Is This a Mall or an Airport

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Geo: 39.0095, -77.4647

Once we cleared customs and immigration and entered the departures area of the airport, we saw a section we'd completely missed upon arrival. The airport had the largest and highest-end airport shopping I've seen anywhere outside of Dubai. The stores stretched across three terminals and ran the gamut from kitschy souvenirs to Hermes to Austin Martin cars. My only explanation might be the extraordinarily high taxes in Denmark, which might make duty-free shopping lucrative. Whatever the case, the airport offered plenty of opportunities to fill the few hours before our 12:20pm flight back to Dulles.

The rain became consistently stronger as departure-time approached, and there were even passing thunder storms. While we boarded on time, we were soon advised by the pilot of a "technical issue," which though resolved within 20 minutes, meant that we'd missed our "transatlantic slot." Original predictions of more than another hour of waiting were incorrect and we were in the air after not much more time. The weather, particularly over Iceland, made for a very rough 9-hour flight home, which was compounded by some circling around Dulles to avoid severe thunderstorms.

All that said, once finally on the ground, we had our quickest trip through Immigration and Customs ever at Dulles. Even our bags were some of the first on the belt.

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