TravelwithMitsugirly RC Jewel: Home

MITSUGIRLY has a JEWEL of a time on my 1st RC cruise in years!

Day 11: Coming home

So it's our last day in Puerto Rico and it's 7am and I'm wide awake. It's sorta rainy out off and on. I'm honestly not even sure what to do today. Do we visit the other fort? Do we just keep walking the same old streets? We've pretty much done everything we could do within walking distance. I was starting to wonder why I decided to stay this long. I was ready to go home.

I noticed that we are out of toilet paper again and that shower going from scalding hot to ice cold was really bothering me. I took a trip down to the front desk to let them know that once again, housekeeping did not leave any toilet paper and the shower had not been fixed. They said they would send someone up...which they never did. I pretty much had to use the restroom in the lobby at that point.

The rain had stopped for a minute and this appeared...

Sakari got up and was working on a drawing about Loki and him wondering what happened to his "mini-human" (which is what we call her when we are talking to him about her). She had been coming up with all the "bad thoughts" Loki must be having about her and wondering what happened to her.

I checked my email and was happy to see that I had a reply from my professor saying "everything looks good on my end"...meaning that my test went through. Whew! Relief.

I checked my personal mail to plan for our trip home tomorrow. Anyone ever get those emails from them saying that you must be at the airport in SJU 3 HOURS PRIOR TO YOUR SCHEDULED DEPARTURE? I honestly don't remember if we did this last time we were here, but 3 hours??? Yikes!

So our flight was at 10:15am, which means we would need to be there around 7:15am, which means we needed to be on the way at least by 6:45am and probably up by 5:30am if not sooner to finish last minute packing and breakfast....I wonder what's going to be open at that time in the morning?

Sakari was asking what we were doing today and saying she was hungry.

THEN I NOTICE IT!!!!

You see the date? IT'S TODAY!!!! Oh my gosh!!!! Our flight is TODAY! We are about to miss our flight!

At that point I'm in complete panic mode. Telling Sakari to get dressed, yelling for the hubby to get up. Throwing things in suitcases...it was a mad house! I can't believe this is happening! To me of all people. I'm a planner. I have all this figured out way in advance. I had been telling everyone that our flight was on Wednesday. I told all my kids this every time I talked to them. I told Kia this on the ship. We told the guys at the skateshop this. I even told Sakari's teacher this and that she would be back to school on Thursday.

It was already 8:15am and our flight left in 2 hours and we weren't even to the airport or checked in! Not to mention they board the plane 30 minutes prior to take off so we now officially had 1 hour and 30 minutes to get our stuff together, check out, call a cab, cab ride there, check our luggage in, customs, security, run to the gate!

I was so nervous I could barely function. I was kicking myself for what was happening and not even double checking this entire time. We packed everything within maybe 10 minutes and headed to the lobby to check out. I told the lady at the front desk we needed a cab ASAP, explained the situation and then of course threw in the "no one ever came with toilet paper or to look at the shower so you might want to get that fixed for the next person that has that room".

She called a cab and let us know they said 10 minutes. We pulled our luggage outside and waited and waited for what seemed like eternity! I know they didn't come within the 10 minutes and I was checking my watch constantly.

We finally seen a cab pull up on the side and we ran. Piled everything in the cab and told him we were about to miss our flight. It was now 8:40am and he informed us that it was a 25 minute ride to the airport. YIKES!

I could tell that he was trying to hurry. He was speeding on the way there and weaving in and out of traffic. He even passed a few cops on the way and all I could think about was if we get pulled over for him speeding like this, we're never making it to the airport.

Finally I seen a glimpse of hope.

We managed to get there in 15 minutes and arrived at 8:55am.

We ran inside the building and there was barely a line. Up to the counter at SW with our luggage and they inform us that we needed to go back and have our luggage checked by customs. UGH! We headed over to customs, threw our luggage on the belt (thank goodness no line), they slapped a sticker on it, then we ran back to check in. They hurried and took our luggage and we ran for security.

We got lucky...security was next to empty as well. I guess we just came at the right time today.

We made it and so far so good. We were at the gate by 9:15am...and still starving! We had a half hour before boarding the plane and decided to grab some food to take with us on the plane.

Then it was time to board.

It felt so good to see this happen...

We were going to make it home after all.

The clouds were rolling in and it looked like it might just be a bad day after all. I'm glad we were leaving on this day and not spending another day in OSJ with really nothing left to do. I was ready for home!