London vs DC airport transport

London. Tube to Paddington station, up and down one flight of stairs and onto the Heathr0w Express. A walk for about 800m and then the check-in counter. No queue for check-in, no squabbles about bag weight, fast -tracked through security and then a range of excellent shops. A quick pop-in to the Virgin lounge and a “yes Sir we can cut your hair even though your flight is being called in 7 minutes.”, and then onto the plane.

DC. First off the excellent Virgin Atlantic plane, into 0 degree celcius. Walk 100 meters to… a glorified bus (this is Dulles), which once completely and uncomforatbly crowded set off for the main terminal. An unexplained delay in docking and the seething mass of people rushed to customs. Immigration – fingerprinted, questioned (none of which I could answer precisely- “what date did you last leave the USA?”) and otherwise treated like a criminal and without a “welcome to the USA” I was through. My bag was already there (it’s easy when you have to wait so long for INS) and off I went to find a rental car. 10 minutes waiting in the cold and a bus arrived to take me to National Car rentals – they’ve been good before and I like that you can pick your own Unusually Shaped Amercan Car. Two very helpful people served me, but they were confronted with a bafflingly Byzantine computer system. They (and I) kept their humor as we discovered that my car would cost $190 for 2 days rental – that’s about $150 more than normal. It seems that the huge dump of snow this morning in DC meant that cars had been one-way driven away, and there was a HQ-enforced minimum rental cost being enforced. After accepting $50 in vouchers to use next time (sorry HQ MBA’s) I picked an Unusually Shaped American Car (a PT Cruiser), which I later found not only lacked traction control, but also ABS and any sense of road handling whatsoever. Perfect for fun in the snow then. Like all American vehicles pressing the accelerator results in a startling increase in noise but no other discernible effect. But after a brisk drive to DC I was done.

Dulles, by the way, has no train service, a bus/train combination service that takes about 2 hours, and has exclusively licensed Taxi services to one rather average and expensive company – $50-60 gets you to DC…