I've never liked traveling. I'm impatient and short tempered at the best of times. Sit me in a crowded tube/car/bus and make me sit still for 5+ hours, and I'll get near Hulk-like rage. Traveling in and of itself doesn't worry me, I have always gone with people who have been before me and know what they're doing. My tried and true method is simply to go with the flow and let other people take care of the problems and hitches that will no doubt arise.
Today was possibly the worst combination of all things to make travel a living hell. I'm not a morning person and in order to catch our flight at 8:30 we were required to leave by 4 am. I got a 3 hour nap and managed to haul myself out of bed and into the waiting van. This wasn't the worst situation to be in but if you add in 7 other people who are more morning people than me (not hard to do at all) and are excited to be going somewhere and there is no sleep in sight.
Dulles is just like any other airport, big or small. It's all about breaking things into manageable chunks and dealing with them as they come. In Dulles we had to wait 2 hours in a smallish wing of the airport with only a Subway to keep us company. Checking and getting through security wasn't nearly the hassle we were expecting, although I did have to deal with a youngish child who stayed in my way for a good 10 minutes. We board our flight at 8am, our departure time is set for 8:30 and I'm ready to relax into my seat and pass out. This happens in 15 minute chunks. Why you ask? Because 15 minutes was the intervals at which the captain would come on and tell us we were delayed because they were waiting on paperwork. This went on for 3 hours until, due to some regulation, they were required to let us back off the plane. At this point it's 11:30 and we're worrying (at least other people were, I was assuming we'd get to the Bahamas one way or another) if we're even going to be able to make our connection in Charlotte at 1:20 pm. I'm nervously thinking to myself about the complement of lemon-soaked paper napkins during this entire episode. Thankfully, minutes after they made us all get off, things got sorted out and we were all allowed back on. We took off some time later and were flying through clouds in a small plane with our hearts in our mouths.
Charlotte Airport, from what I can gather is huge. And has moving walkways. This was all taken in in the 20 minutes we spent in the building racing from concourse E 27 to B4. Good news? We made our connecting flight, a huge 757 down the coast over the Atlantic. This flight was a MUCH better experience. Until someone had a diabetic collapse in the back of the plane and held up the drink and snack cart. Yes, it was more upsetting to me that I couldn't get drinks and snacks. Remember we left at 4 am and I hadn't had time to eat anything else. So no drinks or snacks for Suz. The only thing left was to land in the Bahamas and make our way to the resort.
The Bahamas, from what we've seen in the evening light. Is almost exactly like any beach in Florida. There's mostly American tourists here, and American chains. When we go further into Nassau things should change into Bahamian culture. The weather when we landed was 77 and partly cloudy. All the buildings are brightly colored, although I wonder for who's benefit, and there are tropical trees lining everything. In the Bahamas they drive on the left side of the road, and they drive about like New Yorkers... which I was overjoyed to experience again.
The resort is nice on the front, and smelly, dorm like, and cheap on the inside. It's like a typical south-beach undergrad girl. All veneer but no substance. In fact, if I had to describe it I'd call it skanky. BUT the food is good, there's a beer here called Kalik, which tastes an awful lot like Bud Light. Our room is OCEAN FRONT, and it's amazing to look out and see the turquoise waters and islands. (I'll post pics later when I have better connectivity). The food is plentiful and is actually pretty good. I had bahamian mac and cheese, which is regular mac and cheese only with hot peppers added in, it's delicious. The current BIG drawback is the Spring Break kids, a bunch of sub-21 year olds getting way too excited about the lowered drinking age.
We're going to a Junkaroo exhibition at 9:30 with fire breathers, and costumes, and noise. So it should be a win win situation for me. Tomorrow we're going to church at 11, and gardens/zoo in the afternoon. Hopefully I'll be better rested, because at this point I'm so sleep deprived I'm wondering if I've actually turned into a bear.
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