Alon’s Blog

Rant about fancy hotels

I have just arrived in Cambridge, MA for a week of consulting for Microsoft Research. They paid for my flight and hotel room so they put me in a fancy $200/night hotel. In this post I will try to explain why in my opinion, in general, the fancier the hotel the worse it is.

I have nothing against hotels as a service. Hotels provide a traveler with a clean place to spend the night, and with basic necessities. Hotels are useful when traveling, or when you need a clean neutral place to have sex. However, fancy hotels do not seem to provide these well, and charge a lot of money to do so.

Compare, for example, the fancy hotel I’m staying at now with a cheap motel for $40/night. The motel included a microwave and fridge, free parking, free wifi, and a free “breakfast”, which, admittedly, is nothing to feast over. However, the fancy hotel includes none of those (or least without caveats galore).

Here is a comparison of the cheap motel and the fancy hotel. I am purposefully omitting hotel names, as this is common for many hotels and motels.

August 10th, 2009 at 04:43 Posted by epsalon | American Culture, US Travel | 8 comments

Missed flight, business class

Greetings from over the Atlantic Ocean. I’m writing this blog post from KLM Flight 0605 from Amsterdam to San Francisco in Business class! But, before I write about my business class experience, I should explain my tweet about “missing my flight”.

It all started with me booking a one-way award ticket in business class from Tel Aviv to San Francisco via Amsterdam. The ticket was booked for April 16th at 5:05 am local time. Those with a keen eye will notice that that’s exactly when I posted my tweet about missing the flight. I did not make the flight for the simple reason I was sure I was booked on the April 17th flight, the one I’m on board right now.

The mix-up occurred due to an “off by one” error in copying the ticket information into Google Calendar. Since I was in the Pacific time zone I had to enter all time information in PDT, which is 10 hours earlier than Tel Aviv time, and 9 hours earlier than Amsterdam time. I did the math correctly, but neglected to adjust the date, thus adding the flight on Apr 16th at 7:05pm PDT instead of Apr 15th.

From that point onward, I did not look at my ticket until I was about to check in, what I believed was 26 hours before departure. I went to KLM’s check-in site, selected the flight path and the date and was surprised to see my ticket was not found. After looking up the ticket itself I realized that my booked flight is departing in two hours, while I’m at least a two hour drive from the airport, and my bags are not packed.

I called KLM Platinum reservations and they said that I’d have to book a new ticket, but they could cancel my existing ticket (and hopefully refund the miles and taxes paid). They recommended I call Flying Blue the next morning when they are available.

I didn’t want to wait till the next morning and tried calling the local airport, which was checking in my flight at that time. I got no answer. Then, I decided to try to call the US Flying Blue line, but it was already after 8pm on the east coast, so they too were not available. 5 am passed, and I didn’t have a ticket.

Then I came across the idea to call the Flying Blue center in a different timezone. I called Flying Blue Japan and they were happy to assist me. It turns out there was one award ticket left, in Business class, for the flight on the 17th. I booked that ticket.

Fast forward to the next day, and I boarded the first flight (TLV-AMS). It seems I would have been upgraded if I had an economy ticket as economy was full (as usual). The flight had a slight delay but my connection was fine. At Amsterdam, I went to the new lounge, took a shower, went online, and made a few phone calls.

About an hour later, I got tricked again by the flight information screens displaying my flight as “Boarding”. I went to the gate, quickly passed security and realized no one has yet boarded the aircraft. After nervously waiting for about 20 minutes, a delay was announced, then another one, and we finally started boarding 30 minutes after the scheduled departure time, and departed over an hour late. We should make up for some of the lost time in the air.

Now, for the business class experience. I’m seated at row 77, which is the upper deck exit row on the 747. It’s about 4 hours into the flight and I haven’t yet left the upper deck, and rarely left my seat, which turns into an almost flat bed that’s pretty comfy and sleepable. I spent the beginning of the flight sleeping (and eating the pretty good food) and then watched some shows on the IFE system, which is kinda old, but reasonable. I’m writing this on my laptop connected to the in-flight AC power.

Arrived safely at SFO, and posting this from the airport hotel.  That’s all for now. Sorry for not blogging more, but you can always follow me on Twitter!

April 18th, 2009 at 01:17 Posted by epsalon | US Travel, Frequent Flyer | 3 comments

Desert Snow

As I have updated before, my parents have arrived and have been here for a week now. Two days ago (Sunday), we started our road trip to Las Vegas through the California central valley and interstate I-5.

We spent most of the first (sunny) day driving until we reached Mojave, CA. Located in the Mojave desert, this town is home to one of the driest airports in the continental US and the world’s first civilian space port. Well, by the time we woke up the next day, it was on of the rare rainy days in the Mojave desert, with very poor visibility. However, our plans didn’t change and we took a tour of the airport.

Our next stop on the way was planned to be the Mojave national preserve HQ in Barstow to get tips about visiting this desert national park. However, on the way there something weird caught our eyes. What seemed for a second to be white sand turned out to be snow. Real white snow. In the desert. Barstow was covered with snow, an event unseen since 1985.

The snow was so bad that the direct route to Las Vegas (I-15) was closed and so we decided to go through the Mojave National Park in the snow. The result: some spectacular photos of desert plants in the snow, and a near-accident in 55mph (90km/h) with a truck on a narrow desert road.

When we finally arrived at Las Vegas and checked in to our hotel/casino on the strip, we went right to business and made more than $70 gambling. We’ll see how much of that we’ll lose…

December 16th, 2008 at 18:10 Posted by epsalon | Vegas, Family | 2 comments

$400 to spend a night in Georgia

That’s what I got offered, I accepted. They took back their offer. I’m talking obviously about Atlanta, GA, and the offer was by Delta due to overbooking in my flight back to San Francisco. The offer was revoked due to the fact they didn’t need volunteers after all. Too bad, I was looking forward to a day in Atlanta.

September 9th, 2008 at 01:02 Posted by epsalon | Frequent Flyer | no comments

The road to Midway

Today I have boarded a flight to Chicago, Illinois on my way to the AAAI-08 conference. As usual, instead of flying direct, I have connected through Minneapolis in order to fly Northwest and get a First-Class upgrade. This time I left my passport home intentionally, as this is a purely  domestic itinerary.

Some of you may recall my car accident. That led to me leaving my car at a garage for repair and renting a replacement car a few days ago. I have returned the rental car at the airport and thus saved the time and hassle of an airport shuttle.

As this is a short trip and the weather is warm, I packed almost nothing and did not check any bags, so I could proceed directly to the gate with my pre-printed boarding pass (as this is a domestic flight, I get no lounge access). My first class flight went smoothly, arriving on time at Minneapolis.

Upon arrivial, I checked the screens for my connection info and noticed that there was an earlier Northwest flight to Chicago Midway* airport. I decided to head directly to that gate and try to standby for the earlier flight. The gate agent told me that he could put me on standby, but the flight is likely to be full and I am not guaranteed a seat, and even if I get one, it would probably be in economy. I told the agent I don’t mind (I prefer spending an hour and a half on the plane in economy than in the terminal), and then I had to wait and see if there would be room for me.

The flight turned out to be fully booked, and all 12 first class seats were full. However, since I had Platinum status I got one of those! The flight did depart late, but I ended up arriving more than an hour before my original schedule. Another plus is that a nice girl sat next to me on the flight and we chatted all the way. She was flying from San Jose (SJO), Costa Rica and was on her final leg back home to Wisconsin. I had fun.

After arriving I checked in at my hotel and took a taxi to dinner with my advisor and some more Stanford folk at a Chicago restaurant. I  just now returned to the hotel. Updates to come.

*Midway airport (MDW), is named such not because of its location, but as a reference to the Battle of Midway.

July 15th, 2008 at 07:28 Posted by epsalon | Chicago, Frequent Flyer | 3 comments