Airport Scenes

It’s 11:11 p.m. and I remain keyed up from the big day of taking my daughter to the Minneapolis airport, so here’s a few scenes from there.  A drippy day it was, as you can see in the above photo as we approached Lindbergh Terminal.

First stop was to swipe a credit card to pay for short-term parking.

Once we found our way through the parking ramp and up and down steps and escalators in the terminal, it was time to check in.  Before leaving home, we had asked, “Do you have your passport?”, about 100 times.

There was about a half hour’s worth of time to spare before Daughter needed to be in the security line.  We took in the sights of the terminal, including arrival/departure boards and the weather map.  As you can see, a wide band of showers and clouds lay over the upper Midwest and Plains.  Thankfully, there was no lightning or wind in the Minneapolis area.

Daughter was pleased to see her flight to Amsterdam was running on time as scheduled.  There were only a handful of other international flights on the Delta/Northwest boards……to Tokyo, Singapore, Paris, and destinations in Canada.

Well, the time has come…….we must leave Daughter on her own in the security line.  Unfortunately, after 9/11, family and visitors are not allowed to accompany the traveler to the departure gate.  When my older daughter flew to Amsterdam in late August of 2001, we were able see her board the plane and watch it take off.  A little over 2 weeks later, the awful events of 9/11 took place.  You better believe I was one very nervous mother for awhile, wondering if planes would ever fly safely again.

Oh-h…..good-byes are always hard.  Even Grandma was there to provide a hug.  Her presence was reassuring as she’s flown overseas several times in the past few years.  She admits its not her favorite thing to do, however.

Back to the parking ramp we trotted……

And, emerged once more into the soggy reality of the day.  With one more swipe of the credit card to finalize the parking payment, we were on our way……..

We weren’t headed in the direction of home quite yet, though.  After a short discussion, we decided to go to ___ of ________.  As if you can’t figure that one out.  Photos from there will be in the next post……

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(Its now 11:42 p.m.  My daughter’s plane was set to land in Amsterdam at 6:30 a.m……that’s 11:30 p.m. CST.  If all has gone well, she should be back on terra firma again by now.  I wonder if she got any sleep during the flight?  She’ll be one tired girl tomorrow/today.  We don’t expect to her to be able to contact us for another day or so.  Its a case of “no news is good news”, I guess.)

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