We apologise for any inconvenience

I'm in Boston. I met up earlier today with my mum and dad. We're staying with a good friend of my mum and her husband. After a hectic first three days of my trip, I've accumulated ten hours of transit delays and some kind of sore-throat-related infection. It's been a rough start to the holidays, but I'm hoping to fight through it.

Everything started off well enough. I was very impressed with V Australia. Firstly, automatic points for providing USB ports for charging (and, supposedly, for media playing, though I don't think iPhone/iPod was supported, not that it mattered). Secondly, great (free) on-demand movie selection on a decent-sized widescreen LCD monitor on the back of each seat. Thirdly... well, no thirdly. The food sucked as usual. But two out of three ain't bad. I watched a few movies and caught a few hours of sleep before making it into LAX.

After some unnecessary shenanigans at the Virgin America check-in at the airport, I made it to my gate early - very early. It turned out that the flight had been delayed due to fog at SFO, and the one-hour delay turned into two and then two and a half. I ended up getting to SFO almost three hours later than expected, and I missed my next connection.

I stayed at my aunt's place in San Francisco and booked an early morning flight to DC. When I got back to the airport I checked in and found out at the gate that, yes, my flight had been delayed once more. I did some scrambling around and made sure my connecting flight in Philadelphia was easier to catch and landed at a better airport in Washington (Ronald Reagan instead of Baltimore) and hoped the delay would not be too bad. I caught a break - the plane was helped by strong tail winds and got to Philadelphia earlier than expecting. I ended up getting into Ronald Reagan around six or so hours later than I had planned, and met up with James.

A short rest at James's later and we commenced the tour of the city. James gave me a tour of the Capitol. I got to see bits the building that was not normally covered in tours, which was pretty neat. And the fact that there was nobody else around there (i.e. no tourists) made all the statues and paintings and architecture much better/easier to look at. Afterwards, we headed to RFD's, a bar that had local and international beers, where we met up with a group of James's friends to bid him farewell as he's leaving for Australia soon. We had some beers and some good conversations and then made our way home.

"If it's anything the Americans can do well, it's making monuments." -James

I woke up with a sore throat - probably a result of all the stress of trying to make flights combined with going out straight after getting into DC - and noticed that it was raining outside. James and I were planning to do a Segway Tour of the city, but they had cancelled tours for the day because of the weather. We decided we'd walk instead.

We first got some food and then started to make our way from the Capitol down the National Mall to the Lincoln Memorial. James was right - the Americans did know how to do their monuments. The workmanship that must have gone into the monuments and memorials is impressive. It was a shame that the sun wasn't out because it would have made for some good photos.

We headed back home via the White House and relaxed for the rest of the day with poker, Japanese, and Sunday Night Football.

"We apologise for any inconvenience." -Airline staff

James and I woke up (actually, James woke up, I was awake from an interrupted sleep) at about 3:30 this morning to wait for the shuttle to pick me up and take me to Dulles airport. It was a foggy morning but everything was on time until about five or ten minutes before boarding time when the flight was suddenly announced as delayed. The plane that was coming in supposedly had some mechanical problems. The initial delay was one and a half hours. This became two. And then three and a half. At that point it would have made more sense for me to catch a bus or a train.

The airport had free wireless during the holiday season so that kept me occupied for a while, and one positive from the experience was that I discovered Five Guys - a burger chain that did really bloody good (and pretty affordable) burgers.

When I finally made it to Boston, my sore throat had taken a turn for the worse and my left eye was also hurting - I'm guessing a result of wearing nearly-expired contacts while sick. All we really saw of Boston today was Quincy Mall. After that, I was feeling too average to go on.

I'm meant to go snowboarding at Blue with Janna on Friday after I get into Toronto, so I'm going to sacrifice any sightseeing in Boston until I feel better. I'm hoping that my condition improves over the next few days. Although one thing I will do is see the Blue Man Group - our hosts have bought us tickets to the show tomorrow night and there's no way I can skip that.

(P.S. In reference to my last post, I didn't end up getting all of my photos up from Europe II - way to many from Belgium - but I did put up my England ones here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adrianpua/sets/72157622925057066/)