FIRE IN THE HOLE!!! .....or the cabin....

Well...we're still in Cleveland.  And let me preface this post with- we're okay...alive and well :)
Our plane, after being delayed over three hours, boarded at 4pm today.  After de-icing and making sure all passengers were secure (for now, at least), our plane took off at 4:40ish!  Finally!
Just after dozing off, Bill was awakened by the back of the cabin screaming, "SMOKE SMOKE SMOKE......THERE'S SMMOOOOKKKEE!!!!"  Bill instantly woke up and sure enough, when we glanced back, there was smoke.  The cabin was on fire!
We heard nothing from the stewardess or the pilot, which completely set us into panic mode.  Bill and I looked at each other and knew exactly what was going through one another's mind..."this is it."  For a few minutes, I was absolutely terrified of death...and of hell...but anyway.  I was saying my Our Fathers and Hail Marys like it was nobody's business (and Bill was praying too...).
We started descending and, well, we had no idea WHY because our pilot and stewardess didn't have the common sense to tell us, so I automatically thought the worst but was hoping for the best.  We couldn't see because of the snow and when the plane got low enough for us to see, all we could see was suburbia that was seemingly 50 feet below us.  I was just hoping that this wasn't going to end like the plane crash in Buffalo, NY that happened awhile ago.  To our relief, the decent did ultimately lead us back to the Cleveland Airport (thank God!) and as our plane landed, everybody applauded (a first that I've heard in the US).  We were SAFE!
Despite the smokey, chemical smelling plane, I was never happier to be on the ground.  Now we just wanted to get OUT.  But as you could probably guess by now, what did we hear from our pilot and stewardess?  That's right- NOTHING.
After a good 15 minutes of waiting, we were finally able to exit.  Insert sigh of relief and tears of joy.
Our next step was to demand a rebooking and hotel voucher, which we got with almost no problem.  All that was left for us to do was get our luggage in baggage claim and calm our nerves at the hotel.  Or so we thought..........
Our baggage claim "adventure" lasted a whopping four hours.  However, we met a lot of great and interesting people from our flight during this time, so it wasn't all bad!  One by one, our new friends started to leave as they collected their luggage....and there we were....still waiting.  At 8:40pm, we finally received our luggage and were on our way to our hotel!  Finally!
Since we didn't have dinner, we went to a small place in our hotel and ate dinner with our new-found friend Ann!  Ann was on our flight and was one of the passengers that we grew close to quickly while bonding over our lost luggage.  Lucky for us, she had the same idea for dinner as we did :)
Ann is from Brooklyn, NY and is a character to say the least!  We had a great dinner with her and are still laughing at her incredibly dry sense of humor.
All in all, today was...terrifically stressful.  I feel so blessed to be alive, to not have been another horror story in the news, to have met some incredible people, and to be sleeping in a warm bed with my own luggage tonight.

Goodnight, all- fingers crossed that the next update will be from Rome!