Entries Tagged 'Travel' ↓

So it’s now Sunday morning and I’m once again sitting in my room at my AirBnB. My last post got me up to the early hours of Friday morning. Check-out at Hilton was a leisurely 12 noon, however expecting an earlier arrival I had booked my hire car for 10am. I was willing to push this a little but not too much so I got up just after 9.30. Packed, checked out, walked, trained and finally found the multi-modal facility at O’Hare which is where the hire cars were.

Because I signed up for the Avis loyalty program I got to pick my car up from the Preferred Centre upstairs, though I’m not sure that was any quicker – I reckon I was in the line and waiting for my car for almost an hour. The good news is in that time it was confirmed that I could get into my AirBnB early (for a small fee) which helped a lot. I eventually got my car – in typical US fashion bigger than the class I booked, but I like it – it’s a Mazda CX-50.

I got my car play all setup and headed off to my AirBnB. Driving in the US is ok, some parts of it is better than others. I think I prefer the longer drives on interstates and similar as it requires less conscious effort. The bit I like least is just figuring out how to avoid hitting things – being on the other side of the car gives you a different perspective. I arrived at the AirBnB – it’s basic, but OK for the cost. I would have preferred a bigger desk, but the bed is comfy.

I was hungry so I got Uber Eats – Popeyes Louisiana Chicken which was good. I’d say it’s pretty similar to KFC. Unsurprising I was tired, so I napped, for longer than I expected but I was tired. I woke up a bit later, about dinner time so I used Uber Eats again, I got some good chicken pesto pasta, but instead of the Mountain Dew I ordered I got a half open bottle of water – I decided not to drink it! Then sleep. Pretty boring day and kind of a waste of my short time in Chicago, but the sooner I can acclimatise to US time the better. This post had photos 🙂 I’ll do Saturday in another post.

So I’m back again, which means I’m travelling again. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it – I haven’t done well at recording my last few trips – heck I did no posts at all for New Zealand. But I’m going to try, because when I do write, I really enjoy looking back at it. I might try and keep the posts briefer and maybe more frequent, but I’m pretty’s sure I’ve said that before!

So here goes, I’m in the US again, for FPS IC 2024 and although I’m sure I’ll be back in future years, I decided to make this year a real holiday trip to, with a view to not doing that so much in future years (or at least for a little while).

I’m currently sitting at my AirBnB in Chicago, on Saturday 2 days after I arrived. Not a lot’s happened so far but let’s go back to the start. I left Perth at 9am Thursday morning, which meant early-ish but nothing too ridiculous. I must say I love the perks of Gold, getting me to the front of the line everywhere. So Qantas Club, flight to Sydney. It was on a 737 which is small but it’s a short flight. We arrived a bit ahead of schedule which was good, no danger of missing my next flight. Transfer to the international terminal was easy, immigration, security (where I had to skull my water bottle that I forgot to empty) then International Business Lounge.

Flight to LA was long, thankfully I got an upgrade to Premium Economy. I would have preferred business but you can’t have everything. The flight left an hour late (we were sitting on the plane for over half an hour after boarding. (Apparently there was some issue with animals we were transporting). This had me a little bit worried about my connection in LA but they said we had a good flight time. Food and service in Premium Economy was good (as with my past experience). Sleep this time wasn’t as good as last time though, I reckon I got about 2, hour blocks and then a longer block of maybe 2.5 hours – not a lot of sleep. (I did doze a little on the Perth to Sydney flight too). Maybe I should have got sleeping pills before I left. We did make pretty good time though, despite our late departure, we only landed about 10 minutes late.

When we landed, it turned out there was no need for stress as my flight to Chicago had been delayed. Immigration was slow, but not unbearably slow – it probably took an hour to get thought. I reckon within about 90 minutes of landing I was seated in the AA Flagship Lounge, thank to on Qantas Gold (Oneworld Sapphire status). It is a nice lounge and certainly a serious contender for (at least some of) my time at LAX before my flight home. The food at this lounge was especially high quality – the pesto fish was one of my favourites.

So eventually it came time to board the delayed flight. I think it was about an hour and a half late and the promised faster flight time didn’t eventuate so we landed at O’Hare just after 1am instead of the 11.30pm promised. By the time I got my bags, walked out the Hilton, checked in and got up to my room it was about 2.30am. As such it was after 3am before I got to sleep, which wasn’t a great start to getting acclimatised to US time – and generally just not enough sleep! That’s the travel leg, so I might leave this post here and pick up the next morning.

So I’m now back in Perth (for almost a week) but I’m still keen to try and record the trip and it was great fun, so with the help of my photos (which helpfully record the date and location) I’m going to try and record the best parts of the trip (at least that I remember).

Monday was day one of Sentosa. After breakfast we caught the MRT down to HarbourFront and purchased tickets for the cable car to Sentosa. One return ticket let you board the cable car once at each station. We first caught the cable car up to mount Fabre and then back down across to Sentosa. The cable cars weren’t as comfortable as I remember and they definitely weren’t as good as the Disney Skyliner. They didn’t have air conditioning either so they weren’t super comfortable. (All of our trip was hot & humid, but this day seemed especially that way). It probably also didn’t help that both Elise and I were feeling decidedly queasy and needed frequent trips to the toilet. We’re not sure exactly what it was that caused it but we both felt unwell for a period which didn’t make the day a whole lot of fun.

We went down to Fort Siloso and did the skywalk there, which gave a good view. There was also some interesting information about how Singapore was used as a defensive base. It would have been good to do more of it, but we didn’t really feel up to it and certainly none of the longer walks without easy access to a toilet! We then went to a Seven Eleven, partly to escape the humidity and have air conditioning for a while, but also to looks for drinks. They didn’t have Powerade of Gatorade, but we managed to find a Singaporean equivalent which helped to make Elise and I start feeling better. We then took a long loop on the Cable Car and then took the monorail down to the beach station where we had booked tickets to watch a night time light and water show.

We had about 3 hours to kill so we sat around, watched a water canon show accompanied by music which was good light 5 minute entertainment. Andrew and the kids ordered dinner and I had a lot of chips after finding they didn’t cause any further stomach issues. By this time we were both starting to feel a lot better. Wings of Time is a laser, light, projection water show that was fantastic. It foes for about 15 minutes and has a story line as well as looking fantastic. We jumped on the monorail as an easy way to get home and went to bed.