The evening of March 7th found us in an Air B & B in Lisbon. After a simple burger dinner nearby, we spent the evening preparing (sadly) to return home. With a morning flight, rental car return and check-in, we wanted to be at the airport early and managed to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our flights consisted of a flight to New York from Lisbon and then connecting to a flight to Seattle. There were a couple of minor hitches with the air travel. In Lisbon, there was an additional EU Immigration gate which we had to pass through. Jesse, Laura and the young kids were allowed to pass through an expedited line (this seemed to be a custom in Portugal as this same courtesy was extended to us on a couple of occasions). Unlike Amsterdam, the security official (who I think was new or badly trained) would not let me accompany Jesse and Laura through the same line. He directed me to a separate (very busy) queue and so I got separated from the others. Unfortunately he directed me to the wrong line. So after waiting through one long line, I was sent to an even longer queue. All our spare time, was used up in this process. We all got a bit panicky. At the halfway point in my new queue, I was getting messages from Jesse that our flight was boarding, that they had boarded and asking if he should de-board in order to “rescue” me. (The situation was made more stressful because I was not wearing my hearing aids and because I had forgotten to change the Bluetooth connection between them and my phone. So, they could hear me but I could not hear them on my phone. I eventually figured out what was happening and changed the settings on my phone.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After some anxious moments, I made it to the boarding gate as they were making their final boarding call. Suddenly, they stopped the boarding process – at this point I was beginning to get accustomed to the adrenaline! Apparently, the plane had a maintenance issue and this is why they had stopped the boarding. So, we had a one hour delay, with me and a large number of passengers in the boarding lounge while Jesse, Laura and the kids were on the plane with the balance of the passengers. There was one upside to the delay. The free Mimi Pringles I was given in the boarding lounge hit the spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At JFK airport in New York, we encountered a long immigration line and a slow security line. These delays along with the original flight delay turned the safe 3 hour connection time planned by the itinerary into a rush. Apparently, we were the last people boarded for the connecting flight to Seattle!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the end, all was good. We made it to Seattle on time and were met at the airport by Laura’s dad. Following a brief visit and stay with Laura’s family in Seattle, we will head home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trip was fantastic and I am happy that I had the opportunity to do it. Like every traveller (I am sure) returning after a long trip, home and it’s comforts etc., is a welcome sight too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am looking forward to taking some time to reflect on the trip. I enjoyed the blogging and, at this point, I am planning on continuing to do it. I am thinking that I will re-organize it so that I am not writing about day-to-day happenings as much and see if I can post in a worthwhile way about life in this post- work stage of my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The evening of March 7th found us in an Air B & B in Lisbon. After a simple burger dinner nearby, we spent the evening preparing (sadly) to return home. With a morning flight, rental car return and check-in, we wanted to be at the airport early and managed to do so. Our flights consisted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1458,"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457\/revisions\/1458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}