After leaving the Park Hyatt Zürich, I wandered around the surrounding neighborhood and the northern end of the lake.

For those readers just tuning in, I actually wandered around Berlin on my trip to Europe this past winter.

Unter den Linden sees the same costumed crowd wanting money in exchange for photos as Times Square.

The nearby US Embassy has a Statue of Liberty in bear form.

Having stayed so close to the Duomo, it would be difficult for me to justify not sharing a photo if it.

While in Milan, I made a day trip to Lake Como.

I flew all the way to Kauai to fly on another airplane to see Kauai…

Our takeoff at Lihue was followed by American 266:

As I mentioned, I visited Santa Barbara, overnighting there before heading south on Amtrak to Los Angeles.

Before catching the train, I had to return my rental car to the Hertz office at SBA.  The new terminal’s nice.

In September, I decided to drive from Oakland to Santa Barbara, mostly along CA-1 from Santa Cruz to Santa Barbara.

From the train station, we took to walking around Vancouver until it was time to head to the airport to catch our flight back to Seattle.

I’m often told that I don’t showcase the photos of my destination enough.  Back in May, I went to Colorado Springs.  Here are a few, with a very minimal trip report as a lead-in:

I flew a very delayed, but remarkably pleasant Jetblue flight from New York to Denver, overnighting at the Hyatt Place Denver Tech Center before driving down to Colorado Springs the next morning.

I managed to do a bit of sightseeing on my Sunday afternoon before driving back to Denver airport:

I drove to Pike’s Peak, but snow necessitated a road closure several miles from the top.

With a ten hour layover in Zürich, I took to wandering around the city.  The weather could have been far more cooperative.

At the National Air and Space Museum, it was time for “Fond Memories with the Tulip.”

With about 23 hours in Istanbul, I signed up for the Turkish Airlines-provided city tour to get a quick glimpse of the city before my flight to Berlin.

Bleary-eyed from my redeye, I dropped off my bags at my hotel and then wandered into downtown Tokyo.

For reasons that weren’t clear to me when I was wandering around (and even now), Times Square is to be found in Sukhumvit Bangkok as well.

To continue my trend of proving I wandered outside of the airport, I present Zürich.

As it turns out, I do more than fly around the world in premium cabins and sit in airport lounges.   I leave the airport and wander around my destinations.

American’s dispatchers routed our flight from Seattle to Los Angeles down the coast.  Had we not had a slight mechanical delay, we would have been able to better appreciate the scenery they had planned for us.

United’s A320 painted in its “Friendship Livery” pulled up right before we pushed back for our IAD-DEN leg two weeks ago.

Boeing sent one of its 787’s, ZA004 with tail number N7874 down to Albuquerque.

In lieu of another trip this weekend, I offer a picture of the Sandia Mountains from last week’s trip.

The tram ride up the mountain was billed as a “flight,” but I doubt I’ll be earning my elite minimums with United Airlines for the trip.

Rather than adopt a photography is a crime attitude, Albuquerque Sunport has a few areas setup for plane spotting.

The North area has a covered picnic bench in the shape of a plane.

The cover for the garbage can is in the shape of a helicopter.

The North viewing area is close to the end of the A concourse, making it well-suited to seeing Southwest’s planes come and go.

To get back to New York, I traveled along SJC-LAX-JFK.  Once again, booking myself onto the p.s. redeye to New York.

United leaves SJC-LAX service to SkyWest.

Having noticed that my p.s. flight was looking a bit empty a week out, I chose to upgrade to business class with miles.  While award tickets to Europe would constitute a better redemption value, the p.s. economy to business class is one of the few values for domestic redemptions available.  Since I was in a T fare, the upgrade required 20k miles with the $75 copay waived for being an elite on United.  In contrast, the fully paid upgrade offer made a week out was for $375, giving me a 1.875 cent per mile redemption value.

Ordinarily, domestic passengers do not have complimentary access to airport lounges operated by the US-based carriers.  That said, p.s. business class passengers get access to the RCC at their departing airport and first class passengers the First Class lounge.  With a roughly three hour layover at LAX, I stopped by the RCC to take a look.

I seated myself near the windows and had a view of gate 70A and most of Terminal 8’s gates:

Back at SJC, my flight looked overbooked so I got added to the volunteer list there and headed to the gate to wait for the agent to arrive an hour before departure.

Volunteers weren’t needed for the flight, so I took my assigned seat as ticketed:  5B.  (The other emergency exit row on p.s., row 9 of business class was unavailable when my upgrade cleared.)

The redeye served a snack choice of either a fruit and cheese plate or a cold chicken sandwich.  I opted for the cheese plate:

The only inconvenience on my return segments was check-in.  Since I used my miles to explicitly upgrade for the p.s. segment rather than the entire direction of travel, risking burning 20k miles to only clear for a 45 minute long, regional jet flight rather than p.s., I could not check-in online.  Even as an elite, I had to spend about an hour on the phone with United Web Support the morning of my flight, first on hold, then waiting while they diagnosed the problem, and ultimately, until they realized they had to remove me from the UDU list for SJC-LAX, allow me to check-in, and then restore me to the SJC-LAX upgrade list.  Reservations with UA/CO seem surprisingly fragile.  Due to how my standby and volunteer listing went for my IAH-LAS segment on Memorial Day weekend, Continental’s agents had to spend longer processing my Same-Day flight change.

The Angeles Crest Highway reopened last week. It’s not an airplane, nor a swanky hotel, but it made for a fun drive…

…and a nice sunset from Mt. Wilson.