Atlanta to Quito and FREE WINE!

Surprise, surprise, I nearly missed my flight. It seems that when I have too long of a layover (and a reawakened love for drinking in airports), that I will be the one person running frantically down the hall to get on the jetway before they bolt the doors. Yep, that was me. The last person on the plane. Very smooth, elegant and sophisticated. Oh well.

I do have to give Delta a thumbs-up- the mini tvs with on-demand movies (and more peanuts!) are definitely worth the bit of a price premium I paid. After watching Ghost World (Greg Kinnear, the guy from the office, Tea Leoni—incidentally, an awesome movie), picking at a less-than-appetizing dinner and supplementing it with thousands of shelled peanuts and taking 306 different naps (all while in my lovely lovely exit row seat with nothing in front of me but miles and miles of legroom… so nice!), I sort of forgot that my day of traveling has a destination. I realized that I will be arriving in a completely random airport at 11pm with a TON of crap to carry around. (Oh, Marriott, please find me, and Delta, please don’t lose my luggage. And little piece of crap luggage cart thing that I bought for $14, please work and help me carry my massive backpack!)………..

We just got our last beverage service- and think I can get one more nap in before we land.

........ so now it's Saturday morning and I'm sitting here in the very pimp JW Marriott in Quito- what a difference my hostel will be from this! Upon arrival, I was given a bottle of wine and a huge fruit plate. (The fruit plate included a very mysterious yellow fruit that tasted not so good and is still unidentifiable despite a call to the front desk and an intensive Google search!) Amazing.

So this hotel is fantastic and there was zero drama at the airport (though the $14 P.O.S. luggage cart didn't work). The most interesting event of the night was our landing- I was talking to my seatmate about his upcoming 6 month teaching trip here in Quito, and we looked out of the window and it looked like we were in mountains. Literally, less than 1 minute later, we landed. I've never had such a quick landing! Quito is so high, that there wasn't really a descent at all. We just sort of appeared. Navigating through the airport was no problem, customs was a little long.... but when I made it through, there was the Marriott guy with my name on a sign, right up front! So great.

So I'm having a little problem getting myself into the shower and out the door... Check-in at the next place is 1pm!...........