beckoa

Woke up and soldiered down to breakfast. Slept in longer then I wanted, but nothing big planned for the day. Breakfast turned out better than dinner. Lots of options to eat, 2 egg stations, local and international food, and even a place for mimosas. Ate a bit much, and finally got on my bathing suit for the pool. The facilities overall were pleasant at the hotel, and apparently they had the largest pool in the city. It was still windy and with clouds overhead, a bit cool to go swimming. Its a bit unfortunate there was no beach here, but it appeared to be a cliff if you went outside the fenced area. So I lounged for an hour or so. Freshened up in the room and went to a store I saw on google maps next door. Turns out this was a whole open air shopping mall, with international brands galore. I found a state store inside accepting CUC, so I burned off a bit more of the CUC's I acquired the night before exchanging with the Front Desk, getting a resupply of rum. With the delay last night, we finished off a small bottle of rum. That was an interesting part- to get ice, one needed to go to the lobby bar to get it. There were no machines. But they were nice sized round cubes, perfect for sipping.

Anyway, we finished off the bottle that afternoon. It turns out Alaska arranged for lunch downstairs again, so we checked out of our room (2 PM) and went to eat. Chicken yet again. Oh, with leftover hash browns from breakfast. These guys were clearly overwhelmed, but we saw the Alaska agent who reconfirmed our flight arrangements. He also said we've been moved to AS287 for that day, not the later AS9277 once the tire was fixed. This was nice, as this flight was further delayed with its tire change, and would have made catching our connection onto AS175 difficult.

We boarded our bus around 2:45 PM, and were on our way by 3 for the airport.

After offloading the bus, it was quite the cluster with two plane loads of people trying to check in. Apparently the load was rather small for AS287 today, so most of the folks on the cancelled flight yesterday were accommodated on today's AS287, not having to wait for the tire replacement.

We were able to snake our way over to the Premier line again, and eventually got our bags checked and re-cleared immigration. The agent was confused as I didn't have my visa anymore, but when she found out I was on yesterday's cancelled Alaska flight, I was waived through. Surprise, I got another stamp in my passport.

The inbound AS286 was late again, but we finally boarded AS287, taxied and took off.