Tuesday, July 9, 2002

Today we got up at 5:00 to leave by 6:15 to return the car by 7:00. Xandari had given us watermelon refrescos and a fruit plate for breakfast. We sadly said goodbye to our view, and the birds and caterpillars and their orange and white tabby cat. Mark made it to the car rental place (of course) and we returned the car with no problem. Once we got to the airport we had to scrape together the money for the departure tax–$17.00 per person. We did get it together, got all of the forms, and waited in all of the lines. We chatted with other travelers while waiting for the plane, one of the nicest parts about traveling.  Then we got on the plan without incident. Mark entertained Genevieve on this leg of the journey while I actually got to watch the in-flight movie!  Every now and then I’d hear giggling and “Daddy funny”.  Cute.

In Dallas we had to go through customs. I really really don’t like that airport. It’s walk and walk and walk and walk. Why did they build it that way? Another lame thing is that after you get through customs you’re outside the security line so you have to go back through. Why didn’t they keep us behind security so that didn’t happen? The lamo guy at the metal detector wanted Genevieve to walk through on her own and of course, she wouldn’t do it and they wouldn’t let me carry her but finally, I did anyway which then meant that we all practically got strip searched. We did make our plane, and the crew was 1000 times nicer than the last set of Dallas gate agents. On the plane, the woman in front of Genevieve was very offended that G. kept kicking her seat. Hey, lady, turn around and look. When you recline your seat that far her feet touch the back of your seat. She’s 20 months old, for crying out loud. What do you want me to do, hold her feet the entire trip? Which is actually what I did wind up doing, but usually people give a little bit more forbearance.

We got to San Jose, California, at 5:30. The journey home took a lot less time than the journey out, which is cool. Taxi cab ride home, and bye-bye vacation, hello real world.

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