We made it to the airport. It was super easy to check my bag again. (Upgrading to first class was sooooooo the right choice for this trip. It saved us SO much time/headache/hassle in this pretty crowded season. But also, I would’ve been able to check bags in a priority anyway, because I’m Mint status, baby!)
I do this sort of silly thing in foreign countries where, depending on the exchange rate, I try to save one of every bill thats like $50 (or maybe $100) or less (US).
And I had set aside all my Barbados bills…. but at the airport, I was double checking, and didn’t see a beautiful purple $20! ($10 US).
[I realized later I did have it. I had just put it in the wrong spot of my wallet. But at the time, we were on a new adventure!]
It felt like I couldn’t get one to save my life. I asked in a store. I asked at a dessert place. I tried an ATM. (I forget the problem was with the ATM. It may have only been giving $50s.) But eventually, right back where we started, at Chefette, I got change and had a beautiful Barbados 20.
(Writing this out, it seems stupid to hoard foreign money haha. Because I don’t travel that much, it seems like cool souvenirs, but if I start traveling all the time, I may not want to waste money on just having foreign money – but then again, it’s a souvenir you could always ‘return’ by getting it changed at a bank!)
After that short bit of tiny, silly adventure, we went to our gate and played some more Wordle games, and then we got on the plane.
During the plane ride, I slept for a lot of it. He watched TV for a lot of it. But when we were talking, I was kind of making half-jokes about how I’d never see him again. And then the guy on the aisle, toward the end of the flight, started making conversation with us and saying we seemed to have such great rapport he literally couldn’t believe we had just met.
And we were like “we haven’t.” And he was like “why are you never gonna see each other again, then?” And it was like “It’s a long story, but he lives in Singapore now, blah blah blah. We’re also half-joking, but maybe serious.”
And Alex is like “she’s half-joking/half-serious. I believe I’ll see her again.”
And then – oh my gosh, I can’t believe I didn’t mention this earlier on the blog – every time someone asked what we were doing there, Alex would always be like “she won this trip on Wheel of Fortune!”
So he told that to the guy on the aisle – this part of the conversation was happening after we’d landed. And the guy was so impressed and was like “whoa! I wish I would’ve asked earlier in the flight! I have so many questions!”
It was so funny to me that Alex always teed that up. And everyone always wanted to know more.
And for the last time, as we went through customs in the States, when they asked what we’d been doing, he was like “she won this trip.” And I got my last little questions about it from people being encouraged by my personal hype man yet again.
And then once we made it through customs, I hugged him tighter than I maybe have ever hugged anyone for like maybe a full minute.
And that was it. He went to Los Angeles. I went to my apartment in New York.
(In the end, it probably was better that I asked Wheel to just fly me from NYC, ’cause even though I met him in Los Angeles, once I got to NY, my bags were there, and I didn’t have to worry about them going to LA, as they would’ve been had that been my official airport.)
What a trip. Truly, the trip of a lifetime. hopefully it won’t be the end of the Sky Team, but as we told each other in the dramatic airport goodbye, if it is the end, it’s been an absolutely amazing 8 1/2 year run.
Barbados for life!