ON THE WAY!

Nice clear day for the drive to Milwaukee. Here in Wisconsin there is always the concern that a snowfall could ruin vacation plans. But I guess I timed it well, lucky?,  because the ride to the airport was uneventful. 

I took the shuttle bus that occasionally could be a drag. In those occasions when they have several passengers to pick on the way, it's like a milk run. But not this time.

The Milwaukee airport was pleasantly empty when I checked in. It's rare to see more airline workers than passengers, even in Milwaukee. Chicago, of course will be the opposite.

The flight to Chicago is short, about an hour. Flying time is only half an hour, the rest of the time is spent ascending snd descending.

Once in Chicago, when I was towards the gate, I started noticing something peculiar and not very comforting. Some flights, as would be expected in Winter, were delayed. However, the delayed flights were all to La Guardia airport, my destination. Hmm, time to worry?

The curious thing is that the delays were very short, about 30 minutes in all. It turned out that bursts of wind in the La guardia are were the underlying cause. 

In case that my flight could be delayed further, I decided to take an earlier flight, even though my luggage would remain in my original one. I thought that it's better if one of us gets there, my luggage or myself, than risk the chance of neither getting there. The flight was uneventful although there was a little perturbance arriving in New York. 

But once at the airport, I had to wait for my luggage that actually arrived about 45 minutes later. So far so good.

However, once I got to my hotel in downtown Brooklyn, there was nobody to check me in. Apparently the night clerk was late reporting to work...? After a while of complaining to a worker who was hanging around the lobby, if you can call this little entrance room with only a sofa a lobby, he made a few phone calls and gave me my room key.

It's a sign of good responsible workers that the previous one left his post even though his replacement had not arrived yet. "Not my job man" syndrome.

A sign that I am not in Kohler anymore is that the hotel room doors were all steel, shiny steel to prevent and keep away probable criminals. Maybe I should not have stayed downtown.

By the way, the steel doors are  not used for aesthetic reasons.

Also, in case you are interested, the hotel is La Quinta.

Next morning we made arrangements with Maya for her to pick me up in a taxi to go to the airport, and catch our flight to Taipei. Taxi picked me up first and then we picked up Maya- ride to Kennedy Airport was relatively qucik, about half an hour I think.

Once at the airport, checking in at the EVA Airways counter I found out that my plans to upgrade to business, assuming they would discount the price, could not be realized. The upgrade would've brought the cost of each ticket to about $5,000. Way too pricey.

So we just proceeded with our regular tickets. Had some breakfast first. But, strangely, there were not many restaurants to choose from.

After breakfast we bought a couple of magazines, and I the saturday edition of The Fiinancial Times- always my favorite but I can't read anymore. Reason is that, unfortunately, the Financial Times paper is not distributed in Wisconsin anymore.

Now we just wait patiently to get in the plane.

Here is our plane, it's hyuge, although it looks small in the photo.

Of course, it's common today to have tv screens in every seat. The pre-flying travel announcements that are usually spoken by a person, where stewardess explain difficult and complex things like how to bucle and unbuckle your seat belt, here they were showing via a film. But unlike many other airlines, here they had dancing figures im the background while the isntructions were written on the screen. More enjoyable than  usual.

So, here we are settled on the way. It was very entertaining to watch.