Day 13 Of Cruise - The Return Home

Today we actually had to leave the ship (Christie - <CRY CRY CRY CRY>). We had packed our bags the night before and set them out. The room steward collected them and they were waiting for us on the pier in the morning. We woke up at 5:30 am that morning and expected to leave the ship sometime around 7:00 am. Unfortunately, it was pouring down rain which definitely slowed the process and we didn't actually leave the ship until about 7:30 am. We collected our bags and located a bus with our number, loaded our bags, boarded the bus and waited to leave. And waited, and waited. Apparently, we were missing two people in our group who never showed. The driver finally gave up and we left around 8:40 am for the 45 minute ride to the airport. This was probably the most disorganized part of the cruise.

After arriving at the airport, we had to locate the 1/4 mile long line to stand in order to check in with American Airlines (yes, we flew on Delta to Italy and American home, don't ask me; also, Lael & Christie were not sitting together on any flight, the agent screwed up). Luckily, the line moved fast as our flight was scheduled to leave at 11:30 am. We finally checked in and cleared security by about 10:30 am and boarded our flight by 11:00 am. If you haven't gotten the picture yet, today was a REALLY LONG DAY. The first plane ride was 10 1/2 hours long. We then had a 4 hour layover in Chicago followed by a 4 hour flight to Portland. We had another delay in Chicago because American only flies a couple of times to Portland from Chicago and another flight was late...another 45 minutes delay. By the time we got home it was about midnight on Saturday. We had been up for about 27 hours. The trip was definitely incredible and neither of us wanted to go home.

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