No matter where they are in the world, business hotels are always the same. I swear they must all order from the same art store and hire the same decorators. Definitely the same carpet-layers.
I still do not like flying, but today’s flight was at the very least uneventful. Once I got to the Seattle airport however, things changed. I’ve seen Seatac busy, but never quite this busy. Huge crowds of people who didn’t speak a word of English but were so determined to get where they were going that they nearly crashed into my luggage cart multiple times rather than actually allow me to pass. At leat 45 minutes in customs, and at least an hour just trying to get a shuttle! Craziness! But still, anything is better than the marvelous Middle-Eastern-Misadventure.
At at the end of it all, I’m safely ensonced in my hotel room, having shared dinner with a wonderfully chipper fellow traveller (with the same name as me! Ha! Small world), who was on the huge long-haul flight that got cancelled and which was the main cause of so much of the congestion in the airport. Long-haul to Frankfurt simply didn’t arrive and therefore obviously couldn’t take off….so several hundred people were summarily displaced. But hey, it meant that this time I didn’t have to eat dinner all by myself, and honestly that makes all the difference in the world.
Because this is a lonely night you see. You’re completley in between realities, more so than the week leading up to it; hotels are the ultimate limbo. It made a huge difference just having someone to babble to, even though we will likely never cross paths again.
But now I am settled back into the room, trying my best to think about going to sleep because the 6:45am wake-up call is going to come awfully early (it always does) especially since I have to be up for breakfast. Never skip breakfast on an embark day, you will always regret it…
Climbing the stairs of the rollercoaster…no idea what’s coming next but…as usual…I’m pretty much looking forward to the adventure.