Latoya!

I was super excited to fly to Washington DC direct from Dubai to see my friend Latoya for the first time in almost 10 years!  I love the Dubai flight because all of the good-looking military dudes are on that flight, never mind that it is 15 hours, but for some reason the only food they serve is beef curry or vegetable curry.  I really hate curry, and it doesn't seem like the best choice for such and enclosed space!  I had a 10 hour layover that I thought would be more than enough time for us to hang out and catch up!

Navigating the D.C. metro.

Great catching up with Latoya!

The pulled pork lunch was delicious; as was the dessert!

Our awesome waiter!

Our time went by so quickly as we hung out at the awesome Charley's Restaurant.  It was actually later than I thought.  I jumped on the metro, but then missed the bus to the airport.  I was panicked that I'd miss my flight, so I paid $50.00 for a taxi to get me there.  I made it just in time - to see my flight was delayed for 30 minutes!  Then an hour- which became 2 hours -then 3 -then cancelled completely.  Nice.  We could have had more time! ugh

I asked that my bags be removed so that I could shower and change my clothes.  First they told me I would have to wait an hour.  No problem.  After an hour, I was told 2 more hours.  After 3 hours of waiting, along with a dozen other people,  I found out that my bags had already been flown to Cleveland.  Great. 

There was another group of guys that had been waiting 3 hours for their bags as well.  They had a meeting in Pittsburgh, which is 5 hours away, and they decided it would be quicker to drive there, than to wait for a plane in the morning.  But, unfortunately, since their bags were flown to Pittsburgh, they would have no way to retrieve them until the airport opened the next morning anyway.  Ugh.

I went to my hotel, which I had to pay for, starving, only to find that room service had already stopped, so I would have to go to bed hungry, and my morning flight was too early to get any breakfast.  Oh well.  Good thing I had bought some chocolate chip cookies at the duty-free in Dubai airport!  A bit melted, but yumm.