I'm going to do this little by little. It's too hard to sift through all the pictures again and write up even the basics from each day, so here's Volume 1 of my cruise story:
DAY 1- Getting There
On Sunday, June 24th, my wife and I woke up at 3:00 a.m. to get ready for our journey. This was the first time either of us were on a cruise and it was my first time out of the country. It was also my first time on an airplane since I was a baby. My wife, Jen, has been to three continents. I've been to Pittsburgh, New York City, New Jersey, and the Outer Banks. Getting up at 3:00 sucked but we were too excited about the week ahead to even notice.
We packed our bags two nights prior, so on Saturday the 23rd, we sat around the house all day after my parents picked up the girls. It was weird and almost felt wrong to spend that much downtime without the kids. Sunday morning, we thought we would eat breakfast that morning but we opted for a small glass each of the last of the orange juice. We successfully emptied our fridge of anything that might spoil while we were gone.
Everything flowed smoothly on the way to and into the airport. We had a 6:00 a.m. flight out of Harrisburg International Airport. That flight was supposed to take us to Philadelphia for an 8:00 flight to San Juan. We didn't mind eating light throughout the morning (we took a few snacks along), because we would get to San Juan just after lunch time.
Or so we thought.
We got to the airport before dawn and parked in the long-term parking lot. By a stroke of luck, we parked a few spaces into the lot and right next to one of the shuttle stops. As I pulled our luggage out of the back of our car, the shuttle rounded the corner and picked us up. At 4:30 in the morning, the airport is pretty dead. We checked our bags at the American Airlines desk and got through TSA with only a five-minute wait. We were ahead of schedule.
Once we settled down in the terminal, we split a pack of Pop-Tarts (wild berry flavor) and sat around. We could have slept an hour more and still gotten to the airport before any crowds arrived. Gradually, the terminal filled up. Around 5:15, the display by our departure gate switched from "On Time" to "Delayed." It took half an hour for us to learn that Philadelphia International Airport had fog issues. Our flight in Philly had been pushed back from an 8:00 departure to an 8:20 departure.
Long story short, our 6:00 flight didn't start boarding until 7:30. Our plane didn't take off until 7:45 a.m. but the American Airlines staff said it was a short flight and we should still make the connection. As fate should have it, my wife prefers aisle seats and I prefer window seats, which allowed me to take this right after takeoff:
That, my friends, is Three Mile Island Nuclear Generation Station. I've lived near it all my life. I even took a field trip there in 5th grade. They're decommissioning it next year.
We landed at Philly around 8:05. Our plane was tiny. This isn't my picture, but our plane's interior was identical.
Because we had a connecting flight, we were let off first and ushered to a shuttle that took us from Terminal F to Terminal A-East:
Except that our flight was taking off from the very end of Terminal A-West. After sprinting down Terminal A-West, we learned that we missed our flight by five minutes. Really, though, we missed our flight by 15 minutes, because they close the doors and stop boarding 10 minutes before takeoff.
We were upset but determined. Nobody was at the 10-computer station wide international desk (?!?) so we ran back up Terminal A-West until we found a gate with an employee present. They told us to go to the Special Services Desk. We ran a little further up A-West until we found it. There was one person working the desk and whomever they were helping took forever. We knew from Harrisburg that there was a flight from Philly to Charlotte scheduled for 8:40 that connected to a flight to San Juan. That was the backup plan.
It was 8:30 a.m. when we approached the desk. The American Airlines employee looked and said she had good news for us- she had a direct flight from Philly to San Juan. Great! She said we'd be in San Juan by 10:00 that night. We had to be on the boat by 8. We asked about the flight to Charlotte. She said we were in luck. It was delayed due to a pilot change. It was scheduled to leave at 8:50, which gave us less than 10 minutes to high-tail it to the tip of Terminal A-East.
We get to the gate. Nobody is boarding the plane and the terminal is empty save for two AA employees at the terminal desk. We beg and plead to get on the plane. We were in luck- the replacement pilot hadn't shown up yet but they weren't letting anyone else on until the pilot showed up. The Special Services Desk didn't actually print us tickets, so the gate employees fumble through printing our tickets from Philly to Charlotte and from Charlotte to San Juan on their end. My tickets looked right but Jen's ticket for Charlotte to San Juan didn't have a seat number on it. Folks, we came 10 minutes shy of being 'that couple on YouTube sobbing in the middle of the airport.'
The pilot shows up and we get on board. We're not sitting together but we're right across the aisle from each other. I sat next to a nice young woman who was on her way to Air Force boot camp in Alabama. She's going into the service for a few years as a base medic in order to get Uncle Sam to pay for the rest of her med school.
The whole way to Charlotte, my wife and I share nervous looks. As first-world-problems as it may sound, we prayed to make our flight to San Juan. It was going to be a narrow window, our connecting flight was scheduled for take off 20 minutes after we were scheduled to land. Things finally turned our way when the pilot announced that, because 80% of the passengers on our flight had connecting flights in Charlotte scheduled to depart not long after we landed, he got permission to alter the flight path and got us there with 30 minutes to spare instead of 20.
In Charlotte Douglas International Airport, I checked the American website. Our bags made the flight to Charlotte with us. Good news. We still had to run from one terminal to another one two or three terminals over. We were pretty far back in line but the flight was only partway through boarding. While I waited with our bags, my wife went up to ask about her ticket and what the lack of a seat number meant. I was worried it meant she didn't have a guaranteed seat and that she might not make the flight. I was both right and wrong.
Jen came back from the gate desk and told me that her seatless ticket did mean she was going to get whatever seat was left on the flight but she did snag a seat. I was going to be in Row 29 (coach). Because of her ticket, she got comped to Row 1 of First Class.
While my wife got pampered at the front of the plane, (free in-flight meal, leg room to stretch out, and a warm cookie) I sat next to two reasonably well-behaved tween/teens on their way to a mission trip in Puerto Rico and ate the remaining pack of Wild Berry Pop-Tarts along with a complimentary packet of airplane cookies. So, while my wife had a proper lunch, all I had to eat all day until dinner time was three Pop-Tarts, airplane cookies, a granola bar, and a small glass of orange juice.
But we got to San Juan! We got to the cruise terminal four hours after we planned to, but we got on the boat! In all the excitement, we didn't take any pictures at the San Juan airport or of the exterior of the boat in port. But here we are on the boat after eating some dinner, a shot of the grand atrium in the middle of the ship, and San Juan at night as we set sail!
To be continued...
