We have reached the end of our tip

Southwest plane landing
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We woke up early, not really sure what time zone our bodies thought we were in. After showering, we set off exploring on foot for some breakfast. We stopped along the way on the sidewalk where you can stand as planes fly right over your head landing at LAX. There were no heavies landing while we were there, but quite a few planes still flew right over us. It was pretty cool!

We thought that there was an IHOP right around here, but discovered that we were wrong. Finding no restaurants in the area open yet (they all starting serving at lunchtime) we hit the Albertsons and grabbed some muffins and some stuff to drink. We headed back to our room and enjoyed our breakfast before we headed back to the airport. Spending the night here made the trip home much nicer. I was still tired and felt jet-lagged, but not having to continue flying after we got in the night before was great!

The shuttle for the Radisson also stops at another hotel, but the shuttle bus has a GPS in it, so you can see from a screen in the lobby exactly where the bus is in its journey. We somehow managed to time everything perfectly and only waited for about a minute before the bus showed up. The first class check in line was short and we went to go drop our checked bags off for screening. This is where the day got interesting. Apparently their Xray machine for checked bags wasn't working and they weren't presently accepting bags. We were the third people in line to drop off bags and the line kept getting longer and longer. None of the TSA employees would answer questions about what the holdup was or what the estimated wait time was. Finally they got bags running through the machine again and we left our bags and headed for security.

We were flying USAirways and we were in first class on this trip, we are also both preferred on them. According to the airline's website they have a separate security line for first class and preferred (which greatly cuts down on the wait), but we arrived to discover that isn't the case. USAirways shares a terminal with Southwest and the line was LONG. We made our way through and eventually successfully passed muster and got into the gate area. We found a place to wait for our flight. I was having the feeling that we were having a bad travel karma day from the way things had started out and I was SO right. Our plane for coming from Phoenix (where we were headed) and it was delayed. It finally arrived and they quickly turned it around and we boarded. We had to wait a while to take off as Phoenix was experiencing weather and we couldn't be cleared for landing. We finally were able to take off though. We weren't very far into the flight when they announced that Phoenix airport had to close again. We landed in San Jose to take on fuel and set off again. This time we made it to Phoenix.

We weren't sure when we landed if we had missed our connection or not, but we discovered it was delayed too. We sat there for a few hours before the plane finally arrived and we were off to Pittsburgh. The service on both flights were good and the delays were certainly not the airline's fault! Our bags all managed to appear in Pittsburgh, even with the security delays in LAX and we headed for our car.

The travel drama for the day wasn't over though! We went to leave the parking garage and the attendant said that we hadn't been gone long enough for the monthly discount rate, even though they told us when we got there that we would be gone long enough. After a long discussion with her (she didn't seem to be the happiest person in the world) we managed to pay for parking and head home.

At least the drama ended there. We got home to a house still standing and a cat very glad to see us!

And here we end until our next travel adventure. I hope that you have enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you are using this for travel planning purposes, please feel free to ask any questions! And yes, you can ask questions even if you aren't planning your own trip.

Goodbye for now!

Lisa