The day started very early at 5am with getting cleaned up
and packed even though we had a very late night the night before. We had to leave the apartment. Daniela to go
home and myself to get on my way back to Boston. We had a taxi sent to bring us to the
airport for 6am and we were out the door on time. With a brief stop at her house to drop off
her luggage we made it to the airport quickly because there was no traffic on a
Sunday morning. Unfortunately things
were not as quick in the airport. I did
manage to run into one of my students from the last trip to Peru before I found
my check-in line.
Check in took about 50-55 minutes. Daniela waited for
me. It was a long line. Then we went in to the shopping area
pre-security and bought some coffee at the McDonald’s and did a little bit of
gift shopping. We spent a couple minutes
saying our good-byes before I was going through security. Security wasn’t really bad, the line was
short. But the passport control on
country exit had a very long line and by the time I was finally through it I
had about 15 minutes to board the plane. I think I got to the gate about 10
minutes to spare and honestly the flight attendant asked my name because I was
obviously later to get to the plane and they were looking for missing
passengers. I should point out the flight was actually run by LAN and not
American though I booked through American.
The plane was a Boeing 767-300 and I think as usual it was
full. I was supposed to be on a window
seat but fortunately a guy on the inner aisle wanted to sit next to his wife
who would have been next to me so I got an aisle seat anyway. The plane actually had proper in seat
entertainment systems and before we even took off I started watching The Life
of Pi. It was a reasonably OK movie and
I would say it is worth watching without saying it was the greatest movie I
ever have seen. During the movie they
served a breakfast but I only ate the breads and not the omelet and had some coffee. After the first movie was over I sort of
watched The Adventures of Tin Tin but I did fall asleep during it a little
bit. I can see why it wasn’t that big in
the US. It was a bit too scattered and predictable for my taste even if it was
directed by Spielberg, co-written by Steven Moffat and co-produced by Peter Jackson. When they came around for the snack I guess I
really woke up and watched it to the end though I missed a bit of the
beginning. It wasn’t bad I think. After that was over I knew I had only an hour
or so so I chose to put on Despicable Me (because I had seen it before) and it
became background noise for me to fall asleep again until just a couple minutes
before landing.
At Miami I used Global Entry to bypass the huge passport
control lines and then had to wait a bit for the suitcase to come through. Passing through customs was a few questions
but no searches and was easy. Then I had
to recheck my bag and get across the airport to the American concourse which is
D from I. At concourse D I had to
recheck into security and then I had to take a skytrain to the correct gate
area. When I got to the gate I found the
Islander Bar and Grill and had a couple Bass Ales and a bacon cheeseburger
(welcome back to the states). I wanted
a Sam Adams honestly but they didn’t have anything but Bass and crummy beers so
I took what I could get. I had 3 hours
from the time I got to the security check in before I was to fly so I took my
time then headed back to the gate and wrote a couple of the posts while I had
some time.
The flight to Boston was on a 757 and I was moved around to allow another couple to sit together but I ended up on a window seat this time. The flight was less bumpy than the one to Miami and I slept through most all of it I think. The plane landed about 10:45pm. I think my bag may have been placed on an earlier flight because it did not come off the belt. Instead it was in a holding area. My TSA lock was missing when I got home. It took a while to find the bag. I had a Flightline van with a switch at 125 reaching home at about 12:30. Thoroughly exhausted I headed to bed straight away.
There were no pictures from day 17.
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