“People avoid us like the plague!!!”…More true now than ever.

Photo of a lake in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Not out photo.

We finally made it to Minnesota. The two flights with Icelandair were quite lovely. The planes were modern and in perfect condition, and the flights were smooth and uneventful with little turbulence. On the second longer flight, 6 1/2 hours, we each sat in aisle seats across from each other with no other passengers sitting next to us.

On overnight flights, when we’ve each had a three-seat-row to ourselves, we’ve been able to lay down, lifting the armrests, although the seat belts make it uncomfortable. We’ve done this on many flights hoping to sleep for an hour or two in desperation. But last night, neither of us tried to sleep.

We never ate dinner on the plane. Their for-purchase options were unhealthy and unsuitable, not appealing to either of us. When we arrived in Eden Prairie near our hotel, we stopped at a Walgreens pharmacy to buy cough medicine for sleeping, Walgreens’ version of Nyquil. It helped each of us sleep for six hours. We didn’t eat dinner last night since, by the time we arrived at the hotel, it was 2:00 to us, and eating wasn’t on our radar.

Tom had breakfast in the hotel’s cafe this morning, included in our room rate. There was nothing I could eat but hard-boiled eggs, and by themselves, didn’t appeal to me. I purchased a few bags of nuts which I will nibble on until we go out around 6:00 pm to get takeaway for dinner. Since Tom doesn’t care for my choices of “healthy food,” I will get a Mexican salad at Chipotle, and he’ll probably do Mcdonald’s. Plus, we always try to adapt as quickly as possible. Plus, we always try to adapt as soon as possible.

We don’t feel like sitting in a restaurant with all this coughing. People stare at us. It was never more appropriate to say, “People avoid us like the plague!” We understand why.

So, we get to our hotel and try to settle in with a plan to take the cough medicine at 10:00 pm, Minnesota time. The room is spacious with a mini living room, kitchen, comfortable bed, and roomy bath. It’s in an area with tons of shopping, a large mall, and countless markets, and restaurants. It will serve us well for the two weeks we’ll be here.

But, immediately upon attempting to get online, we ran into the same problem we had the last time we stayed here in July when we visited for a month and got our Covid vaccines. The WiFi in the room didn’t work! At that time, I spent an hour online with the hotel’s tech support guy trying to get it to work. Feeling as exhausted as I did when we got in the room, I couldn’t imagine feeling up to spending an hour on the phone with a tech support person from Marriott hotels.

The front desk gave me a number to call for tech support, but for some weird reason, the call didn’t go through, not on the room’s phone or on my cell phone. I called the front desk again and asked them to try the number and then patch me through. They couldn’t get through either. An hour later, I had to call again. Finally, I went to bed frustrated, wondering if we’d have to move to another hotel.

It was the first thing I thought about when I awoke this morning. At around 8:00, after showering and dressing, I headed to the front desk to tell them this issue needed to be resolved, or we’d have no choice but to move to another hotel. Marriott’s tech department called within a half-hour, and a friendly and helpful guy worked with me to get the situation resolved on both Tom’s and my laptops.

In this case, we got it fixed in minutes. After a friendly conversation with the tech guy, we were both online and able to access the web without issues. What a relief!

We have no plans to see family today. We’ll ramp up the visits tomorrow. This extra day to recover will be good with little we have to do.

Be well.

Photo from one year ago today, May 2, 2021:

Scenic photo of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, where we are now. (Not our photo).

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