We were pleasantly surprised to see the sun today after having seen the rainy forecast on the weather yesterday. All went well with getting ready, checking out, and getting to the train station for our trip to the airport. We almost made an earlier 6:43 am train, but decided not to rush with the bags, and take the next one at 7:01 am, as we had planned. Unfortunately, after we were about halfway to the airport, we experienced out first train “traffic jam”. Apparently there was some sort of rail switch problem and we had to wait on a rail siding for about 20 minutes to get through to that station. Then, since everything was now backed up, when we got to that station, the crowds waiting there had already missed a couple of delayed trains, so, of course, they all jammed onto our train. When we finally got to the airport station, it was a madhouse of luggage toting Englishmen trying to get to their flights. Luckily, our airline was in the same terminal as the train station, and the US Air check-in was just inside the door.
We got checked in, and the people running the counter were so nice. One of our bags was a little over the weight limit, but instead of making us shift items from one bag to another to meet the weight, once the gate attendant saw the other bags were less than the limit, he just sent them through. Not like here in the USA, where they want to charge you if you are one pound over. At security, Stephanie got frisked and received all of the “extra” security. We got something to eat, and bought some mens cologne with some of the pound notes we had left. We had looked on the ship, and even with the exchange, it was slightly cheaper in the airport duty free shop. The only problem was that we will need to remember to put it in our checked baggage once we arrived in Charlotte, after collecting our bags for customs processing before re-checking them on to Jacksonville.
The flight was smooth, the plane was fairly new, and we each had our own small TV’s on the seat back in front of us to watch on demand movies. We actually got a hot lunch, and another hot snack on the way. After the 8 hour 45 minute flight, we landed in Charlotte, and then had to wait about 25 minutes locked up in the plane while Customs got ready to receive flights. I guess we were a little early, and they apparently had not yet started work for the day.
All went well through Immigration, we then collected our bags, added the cologne to the checked bags, and went to Customs, where we got flagged for supplemental x-ray and questions. Stephanie must look suspicious, she got checked twice. They were satisfied, and we were on our way to wait for our flight to Jacksonville, where we are now writing this post.
We had a great trip, the weather was much better overall than we expected, and we got to see a lot of interesting sights. It was tiring, I think we could sleep for a week, but it is off to work tomorrow morning for both of us.
We will still be adding pictures, it will make the entire Blog much more interesting. So even though the trip is over, make sure you check back over the next week as we try and find the time to add the pictures, and also do some spell checking, as I am sure we have a few errors. We were so busy, we have not even looked at all of them ourselves, and we apologize for not getting them in each day.
Bon Voyage.