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canyonwalkerGrand Cayman Travelog #2
SFO United Club Lounge - Mon, 15 May 2023, 12:15am
Our trip to what I hope will be an amazing visit to the Cayman Islands starts with a not-so-amazing night in Houston. We planned it that way..... Getting to Grand Cayman from California requires taking an overnight at some point in the trek. We chose instead of having a redeye flight to take a mid-afternoon departure on Sunday, stay in a hotel near Houston airport and get a real night's sleep, and continue onward in the morning. Alas, after what seemed like a good start to the trip at SFO early this afternoon everything else has sucked.
Our flight SFO-IAH was delayed. The delay was only 20 or 30 minutes, which wasn't so bad. With thunderstorms in Houston this afternoon other flights got delayed worse. But when we landed 20-30 minutes late so many flights were still stuck there that there wasn't a gate open. We sat on the tarmac for over an hour waiting for a gate to become available. And once on the ground we waited another hour for our hotel's pokey shuttle to come around. If we'd known it was going to be that slow we'd have taken an Uber. End result, instead of getting to our hotel around 9:15 and having time to grab a late dinner at a restaurant nearby before settling in for a reasonable night's sleep, we only got to the hotel a few minutes before midnight and had to make dinner from the prepackaged crap sold from the "pantry" next to the checkin desk. And it'll be a struggle to get even 5 hours of sleep tonight.
As we were waiting outside in the muggy evening air for the hotel shuttle it occurred to me, this is kind of how our last beach vacation started, too! Except then we got stuck in the airport overnight and had to fly to an airport 3 hours from our destination the next morning. The failure in common here is thunderstorms in the midwest. What this tells me is that we shouldn't rely on midwestern connections anytime near the summer when we actually want to get there. I'm thinking, fly nonstop or don't bother.
Will this trip get better soon? I sure hope so. Chances aren't looking great, though. The hotel's pokey slow shuttle is already booked up around the time we need to go to the airport tomorrow. I flat out refused to accept a 6am shuttle ride for a flight that's not 'til after 9:30. I'll call an Uber instead. Let's hope that isn't fucked up tomorrow. Oh, and there are thunderstorms in tomorrow morning's forecast, too. This may be yet-another beach vacation that gets off on the totally wrong foot.
Update: an hour after I posted this, things started slowly turning to shit.
SFO United Club Lounge - Mon, 15 May 2023, 12:15am
Our trip to what I hope will be an amazing visit to the Cayman Islands starts with a not-so-amazing night in Houston. We planned it that way..... Getting to Grand Cayman from California requires taking an overnight at some point in the trek. We chose instead of having a redeye flight to take a mid-afternoon departure on Sunday, stay in a hotel near Houston airport and get a real night's sleep, and continue onward in the morning. Alas, after what seemed like a good start to the trip at SFO early this afternoon everything else has sucked.
Our flight SFO-IAH was delayed. The delay was only 20 or 30 minutes, which wasn't so bad. With thunderstorms in Houston this afternoon other flights got delayed worse. But when we landed 20-30 minutes late so many flights were still stuck there that there wasn't a gate open. We sat on the tarmac for over an hour waiting for a gate to become available. And once on the ground we waited another hour for our hotel's pokey shuttle to come around. If we'd known it was going to be that slow we'd have taken an Uber. End result, instead of getting to our hotel around 9:15 and having time to grab a late dinner at a restaurant nearby before settling in for a reasonable night's sleep, we only got to the hotel a few minutes before midnight and had to make dinner from the prepackaged crap sold from the "pantry" next to the checkin desk. And it'll be a struggle to get even 5 hours of sleep tonight.
As we were waiting outside in the muggy evening air for the hotel shuttle it occurred to me, this is kind of how our last beach vacation started, too! Except then we got stuck in the airport overnight and had to fly to an airport 3 hours from our destination the next morning. The failure in common here is thunderstorms in the midwest. What this tells me is that we shouldn't rely on midwestern connections anytime near the summer when we actually want to get there. I'm thinking, fly nonstop or don't bother.
Will this trip get better soon? I sure hope so. Chances aren't looking great, though. The hotel's pokey slow shuttle is already booked up around the time we need to go to the airport tomorrow. I flat out refused to accept a 6am shuttle ride for a flight that's not 'til after 9:30. I'll call an Uber instead. Let's hope that isn't fucked up tomorrow. Oh, and there are thunderstorms in tomorrow morning's forecast, too. This may be yet-another beach vacation that gets off on the totally wrong foot.
Update: an hour after I posted this, things started slowly turning to shit.
