Wow, what a crazy travel weekend we just had. An amazing wedding and visit with friends sandwiched in between two days of traveling H-E-double hockey sticks. It all started so innocuously, with an ontime 11 AM departure from Portland to Chicago O’Hare, but that’s when the severe weather kicked in. Ugh. Lightning, wind, heavy rains.
Luckily, O’Hare is fairly kid-friendly, so we waited out our 3-hour or so delay between the kids’ play area (yes, they have one inside the airport, it’s near the entrance to Concourses E-F in T2 – see http://www.chicagotraveler.com/chicago-ohare-airport-map.htm), Starbucks, fast food joints, and generally touring all over the terminal. Before we knew it, it had gotten late and finally…finally we were ready to board our flight to Hartford. As we taxied out, the weather was still pretty crummy and there was a ground stop on in O’Hare, so we waited among the other 25 planes trying to depart heading eastbound. By the time we took off and landed in Hartford, it was reeeeeeally late and well beyond all of our bedtimes, around 1 AM EDT.
Our next adventure was the car rental. Oh, did I mention that Thrifty at BDL closes at 1 AM? No shuttle waiting to whisk us away to the rental office, and no answer on the phone either. Sigh. Guess we’ll pick up the car in the morning then…off to the Homewood Suites to crash out. More in a bit on the rest of our weekend.
