From the Heart of Africa to the Top of the World: SIN-LLW-LYR-YOW-PUS-SIN in C
Sep 6, 2005, 1:28 am
#32
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: SYD
Programs: Too many golds, no plat: OZ*G, AC*G, NZ*G, VA Gold, QF Gold, HH Gold, Bonvoy Gold
Posts: 5,350
Keep the madness coming! What an amazing trip. 
So, do you think Svalbard is worth visiting for anything besides the 'end of the road' / extreme destination / most northerly / 'I've been there' boasting rights?
So, do you think Svalbard is worth visiting for anything besides the 'end of the road' / extreme destination / most northerly / 'I've been there' boasting rights?
Sep 6, 2005, 6:53 am
#34
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Terra Australis Cognita
Posts: 5,350
Originally Posted by mad_atta
So, do you think Svalbard is worth visiting for anything besides the 'end of the road' / extreme destination / most northerly / 'I've been there' boasting rights?
And netsurferrr is quite right that you can, if you want to, dine on fresh mangoes and reindeer steak with truffles while staying in a suite in the SAS Radisson. But again, to me this just seems kind of beside the point, not to mention incredibly expensive, if it's raw nature that you're coming to experience and I was quite satisfied with my guesthouse at 25% of the price.
Last edited by jpatokal; Sep 6, 2005 at 7:05 am
Sep 6, 2005, 5:49 pm
#35
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Terra Australis Cognita
Posts: 5,350
LYR-OSL SK4499 B737-700 seat 1A "Eirik Blødøkse"
Another gray morning came -- for there are no dawns on Svalbard -- and it was time to say goodbye. LYR's pint-size airport was busy today with both a charter and my flight, but the solitary check-in queue moved fast and I had time to adjourn to the cafeteria/gift shop/tax-free upstairs, where the same polar bear that was 49 kr in Tromso was now marked up to 98 kr. Efficiently if somewhat oddly, our boarding passes were collected before security, and from there it was straight onto the plane. Today's flight was a direct flight to OSL, without the stopover in Tromso, and my plane was no longer the mild-mannered Magnus the Good of last time, but a more appropriately threatening Erik Bloodaxe. The -700 is a tiny bit smaller than the -400, but the passenger load on this Sunday morning was also lower and I scored seat 1A with an empty 1B without even asking. On takeoff, I was treated to thirty seconds of stunning views of the green mossy mountainsides of Grumantbyen, before the plane plunged into the clouds and stayed there for the next three hours.
Lillehammer
What then? I couldn't go to TOS or HEL or even fast-forward to YOW without popping my RTW mile cap, and the prospect of a day in OSL or LHR didn't sound too appealing. I'd already asked FT for tips on what to do in OSL for 24 hours, and had received the intriguing suggestion of going to Lillehammer instead. For my first visit this wasn't possible, as I'd already prebooked my hotel, but now I had a second chance and my horizons were open. A bit of digging around the net found Mary's Guesthouse plunked right on top of Lillehammer's train station, and the NSB schedules revealed a morning train that would get me back before my flight the next day. A confirmation phone call later I picked up a lunch to go and headed to the station below OSL.
I last took regional trains in Norway in my young heady days of Interrailing, and little seems to have changed: the trains are still fast, smooth, sleek and extortionately priced (428 kr return, to be precise, and I didn't even opt for Komfort Klass with power sockets and free Norwegian newspapers). Watering my parched eyeballs with the green pastures passing by, I munched on my kylling lunsj-salad with some excellent bread and a bottle of strawberry-lime juice, the latest concoction from the mad scientist labs of Bramhults. These bizarre but invariably delicious juices -- made from actual fruits, not flavorings -- are making ever-greater inroads all across Scandinavia and I heartily recommend giving them a chug the next time y'all are in town; they're available in all finer stores and 7-Elevens across the peninsula.
For me, one of the minor hassles of travelling in these parts is that appearancewise I'm just a pointy helmet short of a Viking, so everybody I meet automatically assumes that I can also speak skandinaviska, and my ensuring protestations that I don't actually speak Norwegian/Swedish/Danish/Faroese/Icelandic at all are met with utter confusion. To make things a little more complex yet, through passive osmosis and a keen interest in linguistics in general I actually can read written and, to a lesser extent, understand spoken "Scandinavian" to a certain degree, it's just that I'm utterly incapable of replying. Trivial hej, takk-level transactions like getting my ticket checked I can still fake, but even buying a polse gets too complex when they ask if I want ketchup, mustard, pickles or fermented shark guts in my bun. Sigh.
Lillehammer is pretty -- not quite up to the slightly sinister cookie-cutter pastel prettiness of Ålesund (no fjords around here, for one), but pretty just the same. The town is best known for having hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics, in turn perhaps best remembered for the off-stage hammer antics of ice skaters Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, but its main draw for tourists is the well-preserved city center with the attractive central pedestrian street of Storgata, a position overlooking Lake Mjøsa and the rapids of the scenic Mesna River running through it all.
After checking in, dropping my bags and surfing my way onto somebody's WLAN (SSID "default") I perused the tourist office site for interesting things to do on a Sunday afternoon, only to find that most everything was closing by 3 PM and I wasn't too keen on some of the remaining options (say, the Norwegian Historical Automobile Museum). But then I spotted that the Lysgårdsbakkene ski jump arena was open and its chairlifts to the top running until 5 even in the summer, so I stuffed my camera and lenses in my backpack and set huffing and puffing up the hill, a solid 30-minute hike from the railway station.
Ski jumping is a sport close to the heart of many Finns, and even here in Lillehammer it's Janne Ahonen who holds the record for the K120 ("big hill"). But in Lillehammer '94 Finland didn't win a single ski jumping medal, as the eclipse of arguably Finland's greatest jumper, Matti "Flying Finn" Nykänen, had already begun. After scooping up most of the golds in the Olympics of both 1984 and 1988, Matti had embarked on a still-continuing search for a new career. First came a shot at being a pop singer, leaving behind a trail of hysterically bad tracks like the famous "Samurai" (sample lyrics, again translated by yours truly: "Hai, hai, hai / I am your samurai / Into your tight scabbard / I porked my sword"), then an attempt to spice up drooping attendance figures by stripping, and then a shrug of the shoulders and a flaccid attempt to make a porn movie. Briefly engaged to one of his 18-year-old Estonian co-starlets, he soon found an altogether more profitable line of endeavour by marrying a lady 10 years older than him, namely the, um, rather plain daughter of a multimillionaire sausage magnate. Their stormy relationship resulted in a suspended sentence for violent assault, a divorce and a remarriage punctuated with screaming tabloid headlines and shots of one or the other with a black eye, but even that was put on ice when old Matti lost a finger-wrestling match with a buddy and, ever the gracious loser, stuck a knife in said buddy's ribs. He was found guilty of attempted manslaughter and is, as I type this, sitting out a 2-year sentence in prison.
Through it all, Matti has continued to amuse the Finnish populace by creative manglingly of the English language: a few favorites include referring to the feeling of being about to jump as a "completely up yours" moment, stating that the odds are "fixty-sixty", the Rumsfeldian observation that "what has not been done cannot be undone" and, uncharacteristically dabbling in French, even reminescing that jumping always gives him a "bon voyage" feeling. All of which just goes to prove that, if jumping off cliffs strapped to a pair of skis is your idea of a fun time, then just maybe you're a little cracked in the head to begin with.
Another gray morning came -- for there are no dawns on Svalbard -- and it was time to say goodbye. LYR's pint-size airport was busy today with both a charter and my flight, but the solitary check-in queue moved fast and I had time to adjourn to the cafeteria/gift shop/tax-free upstairs, where the same polar bear that was 49 kr in Tromso was now marked up to 98 kr. Efficiently if somewhat oddly, our boarding passes were collected before security, and from there it was straight onto the plane. Today's flight was a direct flight to OSL, without the stopover in Tromso, and my plane was no longer the mild-mannered Magnus the Good of last time, but a more appropriately threatening Erik Bloodaxe. The -700 is a tiny bit smaller than the -400, but the passenger load on this Sunday morning was also lower and I scored seat 1A with an empty 1B without even asking. On takeoff, I was treated to thirty seconds of stunning views of the green mossy mountainsides of Grumantbyen, before the plane plunged into the clouds and stayed there for the next three hours.
Lillehammer
What then? I couldn't go to TOS or HEL or even fast-forward to YOW without popping my RTW mile cap, and the prospect of a day in OSL or LHR didn't sound too appealing. I'd already asked FT for tips on what to do in OSL for 24 hours, and had received the intriguing suggestion of going to Lillehammer instead. For my first visit this wasn't possible, as I'd already prebooked my hotel, but now I had a second chance and my horizons were open. A bit of digging around the net found Mary's Guesthouse plunked right on top of Lillehammer's train station, and the NSB schedules revealed a morning train that would get me back before my flight the next day. A confirmation phone call later I picked up a lunch to go and headed to the station below OSL.
I last took regional trains in Norway in my young heady days of Interrailing, and little seems to have changed: the trains are still fast, smooth, sleek and extortionately priced (428 kr return, to be precise, and I didn't even opt for Komfort Klass with power sockets and free Norwegian newspapers). Watering my parched eyeballs with the green pastures passing by, I munched on my kylling lunsj-salad with some excellent bread and a bottle of strawberry-lime juice, the latest concoction from the mad scientist labs of Bramhults. These bizarre but invariably delicious juices -- made from actual fruits, not flavorings -- are making ever-greater inroads all across Scandinavia and I heartily recommend giving them a chug the next time y'all are in town; they're available in all finer stores and 7-Elevens across the peninsula.
For me, one of the minor hassles of travelling in these parts is that appearancewise I'm just a pointy helmet short of a Viking, so everybody I meet automatically assumes that I can also speak skandinaviska, and my ensuring protestations that I don't actually speak Norwegian/Swedish/Danish/Faroese/Icelandic at all are met with utter confusion. To make things a little more complex yet, through passive osmosis and a keen interest in linguistics in general I actually can read written and, to a lesser extent, understand spoken "Scandinavian" to a certain degree, it's just that I'm utterly incapable of replying. Trivial hej, takk-level transactions like getting my ticket checked I can still fake, but even buying a polse gets too complex when they ask if I want ketchup, mustard, pickles or fermented shark guts in my bun. Sigh.
Lillehammer is pretty -- not quite up to the slightly sinister cookie-cutter pastel prettiness of Ålesund (no fjords around here, for one), but pretty just the same. The town is best known for having hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics, in turn perhaps best remembered for the off-stage hammer antics of ice skaters Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, but its main draw for tourists is the well-preserved city center with the attractive central pedestrian street of Storgata, a position overlooking Lake Mjøsa and the rapids of the scenic Mesna River running through it all.
After checking in, dropping my bags and surfing my way onto somebody's WLAN (SSID "default") I perused the tourist office site for interesting things to do on a Sunday afternoon, only to find that most everything was closing by 3 PM and I wasn't too keen on some of the remaining options (say, the Norwegian Historical Automobile Museum). But then I spotted that the Lysgårdsbakkene ski jump arena was open and its chairlifts to the top running until 5 even in the summer, so I stuffed my camera and lenses in my backpack and set huffing and puffing up the hill, a solid 30-minute hike from the railway station.
Ski jumping is a sport close to the heart of many Finns, and even here in Lillehammer it's Janne Ahonen who holds the record for the K120 ("big hill"). But in Lillehammer '94 Finland didn't win a single ski jumping medal, as the eclipse of arguably Finland's greatest jumper, Matti "Flying Finn" Nykänen, had already begun. After scooping up most of the golds in the Olympics of both 1984 and 1988, Matti had embarked on a still-continuing search for a new career. First came a shot at being a pop singer, leaving behind a trail of hysterically bad tracks like the famous "Samurai" (sample lyrics, again translated by yours truly: "Hai, hai, hai / I am your samurai / Into your tight scabbard / I porked my sword"), then an attempt to spice up drooping attendance figures by stripping, and then a shrug of the shoulders and a flaccid attempt to make a porn movie. Briefly engaged to one of his 18-year-old Estonian co-starlets, he soon found an altogether more profitable line of endeavour by marrying a lady 10 years older than him, namely the, um, rather plain daughter of a multimillionaire sausage magnate. Their stormy relationship resulted in a suspended sentence for violent assault, a divorce and a remarriage punctuated with screaming tabloid headlines and shots of one or the other with a black eye, but even that was put on ice when old Matti lost a finger-wrestling match with a buddy and, ever the gracious loser, stuck a knife in said buddy's ribs. He was found guilty of attempted manslaughter and is, as I type this, sitting out a 2-year sentence in prison.
Through it all, Matti has continued to amuse the Finnish populace by creative manglingly of the English language: a few favorites include referring to the feeling of being about to jump as a "completely up yours" moment, stating that the odds are "fixty-sixty", the Rumsfeldian observation that "what has not been done cannot be undone" and, uncharacteristically dabbling in French, even reminescing that jumping always gives him a "bon voyage" feeling. All of which just goes to prove that, if jumping off cliffs strapped to a pair of skis is your idea of a fun time, then just maybe you're a little cracked in the head to begin with.
Sep 7, 2005, 12:51 am
#36
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Vantaa, Finland
Programs: AY Lumo, FB Gold
Posts: 1,667
Originally Posted by jpatokal
But in Lillehammer '94 Finland didn't win a single ski jumping medal, as the eclipse of arguably Finland's greatest jumper, Matti "Flying Finn" Nykänen, had already begun.
Anyway this report is shaping up to be a real classic. Keep 'em coming. The anecdotes and useless-to-know facts spice it up rather nicely. Good stuff!
Sep 7, 2005, 6:33 am
#37
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Terra Australis Cognita
Posts: 5,350
OSL
After a healthy and nutritious meal of polse and kebab I hit the sack, slept until 6:30, devoured a quick breakfast at the guesthouse's again surprisingly ample buffet and then plonked my rear on the train, which for once left and arrived on the dot. OSL was by now starting to look distinctly familiar. Check-in was painless, security was conventional and I even found my way into the SAS Scandinavian Lounge. A long-expired login unexpectedly worked fine and I surfed the net for free for an hour; let's see how many charges I get on my credit card bill?
I'd planned to pick up some geitost, the Norwegian delicacy that looks, acts and tastes like peanut butter but smells like the goat cheese it is, but much to my dismay the tax-free deli had run out and stuffing my carry-on with, say, smoked eel didn't seem quite so appealing. At this point I had precisely 534 Norwegian crowns rattling in my pocket, and the exchange counter's board gave a daily rate of 5.334 for Canadian dollars. Score! ...or so I thought until I received back 90 loonies, a handful of krone and a finger pointing at the small print: 35 NOK commission. B*stards.
OSL-LHR SK805 B737-600 C seat 02A
Another SAS Braathens flight and another model of the 737, but looks like I'll have to leave the -500 and -800 (also found in their fleet) for another trip. Seat and IFE were, as expected, respectively minimal and non-existent, but I was somewhat surprised to be served a warm meal straddling the gap between breakfast and lunch. As no menu was served to go with it, I'll just have to make up my own:
"Den Artærikloggen" -- A Traditional Norwegian Dish of Chicken Wrapped in Bacon and Absolutely No Flavourings
Mildly Mysterious if Notionally Nordic Salad of Carrot, Turnip and Celeriac with Sporadic Chili Flakes
Orange Cheese, Blue Cheese and Half a Dried Apricot
Nuclear Yellow Tart (No, Not the Stewardess)
Buns, Buns and Flatbread
I skipped the alcohol, but the most other passengers were evidently in need a pick-me-up on this sunny Monday morning and the post-cafe cognacs were snapped up fast. Plane capacity was perhaps 50%, with nobody sitting next to or in front of me, and as the flight was just short of two hours I whiled away most of it flipping through the Financial Times, this being the only form of non-Norwegian entertainment on offer.
Soon enough we were descending into London, past Canary Wharf and the unmistakable harpooned jellyfish of the Millennium Dome. Just a minute or two before touchdown, however, we flew past a tall octagonal Chinese-style pagoda next to a golf course and what was probably the Piccadilly tube to LHR; anybody know what this is? A more beautiful sight yet awaited on the ground at LHR though, as we rolled past -- I blinked but yes, it really was there -- a Concorde in BA livery. What was it doing parked outside?
LHR
One of the great hubs of the world it may be, but my travels rarely take me to LHR. I figure it had been 10 years since my previous visit, as even on my trips to London in the meantime I'd always used LGW or STN instead. Arrival in Terminal 3 soon brought home the fact that yes, LHR really is big and just about everybody going from Europe to the Americas has to pass through -- including the guy in front of me in the security line, who had an Indonesian passport and was going to the Turks and Caicos islands.
Now I've been traveling for a while, but I don't think I had, before this trip, ever gotten a smile or pleasant comments out of airport security staff. I don't particularly blame them, mind you, it must be a mind-numbingly tedious job and all your 'customers' are at best sullen and at worst outright hostile; evidently in LHR more so than most, as there were plenty of signs stating that threatening or assaulting security staff is a serious crime. But for me, this trip has been different. At LHR, as at BKK, SIN, JNB and FRA before it, a conversation ensued:
- "Well look at that. What a strange creature!"
- "Yes. It's my lucky octopus."
- "Lovely! At least he can look out while you're travelling."
You see, before I left on my trip, a friend -- knowing my predeliction for bright red sea creatures (this is a long and largely inexplicable story) -- had given me an undescribably bizarre watch shaped like an octopus, with eight tentacles that you could use to wrap it around your wrist. For some strange reason this has to date failed to become the must-have fashion accessory of the summer, and indeed we spent not a little time wondering about this artifact was a) envisioned, b) designed, c) mass-produced in a factory, d) and sold to a retailer willing to pay good money for it. Fortunately, while I don't do watches, when splayed out the octopus-watch happens to fit perfectly in the front mesh pocket of my backpack, and is thus seen by every single security guard inspecting the bags coming out of the X-ray machine. It's been misidentified as a "spider" or a "squid" a few times, but it seems to make everybody's day, including mine!
Once through I headed for the SAS London Lounge. It was my first time here, and while it's much like any other Scandinavian lounge, it was surprisingly big, spacious and well-equipped with drinks, nibbles, chairs, tables, sofas, views out and in all quite pleasant in all respects except one: there was no wired or wireless Internet to be had, at least not without paying. Using the incredibly slow PCs I tried to Google out if any other *A lounge in T3 had Internet, but I had no luck, so I shrugged my shoulders and set off in search of an Asiana office to make some amendments to my ticket. SK lounge directed me to the SQ lounge, the friendly Silver Kris ladies tried to amend my SQ-issued ticket themselves but couldn't. They more than made up for it with a free T-Mobile WLAN card though (I even came back for seconds), and I spent most of my layover in the near-empty lounge, hacking away and watching planes take off the adjacent runway every couple of minutes.
After a healthy and nutritious meal of polse and kebab I hit the sack, slept until 6:30, devoured a quick breakfast at the guesthouse's again surprisingly ample buffet and then plonked my rear on the train, which for once left and arrived on the dot. OSL was by now starting to look distinctly familiar. Check-in was painless, security was conventional and I even found my way into the SAS Scandinavian Lounge. A long-expired login unexpectedly worked fine and I surfed the net for free for an hour; let's see how many charges I get on my credit card bill?
I'd planned to pick up some geitost, the Norwegian delicacy that looks, acts and tastes like peanut butter but smells like the goat cheese it is, but much to my dismay the tax-free deli had run out and stuffing my carry-on with, say, smoked eel didn't seem quite so appealing. At this point I had precisely 534 Norwegian crowns rattling in my pocket, and the exchange counter's board gave a daily rate of 5.334 for Canadian dollars. Score! ...or so I thought until I received back 90 loonies, a handful of krone and a finger pointing at the small print: 35 NOK commission. B*stards.
OSL-LHR SK805 B737-600 C seat 02A
Another SAS Braathens flight and another model of the 737, but looks like I'll have to leave the -500 and -800 (also found in their fleet) for another trip. Seat and IFE were, as expected, respectively minimal and non-existent, but I was somewhat surprised to be served a warm meal straddling the gap between breakfast and lunch. As no menu was served to go with it, I'll just have to make up my own:
"Den Artærikloggen" -- A Traditional Norwegian Dish of Chicken Wrapped in Bacon and Absolutely No Flavourings
Mildly Mysterious if Notionally Nordic Salad of Carrot, Turnip and Celeriac with Sporadic Chili Flakes
Orange Cheese, Blue Cheese and Half a Dried Apricot
Nuclear Yellow Tart (No, Not the Stewardess)
Buns, Buns and Flatbread
I skipped the alcohol, but the most other passengers were evidently in need a pick-me-up on this sunny Monday morning and the post-cafe cognacs were snapped up fast. Plane capacity was perhaps 50%, with nobody sitting next to or in front of me, and as the flight was just short of two hours I whiled away most of it flipping through the Financial Times, this being the only form of non-Norwegian entertainment on offer.
Soon enough we were descending into London, past Canary Wharf and the unmistakable harpooned jellyfish of the Millennium Dome. Just a minute or two before touchdown, however, we flew past a tall octagonal Chinese-style pagoda next to a golf course and what was probably the Piccadilly tube to LHR; anybody know what this is? A more beautiful sight yet awaited on the ground at LHR though, as we rolled past -- I blinked but yes, it really was there -- a Concorde in BA livery. What was it doing parked outside?
LHR
One of the great hubs of the world it may be, but my travels rarely take me to LHR. I figure it had been 10 years since my previous visit, as even on my trips to London in the meantime I'd always used LGW or STN instead. Arrival in Terminal 3 soon brought home the fact that yes, LHR really is big and just about everybody going from Europe to the Americas has to pass through -- including the guy in front of me in the security line, who had an Indonesian passport and was going to the Turks and Caicos islands.
Now I've been traveling for a while, but I don't think I had, before this trip, ever gotten a smile or pleasant comments out of airport security staff. I don't particularly blame them, mind you, it must be a mind-numbingly tedious job and all your 'customers' are at best sullen and at worst outright hostile; evidently in LHR more so than most, as there were plenty of signs stating that threatening or assaulting security staff is a serious crime. But for me, this trip has been different. At LHR, as at BKK, SIN, JNB and FRA before it, a conversation ensued:
- "Well look at that. What a strange creature!"
- "Yes. It's my lucky octopus."
- "Lovely! At least he can look out while you're travelling."
You see, before I left on my trip, a friend -- knowing my predeliction for bright red sea creatures (this is a long and largely inexplicable story) -- had given me an undescribably bizarre watch shaped like an octopus, with eight tentacles that you could use to wrap it around your wrist. For some strange reason this has to date failed to become the must-have fashion accessory of the summer, and indeed we spent not a little time wondering about this artifact was a) envisioned, b) designed, c) mass-produced in a factory, d) and sold to a retailer willing to pay good money for it. Fortunately, while I don't do watches, when splayed out the octopus-watch happens to fit perfectly in the front mesh pocket of my backpack, and is thus seen by every single security guard inspecting the bags coming out of the X-ray machine. It's been misidentified as a "spider" or a "squid" a few times, but it seems to make everybody's day, including mine!
Once through I headed for the SAS London Lounge. It was my first time here, and while it's much like any other Scandinavian lounge, it was surprisingly big, spacious and well-equipped with drinks, nibbles, chairs, tables, sofas, views out and in all quite pleasant in all respects except one: there was no wired or wireless Internet to be had, at least not without paying. Using the incredibly slow PCs I tried to Google out if any other *A lounge in T3 had Internet, but I had no luck, so I shrugged my shoulders and set off in search of an Asiana office to make some amendments to my ticket. SK lounge directed me to the SQ lounge, the friendly Silver Kris ladies tried to amend my SQ-issued ticket themselves but couldn't. They more than made up for it with a free T-Mobile WLAN card though (I even came back for seconds), and I spent most of my layover in the near-empty lounge, hacking away and watching planes take off the adjacent runway every couple of minutes.
Sep 7, 2005, 7:57 am
#38
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: SYD
Programs: Too many golds, no plat: OZ*G, AC*G, NZ*G, VA Gold, QF Gold, HH Gold, Bonvoy Gold
Posts: 5,350
Originally Posted by jpatokal
"Den Artærikloggen" -- A Traditional Norwegian Dish of Chicken Wrapped in Bacon and Absolutely No Flavourings
Mildly Mysterious if Notionally Nordic Salad of Carrot, Turnip and Celeriac with Sporadic Chili Flakes
Orange Cheese, Blue Cheese and Half a Dried Apricot
Nuclear Yellow Tart (No, Not the Stewardess)
Buns, Buns and Flatbread
Mildly Mysterious if Notionally Nordic Salad of Carrot, Turnip and Celeriac with Sporadic Chili Flakes
Orange Cheese, Blue Cheese and Half a Dried Apricot
Nuclear Yellow Tart (No, Not the Stewardess)
Buns, Buns and Flatbread
Originally Posted by jpatokal
Soon enough we were descending into London, past Canary Wharf and the unmistakable harpooned jellyfish of the Millennium Dome. Just a minute or two before touchdown, however, we flew past a tall octagonal Chinese-style pagoda next to a golf course and what was probably the Piccadilly tube to LHR; anybody know what this is? A more beautiful sight yet awaited on the ground at LHR though, as we rolled past -- I blinked but yes, it really was there -- a Concorde in BA livery. What was it doing parked outside?
Looking forward to hearing about how AC treated you on the next sector. I hope you had the good sense to sample some of their delicious vodka based cocktails, since their wine is almost undrinkable...
Sep 7, 2005, 11:41 am
#39
Senior Moderator; Moderator, Eco-Conscious Travel, United and Flyertalk Cares
Join Date: Jun 1999
Location: Fulltime travel/mostly Europe
Programs: UA 1.7 MM;; Accor & Marriott Pt; Hyatt Globalist
Posts: 17,831
Wonderful photos. I can't wait for a few minutes of downtime to read your full report.
Sep 8, 2005, 8:31 am
#40
Join Date: Oct 1999
Posts: 391
My take is that going to Svalbard via Tromso is one of the best use of your UA 20,000-mile Star Alliance Intra-European Award. The award brings you to Tromso, then you buy a round-trip ticket on Norwegian Shuttle or SAS Braathens to Longyearbyen.
I just used SAS Radission to illustrate that visiting Svalbard is not as rough as one might think. There are so many other comfortable guest houses in Longyearbyen. In a way, it is just like going to Iceland in the summer with fewer attractions and cooler temperature. Speaking of Iceland, the landscape between KEF and the Reykjavik city center is as otherworldly as Longyearbyen´s.
Hilary Clinton was in Svalbard in the summer of 2004 on an offical visit.
I just used SAS Radission to illustrate that visiting Svalbard is not as rough as one might think. There are so many other comfortable guest houses in Longyearbyen. In a way, it is just like going to Iceland in the summer with fewer attractions and cooler temperature. Speaking of Iceland, the landscape between KEF and the Reykjavik city center is as otherworldly as Longyearbyen´s.
Hilary Clinton was in Svalbard in the summer of 2004 on an offical visit.
Sep 8, 2005, 10:26 am
#41
Senior Moderator; Moderator, Eco-Conscious Travel, United and Flyertalk Cares
Join Date: Jun 1999
Location: Fulltime travel/mostly Europe
Programs: UA 1.7 MM;; Accor & Marriott Pt; Hyatt Globalist
Posts: 17,831
I just finished reading your report thus far - fantastic. Your musings on the role of an olive w/r/t Y & C are hilarious.
I also sent your graph on language problems when you don't speak "Scandinavian" but look "a pointy helmet short of a Viking" and have the names and documents to go with to my brother and son. We get those same perplexed looks when we're spoken to in Norwegian and can't manage more than a few words back. Sigh.
I also sent your graph on language problems when you don't speak "Scandinavian" but look "a pointy helmet short of a Viking" and have the names and documents to go with to my brother and son. We get those same perplexed looks when we're spoken to in Norwegian and can't manage more than a few words back. Sigh.
Last edited by l etoile; Sep 8, 2005 at 11:14 am
Sep 9, 2005, 1:12 pm
#42
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Terra Australis Cognita
Posts: 5,350
Originally Posted by netsurferrr
My take is that going to Svalbard via Tromso is one of the best use of your UA 20,000-mile Star Alliance Intra-European Award. The award brings you to Tromso, then you buy a round-trip ticket on Norwegian Shuttle or SAS Braathens to Longyearbyen.
Sep 9, 2005, 8:05 pm
#43
Join Date: Oct 1999
Posts: 391
You can only redeem Mileage Plus reward flights operated by SK aircraft with SK flight numbers. SAS (excluding Braathens) only flies once a day between Oslo and Tromso. Then, Mileage Plus award seats are not available on all SK OSL-TOS flights. The intergration of Braathens into SAS has no meaning to Mileage Plus members. We have to keep in mind that the SAS Eurobonus award is only good for travel within Nordic Europe, while the United Star Alliance award is good for departuring from ALL Star destinations in Europe to Tromso. In reality, two awards actually deliver very similar value propositions.
Last edited by netsurferrr; Sep 11, 2005 at 3:29 pm
Sep 10, 2005, 12:35 pm
#44
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Sweden
Posts: 562
This report is just amazing. Sure I like reading those reports on long-haul First Class travel that describe every single aspect of the flights, but this report is one of the few where I really enjoy reading of the events on the ground even more than the flight descriptions. Please continue in the same style! ^
I think I will soon take advantage of the chance to travel to LYR for just 12000 EB points. Somehow I find it very appealing to be able to travel LLA-ARN-OSL-TOS-LYR for just 12k points; 1961 miles and four flights for what is just 891 miles from LLA to LYR. (And by "soon" I mean something like next summer or so, I'm not suicidal. 
)
I think I will soon take advantage of the chance to travel to LYR for just 12000 EB points. Somehow I find it very appealing to be able to travel LLA-ARN-OSL-TOS-LYR for just 12k points; 1961 miles and four flights for what is just 891 miles from LLA to LYR.
(And by "soon" I mean something like next summer or so, I'm not suicidal. )
Last edited by Deimos; Sep 11, 2005 at 7:13 am
Sep 11, 2005, 7:48 am
#45
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Terra Australis Cognita
Posts: 5,350
LHR-YOW AC889 B767-300 C seat 03C
Eventually it was time to head to the gate. I was a little alarmed to note that, according to the sign, it was 20 minutes to the gate from the T3 central area -- this being 30 minutes before the flight was supposed to leave -- but they hadn't started even boarding yet by the time I huffed and puffed my way to gate 34. Indeed, there was a fine specimen of that most British phenomenon, the queue, with everybody lined up neatly in two rows snaking along the hallway. I can only presume they thought they were flying Ryanair to Canada... once the boarding call came, as usual requesting that the elderly, infirm, families with children, plus those suffering from the acute ailments of Business Class and Star Gold line up, the whole queue surged forward. I shrugged, cut deftly into the queue from the side, and was among the first in the plane.
This was my first Air Canada flight ever and, based on the inside scoop for FT, I gathered that AC has a lot of these 767s, with some good and some bad. Unfortunately today's aircraft was one of the lemons: no personal screen, no in-seat power (unless you brought your own Targus adapter), a dysfunctional volume control that wouldn't go below "full blast" and a broken footrest on my seatmate's side, promptly patched by propping it up with a box from the galley (!). The seat itself, however, was quite wide and spacious with excellent legroom. Recline would have been an issue for a night flight, but this was only a daytime semi-longhaul, so no problem.
AC more than made up for this though with excellent staff, who started by personally introducing themselves to everybody and went out of their way to attempt to resolve the issues and make sure that everything was working fine. The flight was nearly full, with a single empty seat in business, but unlike previously on LH the service didn't feel understaffed and, unlike SQ, there seemed to be a genuine personal touch to the service as opposed to merely following the script. The cabin crew was young and motivated and, in all, very impressive; very much a positive surprise.
Sparkling wine (Canadian, of course, no champagne here) was served before takeoff, a second round of drinks with nuts (in a tray, but cold) followed and soon it was time for dinner. Alas, I lost the menu again, but here's how it went course by course, from memory. Everything was served a dish at a time, with bread and drinks replenished between most courses.
Appetizer was a choice of salmon or grilled eggplant with babaganoush (chickpea-eggplant paste) and asparagus. I picked the eggplant, it came with two thin slices of eggplant rolled around the babaganoush, and a few large juicy aspagarus tips, chickpeas and mesclun on the side, all very well done. Main was rack of lamb, chicken or mushroom. I tried my luck with the rack of lamb, which came cooked to perfection (if just a little bit cold by the time it reached me), with grilled onion, duchess potatoes and an unidentifiable but tasty condiment (quince?) on the side. This would have been very good indeed if only I had had some decent cutlery -- but lamb and disposable plastic knives just don't go together, so eating it was a bit jarring. Then came a cart of cheese and fruits, which was rather predictable, but at least the port was a more drinkable Cockburn's Special Reserve, and the second lemon tart of the day, which was fresh, creamy and utterly spanked SK's attempt earlier in the day.
Sated and stuffed, it was time to settle down to a movie, courtesy of the portable DVD players being passed around. I opted for the Last Samurai, which I slightly perversely opted to watch dubbed into Japanese with English subtitles, and it proved a vapidly entertaining -- at least until the last half hour, which went beyond my limited abilities of disbelief suspension (eg. you'd think getting shot with a Gatling gun and having bullets blast out your back would lead to a bit more than a slight limp).
And then we were flying over Canada! Soon enough YOW popped up from somewhere in the endless expanse of forest and Air Canada announced that we had landed in Toronto, before looking out the window and correcting the destination to Ottawa. I was among the first off the plane and the grilling level at immigration was set to only 'slightly crispy' (Q: "When did you last visit Canada?" "A: About 20 years ago"), and after receiving a red box of maple leaves in my passport it was off to meet the welcoming committee.
All in all, the flight well exceeded my (low) expectations with excellent food and excellent service. The plane was, in a word, bad but they did they best to work around it; for this flight the seat was perfectly OK, but I wouldn't want to try to sleep through a trans-Pac in it. Let's see how AC domestic flights compare...
Eventually it was time to head to the gate. I was a little alarmed to note that, according to the sign, it was 20 minutes to the gate from the T3 central area -- this being 30 minutes before the flight was supposed to leave -- but they hadn't started even boarding yet by the time I huffed and puffed my way to gate 34. Indeed, there was a fine specimen of that most British phenomenon, the queue, with everybody lined up neatly in two rows snaking along the hallway. I can only presume they thought they were flying Ryanair to Canada... once the boarding call came, as usual requesting that the elderly, infirm, families with children, plus those suffering from the acute ailments of Business Class and Star Gold line up, the whole queue surged forward. I shrugged, cut deftly into the queue from the side, and was among the first in the plane.
This was my first Air Canada flight ever and, based on the inside scoop for FT, I gathered that AC has a lot of these 767s, with some good and some bad. Unfortunately today's aircraft was one of the lemons: no personal screen, no in-seat power (unless you brought your own Targus adapter), a dysfunctional volume control that wouldn't go below "full blast" and a broken footrest on my seatmate's side, promptly patched by propping it up with a box from the galley (!). The seat itself, however, was quite wide and spacious with excellent legroom. Recline would have been an issue for a night flight, but this was only a daytime semi-longhaul, so no problem.
AC more than made up for this though with excellent staff, who started by personally introducing themselves to everybody and went out of their way to attempt to resolve the issues and make sure that everything was working fine. The flight was nearly full, with a single empty seat in business, but unlike previously on LH the service didn't feel understaffed and, unlike SQ, there seemed to be a genuine personal touch to the service as opposed to merely following the script. The cabin crew was young and motivated and, in all, very impressive; very much a positive surprise.
Sparkling wine (Canadian, of course, no champagne here) was served before takeoff, a second round of drinks with nuts (in a tray, but cold) followed and soon it was time for dinner. Alas, I lost the menu again, but here's how it went course by course, from memory. Everything was served a dish at a time, with bread and drinks replenished between most courses.
Appetizer was a choice of salmon or grilled eggplant with babaganoush (chickpea-eggplant paste) and asparagus. I picked the eggplant, it came with two thin slices of eggplant rolled around the babaganoush, and a few large juicy aspagarus tips, chickpeas and mesclun on the side, all very well done. Main was rack of lamb, chicken or mushroom. I tried my luck with the rack of lamb, which came cooked to perfection (if just a little bit cold by the time it reached me), with grilled onion, duchess potatoes and an unidentifiable but tasty condiment (quince?) on the side. This would have been very good indeed if only I had had some decent cutlery -- but lamb and disposable plastic knives just don't go together, so eating it was a bit jarring. Then came a cart of cheese and fruits, which was rather predictable, but at least the port was a more drinkable Cockburn's Special Reserve, and the second lemon tart of the day, which was fresh, creamy and utterly spanked SK's attempt earlier in the day.
Sated and stuffed, it was time to settle down to a movie, courtesy of the portable DVD players being passed around. I opted for the Last Samurai, which I slightly perversely opted to watch dubbed into Japanese with English subtitles, and it proved a vapidly entertaining -- at least until the last half hour, which went beyond my limited abilities of disbelief suspension (eg. you'd think getting shot with a Gatling gun and having bullets blast out your back would lead to a bit more than a slight limp).
And then we were flying over Canada! Soon enough YOW popped up from somewhere in the endless expanse of forest and Air Canada announced that we had landed in Toronto, before looking out the window and correcting the destination to Ottawa. I was among the first off the plane and the grilling level at immigration was set to only 'slightly crispy' (Q: "When did you last visit Canada?" "A: About 20 years ago"), and after receiving a red box of maple leaves in my passport it was off to meet the welcoming committee.
All in all, the flight well exceeded my (low) expectations with excellent food and excellent service. The plane was, in a word, bad but they did they best to work around it; for this flight the seat was perfectly OK, but I wouldn't want to try to sleep through a trans-Pac in it. Let's see how AC domestic flights compare...