Introduction
Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport
Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse San Francisco
Virgin Atlantic Upper Class from San Francisco (SFO) to London (LHR)
Virgin Atlantic Arrivals Lounge London Heathrow
First Class on the Heathrow Express – is it worth it?
Hotel Indigo London Paddington
SkyTeam Lounge London Heathrow
Qatar Airways First Class from London (LHR) to Doha (DOH)
InterContinental Doha
Exploring Doha
Qatar Airways Premium Terminal Doha
Qatar Airways First Class from Doha (DOH) to London (LHR)
Crowne Plaza London Heathrow Airport
Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse London Heathrow
Virgin Atlantic Upper Class from London (LHR) to New York (JFK)
Andaz New York Wall Street
Conclusion
—————————————————————————————–

Admittedly Doha isn’t the most exciting city in the world, and in fairness I wasn’t expecting it to be either. That being said, I made the most of my two days there.

The first morning I paid the concierge a visit in hopes that he could make some suggestions for what I should do during my stay, and I think he did quite a good job.

The first morning I decided to take the hotel shuttle to the Islamic Museum. Before going into the museum I decided to walk around the area for a bit, and was actually surprised by how beautiful the Doha skyline is. The city is actually quite picturesque, clean, and has some really modern buildings. I walked up and down the bay for an hour, and eventually visited the museum. The museum is beautiful from the outside, though as interesting as any other from the inside (yes, I’m not much of a museum person).

Waterfront

Skyline

Islamic Museum

Islamic Museum

Bay

After spending some time there I decided to head to Souq Waqif, which is a market just across the street.

Unfortunately the concept of crossing the street in Doha is entirely unheard of, because there are very few traffic lights, and beyond that, the few traffic lights that do exist don’t have crosswalks. So I literally spent over half an hour trying to cross the street, which was only complicated by someone important trying to drive through town. I’m not sure who it was, but he had a fleet of about 20 Mercedes, several police cars, and an ambulance. I wasn’t even allowed to stand near the street as he drove by, which turned into a pretty big ordeal as the cop trying to tell me to bugger off didn’t speak a word of English, and I had no clue what he was trying to tell me to do.

Souq Waqif was actually the highlight of the trip, and for me what set the tone of Doha’s “culture.” The market was traditional, selling things like bags of rice and carpets. There was a bird market, which was interesting (and mildly annoying based on the amount of chirping). And there was also quite a bit of “new world” mixed in, like Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins and Haagen Dazs. I sat down at one of the restaurants for lunch, and the food was quite decent, though I felt like I was getting evil glares from everyone, maybe because I was the only one not fully “covered.” The joys of sticking out like a sore thumb

Trying to cross the street

Souq Waqif

Traditional store

Sellin’ stuff

Bird market

Restaurant

Two worlds collide

On the second day I went to Porto Arabia, which was described to me by the concierge as “the Beverly Hills of Doha.” It was fascinating, yet left me utterly confused.

Yes, the place was indeed the Beverly Hills of Doha. Every high-end brand had a presence there, from Gucci to Ferrari. The bay it lined was filled almost exclusively with multi-million dollar yachts. The area itself was also meticulously landscaped and had a beautiful backdrop, if not a bit sterile. But what shocked me was that there was literally no one there. You know when you have one of those dreams (or nightmares) where you’re walking through a city and you’re the only one? Well, it was kind of like that. I didn’t pass more than a handful of people in the several hours I spent there, despite every store being open and manned. While it was a weekday, I was there during lunchtime, so I figured there would at least be some traffic. As several of you asked in the comments section of my InterContinental Doha review, “where are all the people?” Sadly, that’s the question I don’t have an answer to.

Porto Arabia shops

Porto Arabia

Porto Arabia

Shops

Oh yeah…

Indoor shopping area

After a few hours there in the morning, I headed back to the hotel to get some work done, and then later in the afternoon went to the city center of Doha, where a huge shopping mall is located. The mall was far from glamorous, despite the impressive entrance, though was interesting nonetheless, given that there was actually some people watching to do, unlike in Porto Arabia.

From there I tried to walk around the city center, though that proved to be a real challenge. Doha gets the award for being the most pedestrian unfriendly city, in my opinion, even more so than Ho Chi Minh City (which I didn’t think was possible). Everything is under construction so whenever I tried to walk anywhere I was told I needed to take the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Only problem was that there were eight lanes of traffic between me and the other sidewalk, with no way of crossing.

Shopping mall

Mall

Ice skating rink

Everything under construction

I really wanted to do a desert safari, though unfortunately couldn’t find a reasonable price for one with my short notice. The pricing for the safari is based on how many people are in each car, and each of the tour companies tried to charge me for a full car, which was crazy expensive, if I recall correctly over $300USD for a four hour tour. It looked like fun, though after seeing a desert safari SUV accident on YouTube before my trip, I was a bit freaked out.

Before anyone posts “lucky, how dare you discriminate against those with a disability,” hear me out.

I was flying out of Orlando this evening and was directed towards the full body scanner at the TSA checkpoint. As usual I refused and asked for a private pat down instead. After the agent yells “male assist,” a guy comes up to me who is missing an arm. Fair enough, there’s nothing wrong with that. I figured he would get assistance, as they always do, since private screenings require two agents.

When you get a private screening you’re not allowed to touch your bags until the screening is done for obvious reasons, though he carried all of my bags over to the private screening room. He put my laptop bag over his shoulder with the limb, and then clamped the bin with my Macbook between his limb and body, while carrying my 22” carry-on in the other hand. Even those without disabilities usually take two people to carry my stuff over, though this guy had it all. Unfortunately in the process, he placed my very old shoes on my very new Macbook Air, which I really didn’t appreciate. Then again, I didn’t want to be a douche and ask him to carry them separately, given that his hand was full.

We go to a screening room and a supervisor is called over to “observe” the screening, which is always done when requesting a private screening. When you get a pat down they always use gloves, though in this case, he could only wear one glove, again, for obvious reasons. The issue was, he used his limb to pat me down as well! It’s not that I have an issue with him using his limb, but rather that it didn’t have a glove on it, which is required. And I really don’t like people working a checkpoint touching me or any of my belongings without gloves, given how much stuff they touch on a daily basis. At the same time, what could I really say? “Could you put a glove on your limb?” or “Could you please not use your limb?” The guy was incredibly nice, though it was rather awkward as he swooped his limb between my legs and up to my crotch… really caused me to have to spread my legs wide.

Look, I’m all for the TSA hiring those with disabilities and this guy was especially friendly, but couldn’t they distribute labor a bit better? This guy would be much better off working the scanner or being on the other end of the metal detector or full body scanner, as those areas aren’t as physically challenging.

Not only did he delay me by taking more time than otherwise necessary (he worked at about half the pace), but he was touching me without a glove, which I’m never comfortable with (but I didn’t want to make the situation even more awkward), be it a hand or a limb. Beyond that, while he was incredibly nice, he repeatedly complained about his disability as he got up and down on his knee, having forgotten that he has one bad knee. So clearly he wasn’t enjoying it either.

Am I off base to expect all the contact someone has with me to be via gloves, and to maybe think they can make both of our lives easier by assigning him to a more practical position that isn’t as physical, given his disability?

The competition seems to be getting fierce between American/British Airways and Delta as they’re battling it out over London. Just last week I booked my first “mileage run” on American, a paid business class ticket to Paris via London, which I posted about here. Well, it seems that mileage run just got nearly double as rewarding, as American is launching a double elite qualifying miles promotion between Miami and London and Boston and London for those on full fare coach tickets and above. What makes this promotion especially unique is that travel on British Airways qualifies too.

The promotion is valid for travel between March 29 and August 15, 2011, and registration is required using code LHREQ. Furthermore, the promotion is only valid for those with AAdvantage accounts residing in Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts or Rhode Island.

I’m still not certain if my ticket qualifies or not based on the verbiage. I’m flying roundtrip from Miami to London, though as part of a larger ticket. I assume I would still be eligible, though would only get the double elite qualifying miles for the segments between Miami and London, right?

Furthermore, those that book and fly a roundtrip between Boston and London or Miami and London between March 29 and May 31, 2011, receive a 20% discount code for their next ticket to Europe. The discount code will have to be used for bookings between June 15 and July 31 for travel between August 15 and November 15. Then again, that’s probably not worth a whole lot, since air fare for October and November seems to drop well over 20% after Labor Day.

Anyway, I’m one happy camper. Not only will my mileage run just about satisfy my Executive Platinum challenge, but it also gets me closer to requalifying.

(Tip of the hat to awpeters)

While I’m all for trying new airlines, one of the things I’ve always loved about being such a frequent United flyer is that I have their system down to a “T.” In particular, I feel like I know their inventory management as well as they do.

As I slowly switch some of my travel to American and prepare to take my first international flight on American this week, I’m totally confused by their inventory management. I pulled up the fare buckets on Expert Flyer for my flight, which were as follows:

So for those of you not familiar with fare “buckets,” the above means that they’re selling one more seat in first class, six seats in business class, and at least seven seats in coach (“7″ is as high as their buckets go for American). What surprised me was the seatmap:

So as far as I can tell, every seat is taken in business class. There are two “blocked” seats, though I’m not sure if those are crew rests or assigned at the airport.

It’s not unusual for airlines to oversell business class when first class is wide open, because they can always operationally upgrade passengers. In other words, if business class is sold out and there are nine empty seats in first class, it’s not unusual for airlines to still sell nine business class seats, because they’d prefer the business class revenue and having to upgrade people over not getting the revenue at all.

But doing the math, in this case, they’re selling six seats, there are two unassigned seats in business class, and there’s one seat remaining in first class. In other words, they’re overselling a 37 seat cabin by at least three in business class (probably more, based on the above).

So I’m curious, American flyers, am I somehow reading this wrong, or does American consistently substantially oversell business class, even when first class is full?

Oh, the mysteries of this new airline will keep me up into the wee hours of the night.

This is quite possibly the dumbest thing ever. Flying out of SFO on Saturday morning, I handed the ID checker at the security checkpoint my ID and boarding pass. She asked me what my last name was, in a somewhat demeaning tone, so I figured she wasn’t just curious about the pronunciation. Dumbfounded, I pointed to my ID and said “it’s right there.” She said “no, you need to tell me what your last name is.” I asked why, and she responded that it was a new policy.

It seems I’m not alone and that this isn’t an isolated event. This is a new policy at SFO to “keep us safe” (her words, not mine). Can anyone rationalize that? I guess they think they’re stopping people with fake IDs that way? Seriously, are they that dumb?

Next time I fly through there, I’m either going to refuse to say anything or give a different last name, just to see their reaction.

Idiots.