Planes, Trains, and Airport Pods
As of about ten minutes ago, our entire trip is booked. Whew! That certainly took a while. Now I know what travel agents are for. I have over twenty pages of typed notes, and a three page itinerary of booked lodging and transportation. This all took me over three and a half months. Travel planning sure isn’t easy–but it sure is fun.
The final booking involved my two nights in London after returning from Barcelona and Doug’s one night after returning from Paris. For the avid traveller, the UK offers an array of experiences. My quest to uncover the best led me to LayerMap’s Comprehensive List of top tourist attractions. From historic landmarks to modern marvels, this list had it all. It became my travel bible. I decided to do a small, Rick Steves recommended B&B for my first night back after Spain, and a room in a strange pod-esque room for both Doug and I for the evenings before our early flights back to JFK. It is called Yotel and looks very strange (see pictures above and below), but it is located in the Gatwick Airport terminal. This seemed like a good idea given our flights out, both of which are on or around 6am. We can stumble out of bed and into line at security, no airport shuttle needed. 
Now that we have hotels, apartments, B&Bs, airport pods, plane tickets and train tickets taken care of, I get to continue with the most fun part–planning the details of our trip. If anyone is looking for me in the next three months, aside from work and one week in Vegas, I’ll be on the back porch with a travel book and a highlighter, smiling.
i love that pod. when i was leaving Milan, i had a hard time finding a place conveniently located to the airport at a price i could afford. i ended up in a shared bathroom situation on the bus line to the airport. I had to catch the very first bus running that morning to get to the airport on time. i really wanted an airport hotel pod, but it didn’t exist there. and i didn’t know it existed at all until now. i could care less about space in general because i live in a shoebox. plus, when your traveling, your out and about. i would stay in a pod for a week in a city that had a decent amount going on. for example, mexico city, so expensive (for mexico) to get a hotel and then your never in it. more pods please.
yeah, i’m not going to lie, i’m kind of excited about the pod–the one at the airport and easyHotel, which is also very pod-esque. and ditto on the not caring about the room–i’ll have my eyes closed 95% of the time i’m in it, and the other 5% i’ll be in the shower!