I took the streetcar on the F line that runs along the Embarcadero, to my hotel in the San Francisco Waterfront.
I’m in San Francisco .. a small team has started on a new follow-up project at the same gas company.
I traveled in this morning, spent the day at the our office in Three Embarcadero Center, and then made my way to the hotel in the Waterfront. It was a scramble to get out of the house this morning, and then for some reason the Uber app canceled my trip as soon as I got into the Uber driver’s car (maybe I inadvertently pressed a button on the phone, I’m not sure). So anyway .. let’s just go! I said, I will pay you in cash, which is what he did.
A 787 Dreamliner of Southern China Airlines at the gate in San Francisco .. these 787s are still a fairly rare sight at US airports (or at least in my experience).Here’s the street car on the F line that took me to my hotel. It was built in 1946! They are all very different, the street cars that run the same route. The ones we have in Seattle are all new, and look the same, even though they have different colors.More about my street car and its history .... and here is the rest of the plaque, inside the streetcar.
I’m home! The travelers from Frankfurt arrived into Seattle shortly after noon Pacific Time. I sat next to the window, and looked out at just the right time to see a beautiful view of the Columbia river as we crossed it in Canada, right after the British Columbia border.
The Columbia River is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada.This is a view from 33,000 ft up of Kinbasket Lake. Look for it on the map up high, near the British Columbia border with Alberta province.And a little later there was this view of a sea of mist with the snow-capped mountain tops as the islands in it.
Here’s our arrival into Frankfurt airport, from Hamburg. In the distance a Boeing 747 is just being pushed into the hangar (for some maintenance, I’m sure).And I stopped by this mean machine on the way to my gate for the flight to Seattle, the BMW i8. Competition for the Tesla? Maybe.
[From Wikipedia] Hamburg, a major port city in northern Germany, is connected to the North Sea by the Elbe River. It’s crossed by hundreds of canals, and also contains large areas of parkland. Its central Jungfernstieg boulevard connects the Altstadt (old town) and the Neustadt, passing Binnenalster lake, dotted with boats and surrounded by cafes and restaurants. Oysters and traditional Aalsuppe (soup) are local specialties.
I did the best I could with the day-and-a-half and rain/ freezing rain at times in Hamburg! I will have to try to come back in summer some time, when the weather is warmer. The HafenCity* area’s development continues, even after 15 years since it had started, and I would love to spend more time there when it had been completed.
*HafenCity is an urban center with many shops, restaurants, hotels and cultural venues as well as rising visitor numbers. More than 2,000 people now live in HafenCity as a whole; there are more than 5,000 students at the various academic institutions; upwards of 10,000 employees work in more than 500 businesses. It aspires to generate and use clean energy and be a model for the new cities that will have to be built around the world this century.
The Rathaus (Town Hall) of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg is a spectacular work of art, inside and out. It was inaugurated in 1897.The inside of the main entrance hall in the Rathaus.This is the Alte Elbe Tunnel (the old Elbe tunnel), a tunnel that was completed by 1911 that runs under the Elbe river. It is still in use to this day : by pedestrians, bicyclists, and even the occasional car or taxi !Here is a car that had driven through the tunnel, and is entering the car elevator to get it up to street level. That HALT makes me think of the Berlin Wall and the World Wars!The U-bahn (and walking) was pretty much my only mode of transportation in Hamburg. In Copenhagen I used the bus much more, since there was a convenient bus stop right by the hotel. This is the train station at Ganzemarkt, on the U2 line.This is close by the Elbe Tunnel, stone construction on the river bank.An entrance to St Pauli U-bahn station, and by the Plante-en-Blumen Park. It was too darn cold, with an icy wind in the park! and so I spent very little time there.The U4 route goes to HafenCity Universitat, and the line and stations are much newer than the others. This green overhead light and color on the station changes to blue and purple .. and I would probably have seen more colors, if I stayed longer.A brand new truss bridge for cars and pedestrians at HafenCity.There are lots of stylish new office buildings and apartment complexes in HafenCity, such as this one.This building belongs to Anglo-Dutch multinational consumer goods company Unilever.
Right next to the Unilever building, in HafenCity .. I think this is an apartment tower.The entrance to one of the two new U-bahn stations at HafenCity, called Überseequartier.
No, it’s not a work of art (but it could be) .. lots of reflections on the way down to the U-bahn platforms of the Überseequartier station.
The train route from Copenhagen to Hamburg took a little under 5 hrs. That segment across the water between Denmark and Germany is where the train sits on the ferry! Amazing.
I learned on Monday night that Wednesday – the day of my scheduled departure from Frankfurt to Seattle – is going to be an ugly day at Frankfurt airport. A massive service workers’ union strike forced Lufthansa to cancel 350 flights at Frankfurt, including the one I had to get there for the Frankfurt to Seattle flight. So I pushed out my return by a day .. and thought to squeeze in one more train trip : one from Copenhagen to Hamburg. (I plan to fly early Thursday from Hamburg to Frankfurt). The train ride was quite something. When Deutsche Bahn engineers design and build tracks for their trains, they stop at almost nothing. The train track runs across bridges to cross rivers and narrow channels, and into tunnels to go through hills, or underground. And for a ferry crossing, such as the one between Denmark and Germany that crosses the Fehmarn Belt Strait, they built a train track right on the ferry’s deck, to ferry the whole freaking train across the strait. Or at least half the train. At our final station in Denmark (Roedby), the front four cars were disconnected from the rest of the train. As we reached the ferry, the train cars were run onto the ferry, passengers and all. Then we were shooed off the train (the train is locked for the ferry crossing) to go onto the ferry itself during the crossing, and we boarded the train again before the ferry docked. And the train ran off the ferry onto the track and into Puttgarden station. ‘Welcome to Germany’ announced the conductor.
Our stop at Naestved, the third of ten stops, on the way to Hamburg.Here is a sequence of stills at the moment when the train runs onto the ferry (slowly, of course). 1. Approaching the ferry dec k. 2 &3. A large transportation truck drives by, also going onto the ferry. 4. My train car about to enter into the ferry. 5. Almost inside; an attendant is keeping an eye on the train. 6. Inside the ferry. 7. A tour bus has entered as well. 8. Almost done. 9. Coming to a stop.I’m standing on just outside the train and took a panorama shot of the train & heavy vehicle deck. There is a car deck above us, and the on the top decks is where the passengers hang out and shop and dine and enjoy the views while the ferry crosses.Here is what our ferry looks like. This is one crossing to the other side.Approaching the German side of the crossing. I had to go downstairs and board the train immediately after I took the picture.This is the inside of Hamburg Hauptbahnhof (main train station) some time after our arrival. My train was a white Intercity Express train, and had left already.And here is a view of the outside of Hamburg Hauptbahnhof. It opened in 1906. It handles some 480,000 passengers a day, making the station the busiest in Germany and after the Gare du Nord in Paris, the second busiest in Europe.
The Øresund Bridge connects Copenhagen and Malmo, and was completed in 2000 at a cost of €2.6 billion. The bridge made a big difference to the economy of Malmo.
I could see a bridge far away from my hotel room and discovered that it is the Øresund Bridge to Malmö in Sweden : a combined railway and motorway bridge across the Øresund strait between Sweden and Denmark. The bridge runs nearly 8 kilometres from the Swedish coast to the artificial island of Peberholm in the middle of the strait. So! I have to go, I thought, and besides, my feet and legs needed a break from walking all over the city of Copenhagen in between bus rides and train rides. I literally just had time to make the ride out there, look around the Central Station for 15 minutes, and then catch the train back again.
This is the grand old post office building across from the Malmo Central Station. Looks like the right side’s copper tower and dome is getting renovated.The original, old building of Malmo Central Station opened in 1856.And here is the new extension that had been added. I think it opened in 2011.This is a brand new building right next to the Central Station, still under construction. I think it is for a drug company.Hmm! An M&M candy machine right there at Copenhagen Main Station in the 7-11. (Why don’t we have these in the USA? But maybe that is a good thing for me, that there isn’t any).
Here are some of my favorite pictures from Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Yes, the Danes are very friendly and laid-back, and they speak good English. Watch out for bicycles : they go fast, so do not step into the bike lane or cross it before looking both ways! The public transport is top notch. Even the buses have display screens for the routes, and the connections at the next stop.
This is the Royal Copenhagen flagship store. Officially the Royal Porcelain Factory, it is a manufacturer of porcelain products and was founded in Copenhagen 1 May 1775 under the protection of Queen Juliane Marie.This building is on the corner of Studiestraede and Vester Volgade, but I could not immediately find the name of it.Porcelain displayed in an antique store.The new Axeltorv (Axel Square) towers are still under construction, but makes for quite a visual impact. ‘Copenhagen’s new landmark’ proclaims a sign on the construction fence. To the left is the is a circular building called the Circus Building, completed in 1886 to serve as a venue for circus performances. The last circus to use the building was in 1990, though. It now shows movies.Here is another building that I do not know the name of. I see the beautiful spires from a few blocks away, and then I just have to walk there and check out the building up close!This is the view from my 8th floor room in the Marriott Hotel on Kalvebod Brygge (literally “Kalvebod Quay”), a waterfront area in the Vesterbro district of Copenhagen.I don’t have plans to go to the Copenhagen Zoo, but I love this bus, especially the polar bear.This is the main entrance to Tivoli Gardens : a famous amusement park and garden. The park opened in 1843 and is the second-oldest operating amusement park in the world, after Dyrehavsbakken in nearby Klampenborg. It is still pretty chilly outside (45 F/ 6 C), but there were some brave souls out there on the swings, the roller coasters and dive bomber.Here is Hans Christian Andersen’s statue, looking toward the Tivoli gardens. He was a Danish author, a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, but best remembered for his fairy tales.The Scandic Palace Hotel is gorgeous. Check out the gold trim on the balcony rails. [From Wikipedia] Influenced by the Art Nouveau style, the red brick building was designed by Anton Rosen and completed in 1910.Here is a close-up of the copper-clad trumpeter statue in the previous picture. They stand on a pedestal in front of the Scandic Palace Hotel.This little gazebo-style tower is on Nytorv (English: New Square or New Market) – a public square in the centre of Copenhagen. It serves up Carlsberg beer. The tourist season is not yet in full swing (it has to get a little warmer first!), so the outside spaces are still empty and quiet.Care for a Danish butter biscuit? Might that be Margrethe II (queen of Denmark), deployed in the window displat? Probably not!Here is the clock tower of the Copenhagen City Hall (Danish: Københavns Rådhus).This is the rooftop of the Copenhagen City Hall. Check out the incredible detail in the coat of arms and the copper-clad figuresHere is a Tesla that I spotted, actually making a very illegal U-turn. Hmm. The building in the background is the rebuilt (2013) headquarters of The Confederation of Danish Industry (DI). It houses several companies that do industrial design work. At night the white segments light up in patterns and in different colors.This is ‘The Crystal’ (completed 2001), the headquarters of Nykredit Bank. The founding of the bank date back to 1851, but this year in February 2016 Nykredit faced public outrage among their customers due to significantly increased service fees.
I am spending a few days in Copenhagen* before heading west, home. The flight from Frankfurt to Copenhagen this morning was just an hour, but it took a while to get here : there was trouble with the on-board computer of the incoming plane, and another one had to be found.
*I thought I would check up on ‘The World’s Happiest Country’ .. as Denmark is frequently referred to when ‘happiness indexes’ are compiled.
This is 7 am this morning and I am sitting in an express train headed for Frankfurt Flughafen (Airport). The train is a world unto its own : comfortable seating, a lot of bike and luggage space, toilet on the far right, and wi-fi as well.(it was raining in Frankfurt as well). We’re stepping out to the Airbus 320 from SAS that will take us to Copenhagen. I like the red paint on the jet engine!Denmark is a land with a lot of islands .. first sighting of land as we come in to land at Copenhagen.Here’s my welcome! sign. Hej! is actually pronounced much the same as ‘Hi!’ the way we say the greeting in English.And here’s the gorgeous steel pillars and roof of the Copenhagen main train station, shown as København H on maps. The train station opened in 1911, and is the work of architect Heinrich Wenck. I took the Metro Light Rail to Norreport station, and the S-tug (S-train) to the main station. Finally, here’s a nod to the quadrennial (400th) anniversary of William Shakespeare’s passing away with The Spiegel’s cover. ‘The Terror Expert : Power, murder and morals : the astonishing current world of William Shakespeare’, says the subtitle. In other words. the world has not changed much since Shakespeare wrote about all of those.
I dropped off my rental car at a wet Cape Town airport. This is the main arrivals and departure lounge. It started raining in Cape Town on Thursday, with more in the forecast for Friday.Hello there! I’m looking up at a life-size giraffe with its head in the tree leaves, at the Out of Africa gift store at Cape Town airport.An African mask .. these are likely from a country in West Africa or North Africa.Alright! We’re finally boarding the Boeing 777 from Air France. I had a ‘Premium Economy’ seat with a little more width and leg room.
I made it into Frankfurt. We left Cape Town more than an hour late, after midnight.
From the flight tracker on the Cape Town – Paris flight. We are leaving Africa and starting to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
We arrived into Paris some 11 hours later, shortly after noon on Friday. From there, the Hop! Embraer 190 commuter jet took us to Frankfurt.
I met my brother and nephew for lunch on Tuesday. We picked the swank Westin Hotel restaurant in the city’s Foreshore district. My nephew ordered a chocolate milkshake (not on the menu) to go with his lunch – and to their credit, they were up to it. ‘It will just take a little time’, said our server.
Here’s the view towards Table Mountain from the 19th floor of the Westin Hotel. To the right of Table Mountain is Lion’s Head, and on the far right is Signal Hill. I used to work (this was in 1994!) in the Metlife Centre building on the left. The bulge is really a 180° viewing bay on each floor, looking out over Cape Town harbor.The Westin is all glass and steel, with vanishing edges on this side. The Metlife Centre building is the one in the reflection. The Cape Town International Convention Centre is right across from the Westin.This statue of Bartolomeu Dias is close to the Convention Center. Dias was an explorer and a nobleman of the Portuguese royal household. He sailed around the southernmost tip of Africa (what is today known as Cape Town) in 1488, reaching the Indian Ocean from the Atlantic, the first European known to have done so. [Source : Wikipedia].Some very African motifs from the lobby of the Cape Town International Convention Center. There are baobab trees (thick trunk with round fruit), gazelles and an elephant.
After I had dropped my friend Marlien at the airport on Sunday afternoon, I drove out to Camps Bay. There are two ways to get there from Cape Town : across the ‘neck’ of Table Mountain called Kloofnek (a kloof is a ravine), or along the Atlantic coastline through Greenpoint and Seapoint. I picked the Kloofnek road out there, and wanted to drive back along the coast, but found the late Sunday afternoon traffic too much, so I went back the same way I had come.
Camps Bay is on the south west of Cape Town, on its slopes with the Atlantic Ocean.For this panorama picture, I walked out on the rocks by Camps Bay beach. Those mountain peaks in the background are on the Cape Peninsula and are called the Twelve Apostles. (I can never get exactly 12 when I count the peaks!). There is a little speck on the highest peak on the left : the Table Mountain Cable Car house at the top of the mountain.Here is the ‘main drag’ at Camps Bay beach with a mountain peak called Lion’s Head in the background. Camps Bay beach is on the left. The water is a little frigid year-round, and summer is over now, but a few brave souls still ventured in. The palm trees reminds one a little bit of Miami Beach. They have been there for at least 50 years.This is the large tide pool right next to Camps Bay beach. (There is a low sea wall on the far end and at high tide the seawater spills over the wall and into the pool).
My friend Marlien and I ran out to the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town, the way we normally do when she visits me here. We did not stay too long, though : a blustery wind came up and made it unpleasant, and so we left early. I see my picture of the Enigma XK does not quite do it justice. Checking into it again later, I found out that it used to be a fisheries patrol vessel, but has been turned into a luxury expedition yacht ! I think that some of the spectacular pictures on the link were taken in Antarctica.
The calm before the wind came up : tug boats in the harbor at the V&A Waterfront, with Cape Town’s iconic Table Mountain in the background.The Enigma XK at anchor in the Cape Town harbor at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront. Originally built as a fisheries patrol vessel, Enigma XK has been converted into a luxury expedition yacht.
We made our 1 hr 20 min ‘hop’ from Frankfurt to Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport this morning, and then took the long south-bound flight (11 h 20 mins) to Cape Town. It was 10 pm local time at our arrival. As I got into my rental car and started driving, I kept telling myself to keep left ! keep left ! (Driving in South Africa is on the left hand side, same as in the UK).There’s a much larger risk that one would drive in the wrong direction late at night when the streets are deserted.
This is at Frankfurt airport. The bus took us to the Embraer 190 regional jet (yes, it says Hop! on the side) for the short ‘hop’ to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.Tailfins as seen from the shuttle bus .. we had just arrived at Charles de Gaulle, and the bus is now taking us to the international terminal.And now I am officially in the southern hemisphere, south the of equator. This is the flight tracker’s map, and we are two hours out from arriving at Cape Town (‘Le Cap’, as it is called by the French).
It’s 6.00 am on Tuesday morning here in Frankfurt and I am back at the airport, checked in for my trip to Cape Town with a stop in Paris. There is stepped up security in place, or at least for Paris. My hand luggage was searched thoroughly. (I’m all those chargers and cables for my gadgets make for an ugly image on the baggage scanner).
This front page caught my eye, from Monday’s Dutch ‘de Volkskrant’ newspaper. The headline says ‘White Farmer back in Zimbabwe’, and a report inside says many white farmers are returning to Zimbabwe (this is a tobacco farm), to partner with the local landowners. Just about all farmers lost their property in the decades since Mugabe had come into power in 1980, which saw ‘colonial’ landownership becoming a huge political issue.
Here’s our on-board flight tracker. We just flew over Greenland and is approaching Iceland down below.
We left Seattle on time and traveled without incident. I sat next to a guy that told me he was on his way to Nuremberg in Bavaria to Adidas headquarters to talk to them about their e-commerce* efforts. Frankfurt was sunny and a decent 50°F/ 10°C at our arrival.
*A general term meaning the buying and selling of goods and services, or the transmitting of funds or data, over an electronic network, primarily the Internet. These business transactions occur either business-to-business, business-to-consumer, consumer-to-consumer or consumer-to-business.
Here is the 747-400 that took us to Frankfurt. I sat on the top deck! It was great. We just stepped off the plane at Frankfurt. I guess they did not have a gate for us at the terminal, so we were taken there by bus.It is 10.30 am Sunday morning and we had just arrived at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (main train station). Just ten minutes later a train full of rowdy football (soccer) fans arrived, so there was mayhem on the platform with loud singing and banging fire-cracker explosion noises. Wow, go, go, go – get out of here! I thought, before they caught up with you, I was leaving the station. A dozen policemen were on hand to keep an eye on them, though.The main entrance at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (main train station). I took a tram from there to the hotel.
It is time to start my journey to South Africa on Saturday morning. I’m making a stop in Frankfurt before picking up Air France there for Cape Town. I tried to generate a graphic itinerary in Google Maps but ended up drawing the flights in. Google only offers graphics for flights between one start point and one end point. As for driving, it offered a fascinating road trip from Paris to Cape Town : 172 hrs of drive time, with a ferry crossing across the Mediterranean, following the Trans-Sahara Highway through Algeria and Niger, and then another ferry to get across the mighty Congo River at Brazzaville. Now that would be a trip to remember.
Seattle to Frankfurt is 9 h 40 mins, then (on Tuesday) a short hop to Paris for the 11 h 40 min flight to Cape Town.
I am planning a trip to South Africa in April, and so my nightly ‘game’ of scouring the connections to Cape Town on a variety of on-line travel booking sites (Expedia, Orbitz, Kayak) and the airline sites themselves had been going on for a while. First one has to find an itinerary with decent connections, and then it is a whole new ball of wax to figure out how to pay for it if you are Mr Frequent Flyer with several accounts with air miles in them.
A romantic picture from the Air France home page.
So last night it was time to buy a ticket. BUY IT RIGHT NOW, I thought. The Europe connection to Cape Town is the hardest. It’s usually between London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt or Paris as a connecting city, to get me to Cape Town, and usually with a stop in Johannesburg. I found a direct Paris to Cape Town and was about to buy an Air France ticket on Expedia when I thought : let me log on to airfrance.com and see if I can use at least some miles to pay for the ticket. Hmm. A pitiful 3,000 miles on my Flying Blue account. Maybe I can transfer in miles from my American Express Membership Awards account. Yes. 60,000 miles available to transfer. Great. For a business class seat in, and a premium economy back, I still needed 57,000 more. Man. Let’s see what happens when I try to pay with partly miles, and partly dollars.. voila! Air France let me buy extra miles at the bargain rate of €1.10/ dollar .. and they have a sale until March 18. They throw in an extra 50% miles in addition to the ones you buy. So buying 38,000 got me 19,000 for free. So : all told, an almost business class return fare for US$1,100. Not bad at all. That kind of fare on the open market goes for at least $6,000 and Nelson Rockefeller I am not! (Of course : it took several years to rack up the American Express miles that I now burnt up in one go. But hey, that’s what they are there for).
I got to go home on Wednesday, and I drove out to San Francisco airport with the hope of getting onto an earlier flight. There was a 4.35 pm a 7.30 pm in addition to the confirmed seat I had on the 8.30 pm. No 3 on the stand-by list for the 4.35 pm was not good enough, but I made it into a middle seat on the 7.30 pm : an acceptable trade-off for my window seat on the 8.30.
Here’s a Qantas Boeing 747-400 sitting at San Francisco Airport’s International Terminal on Wednesday afternoon. The ‘Longreach’ on the nose could be seen to have a double meaning : the ‘long reach’ of the aircraft (a 15 hr flight to Sydney!), or Longreach, Queensland. Longreach is where Qantas commenced its operations in 1921.
I picked up my rental car again today and drove up on Highway 101 from the airport through the city and onto Broadway. Man! There are plenty of one-way streets, stop signs, bus only and bike only lanes, and pedestrians to watch out for. Once I reached Broadway, I told myself : park the car now; you cannot ogle at everything and drive at the same time. I was shocked to actually find a parking space, but I did, and I could walk around a bit to explore Broadway and a few blocks close by.
Here is San Francisco City Hall, on Van Ness avenue. (Van Ness is the Route 101 on the map with Broadway). It is here where Harvey Milk was assassinated in 1978. Milk was an American politician who became the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California. Sean Penn played his character in the 2008 biographical film about Milk’s life.Beautiful detail from the San Francisco Public Schools Building across the street and a block or two down from City Hall.Street art off Broadway in an alley.It’s up and down around Broadway (it’s where the famous crooked Lombard Street is, as well), and I hope the little white truck’s handbrake is on t-i-g-h-t. Check out the steps on the sidewalks.There is some eye-catching painted artwork on this building as well.The City Lights Books store has creaky wood-board floors, rooms with wooden book-cases inside, and a basement filled that smells musty, of yellowed book pages. It brought back memories of my grandfather’s study with the walls of old books on them.The iconic Transamerica Pyramid Center was completed in 1972. (It faced lots of criticism during its construction, though). Check out the interesting green building just to its right .... it is the Sentinel Building, completed in 1907 in the distinctive copper-green Flatiron style structure. (New York City has some of these buildings as well, and there is also one or two in Seattle).
Uh-oh, I thought when I saw this. And : I doubt it’s a 13 minute delay only. Let me go south across the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge to get to San Francisco, which is what I did.This is the corner of a big building by the Powell Street BART Station : the Bank of America Financial building.Levi Strauss & Co (jeans store) was founded in San Francisco in 1853. This flagship store on Market Street offers tailored clothing, even if it is just stitching some patches or lettering onto a jacket or a jean.And with Easter coming up, some chocolate bunnies waiting to get snapped up. They are made by local chocolate maker Ghirardelli Chocolate Company, itself some 160 years old.
We completed our work session late afternoon, and we have another one early Monday morning, so it was hardly worth for me to fly back home for a very short weekend. And so I’m staying over in the City. I took the rental car back to Hertz, and I took the train into the city. (I will pick up the rental car again on Sunday).
I am staying in a Marriott close to Union Square. There was a little drizzly rain in the air as I went out for a walk, but barely enough to make the streets and pavements wet.
