Text 33945, 66 rader
Skriven 2015-12-03 10:03:34 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: 614 report cotd
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I'd invited Fredd and Kathy to dine with me, but they pled that
they were tired, and anyhow we'd all been overfed (if not overwell).

Global Entry didn't work again; this time I got run around various
places before being shown the door; the whole process was quick, and
I still had to wait ten minutes for the first bags to arrive on the
belt, of which mine was one.

AirTrain was overloaded. I had to wait for the area to clear a bit
before I got on the third train to P4, where the hotel shuttles 
pick up (they deposit at the terminals).

The Hilton EWR is a comfortable old place. This time they gave me
a really quite nice room on 12, roomy and with a view of a taxiway. 
The amenity was two free bottles of water, good thing as the tap 
water turned out to taste really horrid.

Truth be told, I was tired enough not to go downstairs for my
usual short ribs and mash with brown sauce, always quite good at
Hiltons - I suspect the hand of the commissariat, but this is
the kind of dish that does well in mass production and reheating.

I made do with chocolate leftover from Lidl, after which bed was 
huge and comfortable, and I slept very well.

Two kinds of scrambled eggs at breakfast, and the turkey sausage
looked like pork sausage (but didn't taste like it), and the pork
sausage looked like Vienna sausage but tasted right and had a
nice admixture of pigskin ground in for that lovely sticky aspect
beloved in much of the civilized and uncivilized world.

A strange incident when a guy from a tour group came and helped
himself to breakfast, which apparently he was entitled to only
in the abbreviated version served en masse to the group down in
the next room. He got caught out and ejected and presumably
forced to pay the extortionate full rate; the upshot was that
I was subsequently asked twice for my credentials after having
been there for half an hour, all Asians being alike and all that.

UA3937 EWR DCA 1230 1340 ER4 18C

I got to the club right at the start of lunch and so got to 
partake of the hummus, which I like a lot for an industrial
product, and provided by the airline, at that, and besides there
was the zesty corn chowder, which if like me you ladle yourself
some oil from the top is quite zesty indeed. The soup itself is
pretty good - a milk-based broth with lots of chopped red and
green pepper, potatoes, and extraordinarily anonymous white meat
poultry, probably chicken. Here and there the kernel of corn.

Headed across the way to the gate and the Embraer 145 that United
has seen fit to grace Washington service with. This is to me the 
least of the jungle jets - not quite so cramped as the Canadian 
ones, though - so I was glad to get the exit row  aisle. The trip 
was really quick as well.

I'd thought of stopping by Sam & Harry's to see if they could
remember how to fix a truly rare steak, but I'd had so much free
food that I went straight to the subway, where I found that
blue line service was being hindered by a disabled train up
ahead (but in the other direction). The alternative, marginally
slower under normal circumstances and quite a bit cheaper, was
to get off at Rosslyn and take a variety of buses after. I
estimate on this occasion that I saved a good half hour.
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