Day 8 - Saturday/Sunday,

Saturday we knew would be a long day of travel. Our scheduled flight had us leaving Grenada at 2PM and arriving in Burlington, VT just about midnight.

We had a leisurely breakfast and arranged for a taxi to pick us up around 11:30 AM to take us to the airport, which is about a mile away...literally.  So we arrived at the airport in plenty of time, customs was pretty straight forward and we boarded our flight on schedule.

Bye bye Bishop International Airport... :-(















Everything was lovely, we were about an hour ahead of schedule going into JFK, but then things headed south a bit.  JFK is having one of its runways repaired and this resulted in about an hour holding pattern for us, so we arrived at JFK slightly behind our planned arrival. No worries our flight to BTV was delayed about 2 hours, due to weather in New Orleans. Getting your person and baggage through customs is never fun, but we managed it with only one panic attack when June could not find her boarding pass to BTV,  I thought I was going to have to leave her behind.

Since we had time to kill we had one last group meal at the airport. Ed and I both craved a decent beer, the beer in Grenada is just beer.  After our meal, for the first time in a week, they handed us a bill...we are going to have to get used to that again...ouch.











We arrived in BTV about 01:45 in the morning; it was 19F, a bit of an adjustment required. June and I were dropped at our house about 03:00. Any time you can travel 2500 miles and arrive within 2 hours of your ETA is pretty good.  No complaints from us.

Today is a pretty morning albeit only 20F. There is still snow on the ground here but the sun is out and it is forecast to warm up to the mid 40s this week.

It is not Grenada warm, but we have our ways of enjoying the warmth and it is always nice to be home.








Overall it was a great trip, the weather in Grenada was just amazing and we got a real appreciation for the island and how they live. It is very different from the USA, the country was literally destroyed in 2010 and 2011 by hurricanes with over 90% of the houses being severely damaged, most lost their roofs.  It is clear the country is still recovering from Ivan and Emily, much of the housing has not yet been reconstructed, yet you can see they are trying.  What is most impressive is the friendliness of the people.  When we arrived, the taxi driver could have easily over charged us when we were confused by the EC to US dollar, but he didn't. One morning in the lobby, I dropped a $20 US bill as I got out of the chair and the lady mopping the floor tapped me on the shoulder and said you dropped this. Everywhere we went they seemed genuine in their appreciation for the Americans, October 25th is Grenada's Thanksgiving day when they remember the 1983 invasion by the USA. It is not a big celebration but they remember.

It is a very friendly nation to visit, we had a great time.