Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.
Well I am in Cordoba, Argentina. It is about 11:30 local time as I start this blog as they are 3 hours ahead of central time (2 hours ahead of eastern). What a day! I am very tired but felt compelled to blog this evening (can you feel the love?).
The wife dropped me off at the Dallas airport last night around 7:20. The flight was not until 9:20 but they say you should be there 2 hours early. So I got to my terminal at 7:25 and sat there for almost 90 minutes before the plane was boarding. A co-worker (from now on I will use CW for co-worker) was coming from Indianapolis and hooking up with me for the long flight. We boarded the plane and took our seats in business class. Now I have never flown business class and for those of you who also have never flown business class let me tell you that it is the only way to go. There were only 6 rows of 6 seats in that section and there was about 3 foot of leg room from row to row. Also, the seats reclined to about 60 degrees and the leg rest tilts out as well. There was a nice pillow and blanket laying on my seat waiting for me as well as a flight attendant (from now on I will use FA for flight attendant) offering me champagne as I was getting situated. I took the champagne but only because I thought it was apple juice.
After we were seated, another FA asked us what we wanted to eat and rattled off our choices (essentially beef, chicken or pasta). The FA noted that there was only one beef left so I opted for the pasta and CW took the last beef. We were offered some wine but I opted for a coke instead. We were then asked if we wanted a personal DVD player (CW took one, I declined since I had my laptop). The DVD player arrived and it was about a 5 inch screen with about 20 movies to choose from in a little case.
After take off, another FA (there were like 4 or 5 of them just for business class) brought us some peanuts. These were not the same you get in the back of the plane. These were in a little ceramic bowl and they had been warmed! Also, there were cashews and several other kinds of nuts, not just peanuts. Once those were gone, we were brought an appetizer consisting of 2 chilled shrimp and some smoked salmon (which I had never tried before - it is a delicacy I suppose but all I ended up thinking was that someone had succeeded in making salmon taste like ham). I did not finish this before they delivered the salad and they must have been on some sort of schedule since they just took what was left of my salmon / ham away. The salad consisted of long strips of shaved carrots, asparagus, some sort of spicy tomato, along with lettuce and some kind of mushroom. I did not get to finish my salad (only got through a third of it really) before that plate was taken away and replaced by the main course. It was risotto and had various diced vegetables in it along with some spinach. This was very good and I was able to actually finish this before desert was offered. I did take a small glass of Chilean wine just because it was offered and I thought, "Hey, when will I ever get to drink wine from Chile?" It was not that impressive but I get the feeling that I do not have a palate for differentiating between good wine and the $4 stuff you can get a Wal*Mart. I opted for ice cream with hot fudge, whipped cream and nuts for desert. Since we were in row 6 of 6 it appears the FW just gave me the balance of the chopped nuts that was left. All in all, probably one of the top 10 meals I have ever had. And this was airplane food! I reclined my seat almost fully and was able to catch about 5 hours of sleep. When we woke up the next morning, my CW noted that it looked like some sort of sleepover gone wrong. People sleeping all over the place and stuff all over the floor. My daughter is not old enough to have had a sleepover but his daughter is so I took his word for it. Business class was about 90% men and most appeared to be mid 40's to mid 50's.
Since 5 AM is when I am used to getting up, that is when I got up. I have no idea where we were at in the air but it was probably 8 AM local time where ever we were at as someone pulled open the window shade and light flooded the plane in our section. Breakfast came shortly thereafter and I chose cereal over the omelet but it did come with yogurt, croissant and fruit along with coffee and orange juice. Oh they also came around with hot towels for wiping off your hands when you were done (they did this for dinner as well, forget to mention that).
We arrived in Santiago, Chile on time and it took us about 20 minutes to find our terminal where our next flight was departing from in about 2 hours. The Chile airport was a little boring other than some great views of the mountains and appeared to be playing Duran Duran's greatest hits over the intercom. There was a Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts and a Ruby Tuesday along with all kinds of shops. Mostly we sat at the terminal and read books / listened to our headsets. The next flight only took about 75 minutes and there was no business class (boo hoo, I was really spoiled by that first flight). They did serve lunch (a chicken salad sandwich and a cookie) and the in flight TV screens popped down and showed an episode of The Simpsons. This was in English and there were no subtitles. I found this strange as of the 100 or so people on the flight, I doubt if many were American or even spoke English.
We arrived in Cordoba and got through customs pretty quickly. They are not as stringent here I think as they are in the US. They barely asked me any questions and only scanned my luggage. Outside there was a guy holding a sign up with our last names on it and we were then driven through a ton of city streets to the hotel. I can see why the folks that we know down here recommended that we NOT get a car. Many intersections did not have stop signs or even yield signs. From what I could tell, you simply gaged if you were going to be the first to arrive at an intersection and either stopped or did not stop accordingly. We got checked in at our hotel (a Sheraton) and took a nap and then headed down for dinner. The restaurant was empty at 6:15 so dinner must happen at a later time down here. I had some sort of beef steak and French fries that also contained scrambled eggs (weird, eh?). It was very good but I was still tired more so than hungry. Right next door to the hotel is a large mall so we roamed around it for a while. This was your typical mall and I was familiar with a few of the store names. We found a bank there that would exchange our money to Argentina pesos but they had closed for the day. The exchange rate is about 3 pesos to 1 US dollar and things are a little cheaper down here from what I could tell (the music store had newer CDs for about $12 US). The mall had a food court so I think I will opt to eat there instead of the hotel restaurant if I am given a choice.
Well that is about it for today's post. I tried to make note of the highlights but am sure I am missing some things. There are a few of the 60 or so channels that I get in the hotel room that are in English with subtitles and before I headed down to the lobby to post this blog, I was watching the Spurs play the Nuggets in NBA basketball. I know I will value this eventually as no one else that I have ran unto speaks much English. I will try to post again soon but I have no idea what my schedule will be like tomorrow.
Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.
Jon
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