Since our flight wasn’t leaving until 12:30 pm, we took our time puttering around in the morning, got the kids off to the bus, it was rather unusual not having to rush around to get to the airport at the crack of dawn. Even before we’d left the house, as it turns out, Chloe was already in her classroom, crying her eyes out, although she’d been fine when I got her and Justin on the bus that morning.



When we left we had to swing by Julie’s to drop off one last batch of stuff, so I got on the pike a little later than I’d wanted, but still with plenty of time to spare. Of course there was a huge mid-morning traffic jam that made it take longer than it should have, but still we got to Logan with ample extra time. The other nice thing about afternoon flights (from Logan anyway) is there aren’t that many of them, so there was hardly anyone in line to check in.



The flight to San Juan was just about 4 hours and was completely uneventful. Beth struck up a conversation while waiting at the bathroom on the plane with an older woman named Donna who was coming back from visiting her grown children, and actually had a house with her husband in Barbados. She had plenty of recommendations for places to go, although most of them involved having a drink and looking at the view. I got the impression she wasn’t hurting for cash.



Once in San Juan, it was about 4:30 and there were a couple of hours to kill. The airport is about the size of the Providence airport, so there wasn’t much going on there, and we were already checked through to Barbados, so we walked around for a while and walked outside for a couple of minutes just to say we did. Beth had discovered on her way through security at Logan that the wire in her bra was setting off the metal detectors in a big way. They were thorough but not difficult about it, and again we weren’t in a hurry and there was no line, so it was more of an annoyance than anything else. She had also brought along some special knitting needles that don’t look like railroad spikes, having been told that these would pass airport security, and they did. In San Juan, since we’d left the airport we had to walk back through security there, and with the exact same results. If anything they were even more thorough at poking around with the wand (it was a woman doing it both times), so Beth resolved to try something else on the way home.



Since there was only one American flight from San Juan to Barbados, the lady we had met on the first flight was on the second one also. This plane was quite a bit smaller, a twin-propeller that held about 50 and wasn’t full (the Boston – San Juan flight was extremely empty). I had been trying to figure out the last couple of weeks given the relative distance between Boston to Puerto Rico and between Puerto Rico to Barbados why it was going to take over two hours for the second leg of the flight, but lo and behold it’s because the plane can’t go that fast. Since it was a small plane, you got to walk out onto the tarmac and up the stairs, just like we used to do at Capitol Airport. If you hadn't checked your bags already, they'd take them right there for you. The sun was setting as we took off, and within minutes was completely dark, Beth could see a few lights here and there from other islands out the window, but otherwise it was a featureless void until we touched down at Grantley Adams airport at about 8:30 pm.



Barbados' only airport is under construction, and late at night the terminal looked more like a loading dock. Immigration is a couple of people sitting behind wooden booths that look like they've been painted about 20 times. We got our bags and found (by asking, since there were no signs) where to wait for our pre-arranged ride to the hotel. It was a cab, but at least the car was nice. It appears that in Barbados anyone can drive people around and call themselves a cab, and there are no meters or anything so its all rather informal as to how much a ride costs. The cab driver warned us about the dangers of the sun there, he saw lots of people who got fried their first day and couldn't move the rest of the trip. He said it was particularly hot and humid this time of year, even the locals thought it was too hot. While we were driving, it started pouring outside, but by the time we reached the hotel, not only had it stopped but it hadn't rained there at all.



After we checked in, it was about 9:30 and we hadn't eaten anything but airplane food all day, so we grabbed a late dinner at the hotel restaurant, just splitting a sandwich and a salad, not very Caribbean, but it was fine. Then it was time to crash.