Tuesday April 30th

Flying in and Meeting Bob

The trek to PyCon2019 in Cleveland was pretty damn long.

Due to a last minute flight ticketing change I had to take an extra leg: SYD > LAX > IAH > CLE.

I’ll reiterate: LAX is a terrible airport. I’ve never seen an airport not have customs open in time for incoming flights. Bit of a joke!

After 22 long hours I made it to CLE and was lucky enough to find Bob waiting for me at the Baggage Claim. A pretty solid bro-grab took place.

We caught a taxi driven by a very excitable bloke who was super keen to talk about soccer after hearing Bob was from Spain.

He dropped us off at the Westin Cleveland Downtown. It was nice hotel! Our room had two Queen sized beds and was pretty spacious but that didn’t matter anyway as we’d barely be in there.

The First Night

I showered up, Bob didn’t. We then legged it down to take a walk and find some grub.

Walking the streets felt like coming home. I was able to remember where each street led and which direction to head to get to the alley/strip of restaurants we spent a lot of time at during PyCon 2018.

I really wanted to eat at the Butcher and the Brewer but they told us it was a 15 minute wait. There was beer to be consumed before the exhaustion kicked in so we said “good day sir!” (I wish) and hunted around until we found a pizza place.

Beers and Pizza with one of my best mates. I couldn’t have asked for more!

Aside from our waiter asking if we were okay every 10 minutes, it was a great dinner. Thankfully we didn’t order a pizza each as we forgot how massive portions can be in the U.S. One meat pizza was definitely enough.

Bob’s belated birthday gift was dinner so I paid and we left. Instead of walking back to the hotel though, we decided to wander through the city.

We took a few snaps and even walked all the way back to go past the pub where we first hung out in person the year before. This also led us past the horrifying Airbnb that we stayed at on the first Cleveland trip. We snuck inside the front foyer to the apartment block and copped the same, sickly, chemical smell that ruined the apartment for us.

After gasping for fresh air back outside, we were tired enough to head back to the hotel and grab some shut eye.