Now we know, says Rich, that we could never win The Amazing Race. Okay, so we checked out of the hotel in good time, but we had to negotiate the Metro and the special Airport Bus before we could checkin for our flight. Out the door we went, carrying our backpacks, rolling our suitcases, spirits positive if not quite high. I had had a bit of a problem the first day getting myself and the suitcase through the appropriate turnstile. In fact, i ended up crawling unceremoniously under the barrier, which our friend He Da said he wouldn't recommend. So this time we thought we had figured out the problem, but whatever we figured out must have been wrong. There I was again, stuck between the turnstyle and the not so swinging door. People kept trying to help me, but nothing with budge until finally Rich gave a mighty smack and the door swung to and I was released.
Luckily, the Metro was not crowded because we took up quite a lot of space. Also, it can sometimes be very difficult to get out at one's stop when the aisles are packed with people. Not today. We did fine until we reached the bus stop and Rich discovered that the ticket machine did not respond well to him. Fortunately, the bus driver also sold tickets. Then we settled in for the rather long ride to the airport. As we neared the airport, it became obvious that the bus was going to make several stops, and we suddenly realized that we did not know which stop was ours. A young girl directed us to a chart on the wall that listed the airlines and their terminals, but the print was so small that it might have been written in Chinese for all the good it did us. Finally, Rich asked the bus driver, who by this time was aware that we were clueless about many things, and we got off at Terminal 1, US Air.
The checkin was fine and well-organized. One interesting thing was that they had security in the area of each gate. That provided those long lines that we had experienced in America. Another thing that I had forgotten to mention on our first encounter with the airport was that instead of moving escalators, there were moving ramps. They moved up/they moved down. Again, just as in the large Metro station of two days ago, there were several levels of moving ramps all heading in different directions like covered tubes, the kind they sometimes have in a bank to send messages from the tellers at the window to somewhere in the great unknown.
We were seated on time and left on time, and arrived on time in Philadelphia and landed on time -- with no circling the airport. Maybe they don't fool around with the international flights. I was very happy. The dinner was adequate, even a little tasty; I watched two movies, True Grit and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Rich read and dozed. We had asked no one to pick us up at the airport, so we had decided to take the train home. Since it was a holiday schedule for Memorial Day, we had a bit of a wait to make our connection, but the time passed pretty quickly. I had hoped that our neighbor would be able to meet us at the local train station, but I could not connect with her by telephone. So there we were, walking in the heat and rolling our suitcases up a hill. I had no sooner said to myself, "Well, Lord, I guess we don't need any help or You would have provided it" when lo and behold a lovely lady and her daughter asked if we would like a ride. Yippee!! We were very thankful, and now are happy to be home for real. Although now our trip to Paris is behind us; we can't anticipate it any more. We can, though, give thanks.
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