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| source: Norweigan Cruise Lines |
Despite being eaten alive with insect bites on my legs and arms, the time went too fast. From Miami, we traveled to Costa Maya (Mexico), Harvest Caye (Belize), Roatán Bay Islands (Honduras), and Cozumel (Mexico).
Cindy and Stan got to spend time with the little guy on visits they made to New York in the past 2 months. I was worried he'd be terrified of me since my last visit was in February for Chinese New Year.
Turns out I had nothing to worry about. He smiled and/or laughed almost every time we made eye contact. I could get him to laugh hard whenever I made funny noises. As the youngest passenger, he was probably the most popular person on the cruise aboard the Oceania Insignia.
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| source: Getty Images |
AMERICAN AIRLINES SUCKS.
From San Francisco, I went to a kiosk to do a bag drop for a single piece of luggage. The $30 charge is typical of most airlines, so this didn't bother me.
What bothered me was the surly attitude from several service employees.
When I got to the bag drop area, I proceeded to the counter after the passenger before me in line headed to the boarding gate. The counter person then immediately scolded me about coming too soon. He told me next time I should wait until I'm announced.
After the flight took off from SFO, the attendants came around to serve beverages and snacks. I was wearing my earphones watching a movie so I wasn't exactly paying attention to what was being offered. So when the flight attendant got to my row, I asked what was available. He snapped in front of me a packet of biscuits in one hand, then in the other hand with the same snappy attitude, a small bag of pretzels.
On the return flight back, I noticed the newer looking seats. Found out as I was sitting down, there was no viewing screen (learned today it's been this way for newer AA planes since 2017). We were told to download the AA app from one's phone and look for AAinflight as the wi-fi name. I connected to the wi-fi but tried without success to get to the entertainment. I missed the part about entering aainflight.com in the web browser.
Kind of hard to do when everyone is repeatedly reminded to board a FULL plane to meet an on-time departure. My seat assignment was in the LAST row, 33C.
So I ended up watching no movies, painfully slow wi-fi access and charged $10.99 for it. The constant browser search spinning drained my phone's battery quite quickly. I couldn't charge the phone because the jack to plug in the charger already had the earphones. We received one lousy beverage and food cart service for a 6-hour flight.
AA may have saved plane weight and labor and maintenance costs. I'm all for cost-cutting. But not at the expense of customers. Namely this one.
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| source: YouTube |
Up until this month, my ride sharing app was exclusively Lyft. When I upgraded to American Express Platinum in August, I added Uber to take advantage of the $15/month credit.
As a passenger, I found Lyft to be faster and cheaper than Uber in San Francisco. I found Uber much more responsive in Miami. I used Uber from the airport to the hotel, and from the hotel to the Port of Miami.
The biggest highlights of the vacation:
- bonding time with nephew
- unlimited availability of char-grilled steak and lobster tail at the dinner buffet
- ziplining in Roatán
I'm not yet ready to go back to work tomorrow. But it will be less painful as it'll be a short work week due to the Thanksgiving Holiday.
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