Well, after finally arriving safely in Houston, we had more line waiting to do. We spent more time in lines yesterday than we did traveling. Crazy! We sat at our gate for another hour plus after we landed while waiting for our hotel vouchers and assignments (which they were required to give us since our issues were mechanical). The lady who helped us told us she could get rooms for 15 of us at one hotel, but that one of us was going to have to go to another hotel. No problem, right? Wrong. Poor Johnathon had an awful night. The hotel that United sent him to with a young couple from our flight was rentable by the hour, if you catch what I'm saying... There were fights in the parking lot and gun shots. After seeing his room (filthy, no sheets, and obviously hadn't been cleaned in several...errr... Um... Uses), he heard a knock on his door. It was the couple he had gotten there with and they were going back to the airport to sleep there as it seemed like a safer place. Thinking they could get back to the gate and sleep on some benches, they left. Thank God they made it in and out of the hotel safely! Unacceptable United. Absolutely awful. When they finally got back to the airport, security wouldn't let them through to get to the gates. They had to sleep out by check in...
Now the rest of our group were thinking to ourselves, lucky Johnathon got a room to himself and was probably sleeping while we had an adventure of our own. Little did we know, he was experiencing a much worse night than we did.
The rest of our group headed out to the curb to wait for a shuttle to the econolodge. We waited, and waited. Saw many of the charter bus style ones come for many other hotels. Finally, the econolodge van arrived. We all couldn't wait to get to the hotel and get in bed! There were 15 of us and it was a 15 passenger van. We would have to do a little squeezing, but doable! Then we opened the doors... Only 6 seats in the back. They had taken out the back couple rows of seats. Of course! All we could do is laugh. The driver said he would take us all if we could climb in and share seats nd share the back empty space with suitcases, so we did! Adventure number 347 of the day!
Upon arriving at our hotel, we piled into the lobby and awaited being given our room assignments. Woohoo! So close! Dave walked up to the counter and the man told him, oh we don't have those rooms for you. We only have one room. So after much debate, he told us he could give us 2 rooms (even though the airline claimed to have booked 8 rooms for us! Ugh united!!) and they had 2 roll aways. (I made a comment about Mary and Joseph and that maybe we could be offered a stable out back with the animals. With everyone so tired and delirious, it seemed much funnier then...) I stepped outside to call united and see what they could do about refunding us hotel costs if we went elsewhere to get rooms and saw a high speed car chase, saw many other cops, and heard so many sirens. Perfect place to be! Needless to stay, I quickly decided to finish my phone call indoors. So after putting as many people as we could in those 2 rooms, we called a holiday inn express down the street and purchased a few rooms for the rest of us. We got a ride to the other hotel, and I tell ya, I have never been more excited to be inside of a hotel in the ghetto. My shower and bed last night felt like heaven (and although I am fairly certain that any other day of the year I would have been hesitant to climb in that bed, I could not get in it fast enough). We only got to sleep 3 hours. But hey, 3 hours is better than nothing! Jacque and I made the best of it and laughed at our crazy day before drifting off to a deep heavy all too short sleep.
