24 Hour Trip to Raleigh, North Carolina

I decided that I could use some time away from Michigan so I booked a flight on Priceline. I didn’t really care where I went so I selected multiple airports and somehow I ended up with Raleigh, NC. My offer was accepted to fly to Raleigh on Sunday at 6AM with a stop in Washington, DC before arriving in Raleigh at 9:30. The trip started off pretty bad when I got a stomach bug on Saturday which kept me up all night, I was feeling a little better when I got to the airport at about 5AM, until I saw the airplane my flight was on. The plane was an Embraer RJ145, a tiny piece of crap that removes any remaining luxury associated with air travel. There was no room in the overhead compartment , I was in the front row of seats and my knees were hitting the wall in front of me, I’m only about 5′10. The woman in the seat next to me was so big that she couldn’t even fit in the seat with the armrest down. That said, the flight itself was not so bad and we even got there a little early.

I had a rental car reserved from Avis through their “preferred” program, they were  supposed to have a convertible waiting for me in the lot so I wouldn’t have to wait in line with those people who are not “preferred”. Of course there was no one working in the Preferred department so I had to go inside and they said my reservation was for a premium size car, not a convertible, it looked like rain so I let them get away with that. The car they gave me was a Chrysler 300C which is supposed to be comparable to a Buick Lucerne , I suppose Avis would say Janet Reno is comparable to Jessica Alba, after all they are both female (on second thought I can’t be so sure about Janet Reno). I was also charged an underage fee even though my account was setup to waive underage fees and they would not take it off.

Determined to enjoy my “vacation” I drove on to the hotel in Chaprel Hill, The Carolina Inn, a four star hotel owned by University of North Carolina. They were booked solid so would not allow early check-in, so off I went to explore the city. First I stopped in Costco to buy a digital camera, this was the best part of my trip, the people there were much nicer than at the Costco by my house and everything went smoothly. I drove out to downtown Durham and walked around for a few hours, it looked like a cool city even though it was completely deserted, maybe everyone was in church. I walked around the Duke campus for a bit to pretend I was in college (I never went), wasn’t really much to see just a bunch of old buildings.

I was going to check out downtown Raleigh but my stomach started acting up and it was 95 degrees out so I went back to the hotel, which let me check in even though it was still an hour early. I slept for about an hour and when I woke up I felt so bad that I decided to go home early. After paying $175 to change my ticket and $75 to upgrade to first class on the first leg of the flight (there is no first class on the DC to Detroit leg) I finally made it home. The  the first class upgrade was disappointing as United doesn’t really treat you any better, maybe it was b/c it was such a short flight. All in all a pretty crappy vacation. I still like the idea of going on unplanned one day vacations so I will try again in a few weeks.