And we travel why?

Days like today make me wonder why anyone travels. The day started when we got to the Burlingame Hilton airport shuttle service, No problem finding it or parking, but the shuttle driver picks us and another couple up as he's answering his cell phone...another driver has been stopped by the police, so he has to cover his shift at another hotel. We had to wait for another shuttle to arrive, exchange cars, then do another pick-up before getting to SFO.

You know those flights when there's one 2 year old on board who's out of control with crying, screaming, getting overtired, so it's impossible to sleep? Well, that was my row today....and her young mom had had such a bad day already with her car being towed in SF with her daughter's suitcase inside, then leaving her cell phone with her boyfriend by mistake—and he won't be returning home to NY for 2 more days—that she was in tears. She had no time to buy her food before arriving at the gate and she barely touched the cheese and fruit she purchased from yummy US Airways. We had packed a bunch of food for the day, so I pulled trail mix and bread for her. I tried amusing her with whatever I had at hand, including hauling out my camera to show her my knitted bears. I was knitting a hat and we tried it on “Pooh” to see if it fit him yet.

I thought I'd paid my dues for the day, but the next flight from Philly to Lisbon was full of kids and the screamers were a few rows behind me. The bright side: not next to me.

Lisbon was a nightmare—they had us wait in a very slow line to get our boarding passes for the last flight, which was on TAP airlines. We finally got through there only to find out we had to go through passport stamping there and the line was snaking around the room with hundreds of people. We had gotten in with 1.5 hours to get to our next flight; the baggage took at least 30-45 min, then the lines took another hour. Then we had another pass through their metal detectors, where they stopped Matthew because of our food. Get this: they left the open nuts and raisins, Matthew's dried fruit in baggies, and made us leave the packaged Trader Joe applesauce! Go figure.

We got to the gate about 20 min before the plane was supposed to leave, but then had to wait for who-knows-what. We didn't take off till 11:45.

Not the end of our day....

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