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(HT to Lucky)

I’ve been suffering from plantar fasciitis for a few months before I finally figured out what it was.  I bought a night brace (thanks to SkyMall for teaching me all about PF treatments) and got some relief, but all of my shoes kept bothering my heel after a while, even with orthotics.  I kept reading other blogs and eventually I decided to bite the bullet and go to my local running store and pick up some FiveFingers.  It’s interesting that a shoe with no padding can be more comfortable with a heel spur than anything else I had tried!  I immediately walked 1.5 miles from the shoe store to the light rail station and my foot felt fine except for when my heel made full contact with one of those textured sidewalk strips for blind people to know when the intersection begins.

I’ve already put around 8 miles on them without a peep from my heel/ankle.

The best thing about them?  They take up hardly any space in my carryon, about 1/2 the room my old runners occupied which is huge since I have to lug around my night brace.

The model I got is the Bikila LS.  I don’t need the LS, but they didn’t carry the normal Bikila in my size.

from amazon.com

I’m too young and not French/British so I don’t really remember Concorde.  Apparently Concorde was doomed for several reasons including noise, fuel cost, and the crash.

Going from London or Paris to NYC in just a few short hours became a thing of the past since regardless of the crash, we still couldn’t get over noise or fuel cost.

A new class of engineers has emerged and by 2025 supersonic passenger travel may again be a reality.  Let’s face it, we should be moving to faster flights, not maintaining the status quo of around 500 mph.  The new aircraft called the Sonic Star claims it will go twice as fast as Concorde at Mach 3.1.

The 20-seat Sonic Star is intended to have a hybrid engine, in which turbines create electricity, which is used to turn the fans and compressors. “Our way of doing it is more efficient and creates less waste because we don’t need to turn a driveshaft,” Mr Lugg said.

The Sonic Star would also use electromagnetic currents across the fuselage to suppress the sonic boom and thereby overcome the regulatory and noise hurdle faced by supersonic travel.

I probably won’t be able to afford such a flight unless frequent flyer redemptions are possible, but I would still hope this plane will indeed take flight.

I must admit that I feel more comfortable in a hotel bed than my own some times.  For my vacation you’d think it would make sense to do a staycation, but instead I decided to hit up the capitals of Europe.  Even though the weekly travel grind is just that…a grind, it is still an oddly warming feeling.  I took weeks of business travel for leisure travel.  It’s amazing how much of a city you can see when you can actually go to places between 10 am and 6 pm (standard opening hours for most of the museums I saw).  Sure, business travelers get to visit a lot of cities, but we rarely actually SEE them.  I’m trying to yelp to find places to eat, but normally I just find a Cracker Barrel and pretend like I never left the South.

The cities I visited on vacation were Berlin, Prague, and Budapest.  My favorite?  By far Budapest. The Metro was a little confusing until I got my bearings, but it was frequent and reliable.  Budapest was touristy, but not to the point of Prague.  If I want a Starbucks on every corner I’ll just stay home!  I didn’t see a single Starbucks the whole time in Budapest although apparently they exist.  Berlin was too modern for me.  There are plenty of cities in the US built after 1950.

I found it interesting…in Berlin I did a hop on/hop off bus and had a French tour guide, then an American one.  In Prague I did a paid walking tour which was led by a lady who was not from Czech Republic, but I’m unsure where exactly she was from.  In Budapest, on the other hand, all the tour guides on the Free Budapest Walking Tours are native Hungarians.  Most of them were actually from Budapest.  The tours cater to the backpacker type person so I felt a bit old on the tour, but the guides were enthusiastic.

I had the opportunity to stay at the Hilton Budapest during my trip.  The location is great for tourists since it is right in the middle of the Castle Area (which has no castle) but does have amazing views of the Danube.

Getting there was easy enough since the confirmation stated to get on bus 16.  Bus 16 is a tiny old rickety bus since it has to maneuver the winding roads up to the castle, but it runs regularly.  The Hilton is right next to St. Matthias church so if you follow the numerous signs to the church you can’t miss the hotel.

Check in for executive floor eligible members is actually in the executive lounge.  There is a sign stating this, but I attempted check in with the normal people first.  The executive lounge has beer and soft drinks available as long as the lounge is open, but wine and liquor don’t come out until later.  The fridge was stocked with plenty of Dreher and they brought out the Unicum in the evening for people wishing to sample the local flavor without wasting money.  The Executive Lounge in Prague was much larger, but Budapest’s was never crowded at any time I went there.

https://www.hiltonhhonors.com/DoubleYourHHonors

Suddenly ‘around the world’ is around your corner. You can earn Double Points or Double Miles when you book and stay at any of our participating 3,700 hotels and resorts in 82 countries by September 30, 2011. So whether you’re craving a lazy week at the beach or want to spend the weekend by the pool, the vacation you’re waiting for is almost here.

I chose double points because I use Hilton points quite frequently.

I’m on vacation right now staying at the Holiday Inn Express Berlin City Centre.

I booked a 2 bed room on Priority club points for 25,000 points per night.  Since I was looking to minimize out-of-pocket expenses I did not look at a paid stay for comparison.  (If your situation is different I would urge you to look at the cost per night of paid versus points).

• The room is small and has about a 1 yard buffer around the beds
• There is a hot pot with instant coffee, tea, creamer, sugar, and mugs
• The bath amenities only include affixed soap/shampoo next to the sink and toilet
• The hot water is very adequate
• There is no iron or ironing board in this room
• Wifi is free in the lobby, wired internet is 4 Euro for an hour, 10 Euro for 3 hours, 19 Euro for a day in the room
• The lobby gets quite full in the evening from all of the people occupying the lobby for wifi
• The breakfast is great, although not really any hot options.
• Options include: several breads, several luncheon meats and cheeses, hard boiled eggs, muesli and American cereals and milk, yogurt, several espresso machines and a couple types of juice.  The spread was quite nice and should please most American palates
• There is a great German restaurant across the street with a menu translated into English, Spanish, and Italian.  They have much better beer than the hotel
• No American style outlets
• Taxi from the HBF for 2 people was less than 10 Euro in calm traffic.
• The hotel is not near any trains or heavy traffic so it is pretty quiet at night

I mainly just stayed here because the Hilton Berlin did not have any award nights available when I wanted to be here and the Hampton Inn is over in the West city centre.  I found out that doesn’t really matter since the double decker tour bus went over in that area also.  I might stay there next time depending on when I come back and what’s going on to bring me back.

Checkpoint Charlie is only a few blocks from the hotel and I wouldn’t be a true American tourist without visiting.

So, Saturday was supposed to be the beginning of my long awaited vacation.  I used my United miles to book a Business class star alliance award ticket CLT-EWR-FRA-PRG.

CLT-EWR was US Airways and everything else was Lufthansa.

CLT-EWR was delayed 1.5 hours due to mechanical issues meaning I would miss my EWR-FRA flight.  I called US Airways and they said my ticket was under airport control.  I deplaned and went to the gate and they brushed me off to special services.  The special services guy screwed up my ticket in such a way that after 3 calls to United, 2 calls to US Airways, talking to a supervisor at Lufthansa and a US lounge agent no one could figure out how to get my business class ticket back into business.  The United phone agents were all excellent.  The US phone agent quickly brushed me off saying economy is all I deserve.  The US lounge agent was excellent, but at that point I really just wanted to get to Europe so I kept the Lufthansa CLT-MUC-PRG flights in economy.

US Airways claimed that when they push a ticket to another carrier for mechanical reasons they can only send it as economy.

The economy seats on Lufthansa are not comfortable for international travel, but at least they do have seat back entertainment systems.

Now I’ve lost a day of vacation and no one can prove that my return wasn’t messed up as well. US and Lufthansa list it as economy as well, while United says they still control that ticket and it is indeed still business…

Needless to say I will be requesting miles back.

Well I figured my number would finally come up and it did last week at IND.

The lady forgot to do the inside the beltline inspection, but remembered before she sent me on her way.  I also helps that i have thunder thighs so she “met resistance” while she was still a few inches from reaching the goodies.

I’m heading out of the country for a couple weeks but that means I should hopefully post a lot more.

I’m heading to Prague, Berlin, and Budapest.  I have business class seats on Lufthansa across the pond so it should be a good trip.

Please stay tuned.