Miami Airport - A.K.A HELL

Trip Start Sep 18, 2007
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Trip End Apr 17, 2009


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Flag of United States  , Florida,
Wednesday, September 19, 2007

The flight to Miami was somewhat uneventful. I ended up sitting next to the same woman I had sat next to in the waiting room. Funny how life does that sometimes. Anyway...we ended up chatting up a storm. She is a writer and flies around the world writing about a whole bunch of things. Her major is culinary...but she's a mostly freelance writer. We fell asleep after dinner and then were rudely awakened by this little boy having nightmares and whose screams of terror woke up (and frightened) the entire plane. This happened about 3 times. Perhaps they should not have chosen Shrek's Third as the late-night in-flight movie! LOL.
We finally arrived in Miami around 4 AM. Going through customs...the x-ray dude asked me if I was carrying any meat...sausage more specifically. I was like...'What? Um, no...no sausage, sir.' Well, he made me open up my one suitcase anyway...cuz he was certain I was packin' some meat. Turns out my bottle of Aloe Vera gel looked suspiciously sausage-like under the xray. I shrugged, closed my suitcase and proceeded to the baggage claim (I would have to pick up my bags and re-check them in for the San Franciso flight). Everything was happy and fine until I tried going through the security check at my boarding gate. The (cranky) woman at the gate counted my purse as carry-on...and would simply not allow me to go through. I had one small carry-on and a back-pack...that was just full of my shoes and didn't even weigh 2 lbs. She was like 'Only 2 pieces of carry-on luggage m'am...you have one, two, three pieces.' (she pointed and counted my pieces several times and pointed at a sign that stated the regulations only allowed 2 pieces). I then tried to shove as much as I could into my small luggage piece so that I only had my purse and my carry-on...but my running shoes would simply not fit into my suitcase, I had them in a plastic bag separately. I tried going through the check-point again...only to get turned down by the same woman again. She was like 'Only 2 pieces of carry-on luggage m'am...you have one, two, three pieces.' I was like...you have GOT to be kidding me...I can put the bag with my running shoes under my seat! My purse shouldn't count as carry-on...why is it being counted as carry-on?! She was implacable. I was so stressed by this point...I swear that I felt like I was gonna burst into tears. I complained bitterly to an American Airlines attendant I ran into...saying they should standardize the carry-on rules...and not have some airports not count purses as carry-on and then others count them as carry-on...and that they should have perhaps told me this before I had re-checked in all my luggage and was now very limited in regards to options. I ended up dashing to one of the airport stores, waiting some 15 minutes before it opened (it was now around 6 AM or so) and then spending USD$10 on a bag that could house both my purse and my shoes. Insanity, sheer insanity. Thankfully that annoying woman let me through...I swear...if she had tried to barr me again at the entrance...I was gonna lose it on her ass.
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