Thursday, March 29, 2012

Chile - The Final Day

Today is our last day in Chile our flight does not leave until 8:55 tonight so the first thing to do is to arrange for a late check out from our hotel. We have been told that we need to be at the airport about three hours before flight time so we need to check out about 5:00 and hope the hotel can do that. So we go to the front desk and ask about late check out we are told that we can check out as late as 6:00 pm. Yea, so we can go out and about for a little while today before returning to the hotel to shower and change for our long flight back to the states.

So we go over to the subway station (the close one) and grab a train to the Plaza des Arms. Which is the main plaza in Santiago. There is a beautiful church


the court house, shops, cafes, street performers and lots of people. There is also the Cafe Copacabana – who knew Copacabana is Chips favorite song?



We also went by a few stores that sold baby clothes. Not weird in itself, but the fact that they seem to stuff the baby clothes in the windows gave me the creeps.

I think we were all pretty tired and we walked around and then had lunch and went back to the hotel to shower and dress for the trip.

We get all showered and dressed and go down and check out and get in the cab for the ride to the airport. We get about three minutes away from the hotel when the drivers phone rings and he says something about papers and we have to go back to the hotel. So we go back and the desk clerk meets me at the door and asks for my passport and exit papers so they can make a copy. I think they have a copy already why couldn't they use that? Oh well he makes a copy and I get back in the cab and off we go again.

We get to the airport and stand in line. We get to the front of the line to be told that our flight leaves at 9:55, not 8:55. Something about the time change. Damn that time change is still messing with us. Oh well lets go visit Dunkin Donuts – yes they have Dunkin Donuts here – so we stop at a shop, go thru security, find our gate and wait and wait and wait.

At some point Chip gets up to go ask a question about her flight. We are all together until Dallas and then we go our separate ways – Chip to San Diego and us to SFO. So Chip goes up to the desk and the agent tells her – hey that flight to LA (cause she is going thru LA to get to San Diego) has been cancelled, but he can route her directly from Dallas to San Diego. That is a good thing, yes. However they might not be able to catch her luggage, they will call out her name and let her know.

So after a little while we hear her name called and her luggage has been found and reticketed to San Diego, all is well.

So we wait some more and finally it is time to board our flight. It is one of those planes with the 2-3-2 configuration of seats and we have the three. We get all settled in and the flight attendant tells Chip that the flight is not full and she can move if she would like. So she ditches us for 2 seats all to herself and we stretch out. Well I stretch out and my beloved becomes my pillow.

We have dinner and watch a movie and I pop a muscle relaxer and an ambian and I am thrilled when it seems 20 minutes later we touch down in Dallas. It is raining like crazy in Dallas and our 9:00 am flight is delayed until noon. Who cares we are on our way home. Then delayed until 1:15, again we don't really care.

Chip goes off to catch her flight and we part ways for now.

Finally we board the last flight of this trip and head for home. We arrive in SFO and Chief Matron Mare calls to see if we have landed and she volunteers to come pick us up! Yeah, thanks. So we head for baggage claim to claim our very wet bags. It seems that our bags sat outside the entire time we were in Dallas or at least that is what it seems like. We head outside and along comes our ride and we are home in no time. Where we open our bags and find out that they were not just wet on the outside everything in them is wet. So much for separating the clean from the dirty. Oh well.

Now off to start planning the next trip.



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