Finishing Up Our Trip

THURSDAY, January 6th

We got up very early this morning and drove to Pittsburgh to catch our flight to Philadelphia.  It was a very snowy on our way there.  Finally, we arrived in Pittsburgh and waited a short while to board our plane.  I was very sad about leaving our family in Ohio but then thinking about going on to Philadelphia cheered me up because we were going to be with my family for a short time.  The flight was a little over an hour!  It was the first time for me to land in Philly and I saw some cool landmarks such as the Phillies & Eagles stadiums.  After getting our luggage we went to get our rental car.  Then we drove to my brother Jim's home in Lancaster County.

FRIDAY

When we got up this morning, it was snowing again.  We went to the restaurant where my sister, Vi, works for breakfast ~  Country Gardens.  It was so good to see her.  Then my nephew, Michael, had the day off and wanted to do something with us.  So, we ended up going to Baltimore for the day.  It was really nice but rather cold!  Later in the afternoon we headed back toward Lancaster.  After taking Michael to his home my brother Jim was so kind and took me to the cemetery to visit Mom, Daddy & Thelma's graves.  The hurt si still there as if it all just happened yesterday!  When we left there we met almost all of my family that lives in the area.  It was so good to see my nieces, nephews, great~nieces and great~nephews who we hadn't seen in almost a year.  We ate dinner at one of my favorite restaurants ~ Bird~in~Hand Restaurant.  Mmm good!!  I had pork, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes.  When we go there that's what I like to get.  Before we knew it, it was time to tell everyone goodbye once again!  But before we did, one of my nieces knowing we were to leave early the next morning to drive back to Philadelphia to fly home said that there was more snow in the forecast!  Oh, my!!

SATURDAY 

We woke up around 4:30 am Saturday morning, but didn't get up right away.  Dennis checked and it hadn't started snowing yet, but wanted to leave before it started.  We left my brother's home around 6:00am and didn't get very far down the road before we ran into that white fluffy stuff.  By the time we got near Philly, the roads were covered!  When we got to the airport the lines for International flights were very long.  Once getting everything taken care of there we went to get in line to go through security.  I couldn't believe it ~ that line must have been at least a 1/4 of a mile long or more.  It went back this really long hallway and around the corner.  I said to Dennis that I was afraid we were going to miss our flight.  Little did I know what was in store for the next FOUR long miserable hours!!  Ugh!!  When we got to security I had a hard time getting through.  I was one of the one's they want to stop and search you :o(  After all that we got to our gate and sat down.  The time for take~off was great as it was scheduled on time!!  Wonderful until a short time later one of the ladies got on the intercom to announce our flight was delayed as the plane we were bringing back here to Cayman was late in coming to Philly.  So, we sat and waited and waited.  When the plane finally arrived the lady began making an announcement saying the crew was cleaning the plane and there was some maintenance that needed done on our plane.  We supposedly would board in 20 ~ 30 minutes.  Oh, yes, sure we would!  Probably a good 45 ~ 1 hour later we boarded.  That didn't take long but we were #40 waiting to back out of the gate and get in line to get deiced!  We got in that long line and waited and waited some more.  It really got frustrating, believe me.  Then it was our turn to pull up to be deiced.  We just sat there, got deiced and continued to sit there.  Not sure what that was all about.  After all that waiting we had to go get back in line to get on the runway to take off.  Yes, our flight was delayed for four hours!!  We were to get back to Cayman at 1:30 that afternoon and four hours later we arrived.  When we flew over Cuba I told Dennis that country never looked so good, because by air we're only about 40 minutes away from home!  Needless to say after all the problems and sickness of this trip it was good to be home!!