Ok, so today started with work like a few other of my trips
before. I spent the night before at my
brother David’s house and he drove me into the office. I had a fairly busy day
before finishing out and he drove me to the airport. Yes, we left a bit early,
but honestly not much. The ride to the
airport was relatively traffic free and easy. I bet his ride home was with a
bit more traffic based on what we saw heading in the other direction. I got to
the American desk and checked in without much issue. The guy at the desk
offered me an emergency row seat which bumped me from boarding group 4 to
boarding group 2 which I was happy for (at least for the Boston to Miami
flight). The line at security was really
bottlenecked up but they fixed the issue by opening up a second line and then
everything went smoothly from there. I
walked around terminal B a bit finding the gate then seeing what my options
were. I chose to go to the Cisco Brewpub which I have been to a couple times
before. I had two of their Indie Pale Ales and an order of their kickin’
buffalo chicken tenders to kill a bit of time. Of course I was early. The Indie was maybe a touch too piney but
after the buffalo chicken it seemed to tame down a bit and I quite enjoyed it.
The kickin’ level was not really overly spicy to me but I could bet more than a
few customers from around here would be horrified by it. I realize I had just had a couple of days of
stomach troubles and this might be a bad idea but I decided to risk it
anyway. After eating I made a quick pit
stop then it was on to sit at the gate for hopefully only a short while before
we boarded.
My neighbors were two fairly large women that I thought were
sisters at first but I later had to guess were friends instead. Fortunately I was on the aisle and the seats
were exit row seats so I was given some extra room but it was still a bit
squishy. The one next to me was panicky
about flying and a little bit tipsy as she was trying to cope with it but after
takeoff she calmed down and it wasn’t so bad. The real issue was a very long
taxi time in a large line of planes. The
flight itself had a few bumps but wasn’t really that bad. I fell asleep for a
bit of the takeoff. Woke up and saw there was a movie starring Robert Redford
now in his what? 80s? where he was on a sailboat and had a series of
unfortunate incidents. He was the only
actor in it. I never tried to plug into sound (they never brought around
headsets) but I suspect the 19 words in the script were as obvious as they
looked. For some odd reason I could not
stop myself from watching it (I am curious if I plugged into sound if that
would have changed my opinion) and reached the end before I took another small
nap to basically within a few minutes of the end of the flight. The plane, by the way, was a 757-11/13 it
said on the card.
Being at the exit row meant deplaning was fairly quick but I
arrived with American on Concourse D and needed to get zip codes away to
concourse J for my departure plane on LAN.
I had to exit and rescreen security at J. I remember this process
before. At this time of night it was basically empty in the airport (around
10pm) but I still managed to get the family just in front of me that doesn’t
understand airport security at all. They were Spanish speaking and honestly it
felt like airport security let a lot skip (they went through metal detector and
did not get patted down but I had to go through the backscatter x-ray
machine). I was a touch annoyed with it
but still it wasn’t really that bad.
After checking in I found the gate and found the Corona’s Beach House I
ate at last time on my trip down. They were obviously getting ready to close
but I got a Sam Adams and a cheeseburger before they did (fortunately they had
good beer instead of only Corona). The
food was ok but not great. Just as I remembered it. They were basically done cashing out by the
time I finished the beer. Of course I cashed myself out before I finished to
help them out. Then I double-checked my gate and found it was staying still at
J12 and parked for a few minutes to write up this then maybe nap for the next
hour and 20 minutes until they started to board.
The plane was half full and I managed to get a whole row in
the back of the plane to myself. They had assigned me center but I decided to
take a free window instead. The truth of the matter is I have little
recollection of this flight as I fell asleep almost immediately not even taking
the food or drink service. Though I woke up here or there I was able to sleep
in some fashion for all but say the last 20 minutes of the flight since they
announced they were in landing descent.
The plane deboarded quickly.
I got to and through
immigration rapidly too. I had to wait a
bit for my suitcase even with a quick pit stop.
I got out and had to wait a little bit for Daniela to arrive. She did
and it was great to finally see her again after several months. We took a taxi
to her house and her family was waiting to take us to breakfast. We took a short walk to a restaurant that
sells pan con chicharon which is basically roasted pork sandwiches. Donna and
her boyfriend Edwin went along with my mother-in-law. The food was really good but so soon off the
flight I didn’t eat a lot. My stomach was still roiling a little bit. After we ate we got back to the house and
Daniela and I packed day trip bags as we were not staying in the house or at an
apartment for the next few days. We packed and took a taxi to Miraflores where
we were staying at the Hotel Arawi that everyone else stayed at their last
night in Lima during the wedding trip.
We got settled in and then basically it wasn’t long before sleep took
over. Even with the sleep on the plane I was exhausted and Daniela hadn’t
really slept the night before either.
After a nap we got cleaned up and headed out to take a walk and get some
empanadas.
After we got back from walking around and completing a
couple of errands we went down to the hotel restaurant and had our free drink
each (a pisco sour) and ordered our dinner. We had the dinner delivered to the
room. I had the pulpo (octopus) starter. Daniela had the scallops starter. We
both had the baby chicken on a bed of new potatoes for dinner. The food was
good but the sauce the chicken was braised in was a bit salty. I had the handmade ice cream which was
chocolate flavored but seemed more like chocolate cookie flavored (it was very
good). Daniela had a crepe with vanilla ice cream and caramel. After dinner we relaxed for the evening
because we had an early start the next day.
The pictures from day 1 are located here.
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