Virgin Islands Trip Day 2
Posted by Reagan on 15 Mar 2008 at 08:40 am | Tagged as: General, The Organic Life
March 4th, Tuesday
3:15am – Way too early to be conscious! We were worried about it being too cold to leave out coats in the car. We were still under the impression that traveling at all airports involved massive treks through the cold like Denver International Airport. Not so! The Des Moines airport is teeny.
9pm – 4 flights and 4 xanax later we arrive on St Thomas, USVI. Five hours later than we had planned. Thanks to the idiots at Travelocity! They scheduled our flight to leave Minneapolis at 7:05am and our connecting flight to leave JFK in NYC at 7:10am. Not sure what they know about the mechanics of time and space that I don’t, but they insisted that it wasn’t their fault. I think I talked them into paying for our hotel on St. Thomas since we missed the ferry to St John, but we’ll see. . .
The American Airlines gals at JFK were amazing in getting everything sorted out. However, we were in Terminal 8 when we received a call from Terminal 4 baggage claim. They had our checked bags. What?!?!?! So, we get our flight booked, RUN to Terminal 4 via the AirTrain, RUN to baggage claim, get our bags, RUN back to Terminal 8 via the AirTrain, RUN to check our bags BACK in. By the time we got to the gate we were both feeling pretty good, despite the enormous amount of stress we had just been through. We both handled it incredibly well. The only shouting involved was at the Travelocity agent. “Robert” and “Steven” (obviously aliases for their out-sourced, non American names) never could get a handle on what I was saying. So, I busted out the “Railroad Voice” to get some results, however, I was still able to shoot smiles at Rich the entire time. Our theory. . . all that running acted as a natural stress reliever. Maybe we could survive The Amazing Race without getting divorced. 
CBS, here we come!
So, what did we learn from our traveling day from hell?
- #1: Take direct flights only!
To this, I said to Rich, “There are none from Des Moines.”
“Sure are,” he said, “Alegiant Air flies directly to Disney World!” - #2: Watch where your bags are tagged to go. Make sure they are tagged to go all the way to your destination. Ours weren’t, but we didn’t know to check. . . which is why we had to re-check in our bags at JFK.
We decided to stay at a hotel on St. Thomas the first night because we were tired. We could also get to visit Charlotte Amalie a little before we caught the ferry to St. John the next day.
ooh honey, this does not sound like a good beginning to your much deserve vacation! I hope things get better, but knowing you, you’ll make the best out of it!
Im glad you finally got to your destination in American Paradise. St. John is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. Possibly the most beautiful beaches in the world are on St. John. And ya gotta love the laidback attitude there. Hope you had a great time.