Day 1 - August 30, 2006

So I boarded United 516 to IAD (Washington-Dulles), and during the flight we had a lot of turbulence...I attribute this to Ernesto, who coincidentally has just been upgraded back to a tropical storm. Nevertheless, we land safely, and I get my second real glimpse of IAD. It's a relatively large airport with 2 main terminals. I landed in terminal D, and I had to board a shuttle to get to the main terminal and baggage claim. The shuttle took a good 5 minutes. Finally, I got to the baggage claim and since it had taken so long to reach there, the luggage was already out on the carousel. I quickly located my bag and then headed to the ground transportation area to catch the hotel shuttle.



The Holiday Inn shuttle picks up at 2 locations - 2A and 2H. When I first stepped on to the curb, I saw 2H a block down, but for some stupid reason, I thought 2A would be closer, so I ended up walking way down (about 10 min) to curb 2A and missed the first shuttle. I had to wait 20 more minutes for the 9:15 pm shuttle to arrive. When it did arrive, it at first bypassed me, so I had to run after it. Finally, the shuttle stopped, and the gruff driver asked me if I was headed to that particular Holiday Inn. I pretended to review my notes and said yes (duh, why would I run after the damn shuttle if it was the wrong Holiday Inn?! seriously!) He loaded my luggage and we went to shuttle stop 2H. The driver actually stopped at this curb and waited about 5 minutes for more passengers, and I kicked myself as I should have gone to this shuttle stop in the first place. An older couple got on the bus, and I'm pretty sure from my eavesdropping on their conversation that they were headed to South Africa too.

It took us about 10 minutes to reach the hotel. I was pretty tired and hungry by this point as it was 9:30 pm, and I hadn't had dinner yet. There were a few people ahead of me in the check-in counter, so I waited and looked around the hotel. It was a rather nice-looking Holiday Inn, definitely more upscale than many of the Holiday Inns I've visited, which pleased me to no end. When I went to check in, the receptionist saw Mom's Priority Member Gold Status on the reservation, so the service was top-notch. They even gave me a free breakfast buffet coupon at the restaurant. Yay for hotel points!



They gave me room 1192, which was a pretty nice room. Definitely 3 star quality with free internet access, spacious bathroom, 3 pillows per bed, and modern furnishings. I went to the restaurant around 10pm for a quick dinner and had french onion soup and a veggie quesadilla. Afterwards, I returned to my room and fooled around on the Internet for a while. A good hour was spent scouring the South African newspaper Mail and Guardian's political cartoons from late May to present. Then, after visiting this amazing web site about sleeping in airports - http://www.sleepinginairports.net/ - I decided, what the hell, why don't I go ahead and blog my experiences abroad? It would provide quite a few memories. Now, it is 1:30 am, and since I asked for a 7:30 am wake-up call, time for bed :)