STUCK IN THE STATES

Planning a vacation is one of my favorite things. I love researching various regions and attractions for the area we'll be visiting. The anticipation of a vacation can be almost as much fun as the vacation itself, but once the actual day of departure arrives the time seems to fly by and before you know it it's time to go home. Fortunately for us, and for most people, I suspect, by the time a vacation is over we're really ready to sleep in our own bed and return to our daily routine.

This vacation in the states has been spent at my sister's house, so we've had all the comforts of home...a full kitchen, laundry facilities, big screen TV. But still, when it's time to go, it's time to go, and on Saturday we were all packed and ready to face a full day and night of flying and train travel to get back home.

In the past when we've flown standby it's been in the off-season, November, December or January. For this trip we didn't have any trouble getting a flight TO the states in mid April, but knew things would be more difficult in May. I thought that with three flights daily from Louisville to Philadelphia, that would be the easy part, and we'd just have to try to coordinate as best we could to make sure we had a good chance of getting on the (once a day) flight from Philly to Rome. Once again, what I thought was logical turned out to be completely wrong!

Getting out of Louisville has proved to be quite challenging. Over the weekend all the flights were full, in part due to the NRA convention that was held here in Louisville. As if I needed another reason to dislike the NRA! In the end it wouldn't have mattered much since of course now all the flights to Rome are full too!

Now our plan is to fly to Philadelphia tomorrow morning on the 6 a.m. flight, then hope and pray that we can get on the evening flight to Rome. It doesn't look good right now, but at this point we figure that we have to get to Philly, and if we have to wait it out there, then so be it. With the bargain price of a standby ticket comes the very really possibility that you might have to wait...and wait...and wait for a seat to open up. We knew that going in, and we're willing to take our chances, but for now it certainly keeps our life just a little more interesting!

posted by Barbara @ 5/19/2008 04:05:00 PM