On the road again, we stayed at the EconoLodge South at SeaTac airport. Holy cow, what a friggin’ dump. This hotel was seriously in need of a coat of paint. The room had single pane windows, so the planes flying over sounded like they were landing in the room, but thankfully the airport shuts down flights in the evening so sleep was achievable. Why do we do this? Well, it was cheap and had the best reviews of the lower priced airport hotels on-line, and more importantly, our flight departed at 6 AM, so we needed to get over to the airport by 4AM. Hey, who needs sleep?!
Well, our arrival to this dumpy hotel was in the early afternoon, so we had a few hours to kill. We headed over to the Southcenter mall, where we found a few extra video camera parts (UV filter and lens cap), and a last minute pair of socks. Then we found a Thai restaurant along a side road that served up some adequate basil chicken and larb served up by an extremely cheerful Vietnamese waitress that tried to teach us a few words of Vietnamese. xin chà o (seen chaw), a.k.a. hello, was about the beginning and end of our abilities and we are certain that we mangled the tonal properties, so I probably was mumbling ‘green sheep’ and Derrell was mumbling ‘nice sky’ or something equally odd. It was the best part of the afternoon, so we really did try our best at the language lessons.
After a much too brief nap at our hotel, we headed to the airport. We were informed on check-in that our first flight was running a half hour late and we would miss our connection to Chicago. So, with apologies from the check-in clerk, we were rerouted on a direct flight to Chicago, which cheered us up a great deal. This saved 4 hours of flying from Seattle to Dallas, with a layover, then the flight back to Chicago. I’m not sure if ‘frequent flyer award’ miles are worth the painful routings, but sometimes the weather helps correct the idiocy. And, then, you know it will be an fine travel day.
