Posted by Seth on February 24, 2012 under Hotel | 
Well, maybe they’re worth mentioning, though it is hard to know some days. Neither is an incredible offer, but both might have some value.
First up, DoubleTree is running a contest to win a trip to Costa Rica as part of a cross-promotion with The Lorax. Register here (DoubleTree.com/TheLorax) and you can win. Stay at a DoubleTree before April 29, 2012 and get an extra entry. And you can mail in a postcard to get more entries, too. Odd of winning are perilously low, but there’s no real work involved in entering (at least the one freebie) so no harm there either.
Next up is a discount promo from one of my favorite small-chain hotel brands. They recently won some award and are celebrating by offering 15% off at a bunch of their hotels for stays through March 31, 2012.
The deal includes their property in New York City, for those who are averse to such awesome destinations as Barcelona, Madrid, Buenos Aires or Mexico City. More details on that promo here.
Like I said, nothing earth-shattering, but worth mentioning.
Posted by Seth on October 5, 2010 under Trip Reports |
I’m a pretty big fan of visiting Panama. Each of my previous three visits to the country has been spectacular. Still, the 5 hour flight from New York City and the associated time and expense can make frequent visits a bit difficult. Imagine my joy when I was visiting a friend last week and found out that I would not only get to enjoy Washington, DC, but also Panama. Woohoo!
It turns out that there was an event that evening being hosted by the Panamanian Ambassador. I was not necessarily invited, per se, but my friend was and she added me on as a guest. So there I was, in the middle of a torrential rainstorm, visiting Central America in the middle of Washington, DC.
The event was even more entertaining for me because I was the only member of our group attending who had previously met the Panamanian Ambassador to the United States. It was a meeting of chance at the Continental/Copa Presidents Club in Panama City this past March. Some friends and I were on our way back home from a fantastic day of partying in Panama and Mexico City and we were preparing for the redeye flight with a few Soberanas at the bar. It was also the middle of March Madness and they had the Duke-Baylor game on TV. It turns out that Jaime Alemán Healey, the Ambassador, is a Duke alum and a pretty big fan. He was at the bar cheering and having a blast. There were the pesky issues that with only a couple minutes to play the game was still very close and his flight back up to Dulles was getting ready to depart, but a true fan would never let that get in the way. Suffice it to say that Duke won and he made his flight.
Fast forward seven months and I got to retell that story to him and some other guests in his home. That was entertaining, particularly as he nodded along, acknowledging his rather vocal support of the Blue Devils during the game. It was quite an enjoyable moment for me.
Moral of the story? Make friends with folks in Washington, DC who have access and go to Embassy parties. They’re a lot of fun and a great way to get a bit of access to the countries without having to travel all the way there.
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Posted by Seth on April 2, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Of the five flights last week I managed to get decent video on takeoff for two of them: Mexico City to Panama City and Orlando to Newark. Leaving Mexico is fun because of the many random airplanes around the airport that you get to see. Their military has an Anatov An-32 prop out on the tarmac and there are a few very classic 737s (-200s) out in the charter operations area.
Take-off from Orlando isn’t all that exciting but still fun to watch.
Posted by Seth on March 30, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Carne de calle – street meat – is not an adventure that should be undertaken lightly. There are very real risks associated with it but there area also ways to mitigate those risks and make a pretty good guess as to potential exposure. Vendors that have a means to ensure the cleanliness of the plates they serve food on are a much safer bet, for example. In Mexico City most use disposable plastic sleeves over the plates. High volume is also a good sign as it means the food is fresher and spends less time sitting out waiting to be cooked or cooked and waiting to be served, the two times that food is likely to have the bacteria that will get you sick growing in it. Finally, I go for places that have a lot of locals there. Not a guarantee of food safety, but generally a pretty good vote on quality.
Enough of the lesson on spotting good street meat. Let’s get to the good stuff. On the trip to Mexico City six weeks ago I ended up going for the guy operating a small cart just in front of my hotel. But that was a Monday morning. This trip had us in town on a Sunday and a Holy Day at that. Not much of a chance of that working out (and I was right – he wasn’t there). Instead we ended up about a mile up Paseo de La Reforma, at one the main square near the Hidalgo Metro station. There were a few dozen folks set up cooking in the plaza giving us a wide variety of choices. Tacos or quesadillas? Pork or beef or chicken? Each vendor had their own specialty and picking one to eat at was no easy task. One vendor made sure to point out the options he had available – both pork and pig – while others simply called to us inviting us to sit down.
We finally settled on one of the vendors and ordered up sampler platters – three tacos of chorizo, pork and chicken. Add on a soda (the Coke is still made with real sugar in Mexico) and some chipotle salsa that they had out on the tables and we were in heaven, all for about 40 pesos (~$5) each.
Between inhaling the food and enjoying the local flavor we found ourselves in a discussion of just how much fun it is to find little dining places like that. We were surrounded mostly by locals out enjoying their day and fully absorbed in their bit of life. It was essentially full immersion, without anyone really minding that a couple of crazy tourists happended to be plopped in the middle of their life. Phenomenal.
We actually were going to hang out for a second round, this time at one of the quesadilla shops, but we were out of time and already late getting back to the hotel to gather our bags and head to the airport. Truly a shame, though it does give me something more to look forward to for the next trip.
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Posted by Seth on March 29, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Palm Sunday is apparently special in the Reforma district of Mexico City. Beyond the fact that it was a holy day and the scores of folks walking around town with their Jesus statues and palm fronds, it was also apparently fitness day. The road – one of the main thoroughfares in town – was closed to vehicular traffic. There was a running race on one part of it while the rest was open exclusively to bicycle and pedestrian traffic. The city government had booths set up along the road with free bicycle rentals and a number of other entrepreneurs had set up temporary shops selling gear and offering bike repairs.
In addition to the bikes on the road, there were a couple aerobics stands set up along the road. Open for public participation, they had music booming, instructors up on stage guiding the participants and hundreds of participants, some more into the experience than others. Ranging from young kids simply bouncing along to the beat to at least one guy who was perhaps having way too much fun improvising his own dance steps to the rest of the crowd simply doing their best to keep up, the aerobics setups were almost as big a hit as the cyclists.
And then there were the three of us. Fitness was not at all on our minds as we walked along the road trying to decide what to do for the ~2.5 hours we had on the ground before it was time to head back to the airport during our brief stay in Mexico City. Sure, we got some exercise during our walk, and we did consider waiting in line to get bikes, but we gave up on that due to the limited time available. Instead we undertook one of my favorite pastimes: dining on street meat. More on that to come…
Posted by Seth on February 16, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Four flights covering 7,400 miles is not really all that much for a weekend of travel. Nothing to sneer at, to be sure, but not a ton of miles covered. The fact that I’m earning 150% credit thanks to the booking class helps to justify the trip, as does the rather great sale fare that I got the tickets at. Plus, there is the fun of flying on Copa Air, a/k/a bizarro-world Continental.
Continental and Copa share a lot of similarities in their operations. That makes sense considering that Continental used to own a decent chunk of the Panamanian carrier. And even now that Continental has divested their ownership share Copa still seems to behave a lot like Continental. They share a frequent flyer program – OnePass – and the Copa flight attendant uniforms strongly represent the last generation of Continental’s, for example. And then there is the fact that their logos are significantly similar and that the two carriers operate with immunity from the United States to Panama and connections beyond. Looking around in the galley on one of the flights I noticed that a couple of the bins are labeled as Continental rather than Copa. Yeah, they are very tight.
But not everything is exactly the same. There are just enough differences to make flying on Copa a somewhat jarring experience. Sure, the upgrades still come through generally (I got all 4 this weekend) but Copa serves real meals on all their flights and serves booze from real bottles rather than minis. As it would be described in India, “Same same, but different.”
I was conscious for three of the four flights this weekend. The first – a 5:07am departure from New York City – I slept through entirely. The others, however, were rather pleasant experiences. We had printed menus on one of the three and the meals were consistent enough that I got to try one of everything that they are serving these days, I think. There were ice cream sundaes at the end of each meal, and that goes a long way towards making a flight a success. Of course, unlike Continental Copa doesn’t serve Grand Marnier on their flights. Instead they offer a “Rum of the Month” program in Classe Ejecutiva and I took full advantage of that. Sortof.
It turns out that this month the catering folks only put the good rum in the carts in the back of the plane. So the first two times I ordered the ron especial I was actually drinking Bacardi. I knew that it wasn’t that good but I just assumed I didn’t like the special rum. It was only on my last fight, flight from Panama City back to New York, that I was able to have the conversation with the flight attendant and understand what was being served and solve that problem. Thank goodness, as the special this month – Abuelo Añejo 12 year – was much, much, much better than the Bacardi. I’m no longer wondering why I have to use so much ginger ale to cut it to provide decent flavor, for example.
Beyond the rum there are a number of other nice things about the Copa experience. Full meals on all the flights, for example. It isn’t gourmet by any stretch but the food is pretty decent. I had steak, chicken and different chicken as my three meals and all were completely tolerable. Sure, there was a strange double salad first course on one of the flights but, well, it didn’t kill me.
Oh, and they serve ice cream sundaes on all the lunch and dinner flights. Yummy!
The food service was also much slower than I’m used to. On one of the flights it was 45 minutes before the flight attendant showed up to ask what we wanted and another 30 minutes before drinks showed up. Certainly not the end of the world, but less attentive than I would expect from most airlines in the forward cabin. There’s a decent enough explanation for the slow service. There is only one flight attendant working in the front cabin, expected to serve 14-16 passengers. It simply isn’t possible for that to play out well. But that’s the way they roll. Maybe they have to since they serve a full meal in coach to the 150+ folks back there and that needs the extra body but it does diminish the service up front a bit.
Beyond the food and booze the flights were a great opportunity to meet people. I was wearing my jetBlue shirt on the outbound flights and that was enough for the guy across the aisle on the JFK-Panama segment to start up a conversation. Turns out that he used to work for jetBlue and now works for Copa in their airport operations group. He commutes between Panama and New York most weekends. We had an interesting conversation about impending expansion of the terminal in Panama City, the needs of the terminal (showers in the Presidents Club!) and how incredibly convenient it is as a connection point heading to Central or South America.
I met Tony, a guy who works in the elevator business. We talked about our shared inability to speak Spanish, random visits to various Central American cities and how to better take advantage of the miles he’s been earning all these years. I truly hope he does better than he has with them because he has never redeemed any and, quite frankly, that is a shame. On the plus side, I think I’ve started the education process for him and explained some of the better options he has with all those points.
And then, sitting in the Presidents Club in Panama City, I saw a guy who was obviously from New York (the Duane Reade bags give it away) and who looked pretty familiar. I introduced myself and it turns out that we had met a while back at a FlyerTalk event. We chatted for a bit in the lounge and then ended up sitting next to each other on the flight back to New York. He was wrapping up a weekend in Buenos Aires and me from Mexico City. Similar stories and adventures though also completely different.
Such is the life of the frequent fliers.
Posted by Seth on February 16, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Given a total of 14 hours on the ground in Mexico City, of which the majority was during sleeping hours, there wasn’t a whole lot of opportunity for grand adventures or expeditions. Things got even worse when my phone lost data service on arrival and I couldn’t find the address of the hotel to tell the cab driver. A quick phone call back to a buddy in Los Angeles solved that problem (Thanks, Damien!) but I was still left with a few hours on a Monday morning that I had to fill. I wasn’t willing to just sit in the hotel room until I had to head back to the airport – what fun is that?!?! – so I set out on a very limited exploration of a very small part of Mexico City.
My hotel, the Wyndham Garden Inn, is in the Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City. About 30 minutes from the airport, the area is very accessible and also happens to be a reasonably nice neighborhood to wander about. Even putting aside the significant number of points I earned for the hotel stay I think that the property is a winner. Free internet that is a pretty decent connection, great towels (very soft) and a pretty good location make the property a winner to me.
I got some great tips from a friend in terms of what I should try to see and I managed to do pretty well overall, I think. I still need to get to El Moro, the churros shop that was recommended, but I did get to see El Angel de Independencia and a couple other sites while wandering around the neighborhood for the couple hours I had that morning. Plus, I’ll be back in six weeks and should be able to get that bit of fun in on that visit.
But on this visit I simply walked up one of the main streets of town for a bit and was exposed to an enjoyable snippet of the city. Plenty of folks out on the street and I watched their completely crazy means of dealing with traffic circles (they just go on whichever side gets them to the destination faster rather than in a circle!). Overall, it was a rather enjoyable way to spend a bit of time in the morning getting acclimated to town.
Plus, I had a ridiculously delicious breakfast on the street. As I walked past the guy on the way out for my rambles I had a very good feeling about the situation. He had several meats, each kept in a very neat pile on the griddle. Plus the whole rig looked to be very clean. Still, there was no one else out eating so I was a bit apprehensive. I got over that when I returned from my excursion and saw a couple others around the stall eating off of plates that were covered in a disposable wrap. So he runs a very clean shop. That’s a good sign.
My initial order – in my version of very broken Spanish and his much better English – was for carne y queso; steak and cheese. Served on a couple tortillas and then topped with onions, salsa and a squeeze of lime juice from the condiment bar that he had on the cart. Half way through consuming that delicious I managed to order a second round, this time with chorizo rather than carne. It also had a different cheese though I really couldn’t describe the difference with any reasonable accuracy.
The two tortillas overfilled with meat plus a soda were about 30 pesos. That’s just over two US dollars. The food was great and at the price there was really nothing better out there. At least not that I could figure out how to order anywhere. After all, I barely speak Spanish.
And then it was back to the airport and then onto the circuitous routing back to New York City. Having the same flight crew for the Mexico City – Panama City flight as the night before into Mexico was fun. So was meeting a guy in the lounge in Panama that I vaguely knew from a previous trip. But that’s all a different story.
