Despite nearly being attacked by a barracuda (although I'm sure he went back to his little barracuda friends and claimed I attacked him) , we had a wonderful time in Grand Cayman. And since we had an early evening flight, we even got to spend the entire last day there, soaking up the island and buying a few souvenirs (gotta get that magnet!)
The return trip, however...
Get there two hours early, they told us. Check-in, security lines, these things take time, even at smaller airports, they told us. There could be traffic, they told us. "They" were wrong.
No traffic, no lines, actual people to check you in and take your bags (imagine that!), it was a dream come true. Until we got into the terminal with one hour and forty-five minutes to kill. Then it was a nightmare.
First of all, there were about 100 seats and 200 people. Everytime a flight was called, a new round of musical chairs began. As one set of people raced for the tarmac, another raced for the empty seats, leaving in their wake a path of squashed toes, bruised shins and banged heads. Wow. Fun and games.
Those poor unfortunate souls who were too slow to get a seat were condemned to wander until the next announcement, mentally assessing the lucky winners and trying to figure out which ones were headed to New York vs. Georgia (okay, that one was a no-brainer, but some were tougher, like Missouri vs. Iowa).
Although we were among the lucky ones to have seats, Rose and I chose to join the crowds wandering in and out of the shops in the terminal, which took all of five minutes. There were a grand total of two tacky souvenir shops (I know. Tacky and souvenir are redundant), two over-priced watch and jewelry shops (in case you absolutely, positively could not leave the island without that Rolex), one shop which sold nothing but rum cakes (thirty different flavors. It was sort of like Baskins and Robbins for adults.), and a bar that boasted a line of people that stretched from one end of the terminal to the other (I believe the ratio is two rum cakes equal one drink, although some people were trying to speed things along by eating rum cake while they stood in line for a drink. Hmm, not a bad idea.)
While we joined the fray and purchased those last-minute, must-have T-shirts and baseball caps(it was either that or eat rum cakes until we went up a size), Tim plugged in his ipod, closed his eyes and tried his best to pretend he was back on the beach. Every few minutes, he would open one eye and glare at someone for inching a bit too close to our empty seats, then resume singing along with Billy or Bruce (which is probably what had people keeping their distance more than the glaring).
At last our flight was called and we boarded our plane for Miami and another two hour layover...only this time without the pizza and hot dogs.
Turns out that in order to make up for not opening the food stands early in the mornings, they close them early in the evenings, which really cuts down on your options. Oh, and the flight was delayed, so we actually had a three hour layover (yea us!).
But we knew none of this as we deplaned, went through immigration, collected our bags (the last ones off the plane, naturally), stood in line at customs, schlepped our bags over to another terminal, stood in line for security and then finally found our gate where there were 200 people and only 100 seats (wait. This seemed familiar. Where had I seen this before?)
At this point though, we didn't care about the seats as much as we cared about our stomachs (the rum cakes were looking pretttty good right about now). From our trip down, we knew our food choices were limited, but we were okay with pizza and hot dogs for dinner.
Except that as we (and thirty other people) approached the stand, one of the employees closed the security gate and announced that the restaurant was closed.
Sparing a longing glance at the fortunate people on the other side of the bars (Wow. I couldn't believe I was actually envious of someone about to choke down airport pizza), we all turned and headed for the hot dog place... which was also closed.
Now in a panic, we all surged toward the final choice before raiding the newsstand for Snickers and M&M's, Chinese. I was beginning to feel like I was caught in a cattle stampede, only I was one of the cattle! Food. Must get food.
Fortunatley (or unfortunately since the only thing worse than airport pizza is airport Chinese food) we made it through the gate just in time. In retrospect, we might have been better off on the other side.
Surly employees slopped bottom-of-the-barrel, over-steamed Chinese leftovers onto styrofoam plates with all the culinary style of a prison chow line.
"Next," they snapped. "What do you want?"
Well, let's see. My choices are chicken and mushrooms without the chicken, beef and peppers without the peppers, or steamed veggies that look like they've been scraped off the bottom of someone's shoe. Tough choice, it all looks so good. Ah, but I can have all the steamed white rice I want with water, I mean broth, over it? Today is my lucky day. Load me up. Them's eats!
Needless to say, we were a bit hungry and cranky by the time we finally got home, along with being on a sugar buzz from too many Twizzlers.
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