I started out waking up at 3:00am and after a quick shower it was almost directly to the airport for a 6:30am departure to Newark. When I got to check-in however the woman at the desk said that flight was a bit late and asked if I would like to get on the 6am flight instead. I said sure. This was United. The flight was only a couple minutes late which was still early compared to the other flight I should have been on. It was a 737-800 and I slept through almost the whole thing except for the couple minutes to drink my cup of cranberry juice. I think it had a few bumps but not that much.
After landing I had what was theoretically an 8:45am departure to Miami. I know, 2 stops? It was reasonable anyway especially compared to the pricing of other flights. I also do not have 2 stops on the way home making it easier. I said theoretically because the flight ended up being very slow to board and there was some person with ticket troubles that slowed it up an extra ten minutes besides. The plane departed 45 minutes late which fortunately wasn't a problem with my 3 hour layover in Miami before heading on to Lima. The flight was mostly uneventful, a few small bumps. I watched Despicable Me 2 on the overhead CRT TVs of which the ones nearest me flaked out a few times. I also had to hold the headphones into the jack in a specific way to get sound which I was able to do successfully for most all of the movie. It was cute but certainly the first one was better. This plane was a 757-200 and we ended up with only a drink for free (they offered food at a price). I had coffee only.
We arrived to Miami about half an hour late. Of course the landing gate and the departure gate were on opposite sides of the airport and I even had to exit from concourse G to reenter into concourse J which meant rescreening security. For some reason I got a bit lucky here though and was sent through the TSA Pre check line so I didn't have to unload or undress. I did get the double hand swab screening both before and after the metal detector though. The first might have been random. The second was really chosen by the machine. After I got into my gate area I found the Corona Cafe and had a cheeseburger and a couple of Key West Ales which weren't bad. They were light and not too hoppy but not too sweet either. The cheeseburger was reasonable since it was basically all I had eaten for the day. I spoke to a guy living in Miami heading back home to Philly for the holidays and a guy from NYC of Puerto Rican descent heading to Colombia to be with his girlfriend for the holidays. Like me it was his first time not being home for the holidays. That basically killed off the 2.5 hour layover and I headed to the gate right as they lined up to board and got on rather quickly actually.
This flight was on an Airbus 330 and was operated by Taca (Avianca) The flight did have a lot of bumps in it. I watched The World's End with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost to start out and thought it was funny enough and enjoyed it overall. I then turned on the movie Planes but almost immediately fell asleep to it (by the way it was in seat entertainment here). I did get woken up when the plane was in a serious bout of plane shaking turbulence and ended up watching it to the end though. The turbulence probably lasted about 20 minutes. I was in the ass of the plane at the second from the back row which probably made it feel worse. In any event after that bout it appeared to calm down enough. They served a meal which I picked at and ate the snacks mostly. The actual meal was supposed to be some form of ravioli I think. I had some red wine with that.
We arrived to Lima a bit early. Immigration processing had small lines and I found the one that was filing into 2 stations so I got through super quick. However my suitcase was among the last to come off the belt unfortunately. I got outside and apparently Daniela had sent a text to the wrong number (my house number) to text her when I landed which of course I never got but I texted her when she was not out in the arrivals area. No duplicating some of our wedding pictures I guess... She and her brother arrived about half an hour later due to a couple of accidents along the way of the typically 10 minute drive (I know my curse affects this). We got to their house probably at about 10pm.
I dropped my stuff into her room and said hello to the family including Forest. I had to quickly wrap up all the Christmas presents (bags of course, real wrapping on short notice would have been tough). Then we went out for a quick trip down to the market to pick up some fireworks we never ended up using. I don't think this was an issue because the rest of the city was setting off enough for 17 Fourth of July's in the US just in the 5 minutes prior to through the 5 minutes after midnight alone. We had champagne at midnight and there was a little prayer held by her mother before we ate. Their tradition is to put the baby Jesus into the manger at midnight and say the prayer. We had a merlot with the dinner. We opened up presents right after the champagne. Donna got me a running tech shirt and Daniela a dress shirt. Daniela had cooked a turkey for the traditional Christmas dinner, along with mashed potatoes and a bean salad of some sort. It was all very good. After the main course it was paneton which is a sweet bread with dried fruits in it for the traditional dessert. With that we had chocolate that was supposed to be hot but had cooled down. This was all very good. I begged to get some sleep after that as it was 2am and I really hadn't had much sleep up until that point so we went to bed. It was definitely interesting to experience Christmas in a completely different way than I have always done it and I enjoyed it very much. I was exhausted by the end though. It was a very long day.
The pictures from today are located here.
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