Around our elbow to get to our thumb

Well, here Alan and I sit in Houston Airport, after being scheduled to arrive in Fort Walton Beach, Florida last night.

As usual, we had planned our trip with strategic timing, something that is not always a good idea.

I had introduced Alan to the American ritual of high school Friday night football 2 years ago.  Not only is it just a fun thing to do, but it is also a fabulous photo opportunity for someone who loves sports photography!  So we timed this trip around what we had done then....

We left Scotland early Thursday morning to fly from Glasgow to Newark, connecting to Houston, which I have never understood, but the choice would have been going to London airports and I avoid that like the plague. (although now that I am sitting in Houston on Friday afternoon - still not in Florida - maybe I will rethink by prejudice of going to London!

The flight to Newark was uneventful.  I watched 2 movies and enjoyed the book I was reading.  We landed in Neward and had 3 hours to kill.  Then headed to our next flight.  Not only did the plane arrive late to the airport, causing a possibility of being about 40 minutes late leaving Newark. Once the plane arrived, they announced they did not have enough flight staff to be able to leave and we had to wait until more flight staff arrived.  Only after boarding the plane did they then begin to load the bags......

Waiting for a slot to take off from Newark
Photo by Alan

Then a huge storm hit and we sat in the plane for over an hour.  All these delays became a 3 hour delay so we missed the last flight from Houston to Fort Walton!

In addition to this it was one of the bumpiest flights I have experienced.  It was just not a good experience.  I have been more frightened in worse storms before, but this was just not experiencing good air most of the way.  But we got to Houston on time and safely.

The great unknown of what would happen to us when we arrived in Houston possibly kept me from worrying about the storm though.  To be fair, United treated us very well.  We were given a hotel room and food vouchers for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  It was too late to find anyplace to eat by the time we were finished attempting to get flights to Fort Walton though.

We were very lucky, if you want to look at it that way, that we were able to get  flights the next day.  The customer service rep helping us was having no luck finding anything at all. We even tried going to Pensacola or Tallahassee!  Eventually she found us flights from Houston to Dallas, with another 2 hour layover and arrival in FWB at 6:30 Friday night.

Texas Breakfast!

We didn't really mind going without dinner and the hotel supplied free breakfast, so we arrived back at Houston airport with a grand total of $42  worth of food vouchers, way more than we could ever spend in a morning, even taking  into account how much we can eat when we set our minds to it!

And that is the story of our first full day on holiday, we were unable to meet a friend I have not seen since graduating from FSU, nor are we currently shopping to supply our timeshare, or checking in there.  We are still sitting in Houston waiting on the next stage of this journey.  Wish us luck!





"You know you spend most of your time at airports when your flight has been delayed 45 mins and your so comfortable you had no idea haha."  Kate Upton