Last day in Alaska

For this day I had planned a visit to the very interesting Anchorage Museum.






Exhibits ranged from totem poles to paintings, kayaks, sleds, and typical attire, lightweight waterproof gut parkas made from the intestines of sea lions, seals, whales and grizzly bears, and hunting hats.














A view of downtown Anchorage, taken from a point aptly named Downtown Anchorage Viewpoint, where there is also a whale observation station run by marine biologists.


After some spotting at Point Woronzof Road I went to the airport early in the evening to return the car and check in for my red-eye flight to Chicago.



I swear it wasn�t me they were after! (Teaser for later in the trip)

In order to get some decent sleep, I booked this flight in F. Two days prior to departure I received an e-mail from United prompting me to pre order the meal, but as none of the choices were something I would jump at without hesitation I just ticked the option �I will decide on board�.

Anchorage ANC � Chicago ORD
United Airlines UA 531
STD / ATD: 23:59 / 23:52
STA / ATA: 09:08 / 08:59
B38M N27273
Seat: 2A

My hopes of spending the waiting time in the lounge were shattered when the check-in agent told me that UA have no lounge at ANC. I guess that would give me enough time to get acquainted with every nook and cranny of the Ted Stevens terminal�

The very orderly boarding by groups started at 11:25 p.m. After boarding in group D or 5 on most of the segments on this trip, getting to board in group 1 was a welcome change.


The six or seven meal options offered for pre-ordering shrank to just two on board, of which I took the chicken for lack of a better choice. After the late dinner I went into lie flat mode and slept for around four hours.


Next stop: She-cah-go

I am glad you got to meet Seat 2A. What a nice guy. I have had the pleasure to meet him a few times when he has come through Denver. Your trip through Alaska sounds incredible.

The word "Alaska" is derived from an Aleut word alaxsxaq or "mainland," which the Russian slavers changed to "Alyeska." The Aleut word for the village (various spellings) is Ounalashka.

It's not like there's a landfill you can drive the stuff to. And stuff takes a LONG time to decay in the local climates. It's a problem all across Alaska.

Thanks for clarifying the etymological aspect of the term Alaska. Regarding the stuff, that's what I thought as well: Where should they take it to?

So true, HawaiiTrvlr. The trip was indeed incredible.

OP great report and enjoyed reading all of it.

Barrow looks like a dirty, barren, vast wasteland. I would never want to visit that place.

Reading this is making miss home (I'm Alaskan born).

Thanks enviroian. You are right, Barrow is not exactly the place where one would want to spend a longer holiday. The area has been inhabited by native people for more than 1500 years but nowadays I wonder what it's raison d'�tre is. Yes, it is the administrative center of the North Slope Borough, but I can't figure out what the local economy is based on. Maybe a member familiar with the matter can illustrate us.

Then I'm glad to have been able to bring a bit of your home state to you, wrp96. The Alaska part of the report is now over, so no more homesickness.

A weekend in Chicago

As my return trip was also via ORD, I thought I might as well build in a weekend stopover in Chicago to explore the city a bit. Until now it had been a gaping blank in the list of U.S. metropolises I have visited.

Though we landed 30 minutes early on runway 27R, it took us 20 minutes and a grand tour of ORD to reach our gate. Once in the terminal I followed the signs to ground transportation, bought a Ventra ticket for 3 days and hopped on the first available Blue Line L.


At Logan Square I changed to a bus that would take me right to the doorstep of my hotel for the next two nights.






Though check-in only starts at 3 p.m., an early check-in was possible against a fee. The elevator had a quirky d�cor, as had the room.










Time to explore! While in Anchorage, I bought a CityPass and made online reservations for those attractions I wanted to visit that required one. With a CTA station only a few hundred yards away on the same avenue as the hotel, I was quickly on a southbound Brown Line train.

First stop today was the Shedd Aquarium. On a Saturday around noon the place was pretty packed, but while most visitors were attracted by the dolphin acrobatics show, I was more drawn to stranger creatures.










From there I took a wander in the general direction of downtown.








Having worked up an appetite, I thought: When in Rome� eat Chicago style hot dogs!






Get your kicks...


My next reservation was for the SkyDeck high up on the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower. Though I showed up a bit early, with the CityPass and its priority access it was no problem to change the time to an earlier hour.














For dinner I tried the famed deep dish pizza, which I guess is a matter of taste.


In stark contrast to the previous bright and sunny day, the moment I set a foot out of the hotel entrance the next morning it started to drizzle. In all honesty this came as no surprise, since I had checked the weather forecast for the weekend in previous days and that�s what was predicted. I still made it relatively dry to the CTA station and onto the train, but very soon it started pouring. Getting off the Brown Line at one of the Loop stations the first thing to do was to get an umbrella. Try chasing such an item on an early Sunday morning in the deserted downtown of any big city! The department stores were all closed for at least one more hour, but I found an open Walgreens that had umbrellas. This must have been the hottest-selling item that morning.


Now better equipped to dodge the rain it was time to head to Millennium Park. The crowds were luckily kept to a minimum by the bad weather, and the sprinkled �Bean� certainly wasn�t your usual sight of the Cloud Gate.








No children were floundering about in the reflecting pool between the two towers of the Crown Fountain either.






Later that morning I had a reservation for the River Cruise Architecture Tour, so I walked over to the jetty where my line departed from.






Though interesting, the tour itself was only half as fun as it would have been in bright sunshine. The rainy weather certainly provided an unusual ambiance.








Once off the boat I went for a stroll along the Riverwalk, which was also eerily empty.








In the afternoon I had a reservation for the 360 Chicago Observation Deck in the John Hancock Center. Some may wonder why go up two similar buildings for a panorama sight of the city from a vantage point, but I reasoned that the buildings were in two different areas and, as it turned out, the rainy and cloudy weather in this instance made for a completely different experience. Furthermore, the admission was already paid with the CityPass. I showed up at the time of my reservation but was told that the upper half of the building was completely engulfed in clouds (and shown a live photo of the current view � nil, nada!). A change to a later time slot when the weather would hopefully have improved (no guarantee on that) was no problem at all, so I went up a couple of hours later.









The epitome of a skyscraper

By the time I returned to the hotel in the late afternoon the rain had finally subsided.

The long trip home

My first flight of today was scheduled to depart at 8 a.m. Not knowing how frequently the bus to Logan Square station would pass so early in the morning, I preferred to have a cab take me there. Out of bed at 4:00, check-out from the hotel at 4:45, taxi very much on time 5 minutes later, on the platform at 5:16. Although I had read somewhere that the Blue Line to the airport runs 24 hours a day at 7 minute intervals, the next train would only leave in 17 minutes. Not too much of a problem.

All in all, it took me 1 hour to get from the hotel to the airport. Trekking from the CTA station to Terminal 5 via long corridors, escalators up, overpasses, escalators down, underground passages, etc., took a while as well, but fortunately check-in went pretty swiftly. The (more senior) agent asked me if I intended to stay in Panama, which I negated and explained that I was just connecting in PTY.

Chicago ORD � Panama City PTY
Copa Airlines CM 236
STD / ATD: 07:56 / 07:56
STA / ATA: 13:24 / 13:42
B738 HP-1840CMP
Seat: 2F

Once I was seated the cabin crew pointed out that no carry-on baggage should be stowed on the floor, not even small backpacks like mine, so up in the overhead bin it went.






The pre-departure beverages on offer were water and orange juice.


Suddenly the more junior of the two agents working the counter where I checked in approached me and asked for proof of onward travel out of Panama. Fortunately, I had checked in online the evening before and was able to show him the boarding pass for my flight from PTY to BOG that same day. He then asked for my passport, and after flipping through the booklet returned it without any comment. All very strange. In any case, my U.S, visa is good for entry into Panama and I had been there both at the beginning of this trip and in February on my trip to St. Maarten. Were they really afraid that I would stay?

After another lengthy taxi through that immense construction site that ORD is at the moment, we took off from runway 10L 15 minutes after leaving the gate (sorry for the blur).




Breakfast choices were French toast or omelet, of which I opted for the latter. It came with a croissant and a fruit salad.






Skirting Florida�s west coast, we passed Tampa, Port Charlotte/Punta Gorda, Fort Myers/Cabo Coral, Naples, Marco Island, the Florida Keys, and Varadero in Cuba in relatively short succession.
















Who would have thought that these places would all be battered by Hurricane Milton only a few days later?

To pass the time I watched a couple of movies from the IFE and soon we were on approach to PTY, with the southern access to the Panama Canal clearly visible.




After a first landing attempt which was aborted due to wind shear or tailwind (the explanations were different in English and in Spanish) we landed without any hiccups 15 minutes later and had an extremely long taxi (for PTY standards anyway) of 21 minutes to the gate. Instead of the usual recording on the IFE screen, the purser came personally to each seat to thank the passengers for choosing CM.

Stopover in Panama & Copa Lounge in T2

Once off the plane at the far end of Terminal 2 I made the long trek to the opposite end of Terminal 1, where the gates usually used by Avianca are located. At 20 minutes without using walkways it was certainly a good exercise after several hours sitting still on a plane. The Avianca gate was just opening and I quickly got my printed boarding passes. Now back to T2.

Access to the Copa lounge in Terminal 1 is located quite inconspicuously between a candy shop and a coffee outlet, on the landside-facing corridor of the concourse.


This used to be the only CM lounge and was equipped with showers, but since the opening of Terminal 2 and the lounge there the shower area here was shut down.

Access to the Copa Club in Terminal 2 is via escalators in front of the Attenza Duty Free in the center of the concourse, though I am sure there is also an elevator.


With the boarding pass from the flight I arrived on in J and the statement that I would continue on another *A carrier I was invited in.

The lounge offers a manned bar, several different seating areas, a TV room, a working area, family room, resting room, and great views of the apron and one of the runways. There are also washrooms and four shower rooms available in the lounge.
































On offer at the lounge buffet were lemon crumble tart and bread pudding for the sweet tooth, and Tex-Mex salad, chickpea salad, yucca ceviche, toast, hot sauce, and beef and chicken empanadas. A coffee machine and a beverage dispenser rounded up the offerings.












These items were constantly restocked but remained unchanged throughout my 6-hour stay from 2:30 pm to 8:30 pm.

I helped myself to a bit of everything except the chickpeas. Contrary to what I had expected, the beef-filled empanadas were bone-dry while the chicken ones had a proper moist filling.




Later I may have had a G&T or 3 from the bar while catching up on TR�s.


Closer to my departure time I had a shower to freshen up and then made my way back to T1 and the AV gate.




Panama City PTY � Bogot� BOG
Avianca AV 057
STD / ATD: 21:40 / 21:33
STA / ATA: 23:14 / 22:56
A20N N963AV
Seat: 30A

Boarding started at 20:55, early for the relatively light load on this flight and by 21:44 we were airborne off runway 3L.




Let�s see if I find something on the BOB menu.












A focaccia sandwich and a beer hit the spot nicely, though I was the only passenger to order anything that evening.


The cockpit crew started the descent into BOG just as we were overflying Medellin (MDE) and twenty minutes later we parked at the gate, starting the long trek through a deserted arrivals concourse to international connections. Fortunately, there was no queue at security and I was airside again in no time. My next and last flight of this trip would depart in just a tad more than 7 hours and I decided that it would be too much hassle and too little time to go to a hotel for the short night, staying in the terminal instead.








Not the Raffles, not the Regency, not the Ritz but a rock-hard lounger to spend the night on.


Now, BOG is an airport that has no curfew and operations go on throughout the night. Trying to get some sleep between the usual boarding calls and five �last� calls for Viva Aerobus to Mexico City to my left at 2 am and then the boarding calls and another five �last� calls for American to MIA at 3 in the morning to my right was not very conducive to peaceful sleep.

A week or so after my return I learned that BOG now offers sleeping pods in the international terminal at a place called Sleep Oasis for USD 8,50/hr. Good to know for next time!

The last leg

Very early the next morning it was time for the last leg of this trip, the flight home to SOT, scheduled to depart at 7:15 am. We were leaving again from a bus gate and all passengers from group C onwards (I was in boarding group D) were requested to gate-check their carry-on baggage. The rollaboards were to be taken on the bus and handed over to the ground crew at the foot of the airstairs. The plane was parked at the furthest of the remote stands, literally in the boondocks of BOG, and the bus ride there took so long that I jokingly thought: �They aren�t going to bus us all the way to SOT, are they?� The flight was � again � totally full and in seats B and C next to me I had a young couple with a baby that would not stop crying for the duration of the flight. Rather than being upset I felt sorry for the parents who couldn�t find a way to mollify their baby in all that time.


The 737-200 still going strong, at least hauling cargo:


A few random thoughts that crossed my mind while writing up this report:

- You can choose your holiday destination, but you don�t get to choose the weather you encounter there. On this trip it was not always bright sunshine, but even the rainy and foggy days had their charm somehow. Besides: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
- As a consequence of the above, I didn�t get to see any northern lights during my stay in Alaska, something I had been looking forward to. Some people said that it was still too early (September), but I saw newspaper headlines reporting sightings.
- Also, not once in my 2+ weeks in Alaska did I get to see an Alaska Airlines plane in a special livery. They are probably all deployed in the Lower 48 + HI.

Well, this turned out to be a bit longer than I had anticipated. I hope I didn�t bore you out of your minds.

Anyway, if you made it this far, you deserve an endurance award! Thanks for bearing with me.

Now it�s time to plan the next trip!

Thank you for taking the time to share your report and photos. I enjoyed the ride along!

Excellent report, thoroughly enjoyed it, and you are a hardier soul than I, opting to sleep in the airport, those loungers looked brutal.