Head in the clouds
There are indeed days where I feel likemy headis in the clouds, but yesterdayit was quite literally so, and what a view.Of course, I can't say what customerI was visiting in London's Canary Wharf, but this was the view out theconference room window. It's not often I get distracted duringa meeting seeing a cloud at eye level in peripheral vision (notin that picture, but it happened more than once). Definitely a niceconference room setup.Travel went extremely well during theentirety of my week away. United Airlines customer service was topnotch for both trans-Atlantic flights. While I end up on Americanmost often (with almost 2 million lifetime miles), UA has better food,better ground service for premium travelers, and their employees are justplain nicer than they were years ago. I've said this a few timeson the blog, but it bears repeating since the contrast between them andsome of the other airlines is becoming quite stark. Also good serviceon KLM and VLM(yes, VLM), who I flew yesterday into London City Airport. I wasthe only passenger out of 50 on that flight who was a non-EU citizen...itseems VLM is a local secret.So is LondonCity Airport. This was onlymy second time flying in there, but it was perfect for my travel to CanaryWharf. Not so sure about the welcome committee, though. TheVLM flght was slightly delayed due to air traffic control, leaving me onlya few minutes to get to my meeting. Unfortunately, I wouldn't haveenough time to try the brandnew Docklands Light Rail connection to LCY. Thus, off to the taxi queue. The driver asked me if I knew aboutthe new train connection (which surprised me, since most cabbies resenttrains replacing them). I replied "yes, but my meeting startsin 15 minutes." His grouchy response, "yes, well, I'vebeen waiting here since 7 AM for a job." The implication wasthat the 10 quid fare wasn't worth his bother. Sorry mate, two daysago, you would have been happy to take that fare.When we arrived at Canary Wharf, thefare was £10.80. I gave him two ten pound notes. He threw oneof them back at me, saying he didn't want to be bothered making change. Well, if his attitude at the start of the ride hadn't done it, thisgesture sure did -- I was glad to be out of that ride. Didn't realizewe were in a world where a cabbie would quarrel with a decent fare, butwhat do I know. Instead, I voted with my wallet -- and took the LondonUnderground out to Heathrow after the meeting.Also offering a shout-out to the ParkLane Hotel in London and the Holiday Inn in Amsterdam for great service. The Park Lane is a Sheraton, and I've never had better Starwood Preferredbenefits. The Holiday Inn sent us to a fantastic restaurant for dinneron Monday (visaandeschelde,just near the RAI conference center) and handled a check-out mixup seamlessly. Would that it would always work out that way.
