Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Pensacola Travel, Day One

Here are several pictures from my first day of Pensacola travel. I started out the trip in the usual way, at Dulles. I'm always impressed by the perennial construction at Dulles.

I got this cool picture of the new Dulles tower, but, sadly, I didn't get it in focus. It looks better in the small photo at right than enlarged.

My co-workers and I boarded the MD-80 for Atlanta. Atlanta used to feel like home to me, and when I moved away from there, I remember thinking how I would never be able to get used to living in Virginia. Now, however, Atlanta feels as foreign to me as any other city I visit. (Sadly, all of our family has moved on, and besides some old friends, we really have nothing left down there.)



Upon landing in Atlanta, we had a short wait for the 40 minute CRJ ride to Pensacola. Here's a picture of my reading material for the trip! Doesn't that look interesting? (Not!) God, I wish I worked in a greenhouse, and the only use I had for books like these was in adding carbon to my compost pile!


This one is for Eddie. I thought he'd like the photo of the Song airlines with the Atlanta's Hartsfield tower in the background.


Once I arrived in Pensacola, I was very surprised to find that the hotel was very, very nice. It's really hard to believe that this hotel is under the per diem rates, considering the hotels in San Diego are more expensive and major dumps! I measure the quality of a hotel by two factors: One, if you have to pull plastic off a Styrofoam cup to brush your teeth, the place is a dump. Two, if the showerhead is nice, the place will be nice.

Here was the view from my room. Not exactly an ocean view, but a nice photo, and Venus is in there if you look for it. The extra bonus of my room is the entertaining train footage I can get in the middle of the night!





Dinner was at McGuire's, where I had a delicious "Irish" Seafood Bouillabaisse, which consisted of whitefish, mussels, clams, four shrimp, and one octopus in a tomato saffron sauce. It was pretty good, but I would have liked more octopus. (I'm funny that way.)



McGuire's boasts that they have over 500,000 one dollar bills posted on the walls and ceiling, and I believe it. They really do. What a waste of money.... I mean half a million dollars in cash, not earning compounding interest! Plus, what if a hurricane wipes it all away? (Which it could!)

Apparently, a few years ago, they had some guy break in and steal a few thousand, but when he started spending the bills (each dollar is uniquely signed in black ink by the patrons who donated it), someone cottoned onto him, and he was arrested. Five hundred thousand dollars of unspendable money. The US Treasury must be loving this.

After dinner, as usual, it was an early bedtime. Even though my hotel room has a nice big flat panel HDTV, I never even powered it on.

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