Visiting California

[bjarvis]

I'm heading to the San Francisco area yet again, visiting my corporate overlords at the mothership in San Mateo. In a nutshell, I'm arriving around noon on Tuesday, May 15, returning in the early morning of Monday, May 21.

Booking this trip was a much more painful experience than it should be. Ideally, I prefer to fly non-stop on Virgin America. My next preferred airline would be Southwest as I'm close to getting some free flights and/or perks. (For the record, I despise American Airlines with the white-hot fury of a thousand suns and wish United would burst into flames before collapsing into a point singularity, taking with them any trace of their prior existence.) I also prefer to fly into SFO since it's just up the road from the office and to stay at the Marriott Courtyard hotel just behind my office building.

That's the ideal trip: flying Virgin to SFO to stay at the Marriott Courtyard.

Problems:

1. Virgin America wasn't showing up in our in-house travel reservation system.
   
2. Southwest had no flights from BWI within my budget within my preferred date range;
   
3. In the range I could afford, there were no Southwest direct flights and none to SFO;
   
4. The Courtyard had no rooms past May 22.

Ultimately, through a painful series of compromises, I'm flying Southwest with a single stop in each direction, Dulles to/from San Jose. At least I get my preferred hotel, thank god, but I couldn't get a confirmation for my rental car so I'll have to do that manually.

I hope the trip itself goes off without a hitch, since booking it took a lot more time & effort than it should.

Comments

[bendoutdoors.livejournal.com]

I say and do that a lot. But one of these days I'll be able to shout "Victory is mine!". :-)