The first morning in Richmond

[... Till Now]

9^th March 10.10PM, Hotel Hilton Garden Inn, Richmond

Ahhh… finally the third part is on… after a long day. Now I am under the blanket writing this blog and watching TV after a nice Thai dinner, but it did not start this well.

So, let me start from where I left last time, the time when I was in my flight from London to Chicago. The flight reached Chicago an hour late as expected and then I started running and that running continued.
First I need to take my connecting flight tickets followed by 10 minutes wasted in the baggage claim to get my 3 bags, next was immigration queue which actually passed pretty fast and not many question were asked. From there I had to use multiple escalators to get into transit for terminal 3 and then after dropping the bags and security check (which included taking off belt and shoe and jacket) I had to run to the farthest corner to get into gate G7 for my flight to be told that it is actually leaving from gate G19!! Chicago airport!!!

Finally got my flight like 5 minutes before the departure, thank God they were allowing people till then. The journey from Chicago to Richmond was eventless. I was tired, just sat through the flight waiting for my journey to end, without any idea that the fun just merely has started.

The flight reached Richmond on time and it was close to midnight and hardly any people were there in the airport. I went to the baggage claim, a group of luggage came and people picked their luggage up and left. Nothing to show for me and another guy!! Wonderful I thought and went to the baggage claim customer service desk and after giving my details was told that, my bags are still in Chicago. They got the info and I need not worry, the only catch was that the bags are going to arrive at Richmond in the next flight from Chicago and that flight is at 10.30 AM next morning!! So, they will only delivery my bag around 2 O’ clock in the afternoon.

After a journey of 30 hours, tired and dejected, and of course without any luggage except my laptops  I got a taxi and came to my hotel. The driver was a friendly man originally from North Africa, who had a nice chat with me in his broken English.

Hotel check in was smooth but none of my India SIM card was working (It was working in London though), so I just somewhat got fresh and logged in for 5 minutes to inform Shreya about my arrival and asked her to inform Ma.

… (slept last night, starting again around 7.32 in the morning)

So I slept and then woke up went to the service desk to get a toothbrush and toothpaste (It was complementary but for some reason not given in bathroom!!)

Wearing the same clothes for around 40 hours now, I got fresh and went to have my breakfast. I don’t know why but there were a lot of kids, mostly around 10-15 years old boys, were there.

After the breakfast, I just had to wait in my room for my bags; still I went out for 5 minutes to look at the locality, watched snow for the first time, it was sunny but the air was very cold and when I went out without a jacket I realized that was mistake pretty soon.

[Main entrance of Hilton Garden Inn]

Thankfully, my India SIM started working, what I realized that only one of my phones are working, the other one is not of the same frequency as required in US. I called the airlines and confirmed that my bags are on the way.

The US TV channels are Ok. There are 7-8 sports channels in the TV in my room, two of them are called ‘NFL’ and ‘Golf’ and they are showing that respective sports, everywhere else it was NBA or some form of basketball. It’s like watching ESPN in India, 15 years back!

So out of boredom and tiredness I just decided to sleep till my bags reach. And thankfully they reached me around 2, everything intact. Immediately I placed my laptop on charge and took a shower. And then I was all set to start my US adventure!!

After chatting, facebooking and a number of failed attempts to recharge the T-mobile phone online I went out around 5, heavily covering myself with sweater and jacket and it was comfortable. Outside temperature was around 15 degree C but felt much lesser.

And then I went to a stationary store in the Gas station… to see what?

(Next part after breakfast…)

[To be Continued...]