13/6/09

I came back and watched the Wings lose the finals while I packed up. It was definitely not as easy as I expected. I worked from midnight until 4 am when I showered. I basically frantically packed the rest of the time, up until 4:45, definitely could have used about another hour. I didn't get to vacuum my room or anything, so I kind of quickly went around and picked some things off the floor. I grabbed Hannah and ended up leaving her in the elevator, hoping that maybe someone would laugh/take it with them.

I checked out at security and scurried down to the bus stop. I had no problems with the bus, and slept the whole ride. I was completely exhausted.

When I got to Stansted (way early by the way) and went to check my luggage. Unfortunately it was six kilos over the allotted weight limit of 30 kilos, so I had to pay £90 extra. A nice parting gift. And it pretty much blew my whole profit margin by taking the ridiculous flights instead of just a non-stop from Heathrow. Oh well.

The flight was about an hour late leaving. I slept most of the flight to Dublin.

At Dublin there was a huge line to get through passport control, like 300 people in front of me. I ended up talking with a guy in front of me and he tried to see if I could get moved up since I had less than an hour until my next flight. He was really cool, we talked about travelling arond Europe. The line moved quickly (but not before I was already really stressed out) I got my bags and checked in with Delta (and didn't have to pay anything else, I was worried I would).

I got down to the gate (we had to go through US customs first, kinda weird) in the basement. Turns out my flight was delayed an hour because it was raining in Atlanta the day before and everything got pushed back. I had a lot of time to kill so I got an Aero and Yorkie bar out of the machine and took my computer over to an outlet and worked on the blog some.

The plane boarded and I was in the back, in the second to last row (and behind me no one was sitting so I could put my seat back. I sat next to an Irish dude, but I had the window. The plane didn't take off an hour late, so I ended up sleeping and waking up all confused when we were still on the ground. I watched "Gran Torino" (really good) and they brought me my vegetarian meal. It was a rice and vegetable dish that I really liked. I also watched "Revolutionary Road" which was alright, I didn't like it as much as "Gran Torino." Later they brought by a veggie sandwich and a margherita pizza. I slept on and off the rest of the flight and managed to have time to watch some sort of documentary on digging for opal. I was bored.

Since we were two hours late, my big cushion of time in Atlanta dissappeared. I got my bags quick, waited in another long line, checked my bags, and ran to the next gate. Luckily it was delayed ten minutes so I was alright, but not by much. I was sweating by the time I got there.

That flight was fine, I had a cranapple (like I always get on flights) and slept most that flight too, although not that well. It was a quick flight though. I ened up talking to the guy next to me about how we couldn't see the buildings coming in, apparently a big problem for him.

I went down to baggage claim and Mom and Mark were waiting for me at the bottom of the escalator. It was really exciting to see them.

We got my bags and met Dad with the car and made our way downtown. I figured it was the third car I rode in for the last six months.

We got downtown easy and parked over by Ed Debevec's. The city looked the same yet different, it was kind of weird. I forgot how the tall buildings felt all around you. I had sort of a reverse culture shock, I could talk and not feel embarrassed, even the little walk guy was white, and not green like every city in Europe.

We walked to the Rock 'n Roll McDonald's and had mint chocolate chip gelato (which is still some of my favorite in the world, mostly because of the chunks in it).

From there we went down to Due's and Unos, checking to see which had less of a wait. Due's did, so we put in our name and order and walked down toward the Water Tower. There is a big building that was knocked down on Michigan, no idea what it was. Otherwise, things looks just about the same. It was weird, feeling like I had lived there for such a long time and that I hadn't been there in a long time either.

We got our table and mom and I had a mushroom and spinach pizza, which was alright, not as good as many of the European pizzas. By the end of dinner I was getting pretty tired, and I slept the whole car ride back to the hotel.

The hotel was nice, we had a suite and I slept on the pull-out bed in the front room by the TV. I crashed pretty quickly.