Travel can be long, but fun

 

Getting to your destination can be long and tiring, and definitely not the best part of any trip.  But you can have some fun if you try!

For our trip to Ecuador, I had my alarm set for 3;45 in order to leave the house at 4:30.  When it went off, I decided I only needed 30 minutes to get ready and stayed in bed until 4.  But I made it to the airport by 4:45 in order to make our 7:00 am flight.  

We got through securitry without too many issues and our flight was uneventful.  I even had a child in my row who only got fussy when we were waiting to get off the plane.  We landed in Houston around 8 and were ready for breakfast. After that, there was just a long layover until 6:30ish.  About 10 hours!  So we had a scavenger hunt.  And it was really fun.  Houston is actually a nice airport.  The group I was in also took a picture with an AI World Cup camera.  It was a fun photo that turned us into fit soccer players, but did make one of the women into her son.  AI is not as smart as we think it is.

    Here are some other pictures of cool things we found in the airport.

A bagel sculpture

George Bush

A Texas longhorn

A chocolate boot, yum!

I liked this painting

The rest of our time in the airport was spent eating lunch (brisket nachos for me) and playing Phase Ten.  Even with all that time, we did not finish the Phase Ten game.

I did not grab dinner in the airport because we were going to get a meal on the plane.  Plane food is never a good idea!  But that is what I had for dinner.  I also watched the movie Michael on the plane and it was really good.  Other than the food, though, the flight was good.  I had a window seat and could sleep some.  They even gave us blankets.

We landed in Quito at 11:30 and were on our way to Dunamis around 12:30 and arrived around 1:30.  Then we had to unload, get ready for bed and settled in to sleep so that we could get be ready to go to Banos in the morning at 6:00.  I slept in my Saturday clothes!  But that is a different story.

The way back home was not quite as long of a day, but after getting to bed late Friday night, and waking up at 2:30 when I heard people loading the van, we left Dunamis at 4:00 to make it to the airport for a 7 am flight.  

Last view of the mountains of Quito

On our first leg, we got breakfast and the cinnamon roll was kind of good.  I watched Solo Mio (I still stand by my opinion that Kevin James does not make a good leading man for a rom-com) and Song Sung Blue ( a good but sad movie).  

During our only 5 hour layover in Houston, I got a good meatball sandwich at Potbelly Sandwich Shop and an even better chocolate milkshake.  More Phase Ten finished our layover, but we still did not finish the game!

The last leg of the trip was shorter than expected and again very smooth.  We got home before 10 and walked outside to the muggy humidity of Charleston.  Was glad to be home, but missed the cool evenings of Quito!