After a fun and invigorating four days at the Book Passage Travel Writers conference in Corte Madera, California—the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to a travel writers’ Woodstock, complete with karaoke—I headed to San Francisco International Airport yesterday for my first flight on the new Virgin America airlines. I’d been looking forward to the flight and the highly touted entertainment system, which on the gleaming white seatbacks looks like a giant iPod. The flight and entertainment were great. I’d happily fly Virgin America again. But the highlight wasn’t the plane. 

Virgin America, I learned when I arrived, operates out of SFO’s sleek international terminal, so instead of hanging out with travelers headed for Seattle and Phoenix, as I’d expected, I found myself wandering past counters for airlines from across the planet, and then the Duty Free shops, among travelers speaking any one of a dozen languages, heading for all corners of the globe.

In the gift shop, a sharply dressed mother and father with accents I couldn’t quite place bought 70 Pez candy dispensers in individual packets. Their young boy watched, wide-eyed, as the cashier counted every last one. Nobody would buy 70 Pez dispensers at a domestic terminal.

Few places on the planet hold as much promise and possibility—and if the place you’re headed doesn’t have Pez dispensers, then last-chance opportunity, too—as an international terminal. For a guy flying an hour away in his home state, it was the next best thing to a trip to the other side of the world.

Related on World Hum:
* Virgin America Debuts with ‘Party-Like Atmosphere’
* ‘Terminal Men’ Spend Almost Seven Weeks Living in Delhi Airport
* Airworld: As Seen Via Cellphone Video

Photo by Don Fulano via Flickr, (Creative Commons).