Our primary reason to visit Charlotte was to attend "Dreaming Beyond," a Hope International meeting. They inaugurated this fund-raising event in late 2021, this essentially provided an interim report for those interested in supporting the charity.
Jess's sister lives in Charlotte, and Joe's family will be visiting during spring break. Anne and I flew down to Charlotte a couple of days earlier so we could have a couple of days overlap.
What I plan to post are some of the photos Anne and I took during the four days we were in the area. As I was gathering my thoughts about this trip, it occurred to me that I would write a bit more about a hotel and our experiences at the Charlotte (CLT) and Newark (EWR) airports.
We made it to the official Hope International website. Talking to Isaac from the Nashville office.
Worship service at the Dreaming Beyond event hosted by Hope International at the Ballantyne Hotel, Charlotte, NC.
4/18 Tuesday. Our flight was at 10 am, and we left our house a little after 8 via Uber. Nowadays congestion in the mornings on the Turnpike is more exception than rule, and today was no different. We were upgraded to First Class on a commuter flight (Embraer 170), but enjoyed the extra room on the 1:30 hour flight. Security was straightforward enough, even though I was asked to show my ID - which seems to happen quite frequently with CLEAR.
Our flight landed a bit ahead of schedule, and my first impression of CLT was "wow" (perhaps not that great, but impressed nonetheless). United uses the A concourse which is quite new, and at around 1 pm it wasn't that crowded. We decided to have lunch at Panera Bread - not cheap at about $35 for two pick-two meals.
Then we tried to pick up our rental car, from Budget, reserved through Costco Travel. Here the complaints started. First, all signs seemed to point to the counters on the second level, and the line was very long. Anne walked around and found out "regular" rentals were handled one level below. Going through the process was easy enough. Then we found out there was this long line waiting for cars to show up, one or two at a time. When Anne found out the person that just got his rental had waited for an hour, we decided to give up. Canceling was easy enough, and Joe Jr had use of his in-laws car, so he came to pick us up and took us to the hotel.
This was even worse than our experience in Hawaii a couple of years ago. We at least got a car that time.
With Joe having access to a car, and living close by, transportation wasn't a problem. We did Uber a few times during our trip, which was fine, and we ended up saving quite a few dollars.
Our room was pleasant enough, although I suspect I wasn't offered a room upgrade as the hotel appeared quite empty (even though as a Bonvoy Platinum member was supposed to be).
For dinner we had Japanese hibachi. With Priscilla's family joining as well, there were 11 of us. The younger children were both scared (the chef would light up the whole grill) and fascinated.
Accommodation: Courtyard Charlotte Waverly (2 nights).
4/19 Wednesday. Today we visited the Discovery Place, Charlotte's science museum.
Charlotte from the air. There is much construction going on in the area. I passed by several new developments during my evening walks.
Hibachi dinner for the 11 of us.
Vietnamese Mossy Frogs are quite well camouflaged. I imagine they would be very difficult to spot in the wild. Discovery Place, Charlotte.
Imperial pigeons in the aviary.
Google seems to think this is a black vulture, and who am I to question it. (I was hoping for a more exotic bird.)
Google identifies this as a trogon.
Joe and his family at Priscilla's house.
Jess texted about this "light show" at our hotel. Well, these three flashing vertical lights would be it. Courtyard Waverly.
4/20 Thursday. Joe Jr moved their flights up to around 12:30 pm, their original flight was about 8 pm at night, an advantage of having status on Jet Blue.
I got a late checkout from Courtyard, and took an Uber to the Ballantyne Hotel. A trip that took about 15 minutes, costing less than $9.
Ballantyne is supposed to be in the Luxury Collection of Marriott, and offered a "reasonable rate" (more than $250 per night) for the Hope conference. A couple of problems right away: there were two check in stations for this rather large hotel; and we were assigned the wrong room type (one king instead of two queens). We decided to keep the room, although one would think "luxury" would include getting even the small things right (and room type is no small thing for many people). The front desk was definitely overwhelmed, but the agent did remember me when I talked to her a couple of days later.
The hotel was fancy enough, and our room overlook its garden/park. There was also construction going on to expand (more meeting facilities per the posters we saw), but we never heard any noise from it.
Accommodation: The Ballantyne Hotel, Charlotte (2 nights).
The public park behind the Ballantyne Hotel is under construction still. Don't understand why they would put in artificial turf in some of the areas.
Singing by Sandra McCraken.
With the Ruyles. I have a photo with them in Hong Kong (Jade Resturant, Star House) from December 2012, on Hudson's first birthday.
With Joe Tang and his family. We met his mother for the first time.
4/21 Friday. Day spent on various Hope meetings.
4/22 Saturday. I was monitoring the plane that would eventually become UA1701, our return flight to Newark. It's a 30-year old A320, so my feelings were mixed when the plane was taken out of service, and the flight canceled. The United APP claimed to be trying to rebook for me, and I tried on the APP to no avail. After a 25- to 30-minute hold, I finally got through to a United agent. She tried many different options, and eventually booked us on American, via Chicago. So instead of a 1:30 hour flight, we were looking at a 5-hour gate-to-gate travel.
If this flight had operated normally we would have gotten in at about 5:30 pm, way ahead of a severe that would hit a few hours later, which made Newark a mess.
That turned out to be optimistic. A huge storm front passed by Newark, and all operations were closed for about 2 hours, throwing the evening schedule in turmoil. AA2918 Chicago - Newark, scheduled for 7:15 pm departure, didn't leave until 9:30 pm, and landed at 12:30 am (pilot mentioned ATC slowed us down).
Newark's "new" Terminal A was opened earlier this year, and it was impressive when we disembarked. Things were brand new, after all. The test of how good an airport is isn't when things are going smoothly, it's when things go awry. Tonight things went awry. Planes were landing one after another as the weather cleared up, and things were just chaotic. Perhaps not all the Terminal's fault, but here are some of the complaints. First, no decent place to sit. Second, poor cell phone service. Third, traffic congestion. Fourth, no Uber cars available, even at a record price of about $120, more than twice the usual fair, and 50% more than prior peak pricing. (This last one probably wasn't due to the Terminal.)
It took us more than an hour to locate a driver. Some lady we talked to had tried for close to two hours. There is some luck involved, as well.
I can't remember the last time I flew American Airlines, it's been so long that the frequent flyer number I had is no longer valid. We paid extra for "main cabin extra" seats, and these seats are roomier than United Economy Plus, although they felt a bit tighter. That also gave us some level of "priority boarding" (group 5 out of 9), which meant space to stow our carry-ons. When they serve sodas, they give you a can instead of pouring out a cup for each customer. More generous, and faster service. Overall a good experience.
Looking at FlightRadar, UA1701 typically runs as a DEN-EWR flight, but for some reason it was CLT-EWR (scheduled) on April 22. And when we booked our flight it had a different flight number.
If things had gone smoothly, we would have beaten the bad weather and be home by perhaps 6:30 pm on Saturday.
Instead we arrived at Newark at around 12:30 am on Sunday. Lack of Uber cars meant we didn't get home until about 2:30 am.
The new Terminal A at Newark is nice to look at, but seemed to have buckled (figuratively) under stress. A $2.7B project per news reports.
I imagine this is directed at the homeless. Perhaps that's why the one panhandler I saw was outside on the roadway.
It was about 2:30 am when we got home.
