Description: When United changed our 9:30 Friday morning flight time out of BWI to 8:10 am, I shuddered: this would mean leaving our house at around 4:30 am to allow enough time to get to the airport and park at the economy lot, especially since Fridays are invariably the worst day of the week to travel on the Beltway.
Then it occurred to me: hadn't I recently seen an article on "park, stay and fly" hotels at BWI? A quick search of the web revealed
this site with a listing of hotels offering up to 21 days' parking. Entering our travel dates, I found that the Best Western BWI would give us free parking for the entire two weeks we would be away in Hawaii. This was the perfect solution for us: for
less than it would cost us to park in the economy lot at the airport for two weeks, we'd get a place to stay the night before our departure with free parking thrown in. In the morning, we'd have a mere 10-minute hotel shuttle ride to BWI rather than the 90-minute ordeal we'd face otherwise. Wow... we wouldn't have to do that dreadful early Friday morning drive around the Beltway after all.
Not only that, when we arrived at the Best Western, we found the accommodations exceeded our expectations. I've stayed a lot of Best Westerns over the years, and this hotel is definitely one of the better ones. The rooms are comparable to three-star Marriott, though without the plush bedding of that chain. (Still, the bed and linens were perfectly acceptable.) The receptionist was exceptionally friendly and helpful, and we were surprised to find that we could leave our car right where we'd parked it a very short distance from the door. I'd expected to have it put in some sort of lot further away, but that wasn't the case.
We got a good night's sleep before our early flight. Knowing that we'd get a wake-up call actually made me sleep sounder than I generally do at home the night before a trip. Another pleasant surprise was when we went down to the lobby around 5:45 to catch the 6:00 shuttle. (Shuttles depart on the hour and half hour.) The breakfast buffet was fully stocked and there was fresh coffee awaiting. It seems the buffet starts around 5:30 to accommodate early morning departees -- a nice touch.
The final pleasant surprise was the cheerful and efficient shuttle van driver, who whisked us to our departure area in a matter of minutes. It was pouring rain that morning, and as we got out of the van I was still congratulating myself -- it would have been a godawful morning to be fighting traffic on the Beltway.
Even if you don't take advantage of the very generous parking deal at this Best Western, I'd recommend it unreservedly. Now that we have this "park, stay, and fly" routine figured out, I expect we'll be doing this whenever we have a morning flight departing from BWI.
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