IAD-MEX and a night at the airport
I booked award tickets at 20K miles per ticket IAD-MEX on UA at the last minute for my family of four. We left the Saturday before the American Thanksgiving holiday, returning on the following Saturday after Thanksgiving.

We took my favorite car service, fondly known as Steve, and arrived about 2.5 hours early.

There were big lines but we went to the International first class line as a 1K and they took us in a few minutes. Security at Dulles was not much more than usual in the "old days" except that they asked for our passports and boarding passes three times.

My young daughter had taken a huge scissors in her bag, not knowing the rules, and the Argenbright guy did a thorough search of her backpack and confiscated (took away) the scissors.

The flight was pretty full but we sat in E+ on the A320. Renee was one of the FAs and she is one of the best I've ever seen. She was so enthusiastic. She spoke French to the people in front of us, Spanish with others, English with others. She was very fast moving and helpful. I have not seen a better FA on UA. Service was impeccable and I get great treatment even though I was in coach.

MEX is a very disorienting airport. Signage is quite poor and you can easily wander around for a long time, lost. We finally found the Hilton where we stayed overnight. We rode down the esalator after checking into a small but comfortable room, and we bought some snacks and beer at the little stores that are all around.

I went downstairs and purchased MEX-OAX Y fare tix on Mexicana airlines.

Everything having to do with buying or using tix takes longer in Mexico. It took 15 minutes for paperwork. I went to the Star Allaince Gold window and bypassed an otherwise daunting line.

It is a strange feeling to stay inside an airport with no daylight accessible. Unfortunately we could not view the meteor shower that is supposed to be spectacular because it was impractical to go outside, and even outside with the incredible smog and the lights it would not have been that great anyway.

The Hilton staff were very nice and they served a very decent desayuno (breakfast) buffet.

The next morning we boarded a short Mexicana flight to Oaxaca. Before boarding they searched all of our bags, manually, which was the normal practice apparently.

The flight was on a completely full F100. They gave us the rearmost seats, right next to the jets, with no windows. But I had the only empty seat in the plane next to me, so I didn't mind that much. They did a quick but complete beverage service and we landed after 40 minutes on time into the small Oaxaca airport.