On a recent plane from Asia back to Canada, on board of a very recent 777 that had a completely updated interior, I got this message again. So can someone tell me why there is actually an ashtray in the lavatory, especially if it is placed just below the big “No Smoking in Lavatory” sign:

I can understand an ashtray in very old planes (those that are over 10 years old and that didn’t go through a complete overhaul since). But on a very modern one, I have to say that this evades me completely! Perhaps they are expecting the regulation to change, just as this is becoming the case with cell phones and wireless devices for Internet access.

Update 10 March 2011: I finally got an answer from the team at the AirplaneGeeks Podcast – here is the link to the episode with the answer: http://www.airplanegeeks.com/2011/03/08/episode-138-the-radial-rocket/

It really sounded like the currency from Switzerland was the equal of the one from a third-world country where the exchange rate changes by the minute due to civil war… so when I asked what currencies are actually accepted by my bank, the answer was simply US Dollars and British Pounds (at least one European currency, thanks to the Queen). Yes, you’ve read correctly, my bank in Canada isn’t even willing to exchange Euros.

And for those who ask, I am banking with one of the biggest ones in Canada who charge a fortune for a normal account per month, not a small unknown internet bank. I was already convinced that the banking system in this country is completely outdated, but this was just the little extra that confirmed everything. The only solution for me is to go to a currency exchange place downtown (yes, where the tourists go) and then take the Canadian Dollars to bring them to my branch! Not impressed…

In addition to the great ice sculptures, local inhabitants go and skate on the canal… well, I’ll see next year if I want to give it a try again. It’s been so long that I haven’t skated on ice that I’m not sure if I could actually still stand straight.

And here are a few more photos of the day:

Or should I be more specific… living in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada – Part 1. I’ve crossed the Atlantic in November of 2006, just in time for winter, which I survived, and am now enjoying my first Canadian summer. To summarize this blog post, I really like living in the capital of this huge country. People are really nice, and many of them speak a language that reminds me of French, hidden behind an accent and some strange ways of saying things, that is for someone who grew-up on the other side of the Atlantic. As for when living in the UK before coming to this side of the world, there are things that come as a surprise to me, some constructive comments and other random thoughts not really worth mentioning. In no particular order, I’ll be covering the milk distribution, the temperature during winter, batteries recycling, the Canadian-French language, buying geek toys, hockey and weather news on USA channels.

First things first, surviving the Winter in Canada is not as difficult as rumor has. Basic rules of survival: 1: Stay inside (if heated) whenever possible; 2: Get warm cloths to cover your whole body when rule number one cannot be applied; 3: wait a few more years for global warming to really kick-in . With my gear that keeps you warm up to -32 degrees Celsius (about -25 degrees Fahrenheit) and rule number one followed as much as possible (yes, plenty of time to enjoy my Playstation 3), it worked out well. And when you go to enjoy Winterlude or walk around the Gatineau Park, you’ll discover that there is a huge difference between -10 degrees and -20 degrees (both Celsius)… at minus twenty, your nose freezes from the inside because of the cold air you inhale! The dryness and very little wind most of the time make any temperature “above” -10 degrees C quite comfortable (for a limited amount of time). And for those who want to to visit Ottawa and don’t like the cold, avoid February and March… actually, from what I can tell, I also recommend avoiding the summer as it gets really hot and humid, with plenty of mosquitos and other strange flying things. Ideally, try June or September.

Now that myth number one has been covered, and you are waiting inside, let’s watch some TV. While not directly related to Canada, it is still amazing every time you go through US “news” channels such as CNN and stop on weather forecast to see that this snow storm shouldn’t be a problem for people living north of the border, as there is only a big nothing above the United States of America. I suppose the Swiss weather forecast do the same.

To continue on the theme “Winter”, I really enjoyed my first season of NHL… by the way, did you notice that it’s called National Hockey League? Anyway, the Senators (the local team) made it to the finals of the Stanley Cup this year and finished champions of the Eastern Conference (yes, I’m getting better at the lingo). I really enjoyed the games, but I enjoyed even more seeing how a whole city lives for their team, without the side effect of alcohol on Football fans in the UK for example (or should I say soccer now that I am in North America). On the topic, for those outside of Canada, did you know that there is the Under 20 FIFA world cup? Back to hockey. Not sure about the story behind, but having finals in June against a team from California seems a little strange… well, now that the NHL season is over, I’m getting into MiLB, e.g. baseball.

Good news for those of you who are environmentally aware, there is a system in place to enable sorting of the trash (cans, paper, garden, …) and the waste management company comes weekly to pick-up the various types of trash (quite a complex yearly schedule is provided, taking into account the holidays). But the one thing I haven’t been able to figure out yet is what to do with old batteries? Dear canadian friends, batteries are one of the most polluting things with a limited life-span. In Switzerland, every single store where you can buy batteries has also a special box to recycle them. In Canada, just like in the UK, I am still wondering what to do with my discharged batteries. If anyone has an explanation, please let me know, because I start having a pile of those at home!

And now for something completely different: Milk distribution. I have to admit that it took me a while until I understood what to do with the milk that you buy in plastic bags at the supermarket, but now I’ve got the whole equipment and am ready to enjoy my “Café au Lait”. It’s a great idea as it takes almost no space in the trash (see my previous paragraph) and isn’t worst than tetra-paks to keep milk in a container. It’s just a little surprising the first time you see it.

I couldn’t write a blog post about living in Canada without mentioning the local French language. I have to say, it can be difficult to understand the Canadian-French from Ontario at first (and sometime even after a while). It seems that the French spoken in Québec is a lot easier to understand. For those of you who want to give it a try, I can only recommend the web site Têtes à claques. It must be like “proper” English from Leeds in the UK!

To end-up this first part of my living in Canada rant, I have to mention to all the geeks out there that coming to Canada won’t help with getting the latest toys at the same time as in the USA… the only benefit is that it’s only a car drive away compared to Europe! A few examples, Sony hasn’t released the Mylo or the eReader in Canada, the iPhone is nowhere to be found and I don’t think you can buy movies of the iTunes store. The good news is that depending on what you want to buy, with the current exchange rate between the Canadian and the US Dollars, it’s almost worth driving / flying over the border to do some shopping.

That’s all for now!

Is this in Ontario, Canada?

Or is it this one?

Dear Guest,
Every day, millions of gallons / liters of water are used to wash towels that have only been used once. You can help the environment by putting your towels back on the racks, which will mean “I will use it again”. If you leave it on the floor, it means “please replace”. Thank you for helping conserving Earth’s vital resources.

As a good Swiss who is mindful of the scarce resources on the small planet we all live, I always put my towels back on the rack. But nine times out of ten, when I get back to my hotel room in the evening, I find that all the towels in the bathroom have been changed! This leads me to a simple question: Why did I even bother?

Currently staying in San Diego, California, I guess that the underpaid illegal immigrants who clean the hotel rooms in the region don’t understand English very well, but the hotel management could explain the rule during training. If it’s to make the guest feel he did his ecologically-friendly action of the day to feel better when he steps in his huge SUV as he will have forgotten it anyway in the evening, then don’t bother putting that little card in the bathroom.

OK, I’ll stop my complain. But to all the hotel mangers out there, please stop providing me the impression that if I do this little thing, I’ll help save the planet, and then show me that you didn’t care in the first place and that this little card in the bathroom was just part of the hotel policy to provide a better “experience” to its guests.

Update: Day two of staying in the same hotel… I had to continue my experiment. Well, nothing changed, still got new towels when I came back to my room.

Technorati Tags: opinion, travel

Then again, after you’ve experienced them driving through the city, it might be just that… The red light is the enemy as it doesn’t make the $ counter go up. Two choices: accelerate and go through even if it is a dark orange or accelerate as fast as possible as soon as it’s about to get green to catch-up the lost time. The biggest problem with these two options is when you have more than one taxi at an intersection…

Go Sens Go!

The biggest surprise was that the restaurant on 15 Union Street is no longer the “Marshall House”, but the lobster and clam chowder is still as good as before, even with that place under new management

Great meetings, and surprisingly good weather compared to what it should “normally” be

Saturday was a very nice day to rumble around in Lausanne and go enjoy the view of the lake and the alps

There are also those who are much more gifted with their hands than I am and who take part in the International Ice-Carving Competition. Really impressive temporary-work of art.

And for those who wonder, there is a difference between -10¬? and -20¬? Celsius… when the air you breath freezes your nose, you can tell it’s cold outside

The most interesting thing in this game is that there where almost as many Toronto Maple Leafs fans as there where Ottawa Senators fans… and when you get the two groups together encouraging their teams, it combines “Go Sens Go” and “Go Leafs Go” into what sounds like “Go Sleeves go”

A few more weeks and the Canal should freeze. Time to get myself some skating shoes

As time goes on, I’ll certainly continue the “Living in…” series, but with an Ontario view this time. I can already tell you that opening a bank account is almost as bad as it is in the UK, with the only advantage that you don’t need a utility bill to get started… but you start from scratch with the credit history

That’s it for now… flying back shortly to the UK to finish organizing the move.

So, I’ve lived in the UK for over three years now… it has been really wonderful so far. People are really nice, and the weather is a lot better than what the rumor would like to have you believe. Yes, it rains from time to time, and the sky can be rather cloudy, but overall I have the impression that there is some beautiful sunshine every day. That must be the reason why british natives tell you that there was a beautiful weather yesterday… they simply omit to specify that the blue sky and warm sunshine lasted only 5 minutes

For the “few” days of bad weather, there are plenty of indoor activities to do, even if people tend to do their planned outdoor activities anyway. One of the options is to go to the theater to watch a movie. For someone who comes from a country where the price per person for a movie ticket was about CHF 16.- (about GBP 7) three years ago, I haven’t been shocked with a price tag of 6-7 pounds. But when in addition to that, you get 30-45 minutes of advertising after the scheduled start time for the movie, and there is someone selling ice-creams while the movie is still playing, I am starting to get somewhat annoyed! At least they don’t stop the movie 20 times to get you to buy pop-corn!

So if the weather is not that nice and you don’t want to go out to see a movie, what can you do? Well, I like cooking (when time permits) and when I found the place I have been living in for the last three years, there was an AGA like device in the kitchen… I since then have a separate electric oven to actually be able to cook. For those who are not familiar with it, you must be wondering what an Aga is? In the configuration at my place, it is a combined cooker, water heater and house heater, all in one nice looking big blue box in the middle of the kitchen. Sounds like a good idea, but here is the catch. If you want to make some pasta one nice summer evening, you need to start the long process of heating the Aga as well as the kitchen as the whole thing radiates heat throughout the room. As a side effect, the house is also warming up as the heating system is flowing through the Aga and, to add to the mix, new hot water is being added to the boiler, which is conveniently located in our bedroom. But then you start learning the trick of letting the hot water flow to accelerate the heating process. Logical and environmental-friendly, isn’t it? So what if you want to have a warm shower in the monring… heating the house (or at least the kitchen) is the secret to it.

This isn’t a big problem in the winter when the Aga is turned on 24/7, but during the summer, especially with the heat wave we had this year (over 36° Celsius in the UK in 2006), adding extra heat to the house on top of what was already coming from the outside isn’t my idea of fun! To quote the Monty Pythons: “And there was much rejoicing… Yeaaaah!”.

To close this blog entry about living in the UK, I need to add a little something about National Health Service (NHS). This is the government-managed healthcare system in the UK. Do I need to say anything more? OK, here are more details. About 12% of the salary of a UK tax payer is taken to finance the national healthcare system, and everyone in this country gets the same level of service. You also need to register with one generalist practitioner (shorten “GP” by everyone) when you first arrive in the UK. This specific GP then becomes your first point of contact with the system for everything. If you need to see a specialist, you first go to your GP. He/She enters something in a computer system so that somebody somewhere can schedule an appointment. And then you wait until they contact you (for emergencies, you are allowed to go straight to the hospital). In my case, it took a little over a month until I received a letter through the post with a date and time for an appointment… but this one was for over 2 months down the line!

And if you need to reschedule your appointment, my experience so far is that it moves it by at least a month. It gets even better… one day of early July, I receive a letter through the post telling me that my scheduled appointment for mid-August was unexpectedly cancelled and would be rescheduled for end of September!?! How can you unexpectedly cancel something over a month before it happens!?!

It might sound like I had a lot of medical troubles, but actually it was ONE routine check with a doctor beyond the responsibilities of my GP! You can still get private health-care, but you have to go through your NHS GP and be referred by him. This governement-owned and managed health care system is really impressive for a country where almost everything else has been privatized. Having experienced first hand the system, I can only agree with The Economist when they call for reforms

That’s it for Part 2 of my Living in the UK tales. This will certainly be the last entry about this subject on my blog for a few years… but that will be covered in another posting.

Continuing our way down, we visited York. Beautiful city center, and with that many pedestrian zones, it makes a really nice place to wander around. We then headed towards Cambridge, continuing the use or the B1234 rule as much as possible. The first time we experienced some rain during our tour was the evening we arrived in Cambridge. This was great as it cooled the temperatures a little down. For those who don’t live in the UK, don’t laugh! We had a heat-wave during our tour, with a peak at 36 degrees Celsius in Wales… not really what you would expect when you listen to the rumors about this country. Anyway, the sky was clear the next morning and Cambridge is yet another of these beautiful cities that you need to stop are enjoy.

We intentionally decided to leave London out of the tour, but one of the only possibility to go from Cambridge towards Canterbury down in the South East is to take the M25… lucky us, it was early afternoon and we avoided the major traffic. Our journey South East ended shortly after Canterbury, and then started going west again. We stopped at Bodiam Castle near Hastings. This is the National Trust that is featured on the back of the 2006 guide and is completely surrounded by water.

Continuing west, we stopped in Hastings. The place called “The Mermaid” (I believe) has the best Fish & Chips I had so far… thank you David for your recommendation. Well worth the detour just for that

This concludes our two weeks tour of the UK. I won’t say it enough: what a beautiful country. I’ll need to do the same in Switzerland one day. To finish my blog entries about this tour, I wanted to make a little advertisement for the nicest Bed-and-Breakfasts we stayed during our tour.

• The Swallows Rest, The Ridgeway, Weymouth ( DT3 5PZ ) – Phone +44 1305 815687
• Castle Canyke Farm, Priors Barn Road, Bodmin, Cornwall (PL31 1HG) – Phone +44 1208 79109
• Mor-lais, Rhydyfelin, Aberystwyth, Cerdigion, Wales (SY23 4QD) – Phone +44 1970 612929
• Newlands Grange, Hesket – Newmarket, Wigton, Cumbria (CA7 8HP) – Phone +44 16974 78676
• Rowanbrae Cottage, Main Street, Garelochhead, Argyll & Bute, Scotland (G84 0AN) – Phone +44 1436 810184
• “Newton”, Westfield Road, Stoneheaven, Scotland (AB39 2EE) – Phone +44 1569 762261
• Torwood Lodge, High Cross Avenue, Melrose, Roxburghshire, Scotland (TD6 9SU) – Phone +44 1896 822220
• Rush Farm, York Road, Deighton, York (YO19 6HQ) – Phone +44 1904 728459
• Orchard Farmhouse, 56 Comberton Road, Toft, Cambridge (CB3 7RY) – Phone +44 1223 262309

Overall, the only place we had a bad B&B experience was near Manchester… but that was the only one we could find in the region.

That’s all, now back to work

Continuing our way North on the west coast of Scotland, we headed for the Highlands. Lucky us, the road in front of us was closed at one point and we had to take a little detour… so here is an addition to the B1234 road recommendations… if there is a road without a name, it’s even better than a B road with four numbers

While Fort William is a touristy place, continuing toward the North West brings you to a place called Glenfinnan Monument. This is a National Trust of Scotland, to Scottish correspondent to the English National Trust mentioned in my previous blog. And the good news is that if you are a member of the English National Trust, you get free access to the Scottish National Trust and vice-versa. Now the one thing to know for those who don’t live in the UK and plan a similar trip… get a membership of the National Trust of Scotland, it is cheaper per person than from its English counterpart.

Near Aberdeen, we stopped at yet another National Trust called Castle Fraiser. Beautiful places with wonderful gardens and sceneries are always available at these locations. And as you can see from the picture, we had a beautiful sunshine (I did not use Photo-Paint or Paint Shop Pro on these photos)

Once we reached the East cost of Scotland in Aberdeen, we started our descent back south towards Edinburgh. Stopping over night in Stonehaven, and having parents who play golf, we had to halt in St. Andrews. The good news for all the non-golfers out there, there are other things to do there than trying to get a ball into a way to tiny hole far away with a stick.

Shortly stopping in Edinburgh, a very nice city, we found our way to Melrose in the Borders. This is a beautiful town that hosts two National Trusts plus an old Abbey. In addition, the whole town is taking part in a flower contest of some sort… Well worth a stop. To bad that the library, which has free Internet access, is closed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Well, I’ll find another opportunity to post this blog entry.

Part of our two weeks tour of the UK, we only had a few days to go through Scotland. Next time, we should try to spend the whole two weeks over there, but that’s true for almost all the places we’ve been so far in the UK. As previously, I’ve uploaded a few more photos from our trip in Scotland and the east cost of England onto my web site. We are now heading down to the South East of England. More of our trip in a next blog entry.

Tintagel in Cornwall seems to be known for being the place where King Arthur was born when it comes to tourist attractions… to bad he is just a legend. This little city on the northern coast of Cornwall is really beautiful and the Old Post Office (a National Trust building, more on that later) is worth a visit, as well as the see shore (next to King Arthur’s castle).

Now one thing I would highly recommend to anyone looking at the same type of tour as we are currently doing: Get a National Trust membership before you start and follow the guide. For those who don’t know it, the National Trust is an organization which owns and maintains beautiful heritage places (countryside, see shore, houses, castles and gardens) across England (in Scotland, there is the National Trust of Scotland). Selworthy Green is one example of a beautiful place to stop and have a cup of tee.

Turing left or right without really knowing where we wanted to go, we stopped in a small town in Wales called Liandielo. I hope that i am not introducing typos in the names of the places in Wales, but that won’t be easy… must be great to play Scrabble when you have G W Y L L and a few other letters…

Back to our tour of the UK. Our method so far has been to pick a place on the map in the morning where we would want to be for the evening. Taking the name of that town / city, we are typing it into the SatNav system, with the clear instruction that it should avoid all highways. We also set the guidance to be the shortest route and not the fastest route, so that we avoided the larger roads. Here is a rule of thumb that has proven great to find beautiful (and not to touristy) places so far: Don’t even get on a M road (that’s a highway), an A road with 1 number is to be avoided, two numbers is still not perfect but is OK for small periods of time. To really enjoy the country, go with a 3 numbers A road, or even better a 4 number A road (such as the A1234). The ideal is a B road with 4 numbers, but then it really gets interesting when there is a two way traffic. Taking that method, we arrived in Aberystwyth on evening.

Back to the National Trusts. Bodnant Gardens in Wales are absolutely beautiful. And the good news is, it was (almost) on our way. So when you see a sign with the little logo of the trust, go with your instinct and follow it (if you want to stop for a walk). So far, we have not been disappointed and I don’t think you actually can be.

One more National Trust we stopped (you can see that we start to be addicted to these) is the one called Dunham Massey, near Manchester. One quick comment for that region… don’t try to stay there over night

Next day, in our pursuit to head North to Scotland, we decided to take a little detour through the Lake District. This was simply amazing. Getting lost in the middle of the lakes has resulted in a great day. And with the Sun taking part in our trip so far (except near Manchester), we can only hope that it will stay this way for the reminder of our tour.

If you want to get professionally lost and have got our message about the National Trusts, type in Watendlath near Borrowdale into your GPS and stay on that tiny road for a while. Really worth the extra few miles to get there.

We are now about to enter Scotland where we will be for the next few days.

Heading South-west, I told the GPS to get us to Bournemouth. It’s really nice not to listen to the SatNav voice, but still know that it is there and you have a vague idea of how far you still have to go. Getting lost on our way, we stopped in a beautiful small town called Dummer.

We then continued our way to Bournemouth. Beautiful palm-trees there… almost felt like the south of France. Continuing our way South West, we drove by Weymouth to head towards Fortuneswell on the Isle of Portland. The only problem there was that it was really difficult to find a Bed and Breakfast to stay over night. We finally found a very nice place near Weymouth.

Day two of out tour. We decide to continue towards Cornwall. On our way there, and turning left or right whenever I wanted, we took some very small roads (they are both ways, which is fun when someone is coming from the opposite side).

Getting professionally lost (as much as you can get lost when you have a GPS telling you where to go), we found a very nice town called Beer (yes, I know, like the drink, but for a Swiss who comes from a country where a town is called Bière, that’s not big news). I can only recommend you get lost the same way as we did if you are in the South West of England… just don’t ask me how I go there, I don’t remember

We then stopped in Torquay (Cornwall is really far from Maidenhead once you try to get there…)

For our second night, we have settled in a very nice B&B near Bodmin in … yes… Cornwall! Not so far is supposed to be the Eden Project. Sadly enough, when we arrived there, it was already closed and we where not able to even see it from the outside.

We are now almost ready to head North towards Wales and then Scotland, to finally come back on the east-coast of Great Britain. More to come in a future blog entry.

One last thing. I’ll be uploading a few more photos from our trip to my web site…

As the law says: “if it can happen, it will happen”. I must have been pushing my luck for way to long as I rarely have major problems while travelling, except a few luggage delivery delays (never lost), which I avoid by having only carry-on most of the time. But now, travelling seems to catch up with a vengeance. My trip from London (UK) to Boston (USA) via Montreal (Canada) at the end of February 2006 has been an interesting experience that I would rather not repeat in the near future, to say the least.

Everything started very well on a Friday afternoon. I got to the London Heathrow airport well ahead of schedule, got the great news that I would be able to use my upgrade voucher (thank you Air Canada) and was relaxing at the lounge… nothing was preparing me for the next 2 days to get to Boston. But back to London… the flight takes off on time, the power-plug for my laptop works and I get ready for an uneventful flight over the Atlantic. Shortly after take-off, the captain announces that the expected temperature in Montréal would be -2° Celsius with risks of freezing rain. As I only have a connecting flight within the same terminal there, I don’t really get worried about it.

Seven hours later, while starting the descent, the captain announces that the temperature at our arrival is actually -17° Celsius and that there are very strong winds. This made for quite a shaky descent, but we finally landed on time and I had plenty of time to catch my connection. Customs was very quick (Montréal has a separate customs waiting row for customers in transit) and then started the wait for the luggage. The only thing I can say is that I knew I should have only travelled with carry-on luggage!

After almost one hour, my luggage suddenly arrives. It seems that because of the bad weather, the unloading was a lot harder than normal. Yes, the luggage did arrive on the same plane. The bad news is that this only left me with 25 minutes to catch my connection. An now the fun really begins.

The connecting flight from Montréal to Boston I was scheduled on was cancelled because of the weather conditions. No big problem as they transferred me to the next one scheduled to leave about two hours later. But if planes are cancelled because of meteorological conditions, that does not mean the next one will take off.

And, yes, that flight was cancelled as well. As this was the last flight of the day between Montréal and Boston, I had to be transferred to one the next day (not the first one which was already overbooked, but the one at 2pm). And to make it even better, outside of rescheduling me, Air Canada’s answer was that they are sorry, but as this is because of weather conditions, there would be nothing else for me. I therefore had to find out a hotel for the night (keeping in mind that I had pre-paid my car rental and hotel in Boston for that night, so that I would double-pay my hotel for that night). Lucky me, there where still a few rooms available near the airport.

But before I head to the hotel, I wanted to confirm that everything was looking good for the next day. I had to wait well over an hour in a massive line at the ticket desk (and there where no priority lines for frequent flyers / business class – Air Canada, this should be fixed). At about 3.30 AM GMT, the time-zone I was in, I got confirmation that everything “should” be fine the next day and I headed to bed.

As their office was closed during the night, I contact the travel insurance company on Saturday morning to learn that my policy does not cover for the hotel night as this would be the responsibility of the airline company… not sure why I would take a travel insurance if it doesn’t cover problems that can occur during my travels! Looks like I will now have to start a long back-and-forth between the airline and the travel insurance company to get this resolved, but that’s another story.

I came back to the Montréal airport early so that I could make sure to get on the plane. Over night the weather conditions did improve drastically, and the departure screens didn’t show any “Cancelled” messages, only a few “Delayed”. Good news! Almost

So I wait a few hours. The massage-service that you can get at Montréal Airport should be available at every airport, and the Air Canada lounge is nice with free WiFi Internet. At 13.35, the boarding process started and I go through the gate. I got stopped just before getting on board of the plane by the flight crew because they would have to change the “flying-machine”. And so starts another first experience for me, the de-embarking process before take-off. Anyway, we go to the new gate, wait about 30 minutes to learn that the second plane was not ready to fly.

And now for the good new. In French, there is a saying that got contradicted this time… “jamais deux sans trois”. Well, the third plane was the right one and I was finally on my way to Boston with 22 hours delay. Once landed, my luggage arrived at the conveyor, my car rental and hotel room where waiting for me. And the most important part, which was the purpose of my visit to the Boston area in the first place, I had a wonderful dinner with one of my best friends and his wife.

I love when stories finish with a happy ending, especially when someone I know or myself is the main character