The Long Road Home

We knew we had a long day ahead, and were up by 3:30 a.m. to start the journey. We were pretty much the first people of the day in the Sevilla airport. We checked in for our international flight at 5:00 a.m. (it seems everyone else waited until after 6:00, but oh, well).

Upon arriving in Madrid we headed for breakfast and starbucks. Yum... Allison was determined to spend her last few Euro, so we bought a bit of candy to last us through the rest of the day. We headed to our gate about an hour before the flight, breezed through security and sat and chatted to pass the time. Here's where it starts to go awry...

A security guard approached us and asked to see our boarding passes. We obliged. She spoke no english, but we were able to understand well enough - we were to go with her. She lead us back to security and had heated words with a couple security guards. We were confused. She then put us in a line for the more "thorough" security search. Seriously - they were emptying carry-ons, checking the lining, and getting very intimate by frisking each of us. As we were awaiting our turn, we noticed the same guard rounding up everyone on our flight and sending them back through the heavy security. We were quite concerned that there may be a specific threat against our very long international flight.

That concerned multiplied when we were in line to board. Yep, here comes the dog, sniffing along the long line of passengers. Yikes! So, we head onto the jet way and check out the plane. Right there, outside the window, we can clearly see that a mechanic has one of the huge engines wide open and is working away with a gagillion tools. Um... is there something wrong with the engine???

Once in our seats on the plane, we were on high alert - trying to spot the suspicious characters on the flight. Oh, there were plenty of weirdos, and we were keeping an eagle eye on them! And we had plenty of time to do so... the pilot came on and promptly announced that we would have a one hour delay. Cause why??? because of the engine problems or because the bomb-sniffing dog was working his way through the luggage compartment?!?! We have no idea! Ugh. Meanwhile, the delay did not bode well for our connection in Chicago.

The flight was, of course, uneventful. We passed the time with music, reading, crosswords and sudoku. Even without the delay, we would have had a short ONE hour to make the connection in Chicago. We had been told when we checked in at Sevilla that our bags were checked all the way to Indy, so we thought we had a chance to make our 3:30 flight. We ran through the airport, only to find that we had to collect our luggage, before going through customs. And as luck would have it, my bag was pretty much the last one off the plane. :-( No surprise, we missed our flight.

But we were so very happy to have wonderfully friendly and helpful people help us through the process. We re-booked on the 5:10 flight, and were back in Indy by 7:10. Ahhh.... it felt so good to be home. :-)