How to Tour an Extraneous Airport on Your Vacation!

"How to Tour an Extraneous Airport on Your Vacation!"
...or...
"How one foolish decision can mess up your vacation in so many ways"

I can't decide if I over-thought things, or didn't spend enough time with my vacation decisions. I spent weeks mapping out different strategies for our week-long tour of California, having to start over from scratch every few days as Eric's schedule fluctuated or availabilities became issues, etc. So I think when it finally came down to actually booking the whole thing, I had looked at so many hotels that I got confused about which ones I really wanted when I was booking.

Our first hotel in Millbrae, CA (outside of San Francisco) had me very confused, until I realized it wasn't the hotel I thought I had booked! I had read descriptions of so many breakfast options that included make-your-own waffles, that I was baffled we didn't stay at a single one with this feature! But in the end, the plans for the end of our trip in Anaheim caused the most problems.

We had an 11am check-out in Solvang, with a 4pm deadline to return the rental car to John Wayne Airport in LA, just South of Anaheim. No big deal, right? We spent a little time in Solvang, and then we were on the road at around noon. I wanted to spend some time in Santa Barbara to check out two bead shops that Google Maps showed were very close together. We got distracted by the sights and the shops, I wore the wrong shoes for walking, both our backs were bothering us, and we both got overheated. The places we had picked to have lunch both closed within moments of us approaching their door. We were so exhausted by the time we got to the car, we just got on the highway and drove. We had lunch at a Carl's Jr. in Carpinteria just before 2pm. We had 2 hours to return the car, and Eric's google phone was estimating almost exactly that for how long it would take to get there. We called the company to find out about extensions. We had an extra 59 minute grace period, at one hour we would be charged $10, at two hours late it would be $20, and after that we would be charged an extra day. I tried to get them to move the deadline - to have such a hard and fast time seemed silly, because we had picked up the car at 11am and I had randomly picked 4pm to return it. So I was already 5 hours into an extra day, right? They didn't see it like that.

So we hopped on I-5 to race to the airport. HA! I-5 in Seattle is bad, but this was colossally bad! Friday afternoon rush-hour LA traffic killed what little energy we had left. At 5pm we decided to switch tactics and get to the hotel - we could unload our stuff, clean out the car, skip some of the traffic, have a snack, and then return the car by closing at 11pm. No big deal, right?

We popped off the highway for a half hour to get a snack and stretch our legs, then looked for a better way to get to Anaheim. Somehow, we managed to get to the hotel somewhere after 7pm. Traffic wasn't all the much better, but we only had about 15 miles to go. We got to the airport and couldn't find the sign for our rental company. I started to feel sick to my stomach.

I had picked John Wayne Airport to return the car because (A) it was closer to our hotel than LAX, (B) it was a cheaper multi-city return fee than LAX would have been, (C) smaller airport = less traffic, and (D) the hotel shuttle from the airport would be quicker.

In the end LAX would have been cheaper because we could have definitely made it there between 5-6pm to at least skip another full-day charge (nope, they wouldn't let us change the drop-off to LAX), as well as easier and faster because it was less distance than our starting point. And also the drop-off at LAX is actually at LAX, whereas the drop off for JW Airport was in some industrial suburb we had no directions for that was so NOT part of the airport.

So of course we got lost looking for this place. Using Eric's google phone, we discovered that we make a better team when I'm driving and he's navigating. We found the place in a dark corner of an industrial area near some creepy looking biker bar, with NO signage other than a van with the company logo parked in front. We cleaned out the car, pocketed the few items we hadn't taken into the hotel, and walked into the desk to drop off the keys at about... 10:30pm. Drop off was very easy, and we got a ride to the airport (but not to our hotel), where we got on a $10 per person shuttle to the hotel.

But the Brilliant Anaheim Decisions (BAD for short) didn't stop there. The hotel was great, but didn't have a mini-bar, room-service, or restaurant so we walked to Del Taco around midnight for dinner. Next morning we discovered the continental breakfast available was the worst on the trip, and there were definitely no waffles. We had only that one day to do Disneyland, but I was so exhausted that I went back to the hotel for a nap. Which helped, but ruined our plan to go to California Adventure because they closed hours before Disneyland did - $20 bucks extra per ticket, down the drain. After returning to the hotel on the LAST available shuttle for the night, I went to talk to the front desk about getting to the airport the next day.

Good news: they would hold our bags after checkout so we could visit Downtown Disney for some shopping - our flight wasn't until 4:10pm, so SCORE! However, there was no airport shuttle. None. Zip. Zero. Huh? How did I miss that when I was booking?!?! So we hopped on the shuttle to Downtown Disney and ended up spending exactly 20 minutes there before rushing back because the airport shuttle companies wanted to pick us up before 1pm in order to get us to the airport on-time. So all of that "free time" we thought we had was gobbled up calling shuttled to beg for a space, the shuttle being late, getting transferred to another shuttle a few blocks away because we were last minute, and getting glared at by the people who could have been on the road already if they hadn't been waiting for us to get there and board!

So lessons learned: better research, longer stay, and a breakfast BUFFET will be required for our next trip. And I never want to see John Wayne Airport again in my entire life.