OK, just when I thought it was safe to relax...
Our day at the airport, Sunday April 4th...
Flight to Houston from Newark, wait in domestic travel line for twenty minutes to find out that since we are connecting to a flight going to Mexico, we needed to be in the international check-in...
Get to the gate (Newark Liberty) and find out that Travelocity doesn't actually reserve seats... Get to be on standby with my nerves rattled for an hour... finally get on flight... sit back and relax...
Land in Houston, go to the gate and verify reserved seats (we learned that in Newark), and find out that my son would not be permitted into Mexico unless I have a letter from his father
... Missed flight...
Finally son's Dad faxes a letter to the airport with his authorization (which had to be notarized at 3 pm on a Sunday afternoon...). We get booked on the next flight (standby again). I still wonder why he didn't need a letter to get back in the USA...
At this point, with the nerves being a little frayed, I decided that I would go have a cigarette to calm down. So off we go on the two mile trek to the nearest smoking area. On the way back to the gate, we are handed two orange tickets and told that we were selected for a full body search (randomly selected, of course). Son watches and giggles while Mom does calisthenics for the general public.
At this point, wiht me near tears, we get through to the gate and made it through the standby, and board the plane... at last we are on our way... so we sit and relax... and sit and relax... and sit...
The pilot gets on the speaker and tells us that the mainframe computer system went down and they cannot take off until it is fixed... So our 4:15 flight takes off at 7:30...
We finally land in Mexico at 9:30 pm and we are looking for the transfer car... they do not have our names listed, so we hire a taxi (who ripped us off by charging $20 more than the way back) and finally make it to our hotel...
But, alas, the endurance test was not over... a busload of teenagers and parents, all bearing tennis rackets and tennis balls beat us to the check in... So we wait about 45 minutes to get checked in...
We finally get checked in, try to get something to eat... and we collapsed in our room.
Now I can laugh about this learning experience and everytime I think about it, I laugh more and more. Just thought I'd share some of the fun...
BTW-It was a beautiful country with beautiful scenery and people!