Travel Days. AIA24. Washington D.C. ArchiWeek.
Written by Aliya Pinnock, Edited by Aliya @archistudentnotes
Archiweek
ArchiWeek is the sub-section of archistudentnotes sharing week in the life accounts from Architecture Students, Architectural Assistants and Architects from all over the world. It is free to read and free to submit!
This ArchiWeek we have a week in the life submission of my experience at the American Institute of Architects Annual Conference 2024 in Washington D.C! I was invited by the AIA due to the work I have done here at archistudentnotes so what better way to share my week than with a (rather long) ArchiWeek submission here at archistudentnotes.com!
This post covers my two travel days to start the trip!
Would you have tackled the days any differently?
Travel Day 1.
It begins! So today was a very long travel day and I am only really starting this ArchiWeek today because it is a Monday and I appreciate a bit of consistency. So, please skip to Day 1 of the Conference if you're not interested!
The day started waking up too early, packing and repacking my suitcase as we were flying with cabin luggage only, checking my passport was in fact in the bag for the third or fourth time since I put it in yesterday, ordering an Uber and then traveling down to London for our connecting train to Gatwick.
The train was fine and as expected, sat on a table of 4 which was ideal and grabbed some Yo Sushi at St. Pancras Station for a quick lunch that included a free portion of gyoza curtosy of my student discount with UNiDAYS (Not sponsored, but they save me a lot of money so check them out). We were then off on the train to Gatwick which dropped us off in the South Terminal, where our flight leaves from tomorrow but our hotel for the night was actually in the North Terminal - so we took the monorail (monorail!), walked to the Premier Inn Gatwick A23 which was a bit further away than the newer one but it was an easy walk and it was cheaper to book at the time and arrived at about 2pm.
We were thankfully allowed to check in early, spent… ahem - £8.50 on 2x pints of coke!!! Chilled, downloaded some games, movies etc for the flight, grabbed some snacks from the neighboring petrol station, got some dinner from the hotel restaurant and then a last minute baggage rearrangement before heading to bed. As if we are flying to Washington D.C tomorrow! (What is my life!)
Travel Day 2.
Okay, so yesterday was just the travel day into London and across to Gatwick, today is the big one and we travel nearly 5000 miles across the world. Too dramatic?
Our first flight was at 10.40am heading first to Orlando so we were up at around 6am to get the monorail back over to the South Terminal. Of course, there are some issues.
Issue No.1: My under the seat bag doesn’t fit into the checker thing (BA have recently reduced the size of their personal item). All the rearranging I had been doing the nights before came in handy as I had some spare space in my overhead cabin bag so a quick sort but annoying sort.
Issue No.2: We print our boarding passes and they say we need to see a Airline representative to sort out a Visa issue? Which meant even though we had no bags to drop, we had to queue for about 30-40 mins only to be told no issues (Obviously relief) but now we were slightly later going through security than I usually hope to be. We got through no issue, found some food (Starbucks breakfast sandwich - another expensive choice but we move) and we changed some money. Do not be like us and do at the airport, it was basically £1 to $1 -_- but we just changed enough for ‘emergency money.
Gate info appeared, we grabbed some snacks on the way to the gate, phoned the parents, got on the flight and went straight to the back where I had got us the two seater row which was very convenient and then we were off! (as I’m drafting this we have 8.04 hours left and we’ve just left really so looking at a reduced flight time which is good!)
Once settled into the flight, I got Barbie all ready to go after about 5 minutes of ads? Really can not escape them, thought about doing some work and drafting something up on my phone but decided against it and just chilled. Had a cottage pie if you were interested followed by some sort of savoury pastry that was meant to have chicken in it, though I tasted none, and then touch down in Orlando, Terminal C.
The airport was so so quiet, security was easy and we were admitted into the U.S.A! Now for the next flight which was in about 3.5 hours!
Now you may be wondering why we had a connecting flight when you can in fact get a direct flight to Washington…well, when I was booking the flights, the direct was more expensive and the potentiality view landing into the more local Washington airport and seeing all the sites seemed appealing so connecting flights to and from Washington!
Anyway, we transferred to terminal B via the monorail - checked into the next flight, chose our seats making sure we had a window to see those all important views coming into D.C, located the security queue we needed to go through, grabbed some food at Panda Express, very similar to chopstix and we finally went through the security queue which was about 30 mins. We were very tired at this point but we got through fine, jumped on another monorail to the gate and then had about 30mins before boarding started so we had some time to catch our breath before the next flight.
The last leg of the journey! The flight wasn't full so we were able to move seats and have a bit more space and after about 1hr 45 mins we landed just after sunset with views looking over the Pentagon, Washington Monument and the Capitol building. 100% worth it.
Off the plane, no security as we just had hand luggage, took a cab from the airport to the hotel which took about 15ish mins, another reason why the Ronald Reagan Airport was the best choice for us and got out at our hotel!
Oh the hotel, very very fancy. When I was looking at hotels The Riggs was the absolute clear winner, it was originally a bank, had a very wide hallway with high ceilings as you entered, a cafe to the left and the reception to the right, which was set up as it would have been when it was used as a bank.
The staff were exceptionally friendly, we got checked in, got up to our room and saw that not only had we been upgraded, there was also a very very nice welcome postcard from the hotel and the AIA (seriously who am I). I was tired and honestly, slightly overwhelmed so after a quick exploration of the room, and the view towards the National Portrait Gallery, it was a shower and bed after a very, very long day.
Wednesday
It is the first day of the AIA Conference 2024! Up far too early, very on brand for me, in a very nice hotel in Washington D.C, not very on brand for me….
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post to find out what I got up to!
ArchiWeek Plug
Enjoying this weeks ArchiWeek? Interested in sharing your own week?
