Finally - the last leg of the trip! We made it to the airport on time (despite our dragging tired butts not wanting to get out of bed) and prepared to check in. No curbside check in for me this time - I wanted (needed!) assistance to make sure I knew exactly what we were doing with our connecting flight.
So we go into the airport and look for a check in counter. Hmm....none. They don't exist anymore! WHAT???? I get told that we check ourselves in and then wait to be called to check in the luggage. Hmm, ok...this is a bit different!
It was actually kinda fun - I swiped my credit card and a message pops up on the screen "welcome Ms Syme" Cool - the machine knows who I am! :) I then proceed to confirm the flight details to then get another message - a nice flashing yellow screen requesting assistance to have my travel documents checked out. Oh no, what's the problem *this* time!
An AA representative comes over and looks over our passports. Then the third degree starts - where are you going, why are you going, why do you not have a visa stamp in your passport yet, do you have documents to support what you're telling me, no i don't need to see them, just need to know you have them. Finally I must have said enough to pass her scrutiny, she swipes the magic card and we can carry on with the check in!
Now, the one problem we had with this flight - when I booked it and had to choose seating, the ONLY seats left were middle seats, and there were no seats together, so the three of us were all sitting by ourselves. And worse - I HATE sitting in the middle seat! Even the aisle seat getting my elbow whacked constantly all flight is better than the middle! Once the check in was all complete, it had another screen pop up asking if we wanted to review the seating. What the heck - might as well check if there was anything else 'suddenly' available! What luck! Next to Emily's seat, a window seat was available! So I moved Caitlin to sit next to Emily. And there was also a window seat available next to my seat, so I moved myself out of that ikky middle seat to the window! So we ended up with me by the window and emily and caitlin directly behind me. So not too bad.
Next the bags..... Now I was feeling a bit nervous not knowing how much any of the bags weighed any more. We'd been very lucky so far not to get hit with any excess luggage fees, and this was the final stretch to get through. Thankfully all bags were under the limit! Woohoo!!! Amazing - because they really felt super heavy! After being assured that they would magically find their way from the plane to NY onto the plane to Halifax, we said goodbye to the bags and made our way to security.
Now I should mention at this point that all of this process takes a lot of time. They tell you to be at the airport two hours before the flight leaves for a reason! Now back home, two hours before the flight leaves means that you are usually checked in and then sitting around for the remaining 1 hour 45 minutes. So we were expecting the same deal. With this in mind, we had prepared to go straight to the airport, check in and then have breakfast while we sat around waiting for the remaining hour or so until we boarded the plane.
By the time we got through just the checking in/ditching bags process, it was now almost 7am. Just the checking in alone had taken almost an hour! So with grumpy hungry kids in tow, we went through the process of security. We knew what to expect this time, so managed to get everything into the buckets and onto the conveyor belts pretty quickly. We were also a bit smarter to go between two lines rather than taking up all the space and time in one line. So we go through and I hear the beep beep beep - great, theres a problem with one of the bags. again. I get pulled aside and asked if this is my bag - well, its emily's bag, but i guess i'm stuck being responsible for it <sigh>
"I'm sorry ma'am, we need to open the bag". Yeah sure, go for it. They opened the bag, and there, right on top, is a lovely FULL bottle of mountain dew! Thanks emily. The security woman was kind enough to ask emily if she wanted to quickly go back out and drink it? LOL Nah, just chuck it. Bl**dy kids.
So, that done, we then proceed to find our gate. We followed the little arrows, only to find ourselves at the monorail platform. The airport in Vegas is HUGE!!!! So huge, we get a high speed monorail to take us to the next terminal! And then comes the long walk finding the gate from there. By now it's around 7.15 and we're due to board at 7.30am and we still haven't had breakfast! But thats ok.....because I can smell CINNAMON! Fantastic - there, close to the gate is a Cinnabon shop. I've been told we HAVE to try cinnabon, and we LOVE homemade cinnamon scrolls which are based on the same recipe (or so i am told) So off we go to get our healthy breakfast of yummy hot gooey cinnamon scrolls. all i can say is YYYYUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMM!!!!!! My mouth would have LOVED to eat more, but the tummy wasn't as willing, too filling!! But if nothing else, it at least would hold us over until we got to New York.
We boarded the plane - another cramped, lets all sit on everyone elses lap plane. I thanked god for my window seat (after kicking out the guy who decided to help himself to MY seat) and proceeded to fall asleep. I'm not usually good at sleeping on a plane, but I had been up since 4.30am and my eyes just refused to stay open. So most of the flight was mixed between napping, reading and 'talking' with emily via our ipods. It was quite handy sitting right behind and having the seats so close. Rather than yelling to be heard over the noise, we could just type and pass the ipod over my head, emily would read the message, type back and tap me on the head with it to take it back. I'm sure the guy next to me thought we were nuts (not to mention possibly getting annoyed with the passing back and forwards!)
We finally began our descent into New York. We could see snow everywhere! Very exciting. We have no idea what direction we were coming in from, so didn't know where to look to see any landmarks or anything. But what we could see was HUGE!!! As we are taxing towards the terminals, all I could hear from behind me were the girls looking out the window going "oh look, snow! oh look, more snow! oh look, i see snow over there too" The guy sitting next to them was laughing and said "anyone would think you've never seen snow before" and emily said, we haven't! not like this! And he laughed and said, well, welcome to New York, we have plenty of snow for you here!
We came off the plane, and just that bit going between the plane and the walkway, we could feel the outside temperature - holy crap it is COLD!!!! I could see my BREATH type cold! LOL We now had around 2 hours to hang out waiting for a flight to canada. First stop - bathroom! don't get me started on automatic toilets - just plain creepy! Then it was off to the travelex to change the leftover american money into canadian. and THEN time to have something halfway decent to eat. We all got a hot turkey sandwich - and it was YUM!! So fresh, hot and tasty. We have decided we like the orange stuff americans call cheese - so tasty and pretty to look at at the same time! :) And then we had to sit back and wait for the flight to be called to board our LAST PLANE!!!! Our travelling is almost complete!! WOOHOO!!
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