We all stayed up until 2 am to see Trish on her way.  Joseph and Carrie drove her to the airport in plenty of time for her 5 am flight to Dubai so they got home again about 3.  She messaged them at 3:30 to say the flight from Muscat to Dubai was delayed and the scheduled arrival time would now leave her about 35 minutes to make her connection to Seattle.                                   Not looking too bad for 2 am.

By the time the Musact flight landed in Dubai she had missed the connection. Emirates Air re-booked her on a 10 am flight tomorrow to San Fransisco with a connecting flight to Kelowna that would arrive at midnight Dec. 31/Jan1.  She spent several hours in a long line trying to get a different/better connection to no avail.  When Trish planned her two week vacation she scheduled it so she would get home in time for New Year’s Eve, one of her two favorite holidays of the year (the other is Hallowe’en).  That isn’t happening now unfortunately.

We decided to go for a walk along the beach at the promenade again.  There was an accident that backed up traffic for miles so the normal 15-20 minute drive took over an hour.This is one of twin fountains in front of a corridor of government buildings.  I’m pretty sure the top ornaments are real gold.

We also drove past the HSBC bank building which has gold doors and gold-topped pillars.The tide was really low so John and I wandered on the beach while Joseph and Carrie did a faster circuit on the sidewalk.  A quick coffee pick-up at Starbucks and we were on the way home again. I liked the glimmer of the sun on the shallow water along the shore.  It created a very nice effect.

At four o’clock we heard from Trish again that she was unable to change her flights and Emirates Air was putting her up in a hotel for the night. She has to be up at 4 am to get to the airport in time for her 8:50 am flight to San Fransisco.  She doesn’t know how long the connection is up to Kelowna once she gets there and by then she didn’t care.  She had been awake for about 39 hours by then and was having something to eat and going to bed.  What a nightmare!  Delayed flights and missed connections BOTH ways.  This will be a holiday she won’t remember with a great deal of fondness, I think, even though we all had a good visit and she met some new friends.  Messed up travel plans just taint a trip somehow, no matter how enjoyable it may have been.  She will be very glad to get home.  Unfortunately she also has to work at 6 am Friday so it will be a very short recovery time.  Not a good end to a holiday.  Poor Trish.