Trip Report

Travel Photos – San Francisco, California

Travel Photos, Trip Report, , , , , View all 2 comments

I am switching it up this time and going with photos from the most recent (domestic) trip my wife and I took.  We went to San Francisco over New Year’s and really enjoyed spending some relaxing time in the city while burning some Hilton points.  We lucked out getting 2 of 3 perfectly clear sunny days with highs in the mid-60’s.  Couldn’t have been better!  Enjoy!

View of the Golden Gate Bridge from close to Fisherman’s Wharf (Sight – ***).

View of Alcatraz from near Lombard St.

View of Colt Tower (Colt Tower – ** – just for the views) from near Lombard St.

My wife and I in front of Lombard St. (Apparently we took a bunch of pictures up there) (Lombard St. – **)

This picture is looking towards downtown from Columbus Ave. (Notice the Hilton Financial District Hotel peaking over the tops of some buildings on the right-hand side.  I will give a brief review below)

To complete the pictures portion of this post I had to throw in the requisite picture of Chinatown.  It is very touristy but still fun to walk through. (Chinatown – ****)

I do want to give a brief review of the hotel we stayed in during our trip to San Francisco.  We were there over New Year’s Eve and the prices to pay for rooms out-of-pocket were pretty prohibitive so I decided to use some Hilton Honors points to book us a room.  I searched and there are three options for Hilton’s in the city: Fisherman’s Wharf, Union Square and Financial District.  The Union Square and Financial District hotels are pretty close together and I liked the fact that they were in less “touristy” sections of the city so the choice was down to those two.  I selected the Financial District Hilton based upon the reviews on tripadvisor.com, which were extremely helpful.  I think the hotel was redeemed for approximately 40,000 Hilton Honors points per night which isn’t the greatest deal in the world, but isn’t awful for the what the rooms were selling for over New Year’s.  (Price Rating – $$$$$)

The hotel itself was updated, clean and had a newer feel to it even though from the outside you could tell it was older.  Hilton has done a superb job of keeping this hotel in good and updated condition.  The check-in was efficient, even arriving when we did at 1 AM, with the staff welcoming me as a Diamond Member and explaining the Executive Lounge.  The room itself was clean but had an odor of stale cigarettes that we could not get rid of. Other than the smell, we had no complains with the condition of the room/bathroom.

Overall, I would recommend this hotel to someone traveling for leisure or business as it has a fairly convenient location (Very close to Chinatown) and the rooms are what you come to expect from Hilton.

Hope you enjoyed this post!  Since I am traveling this week I might be able to press out one more so do look forward to that!

Trip Report – St. Louis and Jacksonville, IL

Business Travel, Trip Report, , , Leave a comment

10/24/2011 – Southwest Flight #1232 MSY – DAL (Leave 6:10 AM, Arrive 7:35 AM)

                          Southwest Flight #1256 DAL – STL (Leave 9:30 AM, Arrive 11:10 AM)

10/28/2011 – Southwest Flight #1568 STL – HOU (Leave 8:55 AM, Arrive 11:05 AM)

                           Southwest Flight #2675 HOU – MSY (Leave 12:05 PM, Arrive 1:10 PM) 

As part of my writings for this blog I am going to try and squeeze in a few trip reports from my business travels, if possible, and all personal travels.  I had flown this same exact itinerary the previous week so I did not expect any significant deviations.  However, as we boarded on the 24th in New Orleans the Captain mentioned that there was some pretty thick fog in and around Dallas.   He said he did not expect it to be an issue and anticipated an early arrival (+/- 10 minutes).

The in-flight services were what I have come to expect with Southwest, efficient and friendly.  Nothing spectacular on that front and there typically is not, I have found Southwest to be quite uniform across the board.  The interesting part of this flight came as we were in our final approach into DAL.  Coming in, I could see there was fairly dense fog near ground level but did not think anything of it as you could still make out items on the ground.  We had circled around downtown and had begun our decent DAL from the north.  After extending the flaps and lowering the landing gear, as we were about to break into the fog barrier, I could feel the engines powering up and then I saw the flaps retract back into the wing.  At this point, I was not sure whether we were making a go around due to the density of the fog or if there was some mechanical error.  We did not receive word from the Captain until we had climbed back up through the upper cloud layer.  He notified us that just as we were on final approach DAL closed down flight operations due to the dense fog and that we were being diverted to Austin, TX.

Our landing in Austin was uneventful and we spent the next 3 hours on the ground in Austin.  Some of the time (approx. 45 min) was spent on the tarmac waiting for a gate to open up and the remainder was spent parked at the gate.  While at the gate Southwest gave us the options of returning to the terminal and made use of the old numbered boarding cards.  I really enjoyed getting to see those again!

Around 11 we were told to board the flight again and we took off for the short flight back to DAL.  At this point, I was not sure if I was going to be able to make it to my connection and feared having to wait in the ill-equipped Dallas Love Field.  However, as we taxied to our gate I was able to look up on Southwest.com that my flight to St. Louis had not departed due to the fog.   Thankfully, there was nothing special to report on the flight from DAL to STL and I was happy enjoy some fresh air.  Unfortunately, that fresh air didn’t last long as I had a 2 hour drive to my final destination. Not fun, but such is the life of an accountant.