Day 2:
The first two hours on any flight are fun. You see the magazines, you check the movies available and all that. But then you start to long for a comfortable position. You long for comfort and you pine for your destination like never before. I had heard about flights to the USA and their duration being killer but having been on one myself, I can say that all the hearsay was an understatement.
One might love watching movies and eating, but doing these two things for 16 hours 35,000 feet above the ground can pretty much get to you. I’d watched 3 movies: Yes Man, Vicky Christina Barcelona and Dostana. I had suffered through 2 airline meals and yet, we weren’t even half way through our journey. Nano merrily slept next to me. Woke up at meal times and indulged in a movie or two. But I was awake and super bored. When I almost broke into tears with boredom and nano echoed my sentiment, they announced that we were preparing to land.
Can you imagine the joy we felt as our plane touched the runway at Atlanta, Georgia? Yaay!
Atlanta was our first stop. We had to get out and go through immigration and customs and reboard the same flight. We landed at 8.15 and the flight was taking off at 9.40. We tried our best, but our frantic running didn’t amount to much. We missed the flight by 3-4 minutes.
Fighting hard to breathe, the elder sister in me wanted to handle the situation. But Nani grabbed our passports and asked the lady what we could do.
‘Don’t worry girls, you’ll be fine! We’ll put you on the next flight to Miami, it leaves at gate 4 and let me print out seat requests for you!’
‘but our luggage?’
‘if you didn’t make it in time, your luggage didn’t either. It’ll be on the next flight. Don’t worry’ the lady said with a smile. I have never felt more reassured. But when we heard that the next flight was running full and we may not make it, I knew I had to talk to someone. And that someone usually would be nano, but right now she was swimming with me in the same delectable soup and there was no point talking about it to each other.
Enter Newyorker. Nah, I didn’t ask him to rescue us. I just told him what it was and he heard me out. Don’t worry it’s pretty organised, he said to me. They will drop your luggage to your hotel if it reaches before or after you. So don’t worry. With confidence I repeated Newyorker’s words to Nani. And we prayed and prayed till we got a seat on the next flight! Another yaaay moment!
Finally, we landed in Miami. 27 hours after we left home. It was beautiful, it was clean and it was warm.
Our hotel was a beautiful little building at the heart of south beach. A lovely man, Mike, the concierge of the hotel helped us with maps and what not. We felt a little less lost.
But I was lost nonetheless. Trying to be the older one, the responsible one can be quite tiring and so, I just went to bed. At 8pm! Tomorrow will be hard work. Apartment hunting and all that with nanooli.
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