One of the things I learned from my recent vacation I already knew, but kind of forgot. I don’t think I’ll ever forget again, because the point was made over and over and over. This is my true story of: Annoyance, Frustration, Anger, Surrender, Disbelief, and Mock-Hilarity.
Even though I knew better, I decided we should carry on our luggage. I was thinking ahead. Since our return flight wasn’t scheduled to arrive at JFK until 8.30 pm, and I knew we’d be tired and anxious to get home, I thought it would streamline the last leg of our journey. It can take a full hour for luggage to show up on the baggage carousel, but if we had our bags with us, we would be able to zip over to the taxi queue right after customs, and breeze on home. Plus, since we were going to a tropical island, we wouldn’t have a lot of heavy clothes. It would be easy to pack light! (These are all the things I told my husband when he questioned my decision to carry-on.)
Packing light wasn’t a problem, actually. It was a little tricky to fit in our books and snorkel masks, but otherwise it wasn’t really a big deal. The problem came with the toiletries, and the awful 3oz-containers-in-a-quart-size-bag rule.
I had gotten us plenty of options for small containers, but the issue was trying to squeeze all the containers we needed into the bags. It would have been fine for just our regular toiletries, but I was set on bringing our own sunscreen. My husband thought we could just buy it there, but you never know what the options will be or how much they will cost. I like Neutrogena’s Ultra- Sheer Dry Touch SPF 30, which comes in a 3oz tube, and had bought two tubes of that, plus two 1.6oz tubes of Supergoop. I also had a small bottle of Neutrogena SPF 70 for our faces. It was wishful thinking, because neither of us was able to fit the Supergoop into our quart size bags. As it was, I stayed up until 1am trying to tetris everything I needed into the restricted space. Around midnight, when my husband went to bed, he suggested (again) that we just check our bags. But at this point, I had already invested so much in the carry-on plan, and I was so close, that I didn’t want to give up on it.
But I should have.
Because the thing is, not all carry-on bags, even if they are “regulation-size,” fit on all planes. I had never noticed this before because my suitcase always fit. But I had a brand new suitcase (more on THAT later) which apparently only fits into the overhead compartments of the really big planes. After everything I did to carry on, I had to check my bag at the gate.
Curses.
There is no baggage carousel at the St. Lucia airport, so I didn’t have to wait for my bag to come down. It was just hanging out in a room when we got through customs. Still, I was pissed that after going through so much work to pack a carry-on, I would have to check my bag on the way home, and wait forever to claim it at JFK. I tried not to think about it though.
I was on vacation.
I was on vacation 14 degrees north of the equator. It was overcast the first few days we were there, a risky time for sunburn because it’s hard to tell if you’re in the shade or not and you can’t feel the heat on your skin. We went through our two 3oz bottles of sunscreen in two and a half days. We ended up having to buy 3 more (larger) bottles of sunscreen while we were there. At $25 a pop.
If I had planned to check my bag I could have brought as much sunscreen as I wanted. And as much lotion as I wanted. And as much bodywash as I wanted. And as much coconout shaving cream as I wanted. You get the point. 3oz is not a whole lot of product to last for a whole week, and most of my bottles were actually 2oz so I could bring more things. I was constantly trying to ration my supplies. Luckily, the hotel had body gel instead of the standard bar soap, and I was able to use that when my bodywash ran out three days early.
It was a really nice trip.
On the way home, when all my containers were empty and it didn’t even matter, we checked our bags in advance. No sense in lugging them around the airport if we’d end up having to check them at the gate again. But it turns out, on the way home from St. Lucia you get to take the big plane, so we wouldn’t have actually had to check. Oh well.
The flight was uneventful, except that we had three seats to share between the two of us, which is always nice. The flight is 4.5 hours, but it seemed longer, and I was really happy when we landed because we were one step closer to home. De-boarding was as annoying as it always is. That guy was there. That guy who forgets something and tries to swim upstream to retrieve it, instead of waiting until everyone gets off the plane. I love that guy.
When we got to the front of the super-long customs line, we were sent to one of the smaller lines in front of the individual agents. Inexplicably, we were directed to the “Visitors” section. I checked with another employee, because we were not visitors, but he told me to stay put. The Visitors line moves MUCH SLOWER than the “Residents” line, because everyone who is not a US resident has to do a song and dance, spin around three times, get their picture taken, and have their fingerprints scanned. (If you are Middle-Eastern, like one of the couples in front of us, you must do the whole routine forward and backward.) Meanwhile, every single person who was behind us in the residents line was processed and the whole area was cleared out before we finally got to see our customs agent. He laughed at our misfortune, and so did we. We were just glad to get through customs and be that much closer to getting home. When we finally made it over to the baggage carousel, our suitcases were the only ones remaining. It turns out we didn’t have to wait for our bags after all.
Lucky us.
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