Well today is the last day. We are going up to the Skytower to see the city one last time. Since we got 24 hours to use our pass if we get there before 10 am we are good. So up we go suited up for rain again. The elevator moves very fast going up 50 floors. We are able to view for a short while before the rain moves in again.
We leave and go to a coffee shop down the street from our apartment. I ordered an espresso but it was awful and bitter. Should have done what Eaglet did and order a tea. We went back to the apartment and finished our packing and called for an Uber.
The guy who came was on his 2nd day of driving. He is actually a performing arts major/dancer and can’t find work right now so he drives an Uber.
Before too long we are at the airport and checking in. This time they make us follow all the rules. We don’t like checking bags but they weighed all our carry-ons and wouldn’t let us on with them so we had to redistribute things and check our roll aboard luggage. Air New Zealand checked them all the way to Orlando but I suggested we will off the tags in Houston where we go through Customs and keep them for the next flight. [And once again, CurbCursher’s passport will not work in the automated reader at immigration while exiting the country. The New Zealand officer tells me that I’m not the problem. This is apparently a regular problem with US passports according to him.]
After arriving in Houston and clearing customs, we keep our bags and are glad we did. Our Air New Zealand flight was great until the last 30 minutes when we hit turbulence near Houston. They had a lot of storms today and we had to fly through them to land. We went through Customs and got our bags back. Then looked for our next gate. We weren’t supposed to leave until a 3 pm flight but we saw there was an Orlando one that was still on the gate from a mechanical so we went to see if we could catch that one. The gate agents said no, they had already closed the flight, so we went to sit and wait. [To make a very long story short, we didn’t leave Houston until 12:00pm the next day, getting home about 19 hours after we were scheduled, making the trip home twice as long, a 38 hour trip vs. the schedule 19.]