Puerto Rico, Playa Del Carmen, Portugal… or Buenos Aires?

 Welcome back, loyal readers, both new and returning.  A warm welcome to Teri and Thom if they’re following Teaghan’s adventures.

School ended mid-day and the girls came home ready for us to go to the airport.  Despite our 4:30 flight departure, we needed to get to the airport early to straighten out our visas.  Our flight itinerary takes us from Traverse City to Chicago to São Paulo Brazil and then finally Buenos Aires.  For that, we had to have complete Brazilian visas, and United wouldn’t let us check in until they confirmed we had them.

After a hearty lunch, we checked in our steamer trunk bags (and Teaghan’s modest size bag).  

TSA had a 0 minute wait, and they were friendly too.  

We boarded the plane and got notified that we were taking off 10 minutes early, even with deicing.  Superior!  We were off on our adventure, planning our Starbucks pickup order in Chicago on our way to our gate when everything changed.

Our first clue that our vacation was changing was the update that our flight now arrived an hour later, still in enough time to make our connection.  Soon that became 1.5 hours and then we were getting off of the plane altogether.  The was a severe thunderstorm in Chicago which prevented us from taking off.

  

Back in the terminal, we quickly accepted our fate.  

We are not making our flight to Sao Paolo.  What we also knew is that we were going somewhere for spring break, not going home.  We regrouped and talked about new destinations, realizing we ought to choose something that matched our clothes.  Before i called United to change our flights, we locked in on our top choices, ready to find the best option that saved spring break:

1. Buenos Aires (if by Saturday or before)

2. Puerto Rico

3. Lisbon

4. Edinburgh

5. Playa Del Carmen

The United agent was a true hero, promising at the beginning of the call that we were going somewhere warm and tropical that didn’t require any additional visas.  After an extended call, it was decided!  United could get us to Buenos Aires just 11 hours later than scheduled.  We’re flying to Chicago tonight and depart Chicago or Houston at 12:45 PM tomorrow.  From Houston, we take a direct flight to Buenos Aires, arriving at 6:26 AM.  We got nice seats together and we’re all in high spirits.

At present we remain grounded in Traverse City, but are scheduled to board in a few minutes.  Right as we got our hopes up again, it was delayed again another hour.  In an hour or so, we will give up flying and drive to Chicago tonight.  Joel booked us hotel rooms in Chicago, and we’ll be at the airport bright and early to tackle ORD TSA security lines tomorrow.  Stay tuned in the next installment to find out if we make it to Buenos Aires tomorrow or have to resort to choosing a new destination.  From Chicago to anywhere that suits our clothes.


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