And you thought the last post was long... This is just for the trip TO Sint Maarten...
As before I make the usual disclaimer that these are only the experiences of my wife and I on our first trip to the island. Your results may vary. Considerably...
Just wait till you hear about the trip back. Those of you who flew into FLL on the afternoon of June 30 know just what I mean...
Enjoy.
Installment 2… “The journey’s the thing” – Homer, the Iliad…
When I was a lad, my brother and I were sent off to boarding school in Exeter, England. We flew across the Atlantic several times. Always on PanAm. San Francisco to London, three or four times a year for two years. When we travelled with my mother, she dressed for the occasion. Hats and gloves no less. The lavatories had racks of colognes, perfumes and shave lotion. Racks of them! Little bottles there for your use. Free. At six years old it’s pretty strange to come off of a flight covered in all kinds of exotic fragrances but it didn’t seem to bother anyone else!
When my brother and I travelled alone, we sat in the back where the flight attendants (known as stewardesses and stewards then) congregated. They feds us, made us feel welcome and then talked amongst themselves about what they did when they were in London or San Francisco the night before. I guess they figured we were just too young to understand what they were saying but they were so wonderfully wrong. Their risqué talk, sure sounded fun! They were marvelous and they took such wonderful care of us and they all seemed to be beautiful (whether women or men).
Imagine what it is like to be seven years old and stand in the cockpit of a series 300 Boeing 707 PanAm Clipper for an hour traveling over Greenland and having Captain Welson explain the various instruments. A whole hour! And the magical pilot’s drawl as we climb out of Heathrow and he calls over the intercom “Well Bruce and Jim, you might be interested to know that we’re actually climbing faster than the sun is setting so it’s going to take a little bit longer for night to come…”. He was a hero. We were Gods. The other passengers turned to us and smiled, not a hint of jealousy or malice in their eyes.
That’s pretty heady stuff for two wide-eyed young lads enjoying the wonder of flight in the jet age.
That was 1967... Today, Homer would have changed his mind…
Today we flew Spirit Airlines to Sint Maarten. I didn’t see any wide-eyed boys on the plane. Most everyone’s reaction to everyone else seemed to be a sense of resigned indifference. Times change… I get that we need to take our shoes off and remove bulky coats. I just hope the terrorists never invent exploding underwear. If they do, getting on a plane is going to get real interesting…
Spirit 807 / Spirit 100 (Reagan National – Fort Lauderdale – SXM)
Security at DCA (Reagan National) is busy even at 0530 on a Saturday morning. Check-in is pretty smooth despite the new “pay for each bag” policy that Spirit introduced a couple of days earlier. There’s a guy next to us checking in a storage box which is very over-size and very over-weight. He seemed a touch surprised at the cost (over $150 extra), and that they were going to enforce it. I can only imagine what he was trying to ship in a container that big. I think I could just about have put our boat in it.
We’re on-time down to the Fort Lauderdale Zoo (terminal 4).
I have a picture that better attempts to convey the image of a line varying consistently between 30 and 50 women waiting to get into the lone bathroom for this terminal of 12 active gates. You read that correctly, one bathroom for the terminal as a whole! It’s cruise day (Saturday when the ships come in and disgorge thousands of people and then absorb thousands more. Most of these folks will travel through Fort Lauderdale airport today…) and the airport resembles a zoo. If you travel through here on Friday, Saturday or Sunday (which, as of this writing, are your only days to fly to SXM on Spirit) take my advice and use the aircraft restroom prior to landing or just after departing. I like to play “guess the originating city” of the ladies as they stand in line. There’s the “look honey, can you move it along, I can’t wait here all day…”, then there’s “This can’t really be happening, can it?” or the simple look of stunned realization that they may end up back on the plane and in their seats for another hour or so before being allowed to seek relief. All of these folks are examining their boarding passes in the vain hope that 11:05 a.m. somehow will magically turn into 1:05 p.m. and there will then be time… precious time…
Both drink vending machines were broken (We had a ball watching some desperate passenger try to figure out which way the damn thing might actually read her dollar bill), so your only liquid refreshment came from standing in a line about the same length as the ladies restroom line up at a rude little establishment called Nathan’s, or a small vendor kiosk where a harried young woman serving there must have felt like a Red Cross volunteer at a major disaster site, “here’s your water, I’m so sorry for your loss, I so hope you won’t have to travel again soon dear, there-there…” . The only difference was that she was charging them for the bottles. I guess that’s how she knew it was different. Again, words of advice, once you’re through security at your port of departure (ours was Reagan National) buy all the drinks you can carry.
Spirit seemed to do a pretty good job (given the Ultra Low Cost Carrier approach) and, as of three days before we left, they charge for baggage (5 bucks each way per piece for the first couple of bags). They seemed to be coping with the changes and there were only a few self-important people due for entitlements whining “I shouldn’t have to pay for my bags! I didn’t know about this until you told me!”. I think we better get used to paying for things like this. I believe it will be the way of the future in travel. Indeed, three days before we flew, Spirit also introduced the concept of paying for any beverage (except a cup of water) on board. You can also only pay by credit card. This was causing more than a few disconcerted looks but people seemed to cope. A strange new barter system developed where those with cash were offering to pay those who were willing to buy them a drink using their credit card. You can also buy snacks. The unappealing selection is carefully crafted to make you incredibly thirsty which, of course, means you’ll need that credit card for another Coke. They have Pringle chips, something fairly obscene called Clodhoppers and a water-sucking muffin that spontaneously absorbed all of the moisture out of the hapless passenger in the seat across from us who ordered one before anyone could warn him. He spent 4 dollars to rehydrate using two Coke’s and two Sprite’s and, hopefully, learned his lesson. They should deploy those things to flood zones…
If you haven’t seen the television show before, try to catch an episode or two of “Airline” about the day to day operations of Southwest Airlines. My hope is that someone will see themselves in one of the passenger situations they portray on that show, and will take a moment to consider their actions before they start berating some hapless airline employee for something the passenger most certainly could have avoided with a little thought and pre-planning.
I love to people-watch anywhere I happen to be in the world but lately I think I must be getting old and crotchety because I’m just amazed at the stupid things people seem to do and the incredible rudeness on display. I’ve always thought one should address anyone they encounter in their travels as though that person were someone they knew personally and liked reasonably well. If I keep that in mind, it’s easy to catch myself before I might be tempted to let loose on someone I feel isn’t doing their job to my satisfaction. The other old standby is to imagine myself doing their job and realizing just how quickly it would get old or just how patient I would be dealing with all the rudeness and indifference. There but for the grace of God…
We’re halfway through our dealings with Spirit as far as the trip goes and so far so good. At this point I’d recommend them to anyone who is close to one of their points of departure. We chose to purchase what they call their “Big Front Seats” to have a little more comfort and I still found the price (around $800 return for each of us) to be reasonable. Those same seats on Delta or American would have been more than twice the price. We’ll see how things go on the return leg…
Ahh Sint Maarten. There it is laid out before and below us… We have finally arrived.
Time to see what all the TTOL folks have been raving about.
Time to love the beautiful beaches.
Time to enjoy the scrumptious meals.
Time to soak it all up.
Time to…
…wait in the customs line…
I don’t know if this is typical but, once off the aircraft, we ended up being two of a total of around three hundred people waiting to clear customs. We were in that line (one of four such lines) for an hour. I guess that’s not really so bad but it seemed more akin to some of the major cities I’ve traveled to rather than a small island. There was a much shorter fifth line for folks who were Sint Maarten residents or Netherlands citizens. It was fascinating watching folks try to bribe their way into that line. A lady with a baby actually made it (she was holding an American passport) but only because the airport official monitoring the line seemed too tired to argue with her (never take on a self-entitled western woman with a baby – she’s the most powerful force in the universe since she’s just been through such a unique experience that’s only been shared by about three billion of the currently living population of the planet). It seemed that you could use the line if you were in a wheel chair, and I offered to break Sonia’s leg but she decided against it as our line began to move. There are restrooms in this section (see my earlier point about the Fort Lauderdale Zoological Gardens airport adjunct with regard to using the facilities on the plane before landing).
Customs formalities (once at the head of the line) were quickly and professionally dispatched with a smile to (and from) the customs official. We stepped through to find all of our bags patiently riding the carousel but ready to get off and join us.
Thanks for following along so far...
James
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