20120620 Wednesday
Up early, coffee, pet the dog, snuggle, etc.
Bill drove us in our minivan to the airport. Baggage drop was no problem. Security wasn’t a big deal, either.
We wandered through a bunch of stores to gate A6 and placed ourselves at the computer seats. Free Wifi, nice. But it insists on a log-in that my Safari doesn’t like - hmmm. The iPhone works fine. So I’ll type this and go back to the iPhone to communicate. After a bit, I found my custom DNS settings were incompatible with their log-in process.
United’s computer just called the iPhone to tell us the flight is delayed (surprise!) to 1205 from 1131. Oh, well. We’re here and can wait quite a while.
We finally boarded just over an hour late. Plane is an Embraer 170 small jet (18 rows of 2x2 seating). The ride to Newark was uneventful. The only refreshment was one pass of the soft-drinks cart. We wandered all over northern Jersey before landing, probably for separation. In getting off, we felt the heat.
Down into the bowels of this aging terminal (A) to the baggage claim. It came promptly and both suitcases appeared!! We called the hotel to get directions to the shuttle, which turned out to be a small adventure.
There is this device called the AirTrain here. It runs in strings of four small cars on a monorail. It is computer-controlled with an operator riding and watching. The cabins are very small (10 people maybe). We had to go back up the escalator to get to the thing, then we waiting for one full train to go by. The next train was “not in operation”. We hopped into the next one with many others and went from terminal A to B to C to Parking4. There, we found our shuttle and boarded.
The shuttle zig-zagged all over the place to get a couple of miles to the hotel. We went through off-airport parking lots, dubious streets with lots of trash, but we arrived. We checked in and took our room, which has a nice view of fuel tanks and other industry. We settled for a bit, then went to the lounge.
The Brazilian wait-staff brought wine and told us we could eat in the lounge with all the normal service at that time (before the dining room opened). We jumped on it. Dolores had a roasted chicken, I had chicken piccata, and we both did the salad bar (and another wine). D liked her bird and mine was probably the best hotel meal I’ve had in years. Excellent.
So now we’ll just take it easy, reading and doing computer chores.
Pictures Link
