We’re about to step into the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-900 bound for San Francisco. The sign that confirms the flight number, destination, and that 23 minutes to departure remains is new to me.
There were some glitches with my travel into the project office today – but nothing too serious. Early in the morning the Alaska Airlines bar code reader at the boarding door refused to cooperate. When it had finally been fixed, the attendant simply announced that ‘Everyone is welcome to board’.
After my arrival in San Francisco, it was my turn to rent a car for the team to share – but Hertz were out of cars. San Francisco had too many Labor Day weekend visitors that brought back their rental cars only this morning. But I finally got my car, and my colleague and I could take off for Walnut Creek by driving across the Bay Bridge.
I’m taking a peek from the jet way at the Virgin Atlantic 747, before I step onto the Alaska Airlines plane at San Francisco.
I guess it was a fitting end to a hectic trip, with me arriving late at San Francisco airport to go home this afternoon. I only had 10 minutes to get though security, so no time to wait in the long line to drop my roller bag as checked luggage. (Hey Alaska Airlines : you need more than one agent manning your check-in counters! Is there a strike back there?).
So out came the shaving cream and big tube of toothpaste (threw it away), and I headed straight to the security line with both my roller bag and backpack. They were already boarding by the time I got to the gate.
And now I’m home, I ate food from my refrigerator, and I’m going to sleep in my own bed. Life is good.
It’s always fun for me to unpack my suitcases and rediscover my acquisitions from a trip. These are almost always modest, since they have to fit in my suitcases. If I didn’t have a backpack and two suitcases already, I would have brought one of my mom’s oil paintings with. But that would have been the straw that broke this camel’s back. Couldn’t have handled it, with me getting on the train to Amsterdam from the airport, and back again.
Let’s see .. the little melamine tray with tulips is from the Rijksmuseum, the Bols brandy-in-porcelain house is a freebie from KLM Business Class, the Delft porcelain plate was 50% off because the colors were not ‘right’ (looked fine to me), and the Tintin die-cast Jeep was ‘free’ if I bought two Tintin books, which I did.Here’s a close-up. This is the venerable Willys MB 1943 US Army Jeep with Tintin, Snowy and Thomson and Thompson, depicted on the cover of ‘Land of Black Gold’. Thomson and Thompson have long flowing green beards because they fell victim to a strange illness in the story.
The Canadair CRJ-900 at the gate at Portland airport. The short flight to Seattle is all of 35 minutes in the air! I barely had time to gulp down the orange juice I was served with.
It’s still Friday for me since I flew all day ‘towards’ the sun in the west. We made it into Portland’s little international airport a little late, but the airport did a terrific job of getting us through customs and the baggage re-check.
It’s just a short hop up to Seattle from Portland. We only went up to 22,000 ft and was barely there when the pilot announced that we are starting the descent into Seattle-Tacoma airport.
I’m at Schiphol airport, making my way back to the United States. We will fly all the way across the northern Atlantic and the continental United States, only to stop in Portland, Oregon ! Then on to Seattle. I couldn’t find a direct flight from Amsterdam to Seattle for this Friday.
Here’s probably the coolest store at Schiphol airport, or at least the most fitting one. An old airplane was cut up and put on display. There is even an engine (in the background) that kids can clamber onto.
I enjoyed a little Heineken beer in the Vondelpark Restaurant late Thursday afternoon.The main entrance of the Rijksmuseum, from the south side.The main atrium of the museum is free of charge, with the museum’s restaurant and museum shop below it. It is €15 (about $20) to gain entry to the exhibits.Found it! Rembrandt’s famous ‘Night Watch’. The painting was completed in 1642, at the peak of the Dutch Golden Age.Stylish gilded letters at the Vondelpark entrance.This is near Leidseplein (Leidse Square). Amazingly, some pedestrian crossings have no signals that stop the traffic. So here is where you wait for the locals to make their move across and then you join them so you cross as a pack. Safety in numbers.
My mission Thursday afternoon was to make it to the Rijksmuseum. To do that, I had to buy a tram ticket, and figure out the tram line to take.
I made it there with an hour and thirty minutes to spare before they closed. Now I wanted to find the room where Rembrandt’s famous Night Watch painting is. Luckily, the Rijks-museum is not the Louvre in terms of size : not even close. But the gardens and park around it has been renovated very nicely and it all makes for a great space right in the city to stroll around, and eat some frites or stroopwafels*.
That’s Lake Chad below us as we fly over West Africa. It’s always been a shallow lake, and it has shrunk dramatically over the last few decades, says Wikipedia (due to unsustainable water extraction).And here’s our KLM Airlines’s Airbus sitting at the gate in Amsterdam after flying for 11 hrs from Cape Town. (Well .. sitting at the end of a long telescopic walk way!).
I arrived in Amsterdam Thursday morning at around 11 am. I lucked out when I checked in : KLM offered business class seat upgrades at an 80% discount (which came to only a few hundred dollars).
So it was an easy decision for me to pay the money to sit up front in a big seat. I got a few hours of sleep in on the overnight flight, that way as well.
It’s Wednesday night and I am at Cape Town airport. My time is up, and I have to go back! I will travel back the same way I came, via Amsterdam, with a one-night stay-over. I’m leaving behind a wet and cold Cape Town area. It is still winter here after all, and spring and summer arrives late in this part of the country.
I like the leaf and flower motifs in this wrought iron gate by the Gardens.
The Company’s Garden (‘Kompanjiestuin’ in Dutch) at the top of Adderley Street in Cape Town, and adjacent to the South African Parliament, takes its name from the Dutch East India Company who first started the garden in 1652. Locals just refer to the area as ‘The Gardens’.
I have never really spent time there, and went there yesterday after dropping my friend Marlien at the airport. The Gardens area is abutted by numerous landmarks, including the lodge house for the slaves who built large parts of the historic city, the present day Houses of Parliament, the Iziko South African Museum and Planetarium, St George’s Cathedral (which is the seat of the Anglican church in South Africa), the National Library of South Africa, the South African National Gallery, the Great Synagogue and Holocaust Centre as well as Tuynhuys, which is used by the President for state events.
This stone-with-white plaster building is right next to the Cape Quarter building on Somerset Street. I couldn’t immediately find its name!There is still a number of Victorian era storefronts in the city, and it’s nice to see they still stand their ground, get renovated and a new colorful coat of paint.‘Restored 1991’ says this one.This is the main foyer of the Golden Acre shopping center which had its heyday in the 1970s. Those days are long gone with all the action now happening at the Waterfront. The tenants nowadays are cheap clothing stores and fast food places.This is at the Gardens, a pedestrian walkway lined with trees.This is adjacent to the Gardens .. part of the Parliament building.
(Apologies! This post is late! It was a challenge for me to find an internet connection after my arrival into Cape Town). I just wanted to report that I arrived safely into Cape Town on Monday night. The pictures are from Monday morning at Schiphol airport.
Here’s our Cape Town bound Boeing 777 in the blue and while colors of the Dutch carrier KLM waiting at the gate for us to board.Tulip seed stand at Schiphol airport. (Hmm .. I wondered if it’s OK to bring in tulip bulbs or seeds? And I like the giant tulip light).How about these giant blue Delft ‘porcelain’ tea cup chairs?.. or a wooden clog at this flower stand?I stopped and took a picture of this friendly guy on my way to the train station to go to the airport.
So here I am in Amsterdam : I made it in to the Central railway station at around 3 pm from Schiphol airport for my one night stay in the city. It was cloudy and rainy all afternoon, but for the most part not so rainy that one could not walk around. From what I saw, I believe Amsterdam still easily carries the title of the world’s most liberal city. There are pot shops (marijuana shops) everywhere, and one smells it while walking the streets. People smoke it in restaurants. And even in broad daylight, there were madams advertising themselves in shop front windows (Oh! Am I in the red light district? I guess I am, I thought. No ma’am, thank you ma’am). The city is dirty! It’s actually noted in the newspaper as well. The writer says maybe now that the Rijksmuseum has been renovated and reopened, it can motivate city officials to do a better job of sweeping the streets. (Unfortunately I did not have enough time to make it to the museum).
The Dutch love their cheese .. I did not poke these wheels of cheese outside of a shop on the sidewalk to determine if they were real !No entry .. except for bicycles and mopeds, scooters. Those are a menace! Watch out! There are bike lanes everywhere and THEY DO NOT STOP for crossing pedestrians.The Amsterdam Centraal railway station’s main hall is as gorgeous as ever. I arrived here from the airport, a 20 minute train ride for €8 (US$10.73). (First class train ticket).This is in Schiphol airport .. a nice lamp fixture showing some motifs of the famous (is it still famous? I hope so) blue Deflt porcelain.This is close to the hotel where I am staying. I made my way around entirely on foot. I did not make a note of the street.The sun is still setting late here, at 9.13 pm. This river canal boat is plying the waters in the Heerengracht canal.
These are ready to go into the suit case. Got to have my m&ms and Starbucks coffee (providing comfort for this traveler). Don’t freak out over the fuel bottle. It’s for a little camping stove that my friend ordered from Amazon, and it is EMPTY!Here’s how I am getting to Cape Town .. Delta Air Lines is getting me to Amsterdam, and then on to Cape Town on the Dutch airline KLM. I plan to stay over one night in Amsterdam one night to give my old bones a break from sitting in an air plane seat.
My bags are packed, almost. I’m leaving for Amsterdam in the late afternoon, to get me to Cape Town, South Africa. It’s winter down there, of course – with the climate somewhat similar to here in Seattle in winter time. (Think cool weather, clouds and drizzly rain). I think Cape Town does have more sunny days than Seattle even in winter, so I do expect to see some sunny weather.
I am getting an impromptu refresher/ education of the bridges around San Francisco Bay, because I have to. There is the famous Golden Gate bridge, of course, and the Bay Bridge – but until now I have not really paid attention to the other bridges that cross San Francisco Bay. I had to drive back our shared rental car to the airport. Those in the know recommended I take the San Mateo bridge route, and that’s what I did. Even though it’s a little farther, there would be less traffic to deal with.
The original bridge, known as the San Francisco Bay Toll-Bridge, opened in 1929 and was then the longest bridge in the world. It reopened in 1967 with a modernized span. So with Google Maps’s voice over directions I used many highways and byways and made it to the airport in good time. But after I had gone through the security check point, I discovered that I left my jacket in the rest room outside the secure area. So off I went, and I did find it – and again through the whole security rigmarole. Oy vey.
Here is our Alaska Airlines plane at the gate at Terminal 1 at San Francisco airport. The cool cloudiness-fogginess from the sea is never far away, even in summer. Check out the fancy new control tower in the background on the left. It will have a modern metal-clad spiral outside, and is slated for completion in late 2015.
Here is the route I drove up north to Walnut Creek today.Here’s a giant cut-out billboard in the Salinas area of a farmer presenting his Romaine salad (and check out the cute pooch in the front).
I checked in with the field crew again this morning for 3 hrs or so, and around lunch time started to drive back to Walnut Creek. (Walnut Creek is the name of the municipality on the east side of the Bay where our hotel and project office is).
It was a long drive up! .. partly because I couldn’t resist making a brief detour to Monterey, which made me run into rush hour traffic in the San Jose area. Man! California has a lot of traffic, I thought. (Of course, California is not alone in this in the world).
From Tuesday night : This is 12th Street in Paso Robles, across from the city park. ‘Paso’ as the locals refer to it, is 125 years old this year.
Paso Robles is about a 3 hr-drive down from San Francisco on Highway 101.
It turned out to be quite a day of travel for me. After arriving at San Francisco airport, my colleague and I rented a car and drove out to Walnut Creek – on the east side of the Bay. So that allowed me to check in and meet the project’s team members. HOWEVER, there are annual maintenance activities scheduled for a facility in the Paso Robles area, and moi is going to represent the team there tomorrow to observe the work methods and gather information for suggestions as to which improvements could be made to the systems that support the scheduling and execution of the work. So we figured I’d better hit the road sooner rather than later to escape the traffic around San Francisco, and off I went around 2.30 pm. The drive went well, and I pulled into Paso Robles off of US-101 right at about 6.00 pm tonight.
Here’s our Alaska Airlines flying machine (Boeing 737-800) parked at the gate at San Francisco airport. Check out the gloomy fogginess in the air !Here we’re crossing the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge complex. The old truss bridge on the right is scheduled for demolition and will be gone by 2016.Alright, I have to confess I was driving while I took this picture of the blue sky and green signboards on Highway 101 .. but I had both hands on the steering wheel with the phone between them, and took one picture. And there were no cars directly in front of me or behind me.
The train ride from the airport to Walnut Creek is about an hour.
I got confirmation today that I will start to work on my next project assignment on Monday. It is at a utility company located in the Bay area.
San Francisco airport (SFO) is where I will fly to, but the location of our project office is in Walnut Creek to the north-east of the city of San Francisco. I could fly into Oakland airport as well, but the flights there are not as plentiful as the ones to SFO.
The air plane on my cup of tea looks just like the one that I was sitting in – a Boeing 737-800 with its turned-up wing tips. In the seat on my right was a young Alaska Airlines pilot reading a dog-eared paperback copy of ‘Lone Survivor’ .. a non-fiction book about Navy Seals in Afghanistan.
My United Airlines flight back to Seattle was booked for the usual Thursday night fly-back (bought and paid for three weeks ago), but I wanted to take the first flight out Thursday morning*.
*Flight MH17, Air Algerie crash in Mali last night with 166 on board, Taiwan airplane crash on Wednesday that killed 48 .. maybe all of this made me just want to get the flying over with and get home!
Anyway – these days airlines charge $200 for any ticket change, and I wanted to avoid paying the penalty. My firm’s travel agent recommended to go to the airport early Thu morning, and have the airline agent change the ticket on the spot – then there would no change fee. ‘Plenty of seats left’, there should be no problem.
Alright. That meant I had to get up at 4.30 am, be there at 6.00 am for the 8.04 am flight. I actually did a check of the seats on the flight as I left the hotel : 5 open ones. So I had a shot at it. But forty minutes later when I showed up at the United Airlines counter to claim one, they were all gone. No other flights until the afternoon, and the afternoon flights were full, anyway. Of course. Great. (Not great). Plan B could have been to go to the gate for the 8.04 am flight and hope that seats for no-shows will open up .. but no – ‘I’m not going to do that’, I told the United Airlines agent.
What to do? Spend 12 hours at Denver airport? No. Go get a hotel room to catch up on the sleep I lost this week? Let me check Alaska Airlines, I still have some frequent flier miles in my account, I thought, as I considered my options. Sure enough, there was a 7.00 am flight with open seats. I booked it with miles – hey, why is the internet so slow? It’s 6.05 am already and I have to make it through security and to the gate! I thought.
Security was painfully slow, but done with that, I ran to gate A-52 (52 means it’s a long way there!) .. and made it with just a few minutes to spare. I was on my way home early. Yes!
And here is the real flying machine after we had landed at Seattle-Tacoma airport.
It was warm here in Denver today : 94 °F (34 °C), the skies clear for most of the day.
I took a few more pictures during lunch time and after work of my favorite Denver buildings.
The blues of the sky and the browns of the Brown Palace come together nicely in this view. The Brown Palace Hotel was built in 1892 of sandstone and red granite and is Denver’s second oldest operating hotel. (Yes, old hotels are nice to look at but generally not very nice to stay in – even if they have been renovated!).
This is the entrance to the Colorado Dept of Education building on Colfax Avenue. The state seal shows that Colorado achieved statehood in 1876, a hundred years after Independence Day for the USA. Indeed, ‘Centennial State’ is one of the monikers of Colorado. And the motto ‘Nil sine numine’ means ‘Nothing without providence’.Every bit of scaffolding has finally been removed from the Colorado State Capitol, bringing its $17 million renovation to completion.
This is Thu night after my arrival from Denver, at Sea-Tac airport. I am waiting in line with about a dozen people for an empty little Yellow Cab to show up (like the one in the background). P.S. Yes, we’re a bunch of greenies here in Seattle – the taxi company is trying hard to make its patrons NOT feel guilty about taking the taxi and not the light rail train or a bus!Tracy Taylor from King5 news telling drivers to the Mariners (baseball) and Sounders (soccer) games this weekend to pack a lot of patience. Westbound highway I-90 is going from 4 lanes to one for a week, and 60% of the drivers will have to find alternative routes into the city.
Ah, the joys of summer : long days of sunlight, nice weather*, hopefully some time away from work to relax. But for frequent travelers (me), there are even more people at the airport, the airplanes seem even fuller, and sometimes you have to wait 15 or 20 mins for a taxi whereas in winter there is no wait at all. (Admittedly winter brings other travel challenges like snow!).
*Or not so nice? It’s warm and very dry, and out in eastern Washington State howling winds fan a set of wildfires called the ‘Carlton Complex’ that have scorched 213,000 acres so far.
I had previously posted a picture of the Denver Gas and Electric building lit up in orange and blue. Here is one of it lit up in lavender, the way I found it on Tuesday night after we had dinner. It’s hard to say if this building or the Colorado State Capitol is my favorite Denver building .. but I’d say this one wins!
