Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Favorite Airports

The Washington Post's Travel Blog discusses favorite airports. this is a tough list because airports can be pretty grim places to be stuck for a long time, especially if money is tight, and because they tend to take on a certain level of saminess. But I'll give it a go:


Domestic:
Atlanta (Largely because I have a good friend and former college teammate who runs a business there, but also because it is huge but almost always manageable).
Houston (As opposed to Dallas-Fort Worth, which is a nightmare. Houston has great food options, including a fantastic barbecue place)
Minneapolis-St. Paul (When I lived in Minnesota I had a very serious girlfriend I had left back in Washington, DC so I spent a lot of time in the Minneapolis airport.)
Kennedy (Largely because being at Kennedy so often means going somewhere great.)
Logan (Everything about Logan is a nightmare, but arriving there means I've landed someplace I want to be. Plus I can buy Dunkin' Donuts and The Boston Globe within minutes of landing.)
Washington National (Security is a hassle, but I like DCA and it has that greatest of benefits: Location, location, location.)


International:
Amsterdam (Lots of cool stuff to do and places to rest.)
Hong Kong (Stylish and comfortable and efficient.)
Johannesburg (Another nightmare that does not belong on any list, except that it has personal meaning because when I hit Joburg I am again in a place I want to be.)
Heathrow (See Kennedy, above.)
Cape Town (Unlike Joburg, the Cape Town airport is almost absurdly manageable and intimate. Plus it is in Cape Town.)


Feel free to add your own favorites or least favorites in the comments.

12 comments:

dcat said...

Dad had style, miles and miles, so much style it was wastin' in 1972.

I actually imagine much of Eastern Europe to be that way as well, though I'm sure that in part those are my own biases.

dcat

Thunderstick said...

They have airports in eastern europe??

Anonymous said...

You are certainly the world traveler there dcat. Well done, sir. Well done. I also agree, Johannesburg is a dump. I almost lost my wallet in that hole a few years back.

dcat said...

One of my very first experiences on my first trip to South Africa in 1997 was to have my passport stolen in the JHB airport. I was moving there for a year and I immediately had that nightmare. I did not even bother to replace it until April, several months later, so for the last ten years I have had a passport issued in Cape Town.

dcat

Anonymous said...

ya'll fellers is sure to fancy fer me. What with mosow and johnsburg, dang man, ya'll must be some kinda royalty, i'll tell you what. eether that er ya'll just like to act like it. sheeiiittt.

dcat said...

Cletus --
Travel is no longer the eralm of royalty, as all of the bothersome hoi polloi when I go to the airport indicates.
dcat

Anonymous said...

do whut? son i ain't got no idear whut yer sayin'. but lemme try to teech ya' sumthin impotent here'na song.

"Well this life that ahm livin' has took me everywhere, and there ain't no place I ain't never gone.
But its kinda like the sayin' that you heard so many times,
well there just ain't no place like home.
Did you ever see a she-gator protect her young,
or a fish in a river swimmin' free.
Did you ever see the beauty of the hills of Caroline,
or the sweetness of the grass in Tennessee.
And Lord I can't make any changes,
all I can do is write 'em in a song.
I can see the concrete slowly creepin', Lord take me and mine before that comes."

now then son, do ya see the light now?

dcat said...

Oh, I see -- you want me to write about airports in the Carolinas and Tennessee. I am always shocked by how small the Memphis airport is.I've flown into and out of Greenville-Spartanburg and assheville but remember little about them. Charlotte is a great airport and could have made my top five list as well. I've also flown into one of the airports in the Outer banks -- New Bern -- and found it to be small but perfectly pleasant.

Cheers --
dcat

Anonymous said...

well ah'll be a suck egg mule--you missed it by a mile. that's lynyrd skynryd a talkin' boy, an' they ain't talkin' bout no danged airport neether.

dcat said...

Yeah, yeah, yeah -- and a Southern Man don't need me around, anyhow.

dcat

Unknown said...

The airport that I hated most was Frankfurt, where smoking is allowed only in the designated areas which seem to be every corner!

The small town in Texas where I live has a small airport, The beauty of that is it shuts down every night and people lock the building and go home. If you are early for the first flight in the morning (one of the few to fly out) then you may have to wait outside the building for the people to show up on work and open it.

m
www.aabhaa.com

dcat said...

Middle -
Yeah -- sometimes foreign airports are a little less stringent about smoking, which is a bit vexing given the closed space and all. I've heard that on Indian Airlines there are still smoking flights, or at least there were until recently, which must just be noxious, especially for an overseas flight.
I checked your link and it looks like you live in a different part of texas from dcat, but your small airport sounds a bit like ours -- maybe even a bit smaller. But there is certainly something to mbe said about being able to show up a half hour before even the longest flights.

dcat