Hitchin’ a ride
Tomorrow I leave for one of my yearly England visits. The main reason is for the Reading festival. I started going way back in 1997 so this will be my tenth year (I missed 2005 to get married). Mind you given my previous Glastonbury trips I am already on 11 festivals in the past 10 years. The line-up is as good as any year I have been. As per usual I have zero interest in any of the headliners but will inevitably end up drifting along with other people to see one or two. The main entertainment is relaxing for five days with friends and catching new bands. Last year I discovered a cool band called Giant Drag who I have really got to like a whole lot.
My last flight back was a nightmare, well at least the transatlantic leg. The flight was cramped, uncomfortable and featured the poorest food I have ever had aboard a plane. It was a pretty miserable experience all told. As a result this year I looked into my options a bit more.
As a result tomorrow I travel first/business class on a mixture of Delta and Continental flights. The internal US flights in business seem to be no great shakes. Free booze and a little bigger seats is all. The international leg is where the benefits start to appear. Here is the promo page for my Continental flight
Effectively a nice big seat that reclines with a built in personal entertainment system. It appears from reading up there are both TV and movies on demand plus some games. Business class also features nicer food and a more comprehensive wine list. Hopefully this might be the first flight I ever get some rest on. If not I will just work my way through the various free wines of the world. Theres also some other benefits like more cabin crew per passneger (1 per 8), quick checkin and security queues plus private lounges at airports.
The price wasn’t as bad as I have seen in the past plus paying for the flight should bump me up into a higher frequent flyer traveller bracket. High enough that I will be eligible for free upgrades to the same class in future. I will also accumulate a fair old number of skymiles making my trip back in xmas with Wendi a lot cheaper too.
Sadly there is still no wifi on any US carrier that I know of. If there was I could put up my latest restaurant reviews. This last weekend we went to Park City. I discovered a great wine bar called Bacchus and tried a few restaurants, namely Prime, Glitretind and Wahso. The last of which we even got “VIP” treatment for (more on that later). The writeups will need to wait until I am back in England though. In the meantime I will just throw up some pics of our trip on the gallery page. By now you should all know the link :)