Barbados

This month was scheduled to be the month of Barbados. I was going to fly three of them, (traded one for Japan at the beginning of the month).... in the end though I only go to do two because the one I was supposed to be on as I am typing this busted up (thank you pilots). What an incredible little island. I have found the Caribbean to be hit or miss when it comes to tourists. Some places really like you, others not so much. The Bajan (pronounced BAY-JUN) folks are great. I hope my domicile keeps this trip forever because I love it. This little island is located in the British West Indies and is about a three and a half hour flight from Miami. Due to equipment limitations and crew legalities, we end up with a 30 hour layover because we arrive so late the first night, that we are not legal to work out the next day and end up flying out the morning of the third day.

We stay at a wonderful property right along the beach. The first layover, the weather was a little overcast, and everyone slam-clicked, but the second layover was sunny and just about perfect in every way.

We get free Internet so I bring my laptop which is good as it satisfies my Farmtown addiction on Facebook. My purser Aaron is also an addict, so we organized our layover activities around our virtual crops. Crazy, I know. My new thing is going to be "around the world with my feet" so I have decided to start taking pictures of my feet where ever I go. Note the pretty ocean backdrop.

While the rooms and the hotel are great, the one downside is what we call the "Crack House" wing. Our rooms are always facing a burned out hotel next door. While it is quiet and we get no noise from the pool or the street, you do get a less than pleasant view.... I believe the hotel refers to this as an "Island View".

Both trips we went to "Just Grillin'" which is located on the other side of the street from our hotel. It sits in a covered area inside the parking lot of a line of shops. The food it great. Both times I got the Jerk Chicken. I was going to mix it up a little on the last layover and try the Flying Fish, but since the trip busted, it looks like I am relegated to PB&J's in my living room. The picture below is of my two co-workers, Aaron and Shannon.

The good news is that I was able to trade onto two Barbados trips next month, so hopefully I will make it back to this island paradise a few more times and get the chance to do a little more exploring.

Domo Arigato

I was able to trade one of my three day Barbados trips for Japan the second week of the month. This is the primo trip out of my base and I had not been there in a few months so I was looking forward to it. The flight going over was fine, although strangely enough, the majority of the plane was Vietnamese instead of Japanese, as I guess the arrival times well with connections to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). My aisle partner was a gal named Sharman, who was a stitch and had me laughing the whole way over.

We arrive in the afternoon of the next day, and so I quick changed and caught the 2:30 bus into Narita. It was incredibly hot and humid. It hit us as soon as we got off the plane, as the air conditioning in the airport was so/so. I wanted to go to the Ramen Bayashi noodle shop, a favorite for crews laying over, to have some Chili Pepper soup. Catherine, one of my co-workers was also interested in having a late lunch there, so we ate together. It was an enjoyable meal and she was real interesting. She commutes from Seattle, where she lives on a houseboat downtown. Like me, Catherine is a big traveler, so we had swapping stories about the places we had been.

After the meal, I headed to the Yaoko grocery store. It's the smaller of the two grocery stores I have been to, the other being at the mall. I love Japanese grocery stores. Everything is so orderly and neat and they have such unique packaging, but at the same time, nothing is in English so I have no idea what half the stuff is.

A few months back I had noticed some funny looking packaging which was actually baggies to pick up when your dog poops (http://ronno1976.blogspot.com/2009/02/6421-miles-for-best-noodles-ever.html) and so I got a few packages of those for when I walk Gretchen, and well as some seaweed crackers (don't knock it til you try it) and this sports drink called Pocari Sweat (nothing sounds more fun than a drink named after sweat).

We got back to the hotel right as the cafeteria was opening up for dinner, so I went down for a Kirin beer (the fun part is the mechanical draft machine that serves it) and visited with the crew members hanging out and having dinner.

The next morning it was up early for a work out before heading home. All in all a good trip.

4th of July in 'Lulu

A little behind in the blogging so I am playing catch up.

To help out my friend Bobby, I picked up his Honolulu trip over the 4th of July. I had previously been boycotting that destination since our layover hotel had a roach problem. We have switched to a much nicer and newer property so I thought I would give it another try.

What a nice change. Still on the main drag in Waikiki, but 100 times better. When we arrived at the hotel, I went down with my co-worker Kim to the ABC Store that is off the street level entrance to the hotel to stock up on provisions. We then joined the rest of the crew for martini's at the bar.

I showed restraint and only had one. We were going to go the noodle shop, but instead we headed down to the International Village area where Kim knew one of the guys who is a street performer. The girls were still going strong at this point, but I was starting to crash, so I bid my farewells and headed back to the hotel via Burger King since I was starving. The chicken sandwich had never tasted so good. I also won a contest and was given a coupon for a free apple pie, but I don't do fruity desserts, so I gave it to a homeless man sitting outside the restaurant (while nice and tropical, Waikiki Beach is full of homeless people who just sort of drift about).

The next morning, I got up and had a great workout and did a little walking around before taking my early afternoon nap for the red eye home. Missed the fireworks in Honolulu though as we left before the festivities got started. I did have an ocean view, as seen below, but you have to look real real REAL close to see it. :)

My "Trip" in London

Because of the weather that we had here earlier in the month, I had lost some time, so I picked up an extra London trip this past weekend. It was a Sunday layover, so there is not a lot open, but it was still nice to get away from the oppressive Texas heat (although it was funny that the news in London was calling their weather in the 80's a heatwave!)

When we arrived on Sunday, we parked right next to an Iran Air aging 747.

My co-worker Mary and I left the hotel around 4:30 with intentions of heading to the park, but we stopped at a pub on the way, The Gloucester Arms, and ended up having a beer there instead.

We met up with some other co-workers at 6:30pm and made our way to another pub called Churchill Arms, which is also the location of a great Thai Restaurant.

After dinner, we enjoyed the wonderful weather and made our way back to the hotel. I came across a rather amusing street sign on the way. The Captain thought he knew a shortcut, which proved to be a longcut (typical).

I made time for a morning workout the next day and then we headed back to the airport for our flight home. As we were boarding, we learned our plane was being taken out of service with a mechanical problem. We thought we were going to get another day to layover, but they found us another plane, so we were about two hours late. Right after take off, as we were beginning the first beverage service, I was pulling the cart and I tripped over a bag that a passenger left in the aisle and fell and landed right on my tailbone. When will people learn to keep those aisles clear!!!??

Honduras

I recently came back from an Airline Ambassadors Escort Trip. I went to Tegucigalpa, Honduras to travel with a little girl named Kelin Artica to St. Louis. This is the third time I have traveled with Kelin. The first time she was a shy 7 year old who spoke no English and now she is an outgoing 11 year fluent in English and Spanish!

She has been receiving treatment in St. Louis for scoliosis. She is back in the states for the summer for some follow up treatment.

This trip was a little different from the others because our travel out of Honduras was on Continental Airlines. I had to travel the day before and spend the night in Tegucigalpa instead of just turning right around on the same flight and heading back to the states.

Cadena de Amor (Chain of Love), the medical organization that arranged for Kelin to come to America, is run by a great lady named Dr. Lilia Larios. She has a mission home that her medical teams stay at when they come to Honduras on medical mission trips, so I stayed there for the night.

Dr. Larios' brother was kind enough to take me around Tegucigalpa, so I could see some of the sights. We visited the Basilica Suyapa, the largest cathedral in Centra America, and he took me to a local restaurant called El Gordo, for some Honduran food. I had steak with chimichurri sauce (a mix of garlic, olive oil, and parsley) and some Honduran soda called "Mirinda" - kind of like Sunkist.

The next day, after breakfast at Burger King (how very Honduran!), Elizabeth, who works at Cadena de Amor, and I met up with Kelin and her parents, Santos and Edith. I was surprised to see how much she had grown up since our last trip. The airport was crazy busy, but we got checked in with Continental with no problem.

Our first flight was from Tegucigalpa to Houston was about three hours long. The flight was pretty full, but uneventful. Customs and Immigration in Houston is such a breeze compared to Miami, where everything is crazy and everyone is always stressed. We had about a hour and a half wait before our flight to St. Louis.

We arrived in St. Louis right on time and the Sly family, who host Kelin, were waiting outside security as usual. They were so happy to see her. It really takes special people who open their home up to a complete stranger and over the years Kelin has become a special part of their family.

I will fly back to St. Louis in August to travel with Kelin back to Honduras. They had a military coup right after I left, so I hope that things have stabilized by then.

I Got Crabs in Jamaica

No it's not what you think, but I will get to that in a moment. I just came back from a kind of crappy multi-leg Caribbean sequence. We were scheduled to layover in Montego Bay the first night and Miami the second night.

With weather in Miami, we got stuck in Orlando and Miami and ended up leaving several hours late with a full load of folks to Montego Bay, Jamaica.

The hotel is an all-inclusive place but our layover was now down to the 8 hour minimum so we were not going to have any time to partake in the fun amenities (or so we thought). We meet the next morning in the lobby only to find out the flight is delayed because the plane is broken and the part is coming on the first Miami flight and isn't going to arrive until 11:30am. We go back to our rooms and change and then head down for breakfast since we still have our little red wristbands on and with the exception of booze, can enjoy anything on the property that we want. After breakfast, I snapped a few photos of the beach around the hotel.

Now for the crab story. When we got back to the airport that afternoon, the plane was repaired, but when the first officer was doing his walk around, he noticed a family of crabs had climbed up the wheel well and was trying to nest in a bundle of hydraulic lines. Sadly, they had to be sent to crab heaven.

The nice part of our delay was that when we got to Miami, we were so late, we did not have to do the turnaround to Guatemala City, so we just went to the hotel. I had planned to have dinner with my friend Sheetal, who I have known since my college days at UNF. She is now living in Miami. She came and picked me up and we drove down to South Beach for dinner and ice cream. We could not remember in what parking garage we left her car, and as we were trying to find it, with the help of the iPhone, a homeless man came up to us and started screaming "Mama" to her. Only in Miami are the homeless bilingual!

Much Ado About London

I had a great trip to London last week. It got off to a rocky start because of some wicked weather that rolled thru. Our scheduled flight was cancelled and we had to deadhead over on a later flight. It was packed, but I still managed to score an aisle seat. The First Officer got the middle seat next to me and he had a little temper tantrum about it, so after the meal service, I switched with him since I planned to sleep the rest of the flight.

We arrived in London around noon and got to the hotel around 1pm. Given that I had slept most of the way over, the arrival nap was not really needed, so I could hit the ground running.

I met up with a four other co-workers and went to lunch with them at a place called Eats. I mistakenly grabbed a bag of beet chips instead of potato chips and they tasted like death.

After lunch we walked down past Harrod's to a place called the Tattersill Tavern and had a pint. I had a Kronenburg 1664, which was a tad bitter, but still good. I bid my farewells to my co-workers and headed over to Sainsbury to do some shopping (Ladyfriend was requesting Original Source bath products - http://www.originalsource.co.uk/) and then on to Boots (my friend Terry in my card group likes Remegel, the best antacid ever made).

I dropped everything back at the room and then headed down to Piccadilly and the Criterion Theare to try and get a seat to The 39 Steps (http://www.criterion-theatre.co.uk/), a play based on an Alfred Hitchcock movie. I was able to get a seat in the Upper Circle, the nice British way of referring to the Nose Bleed section for about 20 GBP.

I still had some time to kill so I thought I would do a little walking around and some people watching. I saw a group of high school kids who were wearing Nebraska t-shirts and they were obnoxious and all I could think about is that I hoped they were not on my plane the next day.

I walked over to Trafalgar Square and got some take-away food from a cafe and sat around the fountain to take in the scene. I saw the police pick up a man for pick pocketing, which was kind of interesting.

I got back to the theatre and made my way up to the high altitudes that was my seat. The play was great. A mix of suspense and comedy. The cast consisted of only four actors who played all 139 roles. Watching them switch between characters was hilarious.

After the play ended, around 10:30 or so (it was still light out), I made my way to the Underground and back to the area near the hotel. There is a 24 hour TESCO, a kind of mini supermarket, near the hotel and I got a few vittles for breakfast.

The flight home was OK. Since I had purchased the bath products, I was over my allotment for liquids, gels, and aerosols and had to check my bag. It's a bit unnerving to have the driver leave it out on the tarmac next to the plane just sitting there out in the open.

I actually slept for most of my break, and we landed right on time.