Fast-forward to this year. Stephanie for her English Class had to write a narrative. The narrative had to be about a personal experience..... so she chose the first night in Texas....
We flew out of Cleveland and into DFW arriving around 10:30.
I'll let Stephanie's story take it over from there.
BTW -- Stephanie is not only my daughter, she is a new blogger at: http://onlydeadfishgowiththeflowramblings.blogspot.com/
Our plane had finally landed just as “Panic! at the Disco’s”new song came on in my headphones. I slightly hummed along as we gathered our things from above us. I remember being so happy because you can only hear the woman in front of you yell at her kids for so long before you start yelling at her to leave them alone. Getting off the plane was easy but navigating the airport was hard. Little did I know that it was going to be one of the worst nights of my life.
My Mom, Stepdad, and I finally found our way to the baggage claim to retrieve our bags. We waited and waited because one of the belts were broken, so it took forever to get our bags. After about an hour of waiting we got our last bag and made our way to the bus that was going to take us to the car rental place. We waited around with some people and made small talk about how excited we were to be here. Then the bus arrived, and it turned into a mad crowd of people trying to push and shove onto the bus. I nearly got trampled alive and left behind, but I squeezed on at the last minute.
We arrived at the car rental, and it wasn’t as crazy to get off the bus because we just let everybody go first. After stepping off the bus, my handle broke off my suitcase; so I had to carry it as it banged into the back of my feet. We made our way to the front desk and explained to the guy that we would like to rent a car. Well it was almost 11 P.M., and the guy hardly spoke English.
He kept trying to make us pay more than we already had. That took us another forty minutes just to tell the guy that we got it set up online, and we were here to pay, get the car, and go. After getting into the car and leaving, it was so dark; and we were the only ones really on the road. We had on the navigation system, and we drove twenty minutes to get to our hotel.
We dragged all of our bags into the hotel and went up to the front counter to show the guy working there about the deal online that my mom found. He was very confused because we were not set up in the system.”I am so sorry”,the man said, “But I cannot find you in here. Can I see the address?”Another ten minutes went by before we realized that we had drove to the right hotel name but the wrong hotel. Back into the car we went, and we decided to stop at a gas station for drinks. We were all beyond tired and a little aggravated that it took this long and that so many things went wrong. We got our drinks and a snack and got back into the car to go to the right hotel. In texas U-turns are legal, so when we ended up getting lost, we had to make so many U-turns.
After going into the right hotel and dragging our things in, we made our way up the counter again. It was almost two in the morning, and we just wanted a nice room. After showing the code to the lady, she looked us up and did all the paperwork; and we were so glad something finally went right. “Excuse me we are all out of non smoking rooms,”the lady at the front desk said.
“Are you kidding me!” My mom was so upset because she is really bothered by the smell of smoke. After thirty more minutes of cleaning and my mom having a mental breakdown, we got into our room. The people had offered to clean it out a little bit, so it did not smell so bad. They said they could move us into a non smoking room tomorrow, so we only had to stay there for the night, but all our clothes smelled like smoke after that. We all showered and were asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow.
That was one of the worst days of being in Texas for a week, but everything went smoothly after that. We got some nice breakfast the next morning and were moved into a non smoking room, so it did not smell anymore. All I could think during that was “Welcome to Texas!” which was always followed by a eyeroll.