Diego. An extra 8 hours of travel, but I made it. First flight was delayed 2 hours in Dublin before even departing. This caused a missed connection in Philadelphia, where I got to sit around for 4 hours before my flight to Las Vegas (which I wouldn't have needed if my connection was made in Philly). Got to Vegas and I must say, the strip, lit up at night, was quite impressive.Deplaning, I found myself immediately face to face with slot machines in the Las Vegas airport terminal. I did all I could to not start throwing money at those things. And if my connection there was more than the 90 minutes that it was, I likely would have lost all ability to resist, especially in the hopes to kill time between flights. 2 and a half hours later I landed in San Diego though. It was awesome! I got free transportation to my hostel, because they have some sort of deal with a shuttle company - so I didn't even have to pay! Anything for free is A-ok with me!
The next morning I woke up ready to hit the streets - despite feeling awful after the 24 hours of transit the day before, where I had a fever most of the time, a sore throat, and was coughing constantly. The skies in San Diego were... cloudy. And the wind was blowing things off of the palm trees. No one was walking the streets. It was quite juxtaposed to what I was expecting in "Sunny San Diego."
I made the most of it though, and walked the coast a bit, because after all I was on the Pacific coast! Met an Aussie guy (surprise, su
rprise) named Chris and got breakfast with him on one of the piers. No sooner had we finished then the waitress promptly tossed the check in front of us and wished us a nice day. The first time I got a check without asking in 3.5 months. I was not very excited about this. So far my return to the United States had been pretty disappointing. We walked around through some of the shops along the strip and beach and made the most of an awfully miserable day. After an afternoon nap I ended up just hanging out the rest of the night and settling into my room and talking to people on the porch of the hostel.Overall, not excited to have left Europe; not excited to be in the US; and wishing I had taken out a loan and had another 3 months left.
(This post came 2 weeks late, as I was hiding the fact I was home from my family, to surprise them with my arrival for Christmas time. I already had flights booked home at this point, though they were none the wiser. Very cheeky.)
