Category Archives: Travel

I figured I’d put in a plug for my chronicle of my last visit to Nice in 2000. I’ll probably be going again in April, hopefully with better note-taking than last time.

When the United States bought the US Virgin Islands in 1917 for the then-astonishing sum of $25 million, I wonder if they knew what a bargain they were getting for their descendants.

We arrived in port at St Thomas about 6am, announced by the rumble of the bow thrusters. All four of us were excited to get off the ship and start investigating, so we had a quick buffet breakfast and hit the gangway. St Thomas gets about 2 million visitors a year (although this Wall Street Journal article says their total passenger traffic is down 19% since 2000), and that’s easy to believe given how crowded the gangway area was. Anyway, we left the ship and caught a taxi to Charlotte Amalie, the capital city proper. More specifically, we went to the downtown shopping area, so named because, well, it’s full of shops. On the taxi ride, we saw a cool sign painted along the fence: “No hurricanes for VI”. I hope that turns out to be true!

Almost all of the shops in the downtown area are jewelry shops, but we saw a few other neat things (Arlene bought a great-smelling lemongrass candle with Bob Marley’s picture on it, and you’ve already seen the pictures of Oprah.) Arlene admired the medallion on one of the taxi drivers who accosted us, and he said that “all the island people buy their jewelry at Gold Corner”. Of course, that was like a challenge: find Gold Corner. Eventually, we did, right on the waterfront. Matt and I amused ourselves by taking pictures on the waterfront (see below for some samples). Arlene and Anita each found some Nice Things™, then it was back to the ship for a quick lunch.

We’d previously decided to tour with a local guide instead of booking through the ship. (This turned out to be a great policy for all our stops!) When we first arrived downtown, we hooked up with Timothy, who bears a resemblance to Andre Braugher (only shorter). Even on an island filled with friendly people, Timmy stood out; he took us on a wonderful tour of the island, with a hilarious running commentary (example: he was amazed that we thought iguanas were interesting, since they’re as common as squirrels; when someone asked him if they were common on Aruba, he said “Hell no, because people there eat ’em!”). We stopped overlooking Magens Bay, but we didn’t go there, since we’d heard that Sapphire Bay was both prettier and had a reggae band playing on Sunday. The beach was spectacular; there’s no other word for it. Words don’t do justice to the shades of blue in the water. Coki Point was pretty good too, although I preferred the beach at Sapphire. (Interestingly, we also saw some ducks at Sapphire– not what I would have expected!)

Overall, it was a fantastic introduction to the Caribbean. We went back to the ship and had dinner, but I can’t remember what I ate. One takeaway from this trip: I wish I’d kept a journal like Matt and Anita did so I had a better at-the-time record. As much fun as this blog is, it’s not really a substitute.

Updated: Now, for some pictures that I’d previously posted separately:

The water at Sapphire Bay is unbelievable, and the reggae band was pretty good too.

My lovely wife in the tour jeepney (she’s wearing the sunglasses that our son says make her look “rad”)

Matt, Anita, and I with Timmy, our tour guide; overlooking the bay. Not shown: nearby iguanas or the chain-smoking Russian lady from our tour group.

Right near the taxi dropoff point in Charlotte Amalie, there’s a man who calls himself One Love. His business is in showing off Oprah, his donkey, who wears lipstick and has painted hooves (too bad they’re not in the picture). When One Love says “Gimme some sugar”, Oprah obediently kisses his cheek. This was too good to pass up, thus the picture.

Arlene and I, at sunset on departure day from San Juan.

Now that we’re back from our first cruise, I’m going to blog about it, more or less day-by-day. In December, our friends Matt and Anita told us they were going on a cruise, and it sounded like a fun idea, so we booked the same cruise: the Western Caribbean on the Golden Princess. We used VacationsToGo, which did a good job for us and got us what I thought was a great deal. (I’ve since seen other people mention CruiseCompete.com, where you pick the cruise you want so travel agents can give you bids– maybe next time.) Princess has a pretty good web site, so we were able to figure out what we needed to do before the cruise. In addition, I sent them a letter to tell them about Arlene’s gluten allergy.

We left here about 0500, picked up Matt and Anita, and headed north to the Detroit airport. Our flights were direct DTW-SJU and back; that made the most sense, even though NWA only offers one flight per day in each direction. We got to the airport about 2 hours before our scheduled flight time, which actually felt like 4 or 5 hours. Once we finally boarded, we were delayed about 40 minutes, then we eventually took off. The flight after that was an endurance exercise, nothing more.

When we landed in SJU, we headed to baggage claim, where we found a group of dancers in traditional dress. This was a great reminder that we weren’t in Ohio anymore! After we got our bags, we made our way to the Princess boarding area. We’d bought airport transfers, so we boarded a bus while our luggage boarded a separate truck; it was later delivered to our cabin. This made the embarkation process much more pleasant.

Speaking of embarkation: it went very smoothly. We waited in line for no more than about 5 minutes, showed our passports at the counters, and were each issued a little blue plastic “CruiseCard”. The CruiseCard unlocks your stateroom door, registers you as you enter and leave the ship in port, and lets you charge things aboard ship. We then boarded over the deck 4 gangway and made our way to deck 12, where our cabin was located.

The cabin itself (deck A, 212) was pretty darn nice– it was actually bigger than I expected, with a small refrigerator, a queen bed (actually, two twins pushed together), a small TV, and a serviceable, if compact, bathroom. We put away our carry-on bags and immediately went looking for food, since we really hadn’t eaten all day. We found the food court on deck 14; it’s a buffet-style area with a central kitchen and dining areas on either side of the ship centerline. We usually ate breakfast there, with an occasional stop for a late-night snack. The food was decent; I wouldn’t say it was great, but there was plenty of it, and it was nice to have so many choices. On our first visit, we met some wonderful folks from Canada: Arthur, his wife Crystal, and his mom Marguerite were on a cruise for Marguerite’s 84th birthday. We saw them throughout the cruise and thoroughly enjoyed their company.

We spent the rest of the evening exploring the ship; for dinner, we ate in the Bernini dining room. The Golden Princess has three identical dining rooms, all served from the same kitchen. Princess has two dining schedules: their “Personal Choice” dining lets you show up any time you want, and you get a seat wherever they happen to have one. The more traditional schedule assigns you a fixed time and table, so you eat in the same place (and with the same wait staff) every night. This is what we wanted, so that we’d have the same wait staff; unfortunately, we originally put in the Personal Choice pool. Arlene contacted the maître d’hôtel, Francois Ferat, and he quickly arranged for us to have a fixed time and table… unfortunately, when we arrived in the dining room, there weren’t enough spots at our table. Marcel Petcu, the head waiter in the dining room, quickly found us an alternate table and made sure that Arlene knew what dishes were safe to eat. (Marcel ended up being one of our favorite people on the trip; he had a great sense of humor and made us feel like honored guests every time we arrived). Dinner was delightful, although I confess that I can’t remember what I ate.. but it was sure good!

The ship was scheduled to depart San Juan at 11pm. We knew it was time when we heard a strange rumbling; it turns out that the ship has bow thrusters, and that they induce a loud rumble throughout the ship when activated. We had no idea what it was, but since it stopped not long after we left the dock, we didn’t pay it too much mind (until, that is, it woke us up the next morning, earlier than we liked!) The transit from San Juan to St Thomas is short– only about 60 miles– so the ship moved slowly. That made for a bumpy transit; I loved it, because it lulled me to sleep quickly. Arlene, Anita, and Matt didn’t like it quite so well, though. After a good night’s sleep, we woke up to the bow thruster rumble, had breakfast, and prepared to go ashore in St Thomas!

Arlene and I went on our first cruise this past week. I can’t describe how wonderful it was, although I’ll try over the next several days.

I didn’t make it to the Seattle temple, sad to say, but I got a lot of lesser tasks accomplished during the 25 hours I was on the ground there! I managed to get my new Windows Mobile device resurrected, I finished a couple of projects that have been hanging over my head; I ate Dungeness crab macaroni and cheese (pretty good, on the whole; John dragged me to Hector’s), and I was treated to a glorious sunset on our landing approach over the Great Salt Lake—an infinite number of shades of pink, orange, and gold limning the mountains and reflected in the water. Plus, I thought I’d get home at a semi-reasonable time. Unfortunately, when I got to DTW, National didn’t have a car for me.

After a 45-minute wait, they scraped up a Tahoe, and off I went. I finally stumbled in to my bedroom at about 0245. Not my favorite by any stretch, but it was good to get home sooner than the typical redeye allows. My flight SLC-DTW was delightful again: friendly crew, comfy seats, shiny clean airplane.

Off this morning to Redmond for some meetings (or, more properly, sales calls, since I’m trying to drum up some new business for my team). This time, I’m flying TOL-CVG-SLC-SEA-SLC-DTW; this is a little bit of an odd routing, but it combines a fairly early arrival in SEA (plus Chick-Fil-A for breakfast in CVG) with a good return time home. (Unfortunately, my SLC connection is too tight to have a Dick Clark’s pork chop. Oh well.) This morning at TOL, I was surprised to find that the TSA folks were requiring pax to take off their shoes. This is new, and unwelcome; TOL was one of the only airports I’ve encountered where de-shoe-ing wasn’t mandatory. Apparently they got a new memo or something.

I just got back last night from my trip to Exchange Connections (more details here). I was originally scheduled to take Delta’s redeye SAN-ATL-TOL, which would have put me in about 10a this morning. Arlene suggested checking flights into Detroit; I did and was pleased to see the new SLC-DTW service operated by ShuttleAmerica. I’d forgotten all about it, though it was discussed extensively on FlyerTalk. I rebooked my ticket over the phone; for some reason, DL’s website wouldn’t let me do it online. The first agent I spoke to said he’d updated my reservation, but he didn’t, so I had to call back. Neither agent believed me when I told them that the Embraer 170s flown on this route (and SLC-CMH) had a first-class cabin, but the second guy reluctantly put me on the upgrade list.

I got to SAN on time, and had an uneventful (if cramped) CRJ flight SAN-SLC. In SLC, I finally got a chance to eat the famous pork chop dinner at Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. It was outstanding (but then I was hungry because I skipped lunch). The onion strings were particularly good when dipped in the gravy, to boot. When I got to my departure gate, I found that only one of the 6 F seats had checked in; I was #3 on the waitlist, so I cleared easily. Interestingly, we pushed back with two empty F seats; although standby upgrades were for sale for $100, no one took the bait.

I was delighted with the whole SLC-DTW trip. The aircraft was well-lit, clean, and new; the seats were very comfortable, and the flight crew was attentive and friendly. I’ll definitely try my next return from SEA as SEA-SLC-DTW; that gives me a solid half-day of work and still gets me home the same night, as opposed to my habit of taking the redeye SEA-ATL. (Interestingly, when I tried booking an itinerary with SLC-DTW, DL’s website let me get on the upgrade list for that segment– maybe yesterday’s problem was transient.) We left about 20 minutes late and got into DTW about 30 minutes early, which was great…

until I made it to baggage claim and found that Expressions Limousine hadn’t sent a car to come get me. Oops. I called them several times, but they were already closed, so I called National and rented a car to drive from DTW to home. I picked a Chevy Impala GTZ off the lot, mostly because I could see it had an XM Radio antenna on top. What a pleasant surprise! This is the first GM car I’ve ever driven that I would actually consider buying; it drove and handled well, had a nicely appointed interior without the usual crappy GM plastics, and felt solid and stable.

This morning, I called the Expressions folks at TOL to complain. They explained that the night-shift dispatcher was at fault, apologized profusely, and offered to give me my next TOL-DTW trip free. That’s a nice offer, but I’m still nervous that they’ll leave me standing at the curb again– I’ll keep it in mind, though.

So Northwest, the other airline with good local air service, just filed for Chapter 11 too.

No big surprise here; Delta filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this afternoon. I don’t expect this to impact their normal operations, which is good ’cause I’m flying them later this month.

Live… from Sturgis… it’s my dad!

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Now here’s an unpleasant development: Delta’s cutting back their flight schedule to/from Toledo quite a bit. It’s not so much that they’re cutting flights, it’s which ones they’re cutting

Right now, we have 8 daily flights (departing 6:05a, 9:12a, 10:02a, 12:06p, 1:50p, 4:00p, 6:56p, and 8:20p) between Toledo and Cincinnati, and 4 flights a day between Toledo and Atlanta (departing 7:00a, 10:37a, 3:52p, and 8:06p). After September 1st, we lose the last two flights of the day to CVG and the last flight of the day to ATL. For me, that means my normal route of leaving late in the day for trips is now over with– I can either leave in the afternoon or the very early morning, assuming that there are connecting flights.

For example, we just got a new client in New York City. I can leave at 4pm the day before, or I can leave at 6am and connect in Cincinnati and Richmond to get there at noon– no good for a 10am meeting. Same thing on the return: a 7:30p LGA-CVG flight would formerly have gotten me home about 11p– late but manageable. Now I have to leave LGA at 5:30p to make it home the same night, which means my one-day 9a-5p meeting just turned into two days. Thanks a lot, guys. (And don’t get me started on the effects of this change on my West Coast trips.)

Wow. I never really imagined Rushmore as it was. It’s much more impressive than mere photos suggest. We got up early and drove along US 16A to Rushmore; when we got there, it was overcast and cool, which was great for picture-taking. The pictures do a better job of describing the scene than I can, so here are a couple.

The FAA has updated their air traffic control (ATC) flight delay information page. The big news: you can now search for a particular airport directly from the page. Here’s what things look like for Toledo, Atlanta, and Seattle. This is extremely useful for frequent travelers.