Monica

I wrote about this trip in this entry, but it was getting long so I decided to segregate the pictures. I didn't take a lot of pictures, so these aren't representative of the mix of the whole trip. They're just some pictures I thought were interesting.

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I remember, when traveling in the 90s and into the 00s, looking for hotels with business centers, where I could use their computer to check my email. Technical and geek conventions that set up actual terminal rooms for this purpose were golden. (This happened even in the 80s for sufficiently-geeky contexts.) But mostly, the connected traveler was responsible for figuring it out or just doing without.

After reliance on quasi-public computers came the rise of laptop computers. I was late to this phase, only getting a laptop of my own in (I think) 2006. For the next while, I looked for hotel rooms that had ethernet ports. I took that laptop when traveling not for any work purpose but so I could access my email (and, on big vacations, upload photos somewhere so I didn't risk a single point of failure). I carried an ethernet cable for years. (I have a story from this time about having to fall back to a public computer, or rather a public computer's network connection that I probably wasn't supposed to touch, so public computers were still an occasional thing.)

A few years after the rise of hotel ethernet ports, places (hotels, restaurants, etc) started to advertise free WiFi. I still carried that ethernet cable because you could never be sure, and if there was an ethernet port I still preferred it. I only started to pay attention to public WiFi when I got a smartphone and later a tablet (which can't use ethernet). The smartphone's data plan had limits, so public WiFi seemed useful if I wasn't doing anything that required extra care. (Surfing yes, online banking no -- that kind of thing.)

I used a hotel's WiFi as recently as January, when I found evidence of some unwelcome probes that I couldn't explain any other way. After that I realized that for practical purposes I have unlimited data (it gets slower after 2GB/month but I rarely exceed that). At Origins a couple weeks ago, I dutifully took the piece of paper the hotel desk gave us with the WiFi access information, dropped it on a table in the room, and never touched it again, preferring to use my phone to create a hotspot so I could use my tablet. Much safer.

I'm back to arranging my own access and not looking for public accommodations. I feel like I've gone in a circle.

I visited our main office for a few days this past week. (Sorry to folks I didn't connect with.) I met our two new team members, one of whom is our new manager, and our intern for this coming summer, and I had lots of productive conversations. I also played one game of Caverna with coworkers.

I wondered what airport security was going to be like given the government shutdown. Monday morning in Pittsburgh the line was probably about 15-20 minutes long, but somebody came by to tell us the alternate checkpoint was open and had no line, so some of us went there. All of the agents I saw were polite, professional, and not acting disgruntled. I and several other passengers thanked them for being there despite the situation. Everybody there understood that the mess was not the fault of anybody there and taking out frustrations on the wrong people would be bad. Yay for people acting like adults!

Thursday night at Logan, the first checkpoint I found was closed but the second was staffed. It took me five minutes to get through. Again, people behaved themselves.

Wednesday afternoon our new writer and I took a walk through a park/wetlands area near the office. We saw lots of ducks and one heron. We later saw the heron catch a small mouse; I hadn't previously known that they ate mammals.

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I'm slowly sorting through the pictures from our trip. We spent a couple days in Barcelona, where we took two tours: a half-day tour of Montserrat, and a full-day city tour. The latter had lots of architecture by Gaudi. I've collected some pictures. I don't know why Google decided to make the very last photo the first one, nor could I figure out how to fix it, so...meh. One bit of Gaudi is out of place; people will manage. :-)

The last time I used Picasa it looked different. I don't know if people can still comment there, but you're welcome to comment here.

Inside the church on Montserrat:



Some Gaudi architecture:



Part of a ceiling in Sagrada Familia:



These buildings make me think of Hansel and Gretel:

Me: books hotel in foreign city.
Me: books tour in that city.
Me: books another tour in that city.
Me: attempts to book tour in a different city.
Booking site: couldn't get approval.
Me: tries a different tour (and different vendor).
Booking site: nope, we don't like your credit card either.
Husband: tries (joint card) and fails.

Phone rings.

Caller: Hi, this is (bank).
Me: Oh good; I was just about to call you.
Caller: There were these transactions...
Me: Yes that was me.
Caller: Ok, better safe than sorry. We'll unblock your card now.
Me: By the way, here are some travel dates and locations.
Caller: Got it.

I'll gladly accept those five minutes of inconvenience for that level of fraud protection. I even still had a valid session for the failed transaction, so retrying was easy.

I would have called them with the dates and locations closer to the trip to avoid card declines, but I didn't think about how the advance charges would look.

I wrote previously about the Mi Yodeya celebration. I also joined Isaac and others for services while there, which was interesting and educational.

( places visited )

A couple observations:

First, none of the services felt rushed, but I do not know how people pray that quickly. I couldn't keep up without vocalizing everything, while the service leader was spitting out the Hebrew cleanly and clearly. I guess it comes in time? But on the other hand, if I haven't gotten it by now...

They sure do a lot of kaddishes. If I recall correctly, at the end of the Sunday-morning service there was a bit of torah learning followed by kaddish d'rabbanan, and I came away with the impression that the former was there mainly to justify the latter. (Kaddish is said at certain points in the service, mainly to act as a division, but it also may be said after any learning.) Unlike in Reform services, kaddish is said either by one person or the mourners as a group. I found myself wondering how that's coordinated -- who gets which ones, how do they know, and if you particularly want one that day, how do you signal that?

Both of these synagogues -- and, now that I think about it, several other Orthodox synagogues I've been to -- had a bunch of different siddurim (prayer books). The content is basically the same in all of them, but sometimes there are minor variations, they may or may not include English translations (which may or may not vary subtly), they may or may not contain commentary, and so on. This has a few consequences:

• You actually get, and have to make, a choice. Friday night I just took a book; it was all Hebrew, no English translation. That's fine for the prayers (I'm going to do those in Hebrew anyway), but I had to work a little more at navigation.
• Some people bring their own, an option that simply had not occurred to me.
• Because not everybody is using the same book, and also I assume because there's an assumption that if you're there you're fluent (which breaks down in some individual cases, of course), they don't call out instructions or page numbers -- you're just expected to be able to follow. I can do that for a Shabbat or weekday service, but might be challenged to do so on, say, the high holy days.

On Saturday morning I used the Koren siddur, which I've heard good things about. I actually found the Hebrew font just a tad hard to read, compared to Sim Shalom, Artscroll, and even Mishkan T'filah. It looked like a nice siddur otherwise, so maybe one to have available even if I don't use it regularly. Or maybe, were I to use it regularly, I'd find the font a little easier.

I'm glad I got the opportunity to experience all that.

The first time I traveled for work with my employer I saw that I could register frequent-flyer account numbers with them and they would do the right thing there. I didn't yet have a frequent-flyer account on the carrier we usually use, but I figured I could come back and add that later.

I downloaded the airline's app, used the confirmation number for the flight as an entry point, and created an account with them. The app did all the right things for that trip.

I recently booked another trip and noticed that I hadn't yet entered the frequent-flyer account number in my travel profile (and so the app couldn't find it for me). Ok, I figured -- I'll just ask the app for my account number so I can add it to the profile. (Meanwhile, I had to use an actual phone to talk to an actual human being to connect this flight to my account.)

Nope, no way to get the account number in the app -- I'm signed in, but I apparently don't need to know the account number so they're not going to trouble me with a line in "settings" or some such.

I searched my email and found the "welcome to (us)" notice, but it didn't contain the account number either.

So I went to the web site, at which point I had to log in. After failing with my standard password algorithm I went down the "forgot password" path, which is when I discovered that my algorithm wouldn't work with them (see rant below), hence the failed login. So I reset my password with their insecure rules, logged in on the web site, and therein found my account number, which I then added to my corporate travel profile. I suspect I'll need this password at most one more time (if the app challenges me for it because it changed, which it hasn't yet).

All of this could have been averted if either the app or the welcome email had a way to find the account number. Sheesh.

In theory, now, everything should be wired up: next time I need to book corporate travel on this airline the flights will automatically show up in the app and I'll never need to directly interact with the airline. That wiring makes things easy, but it was way harder than it should have been to get the information in order to effect that wiring.

Rant: In these modern times, why in the world does anybody have password rules that do not permit any low-order ASCII character? No punctuation except periods and underscores? What is this nonsense?

We were in DC for a few days and, while there, we went to a performance of The Magic Flute (performed in English, not German) at the Kennedy Center. The performers were excellent, and they obviously had fun "updating" the script here and there. The costumes were very good, as was the sound. The set design was rather unusual; the implementation of their design was excellent, but I'm not sure what I thought of the design.

There was a short (optional) lecture before the show, which I'm very glad we went to. Here we learned some of the historical background for the show; while most operas of the time were written for aristocrats and in Italian, this one was written for a for-profit theatre catering to "just plain folks". It's more accessible and less hoity-toity. I don't know what's original to the script and what was added by this performance, but this had more of the feel of (high-end) street theatre in some ways, including humorous wordplay and some physical comedy. It also has spoken dialogue, so it felt kind of like a modern musical.

The story (very briefly; click the link for more): Tamino is recruited by the Queen of the Night to rescue her daughter Pamina from the evil sorceror Sarastro. She sends with him Papageno, a nutty bird-catcher who dresses as a bird and really only cares about wine, women, and song. (Tamino has nobler goals.) It turns out that Sarastro isn't so evil, and he kidnapped Pamina to save her from her (in his opinion) evil mother the queen. (At this point I expected it to turn out that Sarastro was the father, but no.) Tamino (who has fallen in love with Pamina) will be allowed to wed her if he passes certain mystical trials, and Papageno has to play too because he's there -- but ok, if Papageno behaves he'll also be allowed to wed Papagena, who seems a perfect fit for him, solving his "can't get women" problem. Trials happen (with bumps along the way) and there's a happy ending. (Oh, the flute? The queen gives it to Tamino as a magical aid and he uses it to get through some of the trials. Really, for something that makes the title of the show, it's kind of minor.)

Papageno provides a lot of comedic relief and the performer was very good. (It may be harder to do that kind of role well than that of a serious character like Tamino.) Sarastro was also very good as both actor and singer; he struggled a little with the lowest note, but Wikipedia tells me it's an F2, so I can understand that. (Deep bass.) Tamino and Pamina were well-done; I wasn't as impressed with the queen of the night and Papagena (both sopranos).

There were obvious adjustments in both the dialogue and the lyrics; the former is easy to do but the latter would seem to require a little more work. One of Papageno's songs included references to Twitter, and there was a bit of dialogue where somebody tells the three spirits (played by children) that they'll understand something better when they reach adolescence. (There were other changes too, but you get the idea.) I enjoyed these tweaks, though it made me wonder what is actually in the original script to begin with and whether it included hooks for this sort of thing.

The orchestral score was done well and mostly acted as support for what's going on on stage (as opposed to taking center stage itself, which I understand sometimes happens). The score did not strike me as overly complex; it was a good solid score, performed well.

The set design was rather abstract; backgrounds of colored lines and swirls at times, sometimes suggesting a setting (like "night" or "inside a temple") and other times not. There was one point where the background had animated circles/elliptoids moving around to no clear purpose and I found it a little distracting; I don't know what that was meant to be. There was also an opening number (before anybody was on stage) where they had animated lines moving around on a screen for several minutes, which left me wondering why. (It was only once the show proper started that I would realize that this was part of their overall design.) Lighting design (beyond this) was generally pretty good, though the follow-spot operators were sometimes a little off in tracking the leads. (The leads almost always had spots on them, even when the stage was brightly lit. I don't know if that's typical.)

A word about visual aids: This was only my second (live performance of an) opera (excluding Gilbert & Sullivan, if you count that), and the first was a dismal failure because it was in Italian, we were sitting too far back for me to read the supertitles, and having read the plot synopsis in advance hadn't been enough to really follow it. So this time we splurged on the second-best class of tickets (the price point for the best tripped our "you've got to be kidding" alarms). I mean, it's the Kennedy Center; it's likely to be good, and how often are we going to do this? Data point: the second-best class of tickets, which put us four rows back in the first balcony, allowed me to just barely read the supertitles about three-quarters of the time. (So I definitely missed some jokes, including, I later learned, a Twitter hashtag.) And this opera was in English, so I had extra input. (Operatic sopranos and children are a loss; I can't understand what they're singing regardless of language. The male leads were better, and there was a good alto mezzo-soprano.) So, it looks like it's only viable for me to go to an opera if we get seats up close; I doubt I'll bother again.

A coworker pointed out to me that if we were going to London anyway, we might consider a day-trip to Paris. I hadn't realized that it was only about a two-hour train ride. So we did that.

We booked a tour package that started/ended in London, so they arranged train tickets and the local guide. That was absolutely the right thing for us beginners to do -- and I would not do it again. Lesson learned: book our own train tickets (and get to choose the times and the seats) and either find a local tour or use the on-and-off tour-bus loop. This worked ok, but I would have allocated the time differently.

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We went to London for several days. I'm hoping to write more about some of this later, but meanwhile, some unorganized notes:

Food prices: whoa.

We booked a two-day pass on the "original tour", an on-again, off-again bus loop with several routes. (The main route has live guides; the rest have recordings.) This was a good way to see a lot of the main sites; you can get off at anything that seems interesting and pick up another bus later. We didn't do enough of that "getting off and back on" thing; I would do that differently in the future. (That is, we ended up chewing up time to, on our own, get back to some of those places later, when we didn't really need to.)

That bus tour comes with a riverboat tour on the Thames. That is not worth the time; there's not much to see from the river, really. I think that would have been true had it been sunny and warm, too, but I can only speculate as it rained every day we were there. (On the other hand, there is quite a bit to see from the Seine, so that river tour is quite worthwhile.)

The London Underground served our needs very well. Our hotel was within walking distance of three different stations, signage was very good, the on-train announcements were excellent (upcoming stops, where this train is going, transfer points, etc), and we never had to wait more than a few minutes for a train. I do wonder, though, how those with mobility issues can use it; I saw no lifts and there are a lot of stairs and escalators. Yet one of the stations we passed through regularly seemed proud of its track having step-free access. I never did figure that part out.

Street signs, on the other hand, were often lacking. We had to rely fairly heavily on GPS and map apps to figure out where we were and where to go once we got off a train. We would have been seriously hindered without smartphones. (Fortunately, T-Mobile's data plan works overseas without extra fees -- or so they told us, but of course we'll check the next bill.)

We bought a powered USB hub (with international power plugs as a specific feature) to charge phones and tablets and tested it for several days at home. It died a day into our trip -- shorted out, it appears. Fortunately we also took conventional adapters, but must remember to write a bad review for Amazon.

We also bought a couple of travel umbrellas (small enough to fit in a coat pocket). They were flimsy, hard to open, ugly, probably made in a sweatshop in China... and I'm very glad we had them.

We booked a day-trip to Paris. Seeing the city was nice, the tour guide was so-so, we didn't really spend enough time in some of the places, and the organizing tour company was terrible on logistics. If doing it again, I would buy our own Eurostar tickets for the train to Paris and then book a local tour separately. We booked through Viator (local operator: Evan Evans). Must remember to write a bad review, err, somewhere. (Where do people review tour packages?)

On the other hand, the day-trip we booked through Viator/Evan Evans to Oxford and environs was very well-done. Must remember to write a positive review somewhere.

Anything that could be tied to the Harry Potter movies was. This is where they filmed such-and-such scene, this room was the model for the dining hall, this chess set was the model for the giant chess pieces in the first movie, $actor slept here... Harry Potter and Napoleon were the common references, with the latter definitely taking a back seat.

When in London one goes to the British Museum, of course. While there we took the guided "highlights" tour, a brisk 90-minute run through selected exhibits all over the building. I thought that was a huge win; yes we also spent a lot more time wandering around on our own, but the place is huge and this way I got at least tiny samples of rooms we never would have gotten to otherwise.

There are two basic approaches (that I've seen) to museum exhibits: "display stuff" and "tell a story". The Tower of London tends to the latter -- so they channel you to walk through spaces along a certain path, stringing out documentation and related sidebars and stuff along the way. Both styles work, but the latter doesn't lend itself to sampling -- if you want to see part of it you walk through all of it. We did a lot of walking that day (and a lot of stair-climbing).

We saw two shows, Wicked (which was excellent!) and Spamalot (which was silly and fun). I wish we'd seen more, but it wouldn't have fit -- the day-trips took out two evenings, and we also didn't want to be up late the night before the Paris trip, which (allegedly) had a 5:45AM call at the train station. (It didn't really; that was part of the bad logistics.) But still, two good shows!

Some may recall that, a year and a half ago, Air Canada badly messed up most of my flights and in the end said "tough luck". On this trip we flew United; on the return trip our first plane was late and it looked like we were going to miss a connection (especially since we hadn't known that we'd have to change terminals at O'Hare and go through a long security line all over again), but fortunately the second plane was also late so we made it. But I'm telling this story because, while we were in that long security line, United was busy pro-actively confirming just-in-case seats for us on a later flight and sending us email about it. What a difference in customer service!

I sent copies of my Air Canada complaint to the CEO/President, Chairman, and Senior VP of Customer Relations (with suitable wrapper text to explain why they were getting this). Yesterday I got email from an assistant for Mr. Rovinescu, the CEO/President. She hasn't given me permission to publish the letter, so I will summarize:

She is disheartened to hear of my experience. Given my description, she can understand how frustrating that was. She regrets that their call center let me down and is sorry for the poor impression their discourteous employees left me with. As a gesture of goodwill, she would like to offer me 40% off the base fare for my next Air Canada trip, provided I complete it within a bit less than a year. They do not cover consequential expenses, but nonetheless require my original receipts for same for auditing purposes.

That does not help at all, and since it's not a voucher for a fixed amount I don't think I could sell it usefully. (I haven't read the fine print and don't know if it's even transferable.) This is the reply I sent:

Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, I'm an infrequent traveler; I've only flown three times in the last decade and would not be able to use a discount in the next year. (Even if I could, I'm sure you can understand my reluctance to book my next trip with your airline.) A discount on future travel also doesn't help me with expenses incurred now. Is there anything better you can do to remedy this terrible episode?

(Belately I see that there is one error in that. I now realize I've flown four times, not three. This does not change the substance.)

VISA is prepared to dispute the charge if I can't settle the problem with the airline, but of course we would both like to try the direct approach first. I'm not yet sure of the process should VISA get involved; do we go to some sort of arbitration or what? Air Canada already has my money, but I guess VISA can take it back.

My (rebooked) flight landed in Pittsburgh around 7:45AM and I was reunited with Baldur by 9. (Reunion with Dani will have to wait, since he'd already left for work by the time I got home.) I haven't read all my email, to say nothing of LJ and G+, and I doubt I'll even try to catch up. If there's something you think I should see, you know how to find me.

The Newark airport is a well-oiled machine, especially compared to Toronto Peterson where they're still rubbing sticks together to try to figure out how to make fire. I was at my connecting gate 35 minutes after stepping off the first plane -- including passport control, baggage claim, customs, baggage recheck, train to another terminal, and TSA. Granted it was 4AM, but I got a very favorable impression. I would fly through there again, were I to fly where that's relevant. (The airline was United. I don't know how much credit goes to the airline and how much to the airport, but that combination was smooth, at least.)

I'm supposed to be 2+ hours into a flight right now. But apparently I'm not allowed to have nice things, and Air Canada needed to go for a clean sweep. Ten (!) hour delay this time! The mind boggles.

BTW, even though they had my email address and (local) phone number, there was no contact. I knew I couldn't print a boarding pass at the hotel and Internet there was kind of expensive anyway, so I didn't see it before I left. (Though I don't know if it was even posted; someone behind me in line said he had checked a couple hours earlier.)

They wanted to put me on a combination that would get me home around noon tomorrow. I asked if they could do any better and explained the urgency. After more than three hours of standing in lines I have a flight through Newark that gets me there around 8AM. And, learning from history, I confirmed that if that connection fails, there's another flight an hour later. They claimed to be unable to put me on the El Al flight leaving at 4PM for bureaucratic reasons, grumble.

This may surprise some given the comments in another thread, but most of the agents I've dealt with here have been polite. (One seemed to have no respect for the queue, though; she kept pushing me aside because I was going to be here all day anyway, but I didn't want to be in her Internet-deprived office all day! Sheesh.)

I came to the airport hoping to get an upgrade as partial compensation for the difficulties they caused on my trip here. Instead I'm begging for a flight home a mere 10-12 hours late and, of course, I'll get whatever seat nobody else wanted (middle, I assume) and I have to assume I won't be able to eat the meal and plan accordingly. I will be contacting Air Canada's customer service when I get home, and frankly, I want a full refund. This is freaking ridiculous.

I'm done with Air Canada after this. I might also be done with Israel; we'll see when I calm down more. It is too frustrating to try to get there and back from Pittsburgh. At the very least I am done with solo major travel.