Home from an amazing trip

As some of you know, I finally made it home Sunday night after 2 1/2 days of travel. Long story so I will start with the end of the trip first, then go back and start from the beginning and add photos.

 It was so incredible to be in Antarctica that I am still processing everything. I feel so lucky to have gotten to go and for my dream trip to be even better than I even expected!

Last Friday we landed at Ushuaia early in the morning and got off the ship and had a couple of hours in the town, then got a bus to the airport. The airport is very cool looking, I will attach a photo. The downside is there are not very many flights a day, and Aerolineas Argentina does not have a good reputation for being on time. Our flight was delayed over 3 hours, which put us in Buenos Aires 30 minutes before our flight for Atlanta, which was not enough time to get through security, change luggage to Delta, etc.

When we landed in Buenos Aires the Aerolineas folks met us and had made arrangements for the 14 of us on the Atlanta flight to have transportation, hotel, and meals until the next Atlanta flight Saturday evening. They also said they had booked us on that flight, so once we all reconciled that we were not getting home on Saturday we had a good time back in BA for another day.

A bus took us back to the airport, about 45 minutes away from downtown BA, so we got there at 5:30pm for our 8:30 flight, which turned out to be just barely enough time! Each person took at least 20 minutes to check in and get a seat assignment and then get their connecting flight worked out. I was told that when I got to Atlanta I needed to get a seat assignment for the 7:30am flight to Detroit - that sounded fine.

We landed in Atlanta at 5:30am and I raced through baggage, customs, loaded my bag again for the Delta flight, and ran to the gate for the 7:30 flight, anticipating being in Detroit by 9:30am. Unfortunately I did not have a seat, I was on standby! Julie, another Michigander, also was on standby. And so were 23 others! Plus the flight was oversold by 4 people, as was the next flight at 9am. The perfect storm of the end of spring break and basketball tournament in Atlanta made Detroit a very popular destination.

Julie and I went to the customer service counter and said we just had to get seats for Detroit after travelling for so long. They worked and worked on it and finally came up with sending us to Baltimore, then to Detroit. So on Sunday afternoon I had crab

cakes in Maryland, which definitely was NOT on my list of places to be this weekend....

We landed in Detroit at 7pm, and after retrieving my suitcase which had been there almost 12 hours already, I was home by 9pm. A shower and clean clothes were quite a relief!