After last 2 weeks traveling, this time it's quite different on several levers. Family trip related to business trip is quite a difference. First the stress level, having to make sure the family behaves and does what is needed for the trip to go smooth brings a lot of stress. Also flying economy instead of business brings queues and queues into the equation. Although with small kids you can cut in some lines. A special counter for family check-in in Munich airport helps, but when it has only one booth for check-in you think twice about going to the normal queue or simply stand in the line that seems to take forever to advance.
At security there is no way to cut through the line, you just have to stand in the queue with your toddlers making enough noise so that other passengers second twice about joining the same queue. Lisbon airport has separate queues for security for families with toddlers. Pity Munich hasn't such perks for the families.
Passed security, always quite tight in terminal 2 of Munich airport, you get into a nice area with plenty of shops. Today the airport is quite packed. Lot of families on their vacations trips. Saturdays in august seem to be the preferred traveling day. Missing the perk of the lounge, getting with family into another queue to get some food and refreshments. Usually would be OK, but with my daughter always having her attention into a new subject every 5 minutes makes difficult to be at the queue and keeping an eye on her at the packed airport.
After queue, and a quick sit at a table, time passes fast enough to get to boarding time. Get moving to the gate, quite far, but a sequence of rolling carpets allow to get to the gate fast. Munich airport with Lufthansa makes a good combination. At least anybody can get complementary coffee or tee while waiting at any gate. Make myself nice Ceylon tee as well as for wife. Daughter is looking for the spielplatz, but unfortunately we are on the opposite side of the airport.
Plane boarding goes well, we get to use the perk of travelling with small children and cut through the line. It's good for one simple reason, we manage to get into the plane early and get a pillow and blanket for the kid. It makes their travel much more comfortable, as well as for everybody else if they manage to sleep during a great part of the trip.
Saturday, 10 August 2013
130810 MUC -> LIS LH1790
130728 Trip to the US
Today starts a new trip.
I am going to the US on work, but that doesn't keep me from enjoying the trip.
Never been to Minneapolis, so I have a new place to Visit.
Travelling to the US always generates a bit of anxiety, is the password in order ? To we have all required permissions? Is the trip confirmed all the way? Is the luggage within the safety parameters? Am I taking the adequate clothes? Should I take a change for the trip? And many other concerns...
But having passed all that moment we still need other stuff. It's also the first time I am flying with Delta Airlines, belongs to the Skyteam group.
Other companies that I already traveled belong to the same group, such as Air France or KLM. I had in the past a miles card, but forgot it since don't use it that often.
I start the trip by subscribing to a new card. After will be 5 long flights, should be worth getting the card.
I have such a long name, especially surname, always a complication to decide on what to use, especially with wanting it to be usable for the US trip.
Well, registered just with first and last name, discovered the option of API, Advanced Passenger Information, and there I register the full name and passport as required by the US authorities.
At the airport check in everything seemed in order, at least for the first part of the trip until Amsterdam.
The boarding card is valid until Minneapolis, so seems to be in order. I am really happy, I dislike having to use my full name, it is simply to big. It does serve to generate some conversation for a while, I have been able to successfully use it as an Icebreaker.
Passed security and get searching for the business class lounge. Weird, first time ever, a door barred, no button to press, just a place to insert the golden miles status cards. And I don't even have a paper status card. At this moment, just applied for one some hours ago online.
Stupid me, there is a 4-digit number handwritten in the top right corner of the boarding card, I seriously doubt this is the phone number of the pretty girl that made my check in at the counter. I tried the 4-digit number and the door opened. Well, that takes care of entering. But a lady was inside to greet me and confirm the boarding card.
What a sensation of dejavu, either all KLM lounges are the same, or I have been before in this lounge. Somehow I feel the most probable would be the first. However you expect differences in the shape of the room, the furniture and layout might be kept, but the rooms have to fit into the structure of the airport. No special internet access, only a typical valid for all, 30 min access. And I have to wait one hour in the lounge. This allows for another discovery, does the blogger continue to save your writing and publish when you get back online ?
Well, we will find out.
Since I can't get more time, the system doesn't allow to use other credentials, I will try to activate the portable hotspot to find out.
And now save...
I am going to the US on work, but that doesn't keep me from enjoying the trip.
Never been to Minneapolis, so I have a new place to Visit.
Travelling to the US always generates a bit of anxiety, is the password in order ? To we have all required permissions? Is the trip confirmed all the way? Is the luggage within the safety parameters? Am I taking the adequate clothes? Should I take a change for the trip? And many other concerns...
But having passed all that moment we still need other stuff. It's also the first time I am flying with Delta Airlines, belongs to the Skyteam group.
Other companies that I already traveled belong to the same group, such as Air France or KLM. I had in the past a miles card, but forgot it since don't use it that often.
I start the trip by subscribing to a new card. After will be 5 long flights, should be worth getting the card.
I have such a long name, especially surname, always a complication to decide on what to use, especially with wanting it to be usable for the US trip.
Well, registered just with first and last name, discovered the option of API, Advanced Passenger Information, and there I register the full name and passport as required by the US authorities.
At the airport check in everything seemed in order, at least for the first part of the trip until Amsterdam.
The boarding card is valid until Minneapolis, so seems to be in order. I am really happy, I dislike having to use my full name, it is simply to big. It does serve to generate some conversation for a while, I have been able to successfully use it as an Icebreaker.
Passed security and get searching for the business class lounge. Weird, first time ever, a door barred, no button to press, just a place to insert the golden miles status cards. And I don't even have a paper status card. At this moment, just applied for one some hours ago online.
Stupid me, there is a 4-digit number handwritten in the top right corner of the boarding card, I seriously doubt this is the phone number of the pretty girl that made my check in at the counter. I tried the 4-digit number and the door opened. Well, that takes care of entering. But a lady was inside to greet me and confirm the boarding card.
What a sensation of dejavu, either all KLM lounges are the same, or I have been before in this lounge. Somehow I feel the most probable would be the first. However you expect differences in the shape of the room, the furniture and layout might be kept, but the rooms have to fit into the structure of the airport. No special internet access, only a typical valid for all, 30 min access. And I have to wait one hour in the lounge. This allows for another discovery, does the blogger continue to save your writing and publish when you get back online ?
Well, we will find out.
Since I can't get more time, the system doesn't allow to use other credentials, I will try to activate the portable hotspot to find out.
And now save...
Thursday, 8 August 2013
130808 CDG -> MUC AF1022
After landing I felt quite weird. My body saying it was morning, my watch saying late afternoon. I felt like somebody playing a joke on me.
As if it was not enough, the shiny sun seemed to confirm the joke on me from high above, bright in the sky. I feel like a zombie. But in a few more hours I would be seeing my beloved wife and my little daughter. Proud daddy of his little baby.
Activated the WiFi and was planning on skyping Vicky. She hasn't wanted to Skype with for the last 5 days. I think she is angry for me being away for so long. It has been 10 days since I left on the trip.
And today Skype is not helping, decided to validate if it's really me. So besides username and password, today Skype wants to send a token to my phone to validate it. It's good to have such mechanisms, it does provide extra safety, but today is just a hassle. The phone I registered with Skype is having difficulty on registering to a network while roaming. So can't receive the damn token. Looks like there is a second mechanism for validating, via email. Let's try that. I must be in a bad luck strike, the email service is also not working. Loose 45 minutes on this, did not relax or enjoy the smile of my little daughter.
Flight is late, like the cherry on top of the cake. Seams to bring some weight in the apparently unlucky day. Let's not blame it on the day, we still have a few hours and the early day went quite well. I'm blaming on airport Charles de Gaulle. Never liked this airport, especially terminal 1, I believe it's the most horrible airport in the world. Built in an era of architecture experimentation, the building has a lot of corridors and escalators organised with apparent randomness around a hollow centre. Terminal 2 is slightly better, but nevertheless does not transmit any special comfort.
Once at the gate, the chaos seems to be happily installed there. Many queues for different gates in an extremely small area that serves 5 gates. We are immersed in a sea of people.
The flight is delayed by 40 minutes. This is not good, I am keen on swing Vicky before she goes to bed. Let's hope that having Mommy tell her I arrive today will keep her awake until I reach home.
After seated on the plane, my travel companion makes a funny comment on the people asking if this was the flight to Munich. Seamed quite absurd that once already on the plane such a mistake would occur. Not a moment too soon when some person complains about somebody else being on his seat. Well, the seat was correct, just not the flight. Somebody planning to travel to Bordeaux managed to get on the same plane. Poor guy left the plane always looking back to get validation for the mistake, only to see the flight attendants close the door immediately after he exited the plane.
The plane seems to take forever to reach the runway. I am getting nervous, looks like CDG does not want today to be a good day for me. It seamed like a full 20 minutes passed before we could feel the thrust of the engines of this Airbus A321.
Munich, Vicky, here I come.
As if it was not enough, the shiny sun seemed to confirm the joke on me from high above, bright in the sky. I feel like a zombie. But in a few more hours I would be seeing my beloved wife and my little daughter. Proud daddy of his little baby.
Activated the WiFi and was planning on skyping Vicky. She hasn't wanted to Skype with for the last 5 days. I think she is angry for me being away for so long. It has been 10 days since I left on the trip.
And today Skype is not helping, decided to validate if it's really me. So besides username and password, today Skype wants to send a token to my phone to validate it. It's good to have such mechanisms, it does provide extra safety, but today is just a hassle. The phone I registered with Skype is having difficulty on registering to a network while roaming. So can't receive the damn token. Looks like there is a second mechanism for validating, via email. Let's try that. I must be in a bad luck strike, the email service is also not working. Loose 45 minutes on this, did not relax or enjoy the smile of my little daughter.
Flight is late, like the cherry on top of the cake. Seams to bring some weight in the apparently unlucky day. Let's not blame it on the day, we still have a few hours and the early day went quite well. I'm blaming on airport Charles de Gaulle. Never liked this airport, especially terminal 1, I believe it's the most horrible airport in the world. Built in an era of architecture experimentation, the building has a lot of corridors and escalators organised with apparent randomness around a hollow centre. Terminal 2 is slightly better, but nevertheless does not transmit any special comfort.
Once at the gate, the chaos seems to be happily installed there. Many queues for different gates in an extremely small area that serves 5 gates. We are immersed in a sea of people.
The flight is delayed by 40 minutes. This is not good, I am keen on swing Vicky before she goes to bed. Let's hope that having Mommy tell her I arrive today will keep her awake until I reach home.
After seated on the plane, my travel companion makes a funny comment on the people asking if this was the flight to Munich. Seamed quite absurd that once already on the plane such a mistake would occur. Not a moment too soon when some person complains about somebody else being on his seat. Well, the seat was correct, just not the flight. Somebody planning to travel to Bordeaux managed to get on the same plane. Poor guy left the plane always looking back to get validation for the mistake, only to see the flight attendants close the door immediately after he exited the plane.
The plane seems to take forever to reach the runway. I am getting nervous, looks like CDG does not want today to be a good day for me. It seamed like a full 20 minutes passed before we could feel the thrust of the engines of this Airbus A321.
Munich, Vicky, here I come.
130807 SFO -> CDG AF085
Got on the plane, seats much better then expected, but then, last time I travels Air France in an intercontinental flight was in 2009 on the trip to Houston.
Real glad with the comfort of the seats. Listening to lots of French conversations, I wonder why I am surprised, after all it's a flight to France, I am the complete foreigner onboard. Not only the fact that I am Portuguese, but also since living in Munich makes me feel comfortable while hearing German language even though I don't speak it any good. It does feel refreshing.
The middle seat in the row takes a bit out of the comfort. Will try to not give them a hard time moving in and out of the seat. Take the moment before takeoff to get to the toilet and change. Since the first time I got comfy clothes for the trip, it seams much more enjoyable. Although coming onboard with comfortable clothes, it is never good to sleep in polos. The fabric makes me feel like sleeping on a sofa, we can do it, but it's far from sleeping on the bed. So decided to pack into the backpack some comfy training clothes.
Managed to get to the toilet and changed. Get all that will need for the trip onto the seat area, and am ready to depart.
Let's enjoy the flight, and try somehow to sleep. Will need to be fresh on Friday, for the last day on the job.
The airplane is a Boeing 777-200, the plane quite is quite big, sits a lot of people. Business class cabin is quite wide and sits 7 people within 2 aisles, a combination 2x3x2.
Going to try again the winning procedure from last time. Take a sleeping aid pill to get to sleep, and repeats again the process tonight when I get home. Seams that using the sleeping aid pill to force your body into adaptation of the different timezones much better than just trying to adapt at the regular pace. I have always suffered a lot to recover from jet lag, especially when returning from the states back to Europe. Will see how it goes along gthe week.
The dinner served was quite good actually. Air France does take care of business class food..
As soon as I got onto the plane, I setup the Withings to track sleep. Will be nice to get an image of how the sleep went. Nice gadget this one. Bought it at Best Buy and have been tracking sleep and daily activity so far. It might be a nice tool to get an extra caution on health.
Falling asleep was quite good and fast. Somehow still managed to see the last Tom Cruise movie "Oblivion". Had the feeling that would fall asleep in the middle of the movie, but didn't happen. So must confess the movie kept me awake and interested all the time. Not quite like "Wolverine" where I managed to fall asleep twice during some very boring parts of the movie. When I woke up had the temptation to see "Iron Man 3", but the small screen aboard the aircraft takes out the grandiosity of seeing the movie in a proper movie the at her with a huge screen, surround sound, and all the works. Definitively I feel would be a loss to all the experience of watching the movie.
After landing the connecting flight will be within the next 50 minutes. The terminal seems to be just adjacent, but we still have to go over passport control. So seems to have to be quite a bit of rush to get onto the next flight. No time to have a look at the airport. Knowing and having experienced a bit about flying, I will definitively will have to wait some hours for some flight in the future, just like I have already experienced in the past, in this same airport. Actually this year back in March.
Real glad with the comfort of the seats. Listening to lots of French conversations, I wonder why I am surprised, after all it's a flight to France, I am the complete foreigner onboard. Not only the fact that I am Portuguese, but also since living in Munich makes me feel comfortable while hearing German language even though I don't speak it any good. It does feel refreshing.
The middle seat in the row takes a bit out of the comfort. Will try to not give them a hard time moving in and out of the seat. Take the moment before takeoff to get to the toilet and change. Since the first time I got comfy clothes for the trip, it seams much more enjoyable. Although coming onboard with comfortable clothes, it is never good to sleep in polos. The fabric makes me feel like sleeping on a sofa, we can do it, but it's far from sleeping on the bed. So decided to pack into the backpack some comfy training clothes.
Managed to get to the toilet and changed. Get all that will need for the trip onto the seat area, and am ready to depart.
Let's enjoy the flight, and try somehow to sleep. Will need to be fresh on Friday, for the last day on the job.
The airplane is a Boeing 777-200, the plane quite is quite big, sits a lot of people. Business class cabin is quite wide and sits 7 people within 2 aisles, a combination 2x3x2.
Going to try again the winning procedure from last time. Take a sleeping aid pill to get to sleep, and repeats again the process tonight when I get home. Seams that using the sleeping aid pill to force your body into adaptation of the different timezones much better than just trying to adapt at the regular pace. I have always suffered a lot to recover from jet lag, especially when returning from the states back to Europe. Will see how it goes along gthe week.
The dinner served was quite good actually. Air France does take care of business class food..
As soon as I got onto the plane, I setup the Withings to track sleep. Will be nice to get an image of how the sleep went. Nice gadget this one. Bought it at Best Buy and have been tracking sleep and daily activity so far. It might be a nice tool to get an extra caution on health.
Falling asleep was quite good and fast. Somehow still managed to see the last Tom Cruise movie "Oblivion". Had the feeling that would fall asleep in the middle of the movie, but didn't happen. So must confess the movie kept me awake and interested all the time. Not quite like "Wolverine" where I managed to fall asleep twice during some very boring parts of the movie. When I woke up had the temptation to see "Iron Man 3", but the small screen aboard the aircraft takes out the grandiosity of seeing the movie in a proper movie the at her with a huge screen, surround sound, and all the works. Definitively I feel would be a loss to all the experience of watching the movie.
After landing the connecting flight will be within the next 50 minutes. The terminal seems to be just adjacent, but we still have to go over passport control. So seems to have to be quite a bit of rush to get onto the next flight. No time to have a look at the airport. Knowing and having experienced a bit about flying, I will definitively will have to wait some hours for some flight in the future, just like I have already experienced in the past, in this same airport. Actually this year back in March.
Wednesday, 7 August 2013
130807 SFO Airport
Parked the rental car at the return area.
Well treated by the Avis employee, got the bill and got on my way to the air train.
Damn bills in US, always the tax crawling in and surprising us.
Big discussion regarding the stop for the shuttle. It makes an interesting route passing twice at the international flights terminal. Doesn't matter on which end you get out, all the check-in wiles are together in a large area joining both stops of the shuttle.
After check-in, uneventful this time, last time had complications with the reservation, the agency didn't finish the process, get through security. Small line, that was nice, security passage was almost instantaneous. Was expecting long lines. But then, saw that the terminal does not have many gates, and low number of operating companies.
Now the new mission, to spend the last dollars, probably getting something for my daughter. Good promotion on Jim beam black label aged 8 years, remembered my youth, but not a recommend gift ;)
After a bit of browsing, always complaining about prices, found where to spend the last bucks. Some ibuprofen pills for the headache, and sf giants football and an airplane to show my daughter that I was flying.
Spend bucks, pay remaining with credit card and there I go for the lounge.
Quite hidden and small, then again, few companies operating the terminal. Many small lounges for many distinct companies. Small but cozy, enough to pass the next 90 minutes in some comfort and write this blog entry after recovering from the lost entry blogs that I wrote.
Need to remember some topics, such as the fantastic landing at Minneapolis, the cloudy sky, and the few spots with the sun rays coming down through the open spots on the cloudy sky remembered like light coming through cathedral coloured glass windows. A fantastic sight that I can still remember.
Well treated by the Avis employee, got the bill and got on my way to the air train.
Damn bills in US, always the tax crawling in and surprising us.
Big discussion regarding the stop for the shuttle. It makes an interesting route passing twice at the international flights terminal. Doesn't matter on which end you get out, all the check-in wiles are together in a large area joining both stops of the shuttle.
After check-in, uneventful this time, last time had complications with the reservation, the agency didn't finish the process, get through security. Small line, that was nice, security passage was almost instantaneous. Was expecting long lines. But then, saw that the terminal does not have many gates, and low number of operating companies.
Now the new mission, to spend the last dollars, probably getting something for my daughter. Good promotion on Jim beam black label aged 8 years, remembered my youth, but not a recommend gift ;)
After a bit of browsing, always complaining about prices, found where to spend the last bucks. Some ibuprofen pills for the headache, and sf giants football and an airplane to show my daughter that I was flying.
Spend bucks, pay remaining with credit card and there I go for the lounge.
Quite hidden and small, then again, few companies operating the terminal. Many small lounges for many distinct companies. Small but cozy, enough to pass the next 90 minutes in some comfort and write this blog entry after recovering from the lost entry blogs that I wrote.
Need to remember some topics, such as the fantastic landing at Minneapolis, the cloudy sky, and the few spots with the sun rays coming down through the open spots on the cloudy sky remembered like light coming through cathedral coloured glass windows. A fantastic sight that I can still remember.
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