Day 1 6/5/12: Airport Fiasco

As many of you know, I am a super Type A person.  I like a schedule, to be on time, lists, sticky notes, lists, organization, oh yeh and lists.  Of course any vacation will put that to the test. Matthew, likes to arrive early, super early, for any appointment and on Tuesday, June 5th we arrived 4 hours early to the Des Moines airport for our flight to Chicago.  I thought he was crazy, but in the end we were lucky we did.  We dropped our car in long term parking and went up to the American Airlines counter to check our suitcases, we were going to keep our backpacks for carry on.  We handed the lady our tickets for Chicago and she slowly sighed and looked up at us to say, "There isn't enough time for your suitcases to get from one airplane to the other.  You only have an hour in Chicago, you have 2 options.  We can book you on a flight for tomorrow or don't take your suitcases."  My heart sunk.  There was NO way I could leave this airport now and come back tomorrow.  My heart and mind were ready for this trip.  I also could not see buying everything new in Ireland, we couldn't afford that. My husband's quick mind began cranking as we looked each other in the eyes and he said, "We only have our backpacks for carry on, we can each have 2 correct?  So we'll go buy a large carry on bag and take what we can." The lady agreed and pointed us to the nearest airport store that sold carry on bags.  They were $30 each, but for once I didn't care about money, this was our out.  We bought 2 and headed back outside to catch an airport van back to long term parking to sift through what we would take and what we'd leave behind in Matthew's car.  Amazingly, most of it fit.  We had to leave behind a few pairs of pants and shirts and any containers that were more than 3 oz.  Taking 2 carry ons and checking nothing was exactly what some friends of our suggested and we thought they were crazy:)  It was now 2 hours to take off and the airport bar was calling our name.  The bar even had Olde Main beer on tap to remind us of home.  After paying $10 a glass for few and feeling quite relaxed and giggly about the whole situation, we headed to the airplane gate to head to Chicago.

~Lucky with 2 carry on bags on our way to Ireland~

Relaxing in the Des Moines airport bar