Well, I slept badly, but that’s to be expected with pre-holiday nerves & a cold of some sort.

There were very short lines at the Aer Lingus check in, but still, it took a bunch longer than expected. I’m not sure why, but the chap dealing with my check-in had troubles, so did the person they called over, so I was sent to the actual Aer Lingus staff, who just sorted it out?

I’m wondering if the preflight information didn’t update or something.

I like them as an airline, but their systems are not good.

Security screening was about as uneventful as it ever is. My hair set off the body scanner, which is normal, and they swabbed my shoes for … well, that’s unclear, but it came up negative, so probably not terrazzo. The security screening chap wished me a happy flight & possibly thanked me for being easygoing during the search, so my amiable demeanor is still holding, it seems.

Immediately after screening I spotted someone’s passport+boarding pass on the floor, presumably having been dropped while packing after security. Terminal staff thought they spotted the person, but it turned out to be a different East Asian tourist, and they wandered off in search of the owner. Got to hope he figured out it was missing before boarding.

Breakfast at The Perfectionists’ Cafe, which turns out to be a Heston Blumenthal place. Was very nice, as you’d hope for airside prices.

The flight to Dublin was uneventful, though boarding was made a little more interesting by a large & disorganised family who couldn’t figure out the boarding pass scanners. All of them. At once.

Security screening & US Clearance at Dublin has a different feel every time. This time around the screening bit was super relaxed¹, and the CBP Agent was … Bored but still vaguely suspicious?

¹ Though it’s nice to see that oblivious people are consistent. The person ahead of me who didn’t move down & took up a bunch of space for all their shit also left a huge pile of screening trays when they left, so that other people could put the damn things back in the sliding bit to return them.

The next flight was … turbulent. The seatbelt light kept being switched on for safety reasons, and at times there was a line of folks queued up in the aisle waiting for the bathroom as a result of long periods trapped in their seats.

Watched The Meg & John Wick, plus a bit of the first episode of The Last Of Us, but I was having trouble hearing after a while.

Getting into DC worked better than I expected; Couple of metro trains put me at Union Station, and some wandering got me to the hotel.

I had a moment or two of confusion trying to buy a ticket from a machine, but eventually got it by overhearing someone else ask the same question, and then another Metro employee explained it. Wasn’t expecting the ticket/card to have a base price for the item itself – I’d assumed it’d be a one-and-done ticket, like you get on the Tube or BART.

There was a guy on the train who’d been stranded by cancelled flights, plus maybe some bad decisions regarding airports to fly into, and listening to him talking with the people next to him as he tried to figure out how to get close enough to home to make it sensible to take an Uber was an education in complicated transport arrangements.

The room is nicer than I’d expected.

The bed has a motorised thingy to go from sofa to bed mode, the lights operate off a touchscreen where you can select colour, brightness, and a range of combinations of what’s turned on. There’s even a relax mode, which mostly seems to be “we put some lights framing the TV”

I am effort not to go to sleep too early, I went for a walk to find the Amtrak bits of Union Station, and also tried Taco Bell. The station is nice, Taco Bell was kinda flavourless.