My Travels

Made a quick weekend trip for family to Lima. As this trip was mostly a chaperone scenario, I made the best of the situation as possible. I had to layover over in Houston on United Airlines and decided to do a layover visit and gave myself an 8 hour layover to see the 'sights.' I was able to get a great deal on Priceline for a car rental and ended up at National with a Toyota Corolla. I was impressed with the mileage of the car as I was able to put on 80+ miles during my excursion and the tank was still at full. Or I was really lucky and the person before me filled it up to the maximum. I went into the United Club to freshen up and grab a quick shower and light breakfast. Also, at 6 am in Houston, it was still dark and there is nothing open in the city. Headed out around 8 am and checked out the Asian scene. I have heard that there was a mass exodus of Vietnamese folks from California to Texas specifically Houston. I wanted to see if the community was as established as it...

Quick trip on United to Chicago to start my quest for 1K status. Flew out on a red eye flight and landed on the coldest hour of the day at 0 degrees Celsius. The airport felt as cold inside as outside and the pilot sent his condolences over the pa system.   Took the CTA blue line and red line to the Hampton Inn Downtown Chicago hotel. The system underwent a change and you can no longer buy paper media and add values. You either have one time use or permanent cards to add cash value. Not very convenient but it does encourage people to buy the expensive one day pass rather than one trip at a time. It was so cold that I barely managed the walk one block over to transfer between the blue and red lines at Monroe and from Grand to the hotel. Although it was way too early to check in, the front desk let me in early. I took a nap and met up with friends for lunch at Big and Littles featured on Diners Dives and Drive Ins . I tried the soft shell crab taco, spicy Thai taco, al ...