My US Trip Part 1- Getting to Hampton the hard way!

Hey Folks,

Well what a wild ride my trip to the US has been. I have to say I loved every minute of it and can't wait to go back next year to teach! So I thought I would share a little snippet of my adventures.

So we flew into Toronto after a 6 and half hour flight from Frankfurt. We got off the plane and had about and 1 hour and 20mins to wait before taking another flight down to Newark airport (just outside New York). The thing was we had to collect our luggage from the flight and walk it through US Immigration, then put it back on the luggage belt, go through security and get to the Newark flight...all in 1 hour 20mins. So what do u think happens? Our luggage didn't come through straight away, we began to panic as it was getting pretty tight for time. So i went to the airline counter and explained the situation, the lady said " Mmm I don't think ur gonna make your flight, if you don't get your bags in the next 10mins come back and we will have to try and get you on another flight" ..I was like SHIT because we had to catch another 2 connecting flights and if we missed this one then all the other flights would be no good and there was a real possibility I wasn't gonna make it to the art and soul retreat! Well it got down to the last minute and all of a sudden our luggage magically appeared . We grabbed our bags and raced through US immigration, threw our luggage on the conveyor belt and bolted to security. I made a fuss and said we were running late for our flight and we managed to get through straight away. We ran so fast but we couldn't find the gate for our connecting flight... it was not showing on the board...and by my watch it was boarding time. I ran down to the service desk and there was about 10 people in front of me, i was like in a panic. Eirik was running around trying to find a phone which he eventually did...and they told him which gate to go to....so we bolted to the gate and it was boarding. We go to get our tickets scanned and there was a problem...our tourist visa info wasn't attached to the ticket details so they couldn't board us until they had this info...well 20mins went by and the lady at the boarding desk was still trying to get a hold of someone...we thought we were gonna miss our flight. Suddenly just as i thought we were doomed to spend our day at the airport..they found our visas on their system and we got out tickets. We got on the flight, they closed the door after us...only to be told by the captain the flight could not leave for another hour due to schedule maintenance on the runway...so we sat there for an hour and a half in reality before we took off! 

Now this meant we were gonna be late for our connecting flight from Newark to Charlottesville...we ended up circling Newark airport for 30mins due to heavy traffic...we landed and then we had to recheck in our bags and get new tickets to fly from Charlottesville to Norfolk. Well the lady who checked us in was from planet moron...first she told us we were at the wrong airport..i looked at eirik and was like 'WTF'...then she says " Oh sorry you are at the right airport"...i just rolled my eyes. She gives us our tickets and checks our bags in and we race as fast as we could to security only to be told I didn't have my plane ticket (she had given me the receipt not my boarding card)...so i had to run all the way back to her ..only to be told that she had given me the ticket...and i said 'Oh no u didn't'...she looks at me and says 'yes i did'. I went I don't have it...she looked down at her screen and to the left she picked up my boarding card she forgot to hand me....i ran as quickly as possible back to security...we get through and the plane is boarding just as we got there....We made it!

We caught the flight into Norfolk...what a bumpy ride, there was lightning outside the plane and it was jumping all over the place...totally freaky but we made it to Norfolk. We collected our bags and then took a taxi to our hotel in Hampton....stay tuned to the next instalment of my US Trip (Are you exhausted from reading that?)