Sunrise leaving Seattle
We had originally booked a flight that left at a reasonable hour, 9 am or so. That gave us a 50 minute stop in Houston to change flights. Then we were notified that the flight had been pushed up a bit later, so we would only have 30 minutes to change planes. AAACK! That seemed a bit tight, given that we would have to travel to a different terminal for the flight out of Houston, not to mention what would happen if we were even 10 minutes late getting into Houston! Therefore we switched to the next earlier flight. Unfortunately that meant needing to be at the airport by about 4 am. We did actually manage about 3 hours of sleep before getting up and getting ready for the car picking us up.
We actually arrived in Houston early, yay, but that made for a 4 hour layover. At least that gave us time to have a very leisurely lunch. We stopped in to Pappadeaux, recognized from our previous visit (coming down in March for the first Sounders game of the season) as a well known group of restaurants in Houston. Tami had some very nice fried oysters with some wonderfully delicious garlicky sautéed spinach. We both finished with key lime pie, even though we really didn’t have room left. We didn’t think to take a picture until most of it was scarfed and only dessert was left (even that was missing a bite).
Almost whole key lime pie
After lunch we did make a stop in the airport to buy chocolates (for later of course). Then on the flight we were handed multiple forms to complete for entry in Panama, including a question about bringing food into the country. Hmm, chocolate is one of the major food groups so we decided there was really no choice but to eat ALL of the chocolate. Mike did a fine job with his chocolates, but Tami couldn’t quite finish hers. What a wimp. But we did not want to get in trouble before we even entered the country!
On the second flight we finally broke down and paid for the inflight TV system to help time pass, especially after Tami noticed there were going to be several soccer games on! Unless you pay, and unlike most other airlines we have been on, United offers almost no free entertainment on their system. We were NOT happy when an hour into our flight the system suddenly announced it was leaving its coverage area and the TV programs would end. So much for soccer! All that remained was a few movies, already in progress, and the best of which we had seen previously. We made due with watching parts of movies we were not that interested in, but we were not happy campers.
Going through immigration, we were surprised to be photographed and fingerprinted. Don’t remember THAT anywhere else we have traveled before. So I guess we will now have to behave ourselves on THIS trip.
Walking out of the airport in Panama meant walking into a blast of humidity and warmth, quite a change from Seattle. By way of contrast, we noticed the headline article in the Seattle Times this morning warning that because of our unusually cool spring, going swimming in our lakes and rivers during the first warm weather could lead to thermal shock and death.
We were met by Uncruise staff right at the airport, greeted enthusiastically, and then put on a shuttle to our hotel (because of long flight times, we were expected to arrive the day before the cruise starts). We finally arrived at our hotel and were very pleased with what a nice place it is. We went up to the room and collapsed on the beds. After our chocolate orgy on the plane, we were not feeling up to dinner, but Mike did manage to find a soccer game for Tami to watch!