Home from Alaska

Heading home into the sunset...

It’s the last day of this “vacation” and we’re flying home. Fortunately, our flight does’t leave until noon, so we have the chance to sleep in and get a nice breakfast in the restaurant.

Since we are Priority Club members, we get access to the members’ lounge, which will have breakfast in the morning or hors d’oeuvres and sodas in the evening. It’s the weekend, though, and the lounge is closed. Because it caters to the business traveler, the members’ lounge often is only open Monday through Thursday, but it depends on the hotel. Some hotels keep the lounge open on the weekends as well. You never know until you get there. I guess you can call in advance to find out if it was important. We don’t, though, and assume that it’s closed so that when we find it open, it’s a treat. Yeah, I know, it’s the little things!

Anyway, if the lounge is not open, most hotels will give you a free breakfast in their restaurant. Maybe it’s a credit, maybe it’s a free buffet, again, you never know. Some hotels automatically give you the vouchers for breakfast when you check in. Others won’t unless you specifically ask for them. In this hotel, the lounge is closed and we are not offered breakfast. However, when I ask, I receive coupons for breakfast in the restaurant. Sometimes I get turned down, but always ask anyway.

Since this hotel is about a 10 minute drive from the airport, we need to rely on their free shuttle to get us to our flight. The shuttle leaves every half hour on the hour. I reserved two spots for us on the 11am shuttle; our flight departs at 12:30pm. This should be plenty of time, right? Wrong! The shuttle wasn’t there at 11am, not there at 11:10am, not there at 11:20am. The front desk kept telling me that he was on his way, but, like I said, it’s only a 10 minute drive to the airport. Finally, he showed up and we made it on time to board the flight. Lesson learned: allow one hour transportation time for a 10 minute shuttle ride.

It was important that we make this flight because USAir did take pity on us and gave us two seats in first class. Nice.

After a quick change of planes in Charlotte, we made it home around midnight.

George and Morgan were there to pick us up.

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