Wonderful Week!

Well, I did it - made it to Platinum. The flight to Miami put me over the top. Once I get the return miles added in, I will be 17,000 miles away from Chairman's Club - still can't wait to see what the color of that e-mail is...

This isn't what made last week wonderful though! It did start with travel related wonderfulness...

I flew to Miami and reserved a rental with National. They have the Emerald Club, which, if you are a member and reserve a mid-size car through your account means you can take advantage of the Emerald Aisle. You just walk up to any car in the Emerald Aisle, hop in and drive off - no counters! Plus, most sites have better than mid-size cars there. As I was on the shuttle bus I was scouting for the Aisle - spotted it and saw a PT Cruiser Convertible - BINGO! It was a really nice drive from Miami to Ft. Lauderdale with the top down!

Then, to end the work week, I booked a quick flight to Philly to see family. Good ol' US Airways came through for me. Once you are a silver member, you can get free upgrades to First Class on domestic flights if it is available. The higher your status, the earlier you can upgrade. The great part is if you book with your DM number, you don't have to do a thing! 3 days before the flight I received an e-mail telling me I was upgraded - Bingo #2!

In addition, on Friday we finally got the word that we can go pick up our daughter from the orphanage in Taiwan in a few weeks - #3.

Finally, the wonderful week ended by spending the weekend at my Mom's house and seeing all of the family in NJ that I could. Plus some friends who have a little boy I haven't met yet. Of course, for all of the wonderfulness of the trip, it was great to get home too!

Well, the "Where in the World" spot will be changing as things are finalized, Chairman's will get here very, very soon...

A great weekend

This is the first weekend since June that we have not traveled anywhere. Not to take anything away from London or Brussels, they were both great, for me, this might have been the best of the three weekends. The weather was wonderful, it rained only a little bit here and there, not enough to make you depressed. When it wasn't raining, it was mid 70's with a breeze. Add to this some good quality time around the house with the family and it doesn't get much better... but it did!

I was able to work in two bicycle rides, since I haven't ridden since I climbed to Petersberg on June 30th (thanks to travel and good ol' Mother Nature), I decided to go with shorter rides - 26KM yesterday and 36KM today. Overall, great rides. Saturday was my usual flat ride along the river, maintained close to my best average for the ride. Today's was my usual ride to the southwest with some rolling hills and a long ride along the river to end. This was the best ride, I beat my best average by 1 km/h, doesn't sound like much, but at this point, a pretty big gain for me.

Finally, a true sign of July, the Tour de France. Now cycling has not necessarily been in good light lately with all of the doping scandals. This has eased some of my excitement around the tour this year and there really hasn't been anything to get excited about until this weekend. Yesterday was a great time trial, which really sorted out who was there to play and who was there to win. Then today's stage was amazing! A mountain top finish with 6 of the top ten riders in a break away group leading up the final 16k climb. Best of all, Discovery Channel had 3 of their riders in the group. Disco then won the stage thanks to Alberto Contador and also moved into the "Top Team" spot. They are definitely making amends for a rather poor showing last year. This final week of the Tour should be exciting and culminates with another time trial on Saturday. I don't think we will really know who will win until then. If you get a chance to catch a mountain stage I highly recommend it. Especially since Versus (formerly OLN) shows only the highlights, so you can skip the boring parts.

Pre-Order Your Tour Shirts Now!

Well, I am catching up on the blog - three posts today and some major renovations to the "Where in the world is..." list.

Things are really starting to pick up on the travel front over here after a well deserved respite. I do not have all of the dates confirmed yet, but I have listed all of my trips through November. It is starting to look like a musical world tour. Should I get shirts printed? Will scalpers sell them in the airports as I walk through? What picture should be on the front? The most creative suggestions will be published on the comments!

London

DISCLAIMER... I have been slow to update, if you would like to read about Brussels, scroll down to the next post...

So, it wasn't a "Foggy Day in London Town", but the second day was a rainy day! More on that later. We arrived at wonderful Heathrow around 9:00 local time. Heathrow is just horrible. Terminal 2 just seems like it is about to fall apart all on it's own! We eventually gathered luggage, checked into the hotel and hopped on the Tube into downtown.

We did a very touristy thing and ate at the original Hard Rock Cafe. We then walked through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. We found the original Lost Boy Statue. This one is much easier to find as there are signs everywhere and it is in much better shape.



Next thing we did was walk down Oxford St. to Oxford Circus and then Regent St. to Picadilly Circus. While on Regent St., we stopped in Hamley's, a 7 story toy store. It was just amazing the number of people that were out and about. The whole city felt like a pack of sardines.

On Sunday we decided to take one of the open top tour buses for a hop on hop off tour of London. I have always felt the tour thing was a little cheesy and overpriced, which sometimes the commentary is and the prices are, however, with a 5 year old, it is one of the best ways to see all of the landmarks of a city in a very short period of time. It did rain every now and then, but that is what Starbuck's was invented for!

Overall, London was a neat town to see. I would like to go back and spend a little more time at some of the museum's, but with the aforementioned 5 year old, that is not much of an option. I wouldn't mind if the crowds decided to stay home though...