Friday, April 14 Washington-Dulles to Tokyo NH Flight 1: Scheduled Departure 12:20pm / Scheduled Arrival 3:20pm Seats 2A, 2C Left home at 9:45 and we were at Dulles at 10:30am. There was one person at each of the coach, business, and first class lines. Ironically, everyone waiting in the business and coach lines were checking in before us. The woman who began checking us in stopped in the middle to take care of the crew and then left the business class CSR to handle us. ANA leaves out of B41, and the B concourse no longer requires the people mover. The underground concourse is fine, but a couple of the moving walkways weren’t functioning. That place is sure deserted a bit before 11am! And it’s such a dreary walk, you’d think they’d spice it up…
Uncategorized
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The Best Hotel Restaurants?
Via Starwood’s The Lobby blog, USAToday.com has a list of the 100 best hotel restaurants in the United States. It’s a generally reasonable list, recognizing outstanding restaurants such as the Inn at Little Washington and Maestro. But I take it all with a grain of salt, since it leaves off CityZen at the Mandarin Oriental in Washington, DC which must be currently one of America’s best restaurants. It certainly outshines the restaurant at the Intercontinental Harbor Court hotel in Baltimore, which the lists ranks at number six.
Diplomatic Suite: the Intercontinental Bangkok
I’m checking out of the Intercontinental Bangkok today, and I was exceptionally happy with my stay. Normally I’d be happiest at the Peninsula or the Metropolitan. Neither is expensive luxury by world standards, Bangkok is after all probably the best city in the world for luxury hotel values. But I couldn’t turn down the value offered by the Intercontinental. I arrived here a couple of days ago after a seemingly endless trip to Bangkok in the Sheraton Pattaya Resort’s BMW. (I’ll share details of that truly amazing, astonishly property sometime in the next few days.) We pulled up to the Intercontinental and walked up to the checkin desk and were escorted up to the club lounge. The lounge is brand new, now on the 37th floor, and the old 33rd floor lounge has been closed.…
About the trip I’m on…
Around 9am in the morning of November 5th I got a fare alert notice. I’d been on Flyertalk already but hadn’t yet checked out the Mileage Run forum. Big news – the Tokyo and Osaka Hiltons were selling for $2 on Expedia, or I could spend an additional buck for an Executive level room. I figured I’d be a sport and go $3 for the better room, since it came with breakfast, complimentary internet, and evening cocktails… Originally Expedia and Hilton were only going to honor November bookings, at least that’s what they told the media, but I had it in writing (email, actually) that mine was a valid rate and they never once disputed this or tried to cancel it. So with the lure of $3 rooms in Tokyo I thought that my wife…
Starwood Transfer Bonus to British Airways
In addition to the bonus for transferring Diners Club points to British Airways, there’s also a 30% bonus for transferring Starwood points between April 20 and July 20, 2006. By way of example, 20,000 Starwood points yields 32,500 British Airways miles under this promotion. If you don’t already have a British Airways Executive Club account, it is possible to open one even without booking a BA flight.
I’ll Return to Blogging Shortly!
My travels have been a bit too diverting lately, and what little online time I’ve had has been devoted to keeping up with my day job. But I should be blogging again by the middle of next week, say by the 27th at the latest. And I should have some interesting tidbits to share about first class travel on ANA and Thai and some wonderful service and suites.
South Park Endorses an Airline! (Or something like that.)
Via Online Travel Review, Kyle from South Park is apparently the mascot for Air Arabia, the discount airline based in Sharjah, U.A.E. Refresh the home page and you’ll see Kyle in various states of Islamic dress.
Reducing your security wait times
The Upgrade Travel Blog points to a Wall Street Journal piece on shortcuts at airport security checkpoints. You don’t always have to go through the security line designated for your your terminal. At DFW, for instance, all the terminals are connected so you can go through any checkpoint — and the checkpoints vary tremendously in wait times. In Detroit you can cut through the airport Westin, which has its own security screening into the airport.
A view worth repeating
HotelChatter links to my photo of sunrise off the deck of bungalow 105 at Bora Bora Nui. I love it too, and nine months later it’s still the background on my laptop’s desktop.
New Advances in Airport Security
Via Marginal Revolution come details of the future of airport security in Russia:Millions of passengers traveling through Russia soon will have to take a lie detector test as part of new airport security measures that could eventually be applied throughout the country. The technology, to be introduced at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport as early as July, is intended to identify terrorists and drugs smugglers. But many passengers will be chilled by the set of four questions they will have to answer into a machine, including, “Have you ever lied to the authorities?” The machine asks four questions: The first is for full identity; the second, unnerving in its Soviet-style abruptness, demands: “Have you ever lied to the authorities?” It then asks whether either weapons or narcotics are being carried. To cut delays, passengers will take the…
