End of the Trip: The Day of Endless Travel

I never did get around to posting about my long day returning from my trip up north in October, though I started drafting this weeks ago. I do want to share some of the pictures, so...here we are, a month later.

My return travel day was already going to be long, though not as long as if I'd picked an itinerary with a 5-6-hour layover, what's up with those? Instead, I chose a route with a layover of 100 minutes, which would get me out of Syracuse at a decent hour and into Florida manageably late.

However, the layover was in LaGuardia, which had had numerous weather-related delays and cancellations the day before, and apparently wasn't over it. I was at the airport but not on my first flight when I got the notice that the second flight was delayed, and then the first flight was also delayed. Which meant I got to spend quite a while at Hancock airport.

They had a few small "shops" with just basic food/drink options, not the bigger ones that have travel items and tourist shirts and so on, and they had scanners instead of human checkers. You put your item on the scanner and the display says "Thinking..." but in my opinion, thinking is not what it's doing. It's scanning.

However, it did at least register what I was buying correctly.

Since I had plenty of  time, I tried finding the mythical place with a comfortable seat, a table, quiet, and not freezing cold. This spot was good on the first two, not on the last two.

But at least I got some knitting in before moving on.

The Middle Ages Brewing restaurant had some fun ads.

I tried this empty gate, but it was cold and had a tv going, so not all that quiet.

Still, I sat and listened to the start of the Bruins matinee before it was time to go closer to my gate: they kept switching how late we were actually leaving, and I didn't want to miss it if they pulled the time way in.

It did get pulled in a bit, actually, and finally we were on board and going.

I noticed that the track lights above me were not all white, and tried to get a photo, but the camera didn't know what to do with it. I promise, it didn't look quite this rainbow to the naked eye!

We made it to LaGuardia without any more drama, and I had time to eat and do some leg-stretching. I liked the sign over the food in this store:

As I had on the way up, I had a good chicken lunch at The Grille, and a delicious cookie from Magnolia Bakery.

It felt like forever until we boarded, but eventually I was back on a (very uncomfortable) plane, picking another movie I'd seen before but was willing to watch again. This time, I went with the hockey classic Miracle.

Some fuzziness as we went up into the clouds.

Finally back in Florida, it was about 10 PM when I walked out of the airport, and was immediately warmer than I had been the entire trip! It was so nice to be warm again. When the shuttle got me to my car and I got in, one of the first things I did was take off my shoes and socks. My feet were very out of practice with being en-shoe-d for days at a time (plus I've always preferred to drive barefoot).

An hour's drive home, and I dragged in and was in bed about 20 minutes later, thanking Past Me for being smart enough to take the following day off work.

All right! Now all I need to do is show what I brought home from that weekend, but that can wait until next time.