Memphis Vacation: The Long Way Home

Saturday, April 2nd
When I was making these posts, I actually made drafts of them all with just a quick note about what we did that day, for for this post all I wrote was “travel day of unending travel.” SO TRUE.

Taylor and I woke up early on Saturday morning and finished packing our bags. Zach and Amy were supposed to drive us to the airport but SOMEONE cough*Amy*cough is too good to get out of bed before seven on a Saturday. FINE, AMY, WHATEVER.

Zach dropped us off at Memphis International Airport in plenty of time to make our flight, which was great except as it turned out, our flight was late. half an hour late, which would be okay except we had another flight to catch and only one hour between then. Plus the airport didn’t have free wi-fi like WHAT. I felt like I was living in the dark ages. Anyway our flight was a big knuckle biter as there were quite a few people with connecting flights and short layovers.

When we landed at Minneapolis-St. Paul we all rushed off the plane in a tizz, and as it turned out Taylor and I were really lucky, because our next flight was only two gates over. CRISIS AVERTED. It was already boarding so I had just enough time to pee and then it was adios, Twin Cities! I quite literally barely knew you.

All we saw of Minneapolis-St Paul

The flight to Seattle was uneventful, except for the part when I was putting something (my kindle? I forget) in my bag, which was under the seat in front, and we hit some turbulence and I snagged my nail in the mesh seatback pocket, causing it to tear and start bleeding everywhere. AWESOME. I was brave and just sucked it up though. I mean literally. Gross, but what else am I going to do with a bleeding finger and 36,000 feet?

We landed in Seattle right on time and in a typically Pacific Northwestern rainstorm, and a some nerve wracking wait at the luggage carousel (we’d had to check our bags in Memphis and were anxious that they might have been left behind in MSP because of our late arrival there) we headed downtown. I’d bought tickets on the 6:50pm train back to Vancouver, and it was around 2, 2:30 by this time, so we figured we’d just get some lunch and go shopping or something. We went to go drop our bags at the train station first, and guess what? The train was cancelled because of a MUDSLIDE on the tracks! Insane, right? Anyway, Amtrak had arranged for busses to take us instead, so we stuck to our original lunch & shopping plan. After way too much food at the Cheesecake Factory (WHY IS IT ALWAYS SO MUCH FOOD???) we went to Nordstrom and I spoiled myself with a new bag.

mbmjprettynylontote

Now, I ACTUALLY bought a bag BEFORE the trip, becaus eI wanted something medium big with a zipper for the plane. I found one I thought was perfect at Plenty, but as it turned out it was a piece of garbage and even though I only used it for a week, the seams around the zippers all came undone and the zipper tab on the outside pocket came right off! LAME. Unfortunately I think I tossed the receipt already but I’m still going to take it back to the store to show them what junk it is! Lesson learned: don’t buy .co-lab bags, they totally suck.

Anyway. At around 5:30 we headed back to the train station to retrieve our bags and get on the bus. Let me tell you, I was NOT looking forward to a long bus trip- it was the whole reason I booked train tickets instead! But I like to look on the bright side, and the bright side of the bus was that it was actually faster than the train, even with a short wait at the border*. Less comfortable and no wi-fi, but we pulled into the station in Vancouver at around 10:30pm.

Now, because the bus arrived earlier than the scheduled train would have, there were no cabs, so I said FORGET THIS and set out to catch the Skytrain. After we got downtown and wheeled our suitcases through the Saturday night crowds (I definitely plowed mine into some ankles) we got home to some very excited dogs and one overtired kid. Once our stalwart housesitters (Sym’s dad & stepmom) went home, I put Sym to bed, we walked Georgie and Kichou and then we basically PASSED OUT. By that point it was getting close to midnight and we’d been up since 4 am PST. To be quite honest, I’m not sure if I would do all that travel in one day again- on the way down we went to Seattle the night before our flights and spread the travelling over two days, which was much nicer.

Anyway, that was my trip to Memphis! It was super fun and amazing and I’m happy I finally got to meet my oldest internet friend irl đŸ™‚

*When you cross the border on a bus, you and all your bags and belongings have to get off the bus and go talk to a border agent in the office. They always ask you the same kinds of questions at the border, and I thought I was all prepared, except my border agent asked why we had friends in Memphis, so I had to say we were visiting internet friends. I’m not ashamed of meeting people on the internet, but it was still kind of embarrassing to have my internet friendship dissected by a border guard!

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