Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Travel Observations

J and I don't travel a lot. We don't have the best sense of direction. Whenever we do travel there always seems to be a lot of amusing people-watching and mishaps.

We made it to the Logan Express bus with plenty of time on Monday. When we got on the bus this is the conversation between two interesting older individuals sitting in the seat in front of us that we overheard:


I need two senior shuttle tickets!  I'm 66, does that count as a senior?

I actually slept really well last night. I just got up once for my peanut butter treat.

Oh good!

I bet Fluffy is upstairs right now. You know how he always comes down with that yellow foam in his claws? What is that?

Yellow foam from behind the piano.

Ohhhh.

It's really expensive foam.


After hearing this there are so many unanswered questions. Does 66 count as a senior?  What exactly is a peanut butter treat? Who is Fluffy? What is this yellow foam for and just how expensive is it? After hearing this conversation and pondering these questions, I silently laughed so hard I almost cried.

When we got the airport we were a little confused because the US Airways desk was labeled "Shuttle". Now. When I think of a shuttle I think of a van or a bus. Apparently they call our flight a "shuttle" because it's such a short trip from Boston to Washington D.C. Good to know.

Somehow after picking up our boarding passes J lost his. This was discovered AS we were starting to get on the plane. Somehow J and I always manage to have our seating assignments apart. Not sure if he plans this secretly? :) We got on the plane and he accidentally sat in the wrong seat and was very politely asked to move. Heh. Strike two!

During our flight a model-like girl was sitting next to me on the plane. She was diligently writing in a notebook on a list entitled, "Goals for 2013." I tried not to look, but I really couldn't help myself. Her goals include but are not limited to...

Maintain 125 pounds. (model-like girl was almost 6 feet tall)
Save $50,000 cash (apparently you can do this if you have Louis Vuitton luggage)
Run marathon #4 (cool)
Start blog: Miera Knows Best (totally going to google this blog in the future and see if she started it)


Our flight was fine, model-like girl was very entertaining, and she gave me her bag of mini-pretzels. Carbs must not be part of her diet to maintain 125 pounds. We made it to Reagan National Airport. We were going via shuttle to the NIH and then were planning to pick up a different shuttle to get to our hotel. Now, these are actual shuttles, not planes. Heh.We had a quick lunch at TGI Fridays at the airport and made it to the shuttle with plenty of time. The trip from Reagan to NIH was pretty quick, less than 30 minutes as there was no traffic, probably because of President's Day. I was able to snap a couple bad pictures of some good sights as we drove along...




We arrived at NIH for the sole purpose of switching shuttles to make it to our hotel. NIH is hardcore. It's huge and completely gated. In order to enter the grounds you have to go through a security checkpoint. At this checkpoint they inspect all vehicles and everyone has to go through a metal detector and obtain a badge. Kind of intense. I, of course, set off the metal detector about 7 times, removing an article of clothing or jewelry each time, before realizing my really cool teacher Dansko clogs must have metal in them. The security guard just laughed at me.

We arrived at our hotel, checked in, went to the fitness center to workout for a little while. After, we took the shuttle downtown - Bethesda is pretty cute! We went to a restaurant called American Tap Room and had a fun little dinner. It was pretty nice inside and the menus actually glowed when you opened them!


 You can't really tell by the picture that the menus is glowing, bummer. I've never seen anything like it in a restaurant before.

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