It's Started
We started the adventure on May 9 when we arrived at Orlando International renowned for it's connection to Disney. That is where the good bit ends. After an 8 hour flight which was reasonable we landed on time. All good so far! As we all started to gather our stuff to leave the aircraft we were informed it would be another ten minutes before we could disembark as the "Immigration Hall was too busy ..." Clearly the landing of two jumbo jets within minutes of each other came as a surprise to the immigration authority in Orlando.
We were in line for three hours before we reached an immigration officer at his desk! Yes that is three hours shuffling through a badly air condition room. When I stated to a fellow suffer that I had never seen it this bad they laughed and said that this is what it is like every time they arrive.
Ah well we will not let that get us down although we are now totally knackered as it is not my usual behaviour to stand around for three hours.
We get to the immigration officer and he asks purpose of our visit and how long we wish to stay. So I tell him we want to stay for 10 months. He looks astonished at this, and declares, without any pause for thought that people on a visitors visa stay for 6 months on average and that was what we could have. No matter what we said he was being a jobsworth and that was all we were going to get. He then pointed out that if we leave it a week we could then apply for an extension and explain in that application that we were wanting to travel extensively and they, yes the mysterious THEY may give us an extension. You could see that he was not prepared to take responsibility for allowing these two dodgy characters into the United States of America. Because terrorists always start trouble after 6 months...perfectly safe up to that point and then it all goes to hell. That was not going to get in the way of our adventure we boldly strolled on through the airport through to the customs who picked us out to have a secondary inspection and the bags were X rayed ....but our endeavour was not thwarted we struggle on through to the car rental area. By now we are at the back of the 400 + people who got off our plane let alone the similar number on the previous flight!
Bet you guessed already there was a long line waiting for the car rental and that took us another hour. We eventually drive away from the airport at 7pm having landed at 3:30 ... Alright those who did the maths that is only three and a half hours so I got the numbers wrong somewhere too tired to pay much notice!! Modern travel is so wonderful!!
No comments:
Post a Comment