One year ago today, we left Dublin. After a lot of good-byes, hugs and some tears our European adventure was done, so we thought. We had traveled back from Dublin numerous times while living there and had never had any great drama on the journey, until that very last time. Our epic journey home puts my “Up in the Air” saga to shame (see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
Our day started bright and early at a hotel. We had spent the two days prior having all of our worldly possessions packaged up to be shipped back to Florida. We had left our house of 2 ½ years the night before, empty and heartbroken. So many memories, so many great friends, questioning our decision to return to the states.
Our usual taxi driver whom we used because he always provided car seats for the girls arrived at 7:30 in the morning. We said our good-byes to the driver who had become our friend at the curb and it began…the never ending attempt to get back to Ft. Lauderdale.
Our flight to Atlanta was delayed and there was little chance we would make our connection so we were booked on the following flight to Ft. Lauderdale as well. The flight to Atlanta was an excruciating 9 hours, but we survived just fine just as we always had. When we got to Atlanta, we realized we might just make our original flight so we grabbed our stuff and ran. Of course we had to change terminals and there was of course a line at the lift and we had the buggy and lots of bags so I told hubby to run ahead to the gate and let them know we were coming.
I pleaded with the people in line in front of us to PLEASE let us go ahead as we were going to miss our flight and amazingly they let us. So there I was, Sugarplum in the buggy, Honeybun carrying her own rolling back pack plus Sugarplum’s and me with my purse and a backpack. The lift door opened and I told Honeybun to RUN! And that she did, all the way to the gate at the end of the terminal, without stopping without whining, nothing!
Unfortunately when we got there the only person we saw was hubby. Despite getting there 10 minutes before departure time, the gate was already shut and all airline representatives already gone. We tried not to be upset as we were booked on the next flight which left an hour later so it wasn’t so bad.
We headed to the lounge to relax, have a snack and get our boarding passes for our next flight. Turns out, we weren’t booked on the next flight and there was no room for us after all. Ok, not a crisis, there were two more flight to Ft. Lauderdale that night.
Hahaha, it actually was a big deal. We ended up getting booked on the LAST flight of the night, over 6 hours after our original flight. To try to make us feel better they gave us a $100 flight voucher each plus something like $10 each for food and that’s only because we were on first class tickets and first class on the new flight was full so we ended up getting bumped to coach, and the LAST ROW of coach to really top it off.
By the time we boarded the flight we were all exhausted, we had left the hotel in Dublin nearly a whole day prior and I had no patience for anything aside from the needs of my sweet girls who had been so great throughout the ordeal. After the flight, collecting our baggage, loading all our stuff and installing car seats into the van service, we finally arrived at my parents’ house at 2:30 am. Ironically, that’s 7:30 Dublin time, exactly 24 hours after our journey began.
