Hangin' in Nawlins Part 2

Sun, Oct 18, 2009 3-minute read

Here I am to continue my story from yesterday. I’m sure I’ll eventually get to the part where we hang out in Nawlins and I tell you what we did, but for now we’ll just finish up the trip on the airplane.

One of the good parts about missing our first flight, which we were not seated together on, was that we were able to sit next to each other and enjoy the trip a little better. I guess our enjoyment was limited to just sitting together because both of us had a really tough time. It was impossible to get comfortable, and neither of us had slept more than 2 hours the night before. Our plan was to catch up on sleep while on the plane and feel a little more energized once we got to Nawlins. That did NOT happen at all.That was the toughest flight I’ve ever been on. It was the longest 3 hours ever. Continental Airlines has seats that are made out of cardboard and foam, or at least that’s what it felt like. I can be thankful however that we made it to Houston without any issues on a relatively smooth airplane.

We landed in Houston, TX around 9:50. That was about 20 minutes earlier than we were supposed to land but we weren’t going to complain. We wandered down to the gate to Nawlins that we were on standby for only to find that the original connecting flight we were supposed to be on was boarding! We could have totally made the flight. So we ran up to the gate and asked the lady, who spoke very poor english, if we could still get on or if our seats had been given away. She looked really confused and politely told us that we were still on standby for the next flight leaving at 11:45. We understood, and decided that we might as well go get a bite to eat and come back around 11 to sit down and wait to find out if we had seats or not.

We ate at Bubba’s Bayou Grill and had a delicious hamburger. I’m kind of glad we got to chill for a little bit and didn’t have to get directly on another plane. We were totally beat and needed some time to deflate. We went back to the gate and sat for a bit where I learned that Houston’s airport does NOT have free wifi. How do you do that?! What kind of sick airport makes you pay 10 bucks for internet access? George Bush International, that’s who!

I sat and talked to Steph and tried to figure out how much a rental car would be if we had to drive it. Turns out it’s not that expensive. Good news was that we didn’t have to drive! We ended up getting on the plane just fine. A group of 9 people coming from Philaelphia, PA had a delayed flight that was going to prevent them from making the connecting flight to Nawlins. So the 9 of us on standby got on the plan perfectly. Then it was off to Nawlins on a 1 hour flight instead of a 6 hour drive. I don’t think we’ve ever been so excited. We had to sit apart, but we made it just fine.

We landed in Nawlins, got our baggage (which arrived just fine), got in a cab and made our way to the hotel for a nice long well deserved nap. Then the fun started….and that’s a post for another day.