Tag: air travel

I just can’t figure airports—especially this one

On By Jim BellomoIn Air travel6 Comments

Our last two sojourns to Europe have both finished badly. It is horrid that you have a great trip, and then the day you fly home, things suck. I promised to detail this for you, so here we go. Just once, I would like to be able to get home without feeling like I was run over by a truck.

We had originally purchased seats on Air France from Seattle to Lisbon via Paris and then home from Budapest to Seattle, again via Paris. Our original flights had a four-hour layover at Charles DeGaulle Airport (CDG–above) on our way out and a three-hour layover at CDG on the way back. I liked that. I thought it was a good amount of time to transition from one plane to another.

But then Air France canceled our flight. Well, they didn’t really cancel it; they moved us via a codeshare to Delta (that means that we were flying on a Delta plane but under an Air France ticket), flight 80 on the way out and 81 on the way back. We would still be on the same Air France flights from Paris to Lisbon and Budapest to Paris. On the front end of the trip, our schedule pretty much stayed the same, but on the way home…not so much. We went from a three-hour layover to a 95-minute layover. My friend Mike had warned me that CDG was not an easy airport, and I was really worried about it. Air France offered us a complete refund, but that would mean finding another flight less than two months before the trip. And those tickets would cost us almost three times the amount we had paid for the original flight. Plus, we would lose the flights to Lisbon and from Budapest…so we took the Delta offer and knew we would just have to move our butts.

Our flights coming to Euorpe weren’t too bad, but our experience at CDG on the way to Lisbon was not. You can read the post about that by clicking here. But on the way back, things went very bad.

I had been tracking both these flights on FlightAware.com before the cruise. If you have not used FlightAware before, you can plug in a flight and see how on time that flight is each day for about a week back. I tracked them both for more than a month—checking their on-time performance every day. I felt better seeing that our flight from Budapest to Paris was usually either on time or early. As it was the first flight of the day, we felt pretty confident we would get to Paris on time. And Delta flight 81 was also pretty much on-time most days. That didn’t make me that happy. I would rather see it being a little late so we had more time to transition at the airport.

How worried were we about making the flight to Seattle? So worried that we looked at videos of how to move from the E gates (where intra-Europe flights land) to Terminal M (where flights outside of Europe originate from). We studied airport maps. We read posts on FlyerTalk. We found a bunch of contradictions about what we would have to go through, but we did understand where we would have to go. Most of these said we should be able to traverse the long walk from the E gates to Passport Control, go through that and then take a train/bus to the M gates, which should take about half an hour to 45 minutes. That would get us to our gate to go home after they had started boarding but before they closed the doors. We weren’t worried about our luggage since we were going home and knew if they didn’t make the connection, they would catch up soon after, and we have clothes at home. Our day was planned, and we went to bed knowing that we might have a stressful trip, but we could do it. Kathleen was still worried about how she would do with her knee.

We got up at 2:00 am, had our luggage ready to be picked up by Viking, loaded on the “luxury motor coach” to the airport by 2:45, and we were downstairs in the lobby, ready to board that bus at 3:00 am. We arrived at the airport at 4:00 am for a 6:20 flight, right on time. We boarded the plane on time. And then…the pilot announced that we needed to de-ice the plane, and that would take about half an hour. We freaked. But then I got a notification from Delta that our flight from Paris to Seattle had been rescheduled to one hour later. YEAH! A flight attendant onboard was great at telling us where our next gates would be, and when we mentioned we were worried about making it to the Seattle flight, she said not to worry too much. There were 24 people on that plane from Budapest going to our flight to Seattle. She said, “They aren’t going to want to rebook 24 people. They won’t fly without you.”

Our flight from Budapest finally left about 45 minutes late. So we had lost 15 minutes of that hour. We had been scheduled to get into Paris at 8:30 am. We arrived at 9:45 and had to get across the airport by 11:30. So off we went. We found our way through the E gates pretty easily, but Kathleen’s knee was already starting to hurt, and we had already walked quite a distance. And then we hit Passport Control.

We had high hopes that being in Business Class there would be a special line for us. And there was. But it wasn’t moving any faster, nor was it any shorter than the other lines. And all of them were going slow. In the meantime, a bunch of people were going up to an airport supervisor, asking to be let in early. He would scan their boarding passes, and if they had less than a certain amount of time, he would let them through. We saw him send 90% of those people back to the end of our line. Of course, they didn’t go to the back of the line; they just kind of blended into the line a few people back. We saw a number of them, who should have been 100 people behind us, get through before we did.

After 45 minutes, we got to where we could see the Passport Control booths, and of course, on a day when there were a lot of late planes due to weather (ice and cold), only four of 10 of the booths were operating. I can never figure that kind of thing out. We finally got through, and it was 11:15. We thought we had only 15 minutes to get to the gate, which was quite a ways away. But I got another text from Delta at just about that minute saying that the flight was now delayed until 11:50. We breathed another sigh of almost relief.

From there, we made our way to gate M-29, where our plane was supposed to load. Now, before I continue, I need to tell you what we are carrying between us as we went. Kathleen has her carry-on (a regular-size carry-on roller) and her personal item, a bag about one-third the size of a carry-on. She was pushing both on the roller’s wheels. I had my standard roller carry-on and my computer/camera bag as my personal item. Both our carry-ons are standard size and weight, and Kathleen’s personal item wasn’t that big or heavy. But my computer/camera bag weighs about 35 lbs. Half the reason I don’t check the roller bag is because I need it as a dolly for the computer bag. That’s how we rolled through the airport.

So now you know what we had between us, you will know why the next thing that happened really killed us (especially me). When it was time to go down the jetway to our plane, we went about halfway down, and there was a door, and we were directed to go through it and down three flights of stairs to a waiting bus. The plane at our gate, at the end of that jetway was not our jet. With Kathleen’s knees, there was no way she could carry her bags down the stairs. She needed to have her hands free to grab a rail. So I carried them all down—all four bags. No elevators, no escalators, just three flights of stairs going down.

Then, when we got to the bottom, there was a very ugly bus. Most people on it had to stand up. Luckily, Kathleen got a seat while I managed the bags and stood. We literally drove to the other side of the airport. I truly believe the bus ride was approximately 30 minutes. And when we finally arrived we saw that our plane did not have a gate or jetway, just a set of stairs next to the plane. So now I would have to carry those bags up a very long and steep set of stairs while I worried that Kathleen would be able to do it safely as well. And there was no way I could carry all four. She had to take her small one.

To make matters worse, they wouldn’t let us off the bus. They had five buses lined up with everyone on board. And since it was a cold day out, they kept the doors closed. For at least 20 minutes, they just kept us there. Eventually, people yelled so loud about the heat on the bus and the smell of diesel fuel that they opened the doors of the buses, but they still would not let us off. I was truly surprised no one passed out from the heat and fumes.

Finally, someone from Delta came to each bus and said that the food service provider was servicing the plane and we were not allowed to be onboard until he was finished, which he thought would be in about 10 minutes. All this time, most of the people on all five buses were still standing up, trying to hold up their bags. Finally, we were allowed to board the plane. By this time, it was almost 12:30 pm. Kathleen made it up with a minimum of trouble. I still have a sore shoulder from getting those bags up those stairs. The cherry on the whole crappy day was that they had changed planes, so our seats were no longer together. Not a huge deal but it meant I wasn’t right there to deal with getting the carryons up and down from the overhead bins for her. And we couldn’t communicate during the flight without getting out of our seats. We managed.

The flight itself was fine. I watched a couple of movies, worked with some photos, had a nice meal, and drank a lot of water. We landed in Seattle after 3:00 (supposed to be 12:45), got through Customs, we were met by our driver (who had monitored our flight and knew we were late), and we were home in our house before 5:00. But what a day—23 hours from waking up in Budapest to unpacking in our home. And to top it all off…it was my 71st birthday. Not one I will soon forget.

See why plane travel makes me feel old…and ruins the end of trips? When I have days like this, I totally get why my good friend Bob hates air travel. I totally understand. Oh, and when I checked this morning on FlightAware, both of those flights had been right on time (within 15 minutes) every day before and since. Our particular day was the only one that was different. That’s crazy.

I have one more post to write and this trip is toast. This is just a summary and review of the whole thing, especially the cruise. See you soon—hopefully tomorrow, but more likely the day after Christmas. Lots of cooking and shopping and wrapping to do before then.

Running through airports with pounds of luggage – that’s a good workout. —Rachel McAdams

 

Day 1—Almost There

On By Jim BellomoIn Air travel7 Comments

I have absolutely nothing better to do right now than write this post. Plus, I have been up for 24 hours at this point, and I still have at least eight more to go before I can go to bed. We are about three and a half hours through a five-hour layover at Charles DeGaulle Airport in Paris, France, where the weather is cold and foggy.

Our travel day started off well with a perfect pickup by Century Car Service. We have been using them for a while now and are very happy with them. Our forever neighbor Lisa told us about them as she books them for her group at Microsoft. They are ALWAYS early. I love that. The drivers are classy, the cars sparkle, and we get whisked off to the airport like we were on a magic carpet. (Lousy analogy—but remember, I have been up for 24 hours.)

When we got to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SeaTac), we got through check-in and TSA pre-check security pretty darn quick, and we were off on the train to the S-gates, where we could spend our time waiting in The Club, a very nice lounge we get to use courtesy of our Chase Sapphire Visa card. What was especially nice was that our old friend Seth Wayne was also flying out (on British Air) simultaneously, so he came in and spent some time talking about travel like we always do. Seth is our friend who used to be a television weather person, had a weekly travel show on the radio (that I was a guest on a few times), then worked for Holland America and now owns his own escorted travel business, Sail with Seth.

After our visit with Seth, it was time to board our Delta flight, non-stop to Paris with connections (that’s what we are waiting for right now) to Lisbon. We flew on Delta coming home from Europe in the fall of 2022, and we were really not that happy with them. The seats in Business were hard as rocks; the food was just okay. For what we pay for Business Class, we kind of expect better.

So, if that is the case, why did I book a flight on Delta? The answer is—I didn’t. I booked a flight on Air France. I booked it about eleven months, and somewhere in the middle of those eleven months, Air France decided that flying to and from Seattle was just not profitable, so they pulled out and codeshared all their flights with Delta. So I didn’t pick them out; Air France did. We weren’t happy.

We are OK with it now. We are on an older plane (in this case, it turns out that’s a good thing as the newer ones have harder seats), and the food was pretty darn good. The service was excellent, and I am actually looking forward to going home on their service from here in Paris to Seattle.

When we disembarked in Paris (we have never flown to or through DeGaulle airport—the only time we have been to Paris, we flew into a smaller airport north of the city), we had to walk about a mile to get to where we could wait for our next flight. Not only that, we had to go out of and back into security and clear passport control. Took about an hour and a half. And their security is a total pain. You have to take everything out of your bags that we haven’t had to do in ages. My laptop, my Kindle, my Phone, my belt, Kathleen’s quart bag of makeup and beauty stuff, our coats…you name it, we had to put it in a basket for scanning.

Thank goodness we didn’t have a tight connection. We were happy to see what gate our next flight would be because there was an Air France First Class lounge right next to the gate. And sure enough—there was…but it was closed for renovations and the nearest other lounge we could into was back on the other side of that security and passport control we had just cone through. There was no way we were going back.

So we have been sitting here on very hard chairs (I just checked with my butt, and it agrees with me), freezing as this is a very cold part of the terminal, and the temperature outside is barely freezing.

This morning, before we left, my buddy Bob was giving me a hard time about flying. He is not a fan. Usually, I am okay with it, especially when we are in business or first class. But this long layover in a cold terminal on a hard seat is beginning to get to me. And then I think—what the hell? You are on vacation. You are in Europe. You got to fly here in Business class. Shut the heck up and stop complaining. I think I will do that as soon as we get to our Lisbon hotel, and I can take a shower and a nap. On the West Coast, where we live, it is 3:30 am. It’s 12:30 pm here in Paris, and we won’t be at the hotel until around 4:00. I’ll let you know tomorrow if we make it 😜.

What’s important is that a customer should get off the airplane feeling, ‘I didn’t just get from A to B. I had one of the most pleasant experiences I ever had, and I’ll be back for that reason.   – Herb Kelleher

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas—in Europe

On By Jim BellomoIn Air travel13 Comments

It seems like just yesterday when we got back home from our Oceania Vista cruise from Montreal to Miami, but tomorrow morning, we are off to the airport again for an adventure that has been in the planning stages (and completely paid for) since 2018.

Way back when (doesn’t 2018 sound like a long time ago?), we booked a Viking River cruise to see the Christmas markets on the Danube River. We paid in full at the end of 2018 for a Christmas Market cruise that would sail in December 2020. Well, we all know what happened to that cruise—COVID.

At that point Viking offered us 125% future cruise credit to let them keep our money and take the cruise in 2021. We thought, “Where else could we get a 25% return on our money,” so we said YES! But then it was late November of 2021, and the Delta variant hit Europe. The cruise was still going to sail, but the countries we would be visiting had all closed their Christmas Markets, and most of them would not even allow the boat to dock. So when Viking asked us if we wanted to reschedule to 2022, we said okay. I mean, why go if there is nothing to see?

But the problem then was that by that time (Christmas 2021), all the 2022 Christmas Market cruises were sold out…so here we are in November 2023, getting ready to board a Delta flight to Europe tomorrow morning. We really don’t start the cruise itself (our first river cruise) until the ninth, but when we spend the time and money to fly to Europe, we just can’t see staying for just a week.

We will start our adventure tomorrow with a non-stop flight to Paris and a short flight down to Lisbon, Portugal. We have never been to Portugal, and it is one of my absolute bucket list destinations. We have a very busy five days planned before we fly north to Prague where we join the two-night in Prague followed by a trip by “luxury motor coach” to a one-night stay in Nuremberg on a pre-cruise extension with Viking. After that, we board the Viking longboat Gullveig for our cruise down the Danube. Here’s our route.

As you can see, after we leave Nuremberg, we travel by “luxury motor coach” to Regensburg, where we board Gullveig and then sail to Passau, Krems, Vienna and finally, Budapest. We are spending two nights after the cruise in Budapest before we fly home on December 18th…which just happens to be my 71st birthday—never spent my birthday on a plane before. Hope they have cake! 😜

We hope you will follow along with us. I would promise daily reports, but there are no “sea days” on riverboats, and that means I will do my best to get posts up and online at the end of our day. Can’t wait to tell you all about it. Come back tomorrow when I hope to do a quick story about our flights and our fun time with Air France and Delta.

Airplane travel is nature’s way of making you look like your passport photo. – Al Gore

We visit the Florida Mouse

On By Jim BellomoIn Air travel12 Comments

Originally I was not going to write a review of this trip. This was a family trip with my kids and grandkids, and I usually do not do a lot of writing about that kind of trip. They are more private, and I hardly ever put a recognizable photo of my grandkids on my blog. But our experience may help other grandparents (and we know a lot of them) deal with Disney better than we did. Don’t get me wrong, we had a great experience most of the time, but we are also happy that Walt Disney World is now a sure “Been there, done that, not going back” experience for us.

This trip was our Christmas (and birthday) gifts for our kids and grandkids this year. We have previously taken them to Disneyland in California (about seven years ago) on a cruise (the summer before the pandemic hit), and we had promised them the big Disney experience when they were both old enough to remember it. And it just happened we went on my grandson’s birthday. This brings me to the first thing I would have loved to avoid but couldn’t—crowds.

When we went to Disneyland seven years ago, the grandkids weren’t in school yet, and my daughter wasn’t teaching, so we only had to work around our work schedule and my son-in-law’s. So we could go whenever we wanted. That is the key to all amusement parks—go when others can’t. Sadly, both kids were in school this time, and my daughter is back to teaching, so we had to coordinate with school schedules. I refuse to do summer. The heat is just horrid and would be worse than the crowds. Maybe it’s worse. And it was still pretty darn hot. Not oppressive like it would have been in the summer, but really hot for us Pacific Northwesterners.

I have done a lot of research about the best time to go to WDW (Walt Disney World), and it used to be that the worst week of the year was the week between Christmas and New Year’s. But not anymore. It turns out that it is now worse during President’s Day weekend…which is when we were there. I base this on the report from the folks who write the book, “The Unofficial Guide to WDW,” who reported that this shift in crowds has now occurred. The Unofficial Guide books and their companion Lines app have been my go-to for avoiding crowds for years. Since way back when I took our kids to WDW in the 1990s, they have been amazing in helping me plan. With their book, their website and their app, they help you develop touring plans that can work. But not this time because the crowds just overwhelmed the plans.

This is the MOST frustrating vacation to plan. When I plan our other travel, I can make specific plans for specific tours and set specific times. Once in a while, a problem will occur that throws things off, but with Disney, it’s all a crapshoot. You can’t plan around the crowds. And there is so much to learn about WDW. Like how the Genie+ works (I didn’t figure that out until the last day), how the transportation system works, and just so much…AAAAGGGHHH!

I feel like I am rambling here, so let me get on with it.

What was good

  • Spending quality time with my wife, my daughter, her husband, my brother, his wife, my niece and my two incredible grandkids.
  • Having my Star Wars fan grandson celebrate his 12th birthday riding the Millenium Falcon, helping the Rise of the Resistance and taking Star Tours.
  • Our hotel (Disney’s Contemporary Resort), which was convenient, had decent food, comfortable beds, great bathrooms, helpful people at the front desk and one of the best showerheads I have ever used.
  • Some of the food was pretty darn good (but expensive) for a theme park/hotel. For instance, the turkey sandwich at the hotel “food court” was so good I had it three times during our stay. Our lunch in Epcot at the Coral Reef and the quick dinner at La Cantina De San Angel, also in Epcot, were all great. But sorry, WDW has some real problems with basic dining. More about that in the what needs changing section below. I also loved that at many restaurants, we could pre-order on our phones, pick a window of time we wanted to eat and then click a button when we arrived, and they would have it ready in minutes.
  • Disney’s free transportation gets you to all four parks in a hurry even when you are going really, really early. From our hotel we took Disney busses to two of the parks and the monorail to the other two.
  • The rides we were able to get on were awesome. Disney still does an amazing job with those. The newest Star Wars rides were great, but even I (who is not an Avatar fan) loved the Avatar ride in Animal Kingdom. There was nothing quite like it. I am still kind of awestruck by how amazing it is. You literally believe you are flying on a winged animal.
  • Magic Bands work great! Disney should hire out the people who make their Magic Bands to help cruise lines that are having problems with their RFID devices. A Magic Band is a device that looks like a wristwatch that you can use for EVERYTHING at Walt Disney World. It’s your room key, you can charge anything to it while on the Disney properties (food, souvenirs, drinks and just about anything else you can buy). You just hold up (like I do my Apple Watch) and tap it. It never failed—it worked every single time. It was so great to walk out of the room every day and not worry if you had your key, your wallet or anything but your sunglasses and sunscreen as long as you had your Magic Band on your wrist. And you can customize them as well. Mason had a Star Wars band; mine was Goofy, so I could walk around saying “Gorsh” all day. BTW: You could also use your phone to do anything that the band would do.

What REALLY needs improvement

  • The problem with Disney dining is NOT the food itself; it is the selection of places to eat it, especially at breakfast. About 90% of the in-park food venues do NOT open until 11:00 am. When you get up at 5:30 am to be in the park by 7:30 am so you can get at least two rides in before the non-Disney hotel guests are allowed in at 8:00, then there should be more than one place open to catch a quick breakfast. In three of the four parks we visited (Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom and Epcot), the only place we could find to get food or coffee before 11:00 am was Starbucks. Seriously. And don’t tell me it’s because no one eats breakfast at WDW because those places were PACKED! SWAMPED!And I know that the Touring Plans folks say you should get breakfast stuff to eat in your room. Well, that is all well and good, but if you fly in and take a shuttle to your hotel and have no car, how are you supposed to get to a grocery store to buy those breakfast items? Pack them in your luggage?
  • Genie+ sucks! This is what Disney replaced a great program they used to have called Fast Pass. You could reserve a spot on a ride and come back at a later time to take it. It was FREE. Now they have this thing called Genie+. You get to do the same thing, but it costs you big $$$. So you have paid $100 plus for a ticket, and if you want to be able to get on rides without waiting in line for hours, you can pay an additional $15-$20 per person/per day to be able to make an appointment to come back in two hours to ride a ride. This way, you could be standing in two lines simultaneously…kind of. But it just does not work well. It’s kind of like TSA Pre-Check at the airport. So many people have it now; it’s almost faster just to do the regular security line. And Genie+ is a huge ripoff. We were offered it free for an afternoon to make up for something (more about that later), and when you use it, you can book a ride time for a future hour. But until you do that ride, you can’t book anything else. For instance, at 2:00 pm, we booked a ride at the first available time for something my granddaughter wanted to do. The soonest we could get the reservation was 5:00 pm (I will admit that Grandpa messed up our first reservation). So that meant we could not book any other Genie+ reservations until three hours later. When we got off that ride and attempted to book another reservation, nothing was available until 8:30 or later. Being exhausted and having to catch a 5:30 am bus to the airport, we bailed. Worthless. And a huge ripoff.

What was just stupid

  • The crowds. And a lot of the people who make them up. There were:
    • Adults who had kids with them that were all under five years old.  Who are you there for? Your kids won’t remember this. Mason was five when we took our grandkids to Disneyland seven years ago. He remembers much of what we did; Maylee was two and remembers nothing about the trip. What a huge waste of money for a few pics of your child with Mickey. And you are making it so much more crowded (because you take up a ton of space with your damn strollers) for those who can’t come at another time.
    • Adults with no kids in their party. Why are you there during one of the BUSIEST weeks of the year? Did you really want to honeymoon with half of the USA? A week before we were there, the crowd levels were at fours and fives (on a scale of 10). When we were there, every park was between eight and ten. If you had come one week earlier, you could have had a better time yourself and lightened the load on the parks. Idiots.
    • The usual rude people who run you over with their motorized carts, wheelchairs, strollers and sometimes just their bodies. I can’t count the number of times someone in our party was run into.
    • The abomination that is the big, fat tubs of lard who rent scooters because they are too lazy to walk. We actually saw one family where the son, dad and granddad were all in scooters. All of them were able to get out and walk (I saw them do it a number of times as we followed them around Animal Kingdom). They had no problem riding the rides. Sadly, their kids whined because they didn’t want to walk either. We also saw a couple with two kids who had a motorized scooter rental and kept taking turns riding it. The mom would ride it onto the monorail, and the dad would ride it off. What are the chances they were both disabled but yet could walk behind the other on the scooter? I fully realize that some people have handicaps you can’t see, but this kind of stuff goes too far. My mom spent much of her last years on a scooter because she could not walk after a stroke. These people are taking up the space of those who need it. Shame on them and the example they set for their children.

The worst parts for us

This one is easy—illness. We arrived on a Thursday night. We spent Friday day in Disney’s Hollywood Studios, standing in one line after the other. By the end of the day, my granddaughter was exhausted, dehydrated and feeling queasy. Queasy became a full-blown illness, and she and my daughter were flat on their backs in bed with a stomach ailment for the next two days. They missed two complete parks, and even on our last day (Monday), even though they could come to Magic Kingdom for a while before they got really tired out, they never got to do much of the fun stuff. And my son-in-law missed that Monday as he got whatever they had, so he was down for all of that day.

I will say that Disney came through on fixing this as much as they could. The manager at the hotel made sure that for every day they missed, they were credited with another day in the park (more than a $150 value) sometime in the next ten years. I hope they can go back and use them sometime in that time frame.

I should also say I feel terrible that my brother, sister-in-law and niece came with us because they could have gone at any time and avoided all the lines. But they wanted to see WDW with the kids (it is an entirely different place with kids) and us, so they came along.

Alaska Air did us wrong!

There was one non-Disney thing that happened on this trip that TOTALLY TICKED ME OFF! I purchased our Alaska Air airline tickets in July of 2021. I bought them with our annual companion fares we get for being Alaska Air VISA cardholders. I got six seats in one row (row 18) so that we could all sit together. About two weeks before our flight to Orlando, I checked our reservation to make sure everything was good, and it was. Then the day before the flight, when I went online to check in, I found that the kids and grandkids were still in row 18 but that Kathleen and I had been moved to the back of the plane to row 29. WTF?? Since we had done nothing to precipitate this, I got very upset and called Alaska. We were told there was nothing they could do about it and that we should ask at the gate to see if those people could change seats with us. Really—would you trade two aisle seats for an aisle and a middle seat? I wouldn’t. But how dare Alaska Air change us on a whim or let a computer change us? Kathleen tells me that one of the two people who got our seats was a 20-something with long shaggy hair that was sick most of the flight (maybe that’s how our kids got sick), and the other was a businessman who spent the entire flight on his computer. My guess is that he was a high-mileage Alaska Air flyer.

Whenever I hear someone complain about their seat assignments, I always want to say, “you should have booked and chosen your seats earlier.” Which is exactly what I did, and then they moved us. I still don’t understand how (or why) they did that. But I was told it says they can in the fine print.

Recommendations

  • When you first decide to go to Walt Disney World, get the book, “The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World.” Then download their app called Lines. Do their touring plans and stick with them until the crowds overwhelm your plans. You have to do your homework before you take this vacation.
  • Don’t go during a school holiday, the summer or any other time of the year not recommended by the Unofficial Guide unless you have no choice. And realize that things change from year to year. President’s Day Weekend had NEVER been that crowded prior to this year.
  • Stay in a Disney hotel. Not only will you be closer to the parks, but you will get to get into the parks anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes earlier than the general public. That was the reason we got on the Avatar ride in Animal Kingdom in less than 30 minutes. When we got off, the wait was close to 2.5 hours. The same with some of the Star Wars rides.
  • Get up early! Be in the park when it opens. On two days, we were literally the first or second people in a particular park.
  • Download the Disney Parks app from Disney. Great maps and suggestions as well as making it possible for you to unlock your room with your phone if you don’t get Magic Bands.
  • Train for the experience. In our party, Mason (my grandson) and I were easily the ones who did the most walking since we never got sick. We walked a total of more than 40 miles in four days. Ask my Apple Watch. That’s in the neighborhood of 20K steps a day. Start walking a few weeks before your trip.

That’s about it. I might add some more later, or I would be happy to answer any questions you might have. We all had a great time when some of us weren’t sick, and I wouldn’t trade my memories for any of it. But I am also glad it is over.

I am hoping my brother will add via comment (below) anything that I forgot.

Our motley crew on the morning of Day 1. No one was sick, and no one was tired.

Oops, I almost forgot one thing I wanted to throw in here. After we got home, my niece Cassie sent us a DisneyWorld Bingo. I thought it was hilarious and wanted to share it here. If you go, you will understand all of this…100%.

If you can dream it, you can do it. —Walt Disney

 

Amsterdam and northward…then on to Greece

On By Jim BellomoIn Photography4 Comments

This time I am writing from Athens, Greece. But first I wanted to post the last pics from our day north of Amsterdam with our outstanding guide, Hans. I found Hans (as well as our guides in Athens and Barcelona) through Tours by Locals. We have used this company before and they are all over the world. The reviews on the site are usually right on and can be trusted. We have found you get some great local insights you would not get from a ship tour because these are the people who live right there. You learn so much.

Hans met us right on time at our hotel and we were off. Since we had already toured Amsterdam on a prior visit, we were looking to see the outskirts of the city as well as some of the countryside. Hans did a great job of doing just that. See the photo captions for some of what we saw. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

On our way north we would pass villages on both sides of the highway. Every one had a very high church steeple.
And windmills dotted the sides of the road
Very pastoral
In Ondermolen we stopped to see a working windmill.
From the one that we stopped at you could see others in both directions.
This is inside looking up to the gears
We were surprised to learn that other than the one we were touring, most windmills are someone’s home.
My brother is checking out the Archimides Screw that was used to move the water out of the fields and into a ring canal.
You can’t tell from the pic but there was a good wind and this one was really spinning.
We visited a village not far away where the picturesque town hall was built in 1630.
Hans took us to many small villages like this near the North Sea. Lovely and charming.
And this was very typical of the roads between those villages.
Of course it’s the Netherlands so there are canals everywhere.
And the churches are always the dominant building in any village.
This very friendly dog was greeting us to his town.
We passed through Edam, the namesake of the cheese…which is no longer made there.
I loved this cottage that is now a B&B and a cafe.
This old lock hadn’t been opened in years. There were huge cobwebs all over it.
This is very typical in that part of the Netherlands. Big trucks crossing tiny canal bridges not built to handle them.
These two ladies greeted us in a restaurant converted from an old church. I loved the faces.

On to Athens

We had dinner the night of our northern Netherlands tour at a place Kathleen and I had eaten at on our last trip that Jamie and Steve wanted to try—Restaurant Zaza. It’s a short cab ride from the Banks Mansion. It was just as good as it had been in 2016, it both service and food. Had a great time.

The next day we had a flight to Athens at 12:20 pm. The hotel as well as every post we had seen online suggested we get to the Schipol Airport no later than four hours before we flew. So off we went at 8:00 am and check my previous post for how we did at the airport. The flight itself was “fine” (you know what that means) and they gave us an actual sandwich…not really, it was just two pieces of VERY stale bread with a single slice of the worst cheese in The Netherlands between it 😜. But they got us (AND OUR LUGGAGE) there almost on time and as soon as we got to baggage claim a rep from Viking Cruises met us and whisked us and our luggage away to a waiting coach for our almost hour-long trip to our hotel, the Athens Marriott. You should know that this hotel was not our choice, but Viking’s as we are now in their care on our pre-cruise extension. I will say that it is a very nice Marriott, it has the best water pressure EVER (I took too many long showers) but it is located in a very non-photographic part of town. The first night I tried taking a photo walk and you will see what I came up with below. Then in my next post I will show you shots of the Athens you were expecting.

On my evening photo walk, I had to settle for some trial motion shots with my new camera.
This tiny creche was in front of a small Greek Orthodox Church on my walk
This office building provided the best color I saw.
More motion trials
And this AMAZING one-of-a-kind car. It is a Bullitt. A green mustang built to exactly match (but modernize) the car that Steve McQueen drove in the movie Bullitt.

Watch the next post for my report on a very HOT but rewarding day in Athens.

I like the look of a windmill. —Jeff Duncan

We Made It! And Amsterdam is (was) Wonderful!

On By Jim BellomoIn Air travel, Food Experiences, Photography1 Comment

As I write this we are packing to leave Amsterdam, brave the craziness of Schipol Aiport and fly south to Athens. We have loved staying two nights at our favorite hotel in the world, the Banks Mansion.

Us in our seats. A shot to send the grandkids

We had a fairly uneventful flight to AMS. We were flying in Business Class on Delta—this is what the airline calls Delta One and we were not incredibly impressed. Everything was just “fine” and if you read this blog on a regular basis, you know that “fine” means that everything was OK but nothing that really stands out. We did have decent, lie-flat seats but they were tight with not enough leg room for me. The padding was a little better than we had on British Air on our last foray to Europe in 2019. And they did feed us pretty well as you can see. Not the best airline meal we have ever had (that was on Cathay Pacific) but good and filling.

My appetizers. Small salad, chicken soup and a roll.
My entrée.Pasta with bolognese made with Impossible Meat that was so good you could not tell.
Breakfast: Spinach omelete.

We touched down in Amsterdam a little early and thought how great that was as we taxied towards the terminal but then our pilot came on and said that because we were early, they had no place left for us to park the plane s we would just have to sit there and wait until the plane that was at our gate left. Then we were told that the plane at our gate had a mechanical problem and would not be moving so we had to wait to be assigned to another gate which might be an hour. How fun. In the meantime, I was getting texts from my brother that their experience at the airport (they had arrived about three hours before we came from LAX) had not been a good one. Lots of lines and lots of waiting for luggage. So we expected the worst.

It was not to be. In minutes after getting his text, the plane found a gate, we were off, got to passport control and where we were the ONLY ones in line, got to baggage claim and (after walking by rows and rows of unclaimed bags that did not meet their connections) our bags appeared on the belt within minutes. We grabbed them and were off to the hotel. Where this had taken my brother and sister-in-law (from this point on referred to as Steve and Jamie 😁) almost 2 hours to do, we landed, exited the airport and were at the hotel in less time than that. I certainly hope our trip today is as uneventful. But we have been warned to be at the airport EARLY. So we are about to go eat breakfast and head to the airport at 8:00 am for a 12:20 flight. I will pause now and be back to you soon.

And now we are sitting in the Aspire Airport Lounge at Schiphol airport. Getting into the airport and through security was nowhere near as bad as we expected. Our cab came for us at 8:15 and we had an almost uneventful ride to the airport (our driver got pulled over for not wearing his seat belt—which he was—the police just didn’t see it). It was easy to get in and check our bags and then about a 35-minute security line and now we have found a lounge that accepts the Priority Pass that we get free with our Chase Sapphire Reserve Visa cards and are relaxing for a couple of hours before we head to Athens.

A couple of quick notes about our travels so far. Kathleen had recently found us some new, LIGHTER luggage. Our two big, checkable bags had gotten really old and were falling apart. It was time and she found us some wonderful and very LIGHT bags from TravelPro. They come with wheels front and back and are really, really light. But they are plain and boring looking and don’t come in a lot of colors. Basically blue (hers) and black (mine). The problem is, that they blend in with every other bag on a luggage carousel. We used to rely on some orange handle wraps but now everyone has those. And then Kathleen found us some really cool luggage covers and I love them. When we got to Schiphol I can guarantee you there was nothing like them on the carousel. They are made of a lycra-like material with a zipper at the bottom and on the sides and you just pull them over your suitcase and zip them up. For less than $20 they were an awesome find.

Our stop in Amsterdam

Now that you have heard about the trip, here’s what we did in Amsterdam.

  • Checked into The Banks Mansion located almost in the center of Amsterdam. Steps away from every place. Museums in one direction, the port and downtown in the other. We stayed there before in 2016 and loved it. We literally think it is the best hotel we have ever stayed in. The beds, bedding and pillows are the most comfortable hotel beds ever, the included breakfast is fantastic and very filling and the view of the canal from our (upgraded room) windows was amazing. You can see one of Amsterdam’s largest canals and the street the hotel is on. You can see Kathleen, Steve and Jamie in the window of Kathleen and my suite here. Forgot to mention that the Banks is all-inclusive. No extra charges for everything including the bar in the “Living Room.” And the service is amazing. Ask for anything and it just appears. Like a taxi or a boarding pass printout.
  • Went to dinner at Moeder’s, a traditional Dutch restaurant. Moeders in Dutch translate to Mother’s and the restaurant is completely COVERED in photos of people’s mothers. They are still accepting them so we could have left one of our Mom’s pics if we had a print with us. The food was good, and the service was excellent.
  • The next morning after sleeping off our jet lag Steve and I went off on a pre-dawn Photowalk. Got some great pics of downtown and near the port as a glorious sunrise made our early morning walk worth getting up for. Photos from that walk are below. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…
    Early morning on the main street to the port.
    I love neon…I really love neon.
    Looking towards the main train terminal.
    The Oden Kirk, one of the oldest churches in Amsterdam, sits in the middle of the Red Light District.
    A beautiful old building.
    Same building, different light.
    Sunrise over the port
    Sunrise 2
    Sunrise 3
    Sunrise 4
    The main train terminal (not very busy as there was a rail strike)
    A ferry crossing the harbor.
    Note the lean in thse buildings.
    Sunlight on a canal-side residence.
    And a beautiful view of a canal.
  • Then it was back to the Banks where after having a wonderful breakfast, we were picked up by Hans from Tours By Locals who took us on a tour outside (mostly north) of Amsterdam. Since we had seen most of the city during the 2016 visit, we wanted to see the outlying areas. Hans did a great job of showing us the countryside including a visit to a still-working windmill (one of the few). See the photos for more info about that tour.

It’s time to head to the gate for our flight so I will have to show you our windmill pics in the next post. See you in Athens.

Air travel dehydrates people.  —Michael J. Knowles

And We’re Off!

On By Jim BellomoIn Air travel6 Comments

It’s almost time to start our big journey. Just before 2:00 pm on Monday, our good friend Marjorie is going to pick us up and take us to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport where we will check in with Delta and wait about three hours until we are scheduled to take off on flight 144, a non-stop to Amsterdam at 5:20 pm (just about 24 hours from when I am writing this). We did a COVID test this morning and we are good to go. Our meals on the plane are ordered and after we eat dinner, I will get our boarding passes printed out.

We are supposed to get into Amsterdam at 12:20 on Tuesday afternoon (that’s our route above). Hopefully, we will be on time and picked up at the airport and transported to what we believe is the greatest hotel on planet Earth, The Banks Mansion. By the time we walk into the “Living Room” at The Banks, my brother and sister-in-law should be sitting there having a drink (free bar!!!) and waiting for us to join them.

We are then headed to a traditional Dutch dinner at Moeder’s. Probably going to have stamppot, a traditional Dutch dish. According to Wikipedia, it’s Dutch comfort food. We had it the last time we were in Amsterdam and it was wonderful.

We will spend the next day (Wednesday) touring Amsterdam, going to the Van Gogh museum and having dinner at Restaurant ZaZa which we loved on our last visit to Amsterdam. Then early next morning we will all head to the busiest airport in Europe, Schipol, where we will catch our 12:20 pm flight to Athens, Greece. Hopefully, we will arrive pretty close to when we are supposed to, meet our other traveling companions (my sister-in-law’s sister and her husband) and hopefully head to dinner at a traditional Greek restaurant I have reservations for.

The next day we will tour Athens with Alexios from Tours By Locals (a tour company we have used before and I love). Then another dinner in the Plaka district. The other thing we have to do on Friday is to take a COVID test. Here’s a strange situation. Greece requires a COVID test to LEAVE their country. I get it when someplace wants to keep COVID out of their country by testing those coming in. But to require a test only for people leaving their country makes no sense.

Then next Saturday, we will board the Viking Sky for our 21-day cruise. Viking calls it the Mediterranean & Adriatic Sojurn. Here’s where we are going.

For Kathleen and I this will be a chance to revisit many places we have been. For the rest of our group, this will be their first time in this part of the world. Although we have been to most every place after we leave Sicily, we have never been to most of the stops in the Adriatic Sea. We have spent time in Venice and it has always been one of our favorite cities. It was really the first place we ever went to in Europe. Luckily for us, we have almost three full days in Venice. Our good buddies (and always neighbors, Jayesh and Lisa) were there last month and did some scouting for us, finding us some amazing restaurants to try. We can’t wait to try.

So I want to invite you to virtually follow us on this journey. I will do my best to post here on a very regular basis but with not a single sea day on this trip, I might run a little late. And of course, it also depends on the quality of the WiFi on the ship. So make sure you have subscribed so you can keep up with the ports. You know how much I love to share our travels. See you soon, right here.

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
—St. Augustine

In A Holding Pattern

On By Jim BellomoIn Air travel4 Comments

We were on our group text with my brother and his bride yesterday when I mentioned my frustration with our current situation. We are leaving for our almost month-long Mediterranean trip next Monday and to be honest, we are in what I call the holding pattern part of travel. That part of every trip comes around twice. We are in the middle of the first holding pattern.

This holding pattern is the one where you have pretty much everything you can do to prepare all done but you really can’t start packing yet. You can do things like take out the garbage, turn off the water to your washer, put the trickle charger on the car, and set your light timers. We really can’t even pack yet because we need to wear some of the clothes we are taking between now and then.

Sure we can make lists of things we need to do but in the meantime, we really can’t do any of it until Saturday, Sunday or early Monday.

Early Monday brings me to the second part of the holding pattern. Normally we get to skip this part of the trip because when we fly domestically we almost always fly early in the morning. Sometimes at a god-awful O-dark-30. But when we fly to Europe, it’s another story. Most of the flights from Seattle to Europe don’t leave until late afternoon or early evening. That means that on Monday, we will be all packed and ready to go by 10:00 am or so and then we will just sit around until it’s time to head to the airport around 2:00 pm.

Our flight doesn’t leave until 5:20 pm. But we do prefer it that way when we are flying across that many time zones. When we go at that time it really helps us to fight the jet lag. We board (if the flight is on-time…yesterday it was two hours late) at 4:45, get settled in, and probably have a glass of champagne in our hands by 5:00. Then take off by 5:30. If that all works they serve us dinner (yes, we are in business class) around 6:30 we will have dinner. After that, maybe watch a movie and then try and get some sleep for 4-6 hours. Then we are awakened for breakfast and land in Amsterdam around noon. That to me is a perfect schedule. But it does involve that holding pattern.

So today I am taking up some of our current holding pattern by doing this post. And then I am going to an afternoon Mariner game with my son. Watch this space either tomorrow or Friday for the full itinerary of the trip.

Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting. —Joyce Meyer

Going again

On By Jim BellomoIn Uncategorized5 Comments

I bet you thought I died…or worse. But we are still here. And tomorrow, we leave on a two-week vacation that will find me posting a whole bunch. First, we are headed to Southern California to spend the night with my brother and his family in San Juan Capistrano. Then Tuesday, we head further south to San Diego, where we board Celebrity Cruise Line’s Millennium for a cruise back up the coast to Vancouver, BC.

On the way, we have stops in Santa Barbara, on Catalina Island, two days in San Francisco, Astoria, Oregon, Seattle, Victoria and finally Vancouver. And of course, I will be writing all about it and posting photos, so watch for my daily posts. I am happy this cruise has a couple of sea days, so I will do some posting and photo processing on those days. Hope you enjoy coming along.

But the real reason I haven’t posted in more than a month is that we are moving. And so we have been doing all the things you do to get your house ready to sell and dealing with all the fun of buying a new one. So I hope you will excuse my absence, but now it’s time to travel again. See you soon.

Economy…Plus…Plus

On By Jim BellomoIn Air travel3 Comments

Editor’s note: After I mistakenly pushed Publish on my last post before I had added photos, I am going to no longer have the entire post go out in an e-mail. You will get the headline and the first paragraph followed by a link to click to see the entire post online. Thanks for looking at it that way. 

Typical Domestic Economy Class

Winding up our discussion of flying classes/categories, let’s finish with the Premium Economy, international Economy and Economy. But first, let’s talk about domestic economy class because we all know that hell hole that we have all flown a lot of the time. We still fly it when we travel along the West Coast but we do our best to make the situation better with plane and airport choices. Here are some of the things we recommend for those flying domestic economy.

If you fly domestic economy and want to have as good an experience as possible here are some things we do to make it better.

  • Choose a better airplane if you can. When we book a flight I will often look (if multiple flights are going to that city) for a particular airplane to fly on. We have grown to love flying on Embraer jets. If you have never flown one, they are smaller planes (not too small—you can still stand up in them) and if you pick the correct economy row (the first one behind First Class) you have more legroom than those in FC. Also, the seat configuration is 2-2 so there is no chance you will ever get a middle seat. One drawback to these planes is that you can’t take a standard carry-on onboard the plane. There is just no room in the overhead compartments so I usually gate-check my carry-on bag.
  • Choose a better airport if you can. We have been blessed for the last few years that Alaska Air has started flying to most destinations on the West Coast from Paine Field in Everett (PAE). For us, it is about the same distance from our house to Everett as it is to Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA). PAE is much smaller (like about 5% the size of SEA) and the smaller the airport, the smaller the planes (Alaska only flies Embraer jets out of Everett). Small airports also mean that you don’t wait in security, boarding, or food lines at concessions for as long. The airport is one of the most stressful parts of flying and small airports make it better. When we fly from SEA, from the time we walk into the airport until we check our luggage, get through security, and take about 30-45 minutes to our gate. At PAE we can do all that in less than five minutes.
  • Choose the right seat. NEVER fly in a middle seat. Even when flying together in a jet with 3-3 seats we sit across the aisle from each other. I have never been a fan of window seats. I hate being closed in and having to get across two people to use the restroom. And the older I get the more that happens 😜. On a wide-body jet, you have another choice to make but that depends on the seating configuration. If you have never been there, allow me to introduce you to Seat Guru. You don’t need to check it for every flight but you do need to go there before you fly on a wide-body jet. That will show you the configuration of the seats. For instance, in this seating chart from a British Air 777, you can see that the top section (that starts with the green seats) is Premium Economy with 2-3-2 seating. The bottom section (they call it World Traveler) is their economy and it is 3-3-3. The best seats on this plane (outside of Business class) are the green bulkhead seats on either side of the plane. The 2 seats in the 2-3-2 configuration.
  • Another Seat Guru note is that as you can see, some seats are red, some green and some yellow. When you’re on the Seat Guru website and mouse over those, you get a pop-up that tells you that the reds are seats to stay away from and why the yellows are cautionary. The greens are considered very good for some reason. When you mouse over them, it tells you why or why not you should pick them. I do this with every flight we take unless I know the airplane well. All you will need to look up your plane is your airline, date of flight and flight number.
  • Choose your seats as early as you can. People who wind up in middle seats usually buy their tickets at the last minute. I can tell you that the last time I flew in a middle seat was when my Dad was sick and I bought a ticket using miles to get down to help my brother deal with a bad situation.

The differences between international and domestic economy

Typical International Economy cabin on an international flight. Note the 2-4-2 configuration.

When you fly international for the first time you will find that it is decidedly not like flying economy domestically. To start there is about a 90% chance you will get a meal. Especially on foreign carriers. And on the foreign carriers, it will be a warm meal. You also have some kind of entertainment system. There may be some other little perks you can get but this will vary by airline. Some include seat assignments for free, some include one checked bag. Pay attention when booking. Watch for anything that says, “info” and click it. The more you know about your flight the better. I am going to do another post (I just decided this one is too long) on how I book our airfare.

What do you get with Premium Economy and is it worth it?

Delta’s Premium Economy Seat

When you decide to pay the additional $$$ and move up to Premium Economy (PE) you get a few nice extras. One is the seat. Your PE seat will look much like the ones you walk by in First Class of a domestic flight. A little wider and a little more legroom. Unlike most domestic First Class, the seat may recline a little further and you may have a leg rest that pops out when you do. Kind of like your La-Z-Boy recliner at home. So it should be easier to fall asleep.

If you are flying with a partner or a spouse, do your best to get one of those two seats on the side of the plane in a 2-3-2 configuration that I mentioned above. That way if you have the window seat, the only person you need to bother when you need a restroom break is your partner.

Flying in PE may also get you expedited check-in, earlier boarding, a better meal, a free checked bag or an amenity kit. The area of the cabin you are sitting in will be smaller than the economy section. Usually a LOT smaller. And there will be one or two dedicated flight attendants for this section so you should get better service. It should also make the flight a little quieter. Since PE costs more than Economy, many families with kids won’t be flying in that section which will further help you get some sleep on the flight.

Is it worth the extra dollars?

The price difference between economy and premium economy will depend on the flight you are taking. For instance, here’s the price on our next flight to Europe, a non-stop going from Seattle to Amsterdam on Delta.

  • Business Class (Delta One) $2,680 per person
  • Premium Economy (Premium Select) $1842 per person
  • Economy (International Main Cabin) $1,135 per person

We are flying Business Class using a voucher we had from a canceled flight in December. If we were going to fly this flight and we weren’t going to be in Business, it would be worth it to us to pay the additional $707 to move up. Especially if I could snag one of those two seats in a 2-3-2 configuration. It would be worth it to me to get rid of the middle seat. Especially during COVID. I should add that some airlines (including Delta) now charge more for “Comfort Seats” with a little extra legroom. That might just be an exit row or a fully dedicated section. All of that will depend on the route and plane you will be flying. Again, check Seat Guru…and hope they don’t change your plane the day of the flight.

Airplane travel is nature’s way of making you look like your passport photo. – Al Gore