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LAST VISIT TO GEORGETOWN & THE JOURNEY HOME
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| Lost In Translation | Usual story - we're up early, ring the girls. Tell them about the room extension, tell them to get washed and dressed, come to us for breakfast, pack later. This gets translated into take your time washing and dressing, do your hair for ages, unpack and repack, then, and only then, bring yourselves and your cases through to our room. Must have been the noise of the aircon garbling the message down the phone.
Mary and I have breakfast alone (the last of the Kellogs Variety Pack being on offer). Lucy appears with her bag, KT is still in the shower. I go down to book the Shuttle Bus for 3pm, on my return Lucy has finished breakfast, no sign of KT, so Mary and Lucy go out. |
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| A Family Divided | They are walking down to the shops on M and Wisconsin - will see us at 10:30 down there. I am to wait for KT to finish doing whatever it is she is doing.
KT breakfasted and packed, so I check their room, then KT and I check out of their room and we go to meet the other 2 - walking down Wisconsin. Not too hot and only very humid - quite agreeable (almost).
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| Zig Zag Shopping | Meet the others by GAP - where clothing is purchased. Next the shops across and down to buy jeans for both - same style, different sizes. Lucy also got a Las Vegas T-shirt. Next quick(ish) look in Urban Fashions, across the road to Speedo Shop (Sale!) then Starbucks for refreshments - tea and coffee.
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| A Mall Revisited | After that we tackle Georgetown Mall. They have obviously spent all night getting things organised after the floods of Saturday. Most of the shops were open with some changes - the bed in the furniture store had been removed and replaced with another display etc. Only a couple of shops were closed - they seemed to have the most carpet damage. There was evidence here and there of tiled floors having lifted and warped and a couple of escalators were not working. Apart from that, we all went our separate ways to look at the shops.
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| A Good Plan | Plan was to meet again at 1pm on the ground floor food hall, have lunch and start the walk back by 1:30pm, pack and out of the rooms by the agreed 2pm. Oh well it nearly worked - we did get back to the hotel by 1:45pm. We were all packed - except Mary - who "took 5", read the paper, emptied her case, ironed some clothes, slowly repacked her case, organised lots of papers, pamphlets, guides etc - first moving them here, then there, then some to the bin, then some to here case and so on. So at 2:25pm we actually called for someone to pick up our cases.
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| A Long Wait | Downstairs and wait for the shuttle. As we waited, loads of pilots/flight crew arrived from various upper floors. They had a shuttle waiting which took them away at 3pm on the dot. 3:15 and ours hadn't arrived - just as I was discussing this with the porter - it arrived. Baggage on board, tip porter, us onboard and away to the airport.
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| A 2-Stage Journey | Well - not quite. Appears that me laddo is actually on his day off and has been called in by his uncle to help 'cos he is delayed. Also appears that me laddo is not taking us to the airport, but we will rendezvous with the (bigger) shuttle somewhere in Georgetown.
There it is going across the next junction - follow that bus! So we stop at a filling station, we disembark, our luggage is thrown onto the back seat of the new minibus, we settle into the front seat (having said hello to the 2 families already aboard) - and off we set for the second time. Up Wisconsin (past our hotel - now how strange is that?), hang a left and then thru the suburbs down increasingly smaller roads. Then, miraculously, we start hitting slip roads to larger and larger highways until suddenly we are on the main route to the airport (Dulles Airport - which is a bonus!). Whole journey took about 25mins unlike the original hour (which you will remember if you have been paying attention)
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| Dulles Departures | Off-loaded luggage, into the departure lounge and get into the queue for tickets. This took 20mins for us to zig-zag our way to the front. But it was all well organised with UA rep pointing out the next available (out of about 15) check-in desks. All sorted, seats allocated, Frequent Flyer points on card, lets go and find Gate D29.
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| Duty Free Procedures | Areas C and D are in the middle of the airport so we need to catch a Mobile Lounge. But first, Duty Free and buy a litre of Gin - just to keep the stocks up. Hang on - they don't give me the bottle - just a receipt. I will have to pick up the gin as I embark on the plane - lets see if that works.
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| An Institution | Off to the Mobile Lounge entry point, cross two runways, disembark in D. Go to Gate 29 - no, not yet - first we have to try another American Institution - Ben and Jerry's Ice cream. All the way down to C before we find it. $13.95 most of which we furnish in quarters, cents and dimes - she looked thrilled.
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| All Aboard | From there we made our way to D29 to see that the BMI people had just about sorted out boarding. Quick - finish ice creams, toilet and embark - pausing only to pick up our gin from the table with our number on it (the gin not the table) - just like a Tombola Stall - except I won!
KT, Lucy, aisle, Mary, me. Slight problem in that someone was in my seat. Poor old family with a 3 year old (or younger). Said they had arrived at 5am to ensure got 3 seats together - they were - but with an aisle in between. Stewardess asked them to sit in their allotted seats and wait - plane not full (it's a Monday evening) so plenty of opportunity to ask someone (other than me) to swap. And so it transpired. It also meant that the seat next to me was vacant, so during the journey I could raise the seat arms and spread out a bit.
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| The Dissent | Journey was some 6 hours plus we 'lose' 5, so from a 5:50pm start, we arrive just after 6am GMT on Tuesday morning. Flight passed largely uneventfully. We ate good meals, drank the G&T, had wine with our meals, watched the films on the little TV screens in the back of the seats again (plane is an A330 once more).
At 3am (GMT) I decided to have a little snooze, so slowly pushed my seat back and tried to relax. Lady in seat behind obviously took umbrage at this and there were some hissed remarks to her companion. He said, in a loud voice "Just put your seat back as well" several times, each one louder - presumably trying to raise some reaction from me, like "Oh, I'm sorry, is it causing you a minor problem? I'll pop my seat upright straight away" That's not going to happen now is it? Couple of minutes half listening to hissed "button . . . stewardess . . . make him . . ." but she's got to know that it's a bit unreasonable 4 hours into a journey not to let me rest - doesn't she?
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| A Crisis Averted | Upshot of course was that I only catnapped - expecting a stewardess to arrive, or an accidental red wine trickle over the seat. (as I'm 17 stone air rage is probably not a good option - subtle approach would be better) - but nothing happened. So when breakfast arrived, I raised my seat (slowly - don't want to spill anything behind) and didn't lower it again after. This is non-confrontationalism. After that, no further "problems".
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| Destination Reached | Off the plane just after 6. Bags available within 10mins or so - after the long walk down T1 and thru passport control. Outside and there was our taxi waiting patiently in the early light. Home by 7:15, mail opened (and most thrown away) by 7:45am - all in bed by 8am. Up again at 1pm, a bit groggy.
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| HOLIDAY IS NOW OFFICIALLY OVER
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Words and pictures © Steve Andrews 2001 - 2012