sunday 01.29.2006 (getting home)
Posted in bahamas on February 1st, 2006 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: bahamas, kentucky, nassau, ocean
Sunday morning, we walked downtown for breakfast. This was a challenge, as nothing was really open yet. I had a cappuccino, but I really really wanted more Go Ahead and the grocery store was closed. It was to be expected that things would open late on Sunday in the Bahamas.
well-fed wild dogs in nassau. they mostly hung out at the ‘beachside jerk’.
We walked around Bay Street. About a quarter of the shops were open. I was looking for my usual Christmas ornament souvenir, and we wanted food to bring to the airport in case there was nothing there. We knew we’d probably be sitting around for a while.
We found a pharmacy that sold food and souvenirs. No ornament, but the double-bonus on the Go Ahead. Between the two of us, we bought nine packages to bring home. Score!
We walked back to the hotel, said no to the braiding lady for the last time, packed up, and checked out. A shuttle arrived with a driver we did not know, and that was surprising. I was kind of hoping for Frankie. There was another couple waiting for the shuttle at our hotel, too; the girl looked and acted exactly like Kaia from The Real World, and the guy seemed sullen. There was apparently some ticketing mixup, so she wasn’t going home until the next day. The guy sat down in front of us and was silent.
We made a stop at another hotel on Cable Beach. The people weren’t standing there, so the driver went in looking for them. Our shuttle companion spoke up, without even turning around. He said, “Are you going back somewhere with snow, too?” All of a sudden, we loved him.
We compared vacations, because he had booked a similar package to ours. He was going back to Chicago, and seemed very unhappy about it. He told us he was on a Delta flight to the middle of nowhere; it was the same as ours, to Cincinnati, only his left 15 minutes beforehand.
We had been told multiple times to get to the airport two and a half hours early, and that was for good reason. There was a long line along the front of the building for security, and most of the airlines’ desks were crowded. We were relieved to be able to get seat assignments for our connection back to Minneapolis, considering the trouble we’d had getting there. We got in line for the first security scan before customs, which took close to half an hour.
We cleared customs quickly, I had my suitcase searched, then we stood in another line going upstairs, which turned out to be for yet another security check. I’m not sure why we had to have our stuff xrayed so much, but whatever. We were in the gate area more than an hour before our flight, so we could relax.
The gate area is all in one building, and it was mobbed when we got there. There was a shop, a bar, and a restaurant, so we decided to have a real lunch, if by ‘cheese sandwich’ I mean ‘real lunch’. As we were sitting down, we heard the announcement: our 2:25 flight was delayed until 4:30. Awesome.
Since we only had a 50 minute layover in Cincinnati to begin with, I knew we had a problem. I called Delta, and they said to talk to the people at the gate. Well, everyone was talking to the people at the gate, because it was chaos. All their outbound flights were overbooked. Half of them were delayed. The 2:15 flight to Cincinnati that Chicago boy was on was boarded and then unboarded because they put them on the wrong plane. Our plane was experiencing ‘mechanical difficulties’. We finally got to speak to the guy at the gate, and he told us to come back after the other flight was boarded correctly. We really wanted on that flight, but it was already full. We decided to take the next logical step: have a drink at the gate and enjoy ourselves. That’s exactly what we did.
We went back and talked to a different agent later. He spent about half an hour trying to get us on any flight he could find that would connect back home, but it was impossible. I couldn’t really be crabby with him, because he did his best and I could tell it was pissing him off that he couldn’t work something out. So at 4:30, we got on our return flight to Cincinnati, knowing we’d be spending the night there.
The flight was insane. We quickly discovered that the slimy, nasty dudes from the flight down were on that 48-seat plane with us. They were now accompanied by a couple girls in their early twenties, who they were very happily groping. The smarmiest one of all was seated in the exit row, with the loud, drunk blonde chick next to him. The flight attendant came and told her she had to move out of the exit row, because she didn’t trust her to perform her duties in case of emergency. Personally, I didn’t trust the nasty dude, either. He was clearly disappointed when she moved.
She sat a few rows up, bitching about what had happened. The flight attendant went back up to her and told her she was THIS close to being kicked off the plane. That seemed to shut her up.
In Cincinnati (the airport is actually located in Kentucky, so from then on it became Kentuckinnati), we had the pleasure of being in line behind the Detroit Mafia at the desk where they were handing out hotel vouchers, or trying to make arrangements for people on other flights. The dudes were seriously considering the airline’s offer to fly them to Cleveland and get them a cab to Detroit; they wouldn’t just get them a rental car due to liability. They finally grudgingly agreed to take the vouchers, and of course we were extra thrilled that meant they’d be staying in the hotel with us.
We got our vouchers for the hotel, meals ($7, good anywhere in the airport, whatever), and our boarding passes for the flight the next morning. We hopped on the shuttle with the Detroit Mafia. We cringed as we listened to their conversation. They were truly disgusting.
In the lobby, they all insisted on separate rooms, because Delta was paying for them. They ate a bunch of the hotel cookies and wandered in and out of the lobby, watching some game on TV. They’d occasionally try to talk to us in the lamest way possible: ‘Hello Kitty, huh?’ ‘Yep.’ They asked where they could get dinner, since it was after 9. The girl at the front desk said that the Marriott down the street was the only nearby restaurant, which meant we were going to again end up in the same place. I was dying to ask her to get us a room far away from them, but they were there the whole time. GROSS.
We managed to get to the restaurant long before them, and were almost done with dinner before they showed up. They were seated far away, so at least we were spared that unpleasantess. We ran back to the hotel, called work to tell them we’d be late, and spent probably the only night of our lives in Kentuckinnati.
We survived the bleak nothingness of southern Illinois and stopped quickly in Metropolis so Stephanie could see Superman. We arrived just in time for some kind of bizarre religious Superman festival; the main street was blocked off and there were vendors selling state-fair food and cheap designer knockoff schlock. A couple hundred old people were crammed in a tent listening to gospel music. It gave us the willies, so we got the hell out of there and crossed the border into Kentucky.
If you don’t mind, I’ve taken the liberty of redrawing the map in accordance with my theory. So, you’ll see that the large tangerine-colored state is the territory now known as Kentuckinois. The salmon-colored state near the top remains as a tiny remnant of the original Illinois, and contains mostly Rockford and various tollbooths along the interstate. The lime-colored state along Lake Michigan encompasses what is now officially named Chicagoland. All other midwestern states remain as is (for now). I think you will all agree that this is a great improvement on United States cartography.
I dumped the quarters from my wallet onto the table and headed to the jukebox. What I found there was almost too wonderful to relate, but I’ll try: the first twenty or so selections were all songs
I was cranky as hell, as I usually am in the morning. It seemed to take an extra long time to get there, which we finally did around 11:30. Heather wanted to do some present shopping at the Old City Market (on eBay Street!), I wanted to pee. We drove around and around looking for parking, but the place was mobbed. Finally, I told her to go shop and I’d keep looking for parking, and call her when I found it. I never did. Around 12:30, about to pee my pants, I called her and told her we had to switch so I could go to the bathroom, so we did that. Then she went back in for more, and I circled until she was ready to go. Charleston is an incredibly beautiful city, but when you don’t have time to enjoy it, what’s the point?
We went into the Sanders Cafe, which is a functioning KFC attached to the original restaurant. There are some statues and displays honoring the (fake) colonel, which were reminiscent of the 
