Phoenix Trip

I attended a computer conference last week in Phoenix and scheduled an American Airlines round trip flight a couple of months ahead of time. The flight was scheduled to leave Baton Rouge at 10:30 AM. At 10:00AM when we arrived at the gate, we found out the flight has been cancelled then I get a call on my cell phone saying the flight was cancelled and they booked us on the same flight "the next day". I got to an operator and told her that wasn't good enough. She asked if we could get to Lafayette (I said No), she suggested another flight that didn't leave until late that afternoon and we didn't know about a connecting flight to Phoenix. Finally the lady in Baton Rouge got us on a 12:10 Continental Flight through Houston instead of Dallas. She then scheduled us on a US Airways flight 4 1/2 hours later. We finally got to our hotel in Phoenix at about 8:30 - 12 hours from the time we left Baton Rouge. What a looonnng day. It would be nice also if airports were more consistent on the rules about liquids. The airport in Houston required that not only should they be in a quart size bag and under a certain size, you had to take the quart bag out of your suitcase and put it in a bin separately. For the flight back, there was another flight to Baton Rouge from Dallas that was delayed and left 30 seconds before we did and arrived in Baton Rouge 30 seconds before we did. When we landed, we found out there wasn't enough staff to accomodate both the flights at the same time, so we had to wait on the runway while the other plan deboarded, loaded the next flight and left. While at the convention we heard about similar problems with flights. I wonder if this kind of situation is common on all airlines or only some and if it happens alot or not.

Anyway, enough about the frustrating flights. The conference was at a beautiful resort hotel called The Phoenician. The area was beautiful and the service great. It was one of the hotels where they turn the bed down and leave chocolates by your pillow. Also they had some great eucalyptus and grapefruit toletries from their spa in the room.

I had a tip from others that if you take these bottles out of the bathroom, they were replaced everyday. I came home with some of the bottles for myself and coworkers.

They had fresh flowers in vases and bowls throughout the resort along with pieces of art and lots of cactuses and bromeliads. It would be great to stay at places like this for vacations and any other travel. It's nice being pampered once in awhile.