I really enjoyed Mexico City, but I wish I had more time to explore. The place is enormous and its colonial history shows on every corner. Still, there’s an odd contrast between the old and the new in Mexico City. It’s much more cosmopolitan than I expected and quite vital during the day.
Coming home was an adventure. My flight left the Mexico City airport at 6:30am so I got up very early just to be prepared and ready. I got up at 3am and was ready for my pre-arranged taxi by 4am. It took less than 20 minutes to glide through the empty streets to the airport. At 4:30 I was in line and ready to get my boarding pass. I was happy to be a little early because American Airlines was fabulously slow: only two check-in agents for sixty people waiting for boarding passes. Eventually I got my pass and proceeded to security and immigration. Security, at 5am in the morning, isn’t a hassle at all, so I got through quickly even though the X-Ray operator was convinced I was carrying two laptops (I wasn’t). A quick glance at my boarding pass indicated that I should head to gate 27. I walked to the gate, took out the Kindle 2, and used it to keep me company for the rest of the wait until my flight.
After a while I noticed lots of activity around me but none at my gate. Just to be sure I checked my boarding card again. Incredibly, I was assigned seat 27 and not gate 27. Instead, I was supposed to be at Gate 36 – a ten minute run away from where I was. When I finally made it to Gate 36 I was eight minutes too late. My flight had just left. The gate agent said he had called me several times – I don’t doubt it. I’ve never done this in all the years I’ve travelled internationally. The gate agent said I’d have to go back through immigration to the main desk to get a new reservation and a new set of boarding passes.
Once there I was asked about my bags: “You brought them with you, right?” No, I hadn’t. “Oh, well. You will have to go through security and immigration again and retrieve your bags before we can re-check them to Madison.” After about an hour of self-inflicted frustration, I emerged with a new set of boarding passes. One for a trip to Dallas. The other for a trip to Madison. Unfortunately for me, the connections weren’t so good: six-and-a-half hours in Dallas/Fort Worth’s brand new airport.
And, all because of my Kindle 2.
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