From a small northwestern observatory…

Re-reading my “Airports” page, I see that it’s in terrific need of updating!  Here goes:

St. Louis Lambert Field — Not a bad airport, once you get there.  Getting there can be an adventure.  First, it has the second worst “rental car return” signage in the world.  (To be fair, San Diego has the worst rental car return in the U.S., but the signage is pretty good.)  Once you RETURN the rental car, you ride a standard issue shuttle bus to the airport.  This is where it gets fun.  You get dropped off on the street, cross the street, go down a wheelchair ramp to the baggage claim, ride and escalator up to the ticket counter, then back down to exactly where you were to begin with to go thru TSA!  Sigh….

Charles de Gaulle, Paris — Lots of nice things to say about CDG, but rental car return isn’t one of them.  Even if you speak passible French, the signage for rental car return is impossible to decipher.  On the positive side, the airport hotels are top-notch.  We stayed at the CDG Marriott, which was one of the nicest Marriotts I’ve ever enjoyed.

Dulles — Dull.  Seriously dull.  On the positive side, if the NYC airports are all slammed due to snow, you can grab Amtrak and head for DC, then grab a towncar to Dulles and get the heck out of the way of the winter.

New Orleans/Louis B Armstrong — Ya gotta love any airport named after Louis B. Armstrong.  My compliments to the staff and management for getting MSY back in service after Katrina.  Since then, they’ve done some great renovations to the terminals and added a brand new rental car facility (which, sadly, is a bit of an up-hill hike from the main terminals).  I’ll add that among mid-sized airports in the US, MSY has some of the best food going, but you’d kinda expect that, right?

Extra shout-out — Right in the main center of the E Concourse at ATL is “One Flew South”, an Asian/Southern/Fusion restaurant that is amazingly good.  If you have an extra half hour in ATL around lunch time, check it out.