Text 30830, 68 rader
Skriven 2012-11-05 07:37:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: actually on the way 513
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Anyhow. On the way I decided to use my last food voucher at
Cousins, supposedly the best of the fast-food outlets in
this airport. A brisket sandwich with extra meat costs
$8 something, and the voucher was for $10, what could be
bad? The cashier said, there's still money on this thing.
I said, just count it as a tip, to which she said, we can't
do that, don't you want dessert or a drink or something?
Okay, I relented. The only drink I saw that I knew wouldn't
have caffeine was Grape Crush, so I asked for one of those
(turns out there were other soft drinks in the other
cooler). She rang it all up, and it came to a bit over
$10, but she accepted the chit happily. I gave her a buck,
and she said, now you can tip, and dumped it in the jar.

Though Lilli's plane came into terminal C, the shuttle
train comes every minute, so I got there well before her
plane arrived a couple minutes late. There's another
Admiral's Club right by her gate, so we went there instead
of the one at D.

We got a bunch of drink coupons - the cheap stuff is free,
but top shelf liquor and premium wines go for bar prices,
i.e., in the $8-10 and up range, so coupons lighten the
load; this system is designed so international premium
customers who will supposedly end up getting the good stuff
on the plane can start early, while the plebs de la creme
have to make do with no-name booze and Budweiser.

I asked the bartender for a glass of each of his Cabernets,
of which there are three. He sort of grinned and said, is
that all?, and that started off a bit of a banter. Turns
out he does wine tastings in his other life. So there was
the house stuff, free, the midrange stuff, maybe $7 or 8,
and the high end, over $10, which here is from Joel Gott
(a brand that used to be "value priced" but now qualifies
as "prestige"). Well, I did like them in the order of
price, but the lower two were quite similar and comparable,
the midrange one a bit oakier and more tannic, which I like.
The Gott had some depth, with good vanilla oak, brambles,
the usual classic style. He said that he actually liked the
free pour better than the midrange, to which I said that I
could understand but disagreed.

I believe that Lilli liked the Gott but would have been
happy drinking the others (whose names I forget); so I gave
her most of that and drank the other two. Bolted is more
like, as she had scheduled only 80 minutes for an
interterminal international connection. We still had a
couple coupons left and gave them to some random guys, who
seemed grateful (hey, can you use these, our flight is
earlier than we thought). Funnily, it took a few tries
before we could unload them. We'd had the same problem
giving away $20 in food vouchers at Dulles once. I guess
we look disreputable and untrustworthy.

We had intended to check out the duty-free (which at this
airport is said to be pretty crummy) to get a gift for our
friend Mike, who had invited us to dinner, but we'd had
enough fun with the wines that there wasn't time for that. 

Thank the gods, the train did not fail us, and we got to our
gate during our proper boarding sequence so settled into our
comfy seats half an hour before takeoff.


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