The BEST VACATION EVER (Part I: the flight)

For me, the BEST VACATION EVER consisted mostly of sitting on the couch in my parents' living room and playing Magic the Gathering^®  with my brothers. Maybe that speaks to my laziness, or maybe to the awesomeness of Magic, or the luxuriousness of the little yellow loveseat, but really I was just glad to be back with the people I know and love. ^{wow that sounds cheesy} 

If you've been reading this blog, you'll probably know already that it had been well over a year and closer to a year and a half since I had been back to the North American continent. Which really isn't all that unreasonable when you realize that there are five thousand miles (8.000 km), nine time zones, an ocean and a continent between my hometown and my adopted country. 

The flight between the Santiago airport and SeaTac made me remember exactly why I had put off making the trek home. 

Leg 1: My apartment to Madrid

5:00 am, I get up, get dressed, lug my suitcase down 6 flights of stairs and across the street to the bus station. An hour or so later I'm going through security at the little airport here in Santiago and enjoying a 4-euro croissant. Catch the plane and watch the sunrise over Galicia. 

Leg 2: Madrid to Philly

I get off the plane in the Madrid Barajas airport and muddle my way to the right terminal after picking up and re-checking my luggage. I sit and wait to board, checking my itinerary every couple minutes just because I'm anxious like that. I've got two hours to make my next connection in Philly, but the plane, in regular Spanish style, is late. Half an hour, forty-five minutes... We take off an hour and a half after the original departure time, never given a reason as to why we left so late.

The plane ride itself is kinda miserable. I get to sit next to a weird old Spanish man for nine hours who tells me maybe a dozen times about how he doesn't speak English. (Good story bro.) I'm one row back from the bulkhead, where a family of four is sitting. As we land the little girl (maybe 3 or 4 years old) cries so much she makes herself vomit. I'm sure the Chicken-or-Pasta was just as good coming up as going down.

Leg 3: Philly to Seattle Phoenix Denver

I was definitely not the only one doomed to miss a connection in Philadelphia that day. About half the plane seemed to be on their way elsewhere and very few of them accepted this fate with quiet resolve.

As we land, the captain announces that anyone who is making a connection needs to stop by the US Airways table to pick up replacement tickets should they not make their flights. There's a mad rush to get off the plane, and harried airline employees shout us along to the table where a single overwhelmed woman is asking "WHAT'S YOUR NAME? WHERE ARE YOU GOING?" and handing out the new boarding passes. I snatch up my own and follow the crowd to pick up my bag. 

We rush through customs and I compare my new ticket with a girl headed for California. Apparently I'm going to Seattle via Phoenix, leaving tomorrow afternoon. 

Look how far out of the way that is.

The customs guy asks me some questions--what have you been doing, do you have anything to declare... then stamps my passport and says, "Welcome back." I just about start crying. God knows why. Maybe it's the stress or the fact that I've been awake and on planes for about 20 hours so far, or maybe I'm just really happy to be in Philadelphia. 

I rush along, still with my fellow connection missers. I've got about ten minutes before my original flight takes off, a bag to check and an entire airport to cross. After a minute I come to a crossroads. I can either follow the signs to the gates, or go outside to the busses that will take me to my US Airways-subsidized hotel room. A security guard sees dancing back and forth, and asks me where I'm going. I tell him and show him my new boarding pass for tomorrow.

"No, no no," he says. "That's really shitty. You're not gonna catch this one tonight. You're gonna go down that hallway and talk to the lady in the window. Tell her you want to go to Denver. Denver, got it?"

I say okay, and go to talk to the lady in the window. It takes a little explaining, a little finagling, but eventually she gets me on a United flight to Denver at 8:00 am the next day with a connection to Seattle that will get me there early in the afternoon. More than anything I am super relieved that I do not have to have this conversation in Spanish given my loopy mental state.

I take the shuttle bus to the hotel, check in and go to have dinner at the hotel's restaurant. By this point I am super out of it and everything is absolutely hilarious.

Look at this toilet! There's so much water in there! And what's with that little lever? Why is there no button on top?

There are some guys at the bar, talking pretty loudly, and I keep sitting up and looking their way, thinking, "English? I hear English! Is it people I know? Probably! I should go talk to them." and then remembering that oh yeah, I'm in the States. Most everyone speaks English.

Leg 4: Denver to Port Townsend

This last little bit wasn't too bad. I flew out in the morning, had breakfast kind of in Denver, and met my mom at the baggage claim in SeaTac. We stopped for phở in Poulsbo or someplace and oh my goodness it was spicy and salty and amazing. It wasn't too much longer before I was in P-Town once again.

It was a longer trip time-wise than I had been expecting (over 48 hours transit time) but at least it wasn't as though I had work or any other real obligations waiting for me.

It's Port Townsend