Sunday, August 22, 2004

We're going home!

In many ways, the trip home was even worse than the trip over, and that's no easy feat! It started off easy enough as we got up at 6:30am with a goal of leaving by 7:00am. We actually hit the road closer to 7:30am.

We made it to Lisbon in good time, a little after 10:00am. We had no problems in returning the rental cars and getting checked in at the terminal. Our flight to Madrid at 1:05pm left right on time, and we had no problems at all changing planes in Madrid. They everything went straight to hell.

An eight hour flight from Madrid to New York, and Kevin was a nightmare for a good part of it. He refused to stay in his seat, and I spent most of the first four or five hours just trying to contain him and keep him from bothering the other passengers. Both John and Kevin finally fell asleep for a couple of hours at the tail end of the flight. My happiest moment was looking out the window and seeing Cape Cod, and then a little while the Connecticut shoreline. I saw the Connecticut River from it's mouth in Old Saybrook snaking it's way through the entire state. There was nothing that I wanted more at that time than to be on the ground. The plane finally landed right on time at 7:15pm EST at JFK. That's when the day took a turn for the worse.

We had a little trouble getting through immigration as the agent told us that Joe's green card was expired , and that he would need to fill out some paperwork. That was problem number one. While he and Vanessa took care of that, Maria, the boys, and I went down to baggage claim to get our luggage. Of the four pieces of luggage that we checked in Lisbon, only three made it to New York. That was problem number two. In the meantime, Joe and Vanessa got his paperwork taken care of, got their two pieces of checked luggage, and rather than wait for us they decided to go get their car.

After Maria and I finally decided that our missing luggage was not going to show up, we decided that we would just report it to Iberia Airlines baggage services office and head out. But when we tried to get through customs, we realized that we no longer had our customs form, which we had filled out on the plane, on us. Problem number three. Maria realized that Joe had had it with his stuff when he had to fill out his paperwork. As we later found out, the immigration agent had made him fill out a new customs form (we had tried to list him on ours), but wouldn't let him leave with the old form (i.e. our form). Apparently, he didn't think it was necessary to tell us that little fact before he and Vanessa bolted for their car with THEIR luggage. So now, we had to go back upstairs and fill out a new customs form and go through immigration again. Fortunately, we found an agent who was very helpful and got us out of there pretty quickly.

So now we're out of the terminal and I have to go to long term parking to get the car, about a 45 minute round trip. I leave Maria and John and the luggage right outside the terminal, and take Kevin with me. When I finally got to the car, and was waiting in line to pay at the parking exit, who should show up behind me but Joe and Vanessa! Joe asks me "what took you so long, we've been waiting over an hour". I was really annoyed and not happy at all to see either one of them at this point. Joe said something about following me back to the terminal while I get Maria and John, and I told them that there was no reason for them to wait for us, that they should just go home. Maria and I had already assumed that they were long gone by this time anyway. I gave them directions to I-95 and we parted ways.

When I got back to the terminal with the car, I realized that I couldn't get to where Maria and John were. Problem number four. So I leave the car at the arriving passengers pick up area with Kevin in the car, the doors locked, and the flashers on, and run over to get Maria and John. When we got back to the car, about three minutes later, there was an airport cop starting to write a ticket. This was the last thing I needed at this time as it was about 10:00pm and I was tired and pissed. I explained the situation to him, and he told me that he had already called for a tow truck, don't do this again, etc., then he let us go. Finally, we were on our way home and in control of our own destiny.

A couple of stops for food and bathroom breaks, and we finally made it home to Simsbury at around 12:40am. All in all, about a 22 hour trip door to door.