Big & Tall Travel

I’m finally getting around to updating you all on how my still fairly recent trip went as a larger-than-most man. The short answer is that it was fantastic trip with my beautiful wife, full of adventures big and small.

The longer answer starts a few days before Thanksgiving…

We packed up our luggage with more clothes than I thought either of us had. We loaded up the pups and took them to their extended stay sitter more than an hour away from home and then made our way to the airport.

Since we live in the DC Metro area, the airport we made our way to was Dulles International Airport. While we had originally planned to fly directly from IAD to Rome (FCO), that booking was cancelled. (If anyone knows a good way to spend 150k Virgin Atlantic points, please leave a comment below…) Instead, our itinerary took us from Dulles to Munich on United Polaris, and from Munich to Rome on Lufthansa.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Once we arrived at Dulles, we checked in and made our way through TSA Pre-check in a jiffy. From there, it was only a few steps – literally – to our first stop of the day: the Capital One Lounge. My wife holds the Venture X, which got both of us in at no additional charge.

There has been a lot of hype surrounding the Capital One Lounges, and for the most part, it seems to me well deserved. The lounge is good. The service was impeccable. The food was alright, though not as good as the YT videos and other reviews would have you believe. My dear wife and I didn’t try out any of the items from the grab and go, but we tried nearly everything from the buffet and more than our fair share from the bar.

The bar was exceptionally good. The bartenders were friendly and eager. And their drinks were out of this world good…much better than what anyone would expect at an airport.

But what sets this lounge apart from other lounges is the service. As soon as a glass was emptied or a bare plate put down, someone was by to clear the table and ask us if we wanted anything. While I might not be surprised with this level of service if there were only a few people in the lounge, but there were definitely more than a few. My best guestimate is that lounge was about 80% full. Still, the service never flagged. I was impressed.

From the perspective of a large humanoid, the lounge was quite comfortable too. The chairs were wide and plush. The barstools don’t have any silly armrests on the side for my hips to push against. The ceiling as high, and the corridors were wide enough for someone to walk next to me. There was no way I was going feel claustrophobic there.

Oh…I almost forgot to mention the bathrooms. There aren’t any showers or anything of the sort, but I was really happy to see that the couple of bathrooms I visited during our time in the lounger were spacious, very clean, and well stocked.

We stayed in the Capital One Lounge for about an hour and half before our flight. But we wanted to check out the United Polaris lounge too. So we packed up, collected a couple of chocolates from the reception desk, and headed on our way.

After a short walk and an even shorter train ride, we found ourselves that the United Polaris. It very quickly became very clear that our experience at the Polaris lounge was going to be different than the great experience we had just had.

As soon as we entered we were met with a couple of desk attendants with the most dour expressions I’ve seen in a long while. To their credit, however, they had to deal wit a couple of Karens who had arrived just before we walked in. I can’t blame them too much for not loving their their work.

As soon as we were checked in, we walked up the stairs, reconnoitered the large space, and looked for a spot to call home for the hour or so before we had to board our flight.

We decided to give the restaurant a go, despite a fairly long wait for a seat. It was decent, though not terribly memorable. I do remember feeling bad for for the staff though; there were just too many patrons and not enough staff to keep up. The one thing that the Polaris lounge did that was super memorable was its chocolate chip cookie brownie sundae skillet.

The contrast between the Polaris and Capital One lounges was stark. For leisure travelers, the Capital One Lounge is clearly the better of the two. For business travelers, the Polaris lounge may make more sense though as there were *many* more tables to work from and the lounge’s amenities (showers, printers, quiet rooms for phone calls) were clearly geared for business travelers.

With our lounge visits over, we headed to board our flight to Munich. Boarding was a breeze and we were quickly at our seats. The flight we were on had a 1-2-1 business configuration. However, the window seats were not created equal. Each one seemingly had a slightly different cant toward the aisle. Some of these window seats didn’t even have a view out of the window; others had two windows to peer through!

Other than the strange window alignments, the seats were nice. That said, they were tight for a big fellow like me, or at least the one I was in was. The width was snug but fine. The main issue I found was that the footwell at my seat appeared to be both narrower, shorter, and tapered faster than those in the surrounding seats that I saw. This presented a bit of an issue for me as it meant that I couldn’t quite lie flat since my size 15 EEEE feet couldn’t make full use of the footwell.

I can’t complain too much though as I still managed to get asleep and stay asleep through breakfast. About 45 minutes before landing, my wonderful wife woke me and took the opportunity to properly memorialize my first trip to Europe.

Upon landing in Munich, we found we missed our connection to Rome. An hour later we had made it through customs and walked a week’s worth of stairs (why are there so many flights of stairs???) until we made our way to the Lufthansa business lounge. It was, of course, packed. Despite being at capacity, this lounge felt more efficient and streamlined than the Polaris lounge did at Dulles. A couple of self serve biers for me and a few husband-served glasses of bubbly for my wife helped the next leg of our trip be a little more bearable.

Lufthansa quickly and efficiently found us a replacement flight to Rome. My wife was fortunate to still be in business when we boarded; I was relegated to coach. In an exit row. Next to a sick older, Italian fellow who understood exactly zero English or German. He got a few good coughs and sneezes in my general direction before he was forced to move to a different seat. Lucky me.

Then again, I was lucky. Truly lucky. A few years ago, I never thought I’d have the opportunity to travel to Europe for a three week vacation. But there I was: finally in Rome and ready for my soup of the day!