If you were in New York’s Union Square yesterday, you may have walked past 100 or so people engaging in a chain of French kissing. Organized by French group Institut Bonheur (Institute of Happiness), the kissing party was set up to break the world record for the longest chain kiss. You gotta love the Frenchmen that is so into what this group is doing that he says, “this French kiss has to be the new symbol of what we call happiness and freedom.” Crazy Frenchies.
Here’s an observation by Mike Nezza at The Lede. Although, it was ruled by a federal court that airlines don’t need to provide passengers with comforts if they are detained while sitting in an airplane, passengers stuck on London’s gigantic Ferris wheel, the London Eye don’t have to worry about such trifles.
Just like Abha reported in her post, if you get stuck on the London Eye, you’ll get blankets, water, glucose tablets and a toilet. If you get stuck on an airplane, according to the law, you are not guaranteed water, a working toilet or fresh air. On the London Eye, you’ll also get a terrific view of London if you’re close to the top. On an airplane, if you look out a window, there’s the tarmac—maybe other airplanes, a runway or a building or two.
But, perhaps one might rather be stuck on the ground than up in the air. Those at the bottom of the London Eye may have been allowed to get off. If you’re out on a runway, there you are, and are, and are, and are.
People often don’t think about traveling over the holidays before it’s too late and ticket prices have gone through the roof. Good thing you’ve got me around. Just be glad you don’t know me personally, I’m always pestering people to buy tickets and they hate me for it.
Anyway, we’ve been looking for good tickets to buy for my girlfriend and I over Memorial Day, and blogger Jeremy (aka, Yaro, aka SATIJ) stumbled on a great fare to Mexico City over that weekend. For a paltry 280$, you can get yourself into the cultural and economic center of our neighbors to the south from either Chicago or New York, leaving Friday or Saturday and returning on Tuesday, the day after the holiday.
Oh but it gets better. If you want to book today or tomorrow, there’s also a 50$ off rebate that you can use with Northwest. So your ticket price drops to 230$.
Use a month long search on the NWA website to find your tickets out of Chicago or New York. You’ll also find that the fare is good for multiple weekends in April and May as well.
Mexico City to big and dirty and scary for you? It’s actually not as bad as it used to be. Take a gander through their wikitravel page and I think you’ll be impressed at what you see. And if you need any personal advice, ask Yaro for some tips and he’ll hook you up. Ask him about his nicknames while you’re at it.
I’ll see you in Mexico City. Just don’t forget your passport.
For a brief second I thought that airline passengers just might be making headway in the notoriously frustrating airline industry. That was until today when the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a law requiring airlines to provide basic necessities to passengers stuck on a plane delayed on the ground.
When New York passed the Passenger Bill of Rights last August — intended to take effect at the beginning of this year — several other states joined in and proposed their own bills, all in the name of passenger comfort. Granted the bill didn’t provide for anything too luxurious; it only required commercial airlines to provide things like food, water, functional restrooms and fresh air when a flight was pushed back and held on the tarmac for over three hours. But in today’s airline industry where a meal is a bag of three unsalted peanuts, it’s easy to get excited about the little things.
The Passenger Bill of Rights may seem to require the bare minimum of what airlines should provide to passengers in such situations, but the airlines, represented by the Air Transport Association of America, appealed the bill anyway, as reported by CNN. With today’s official ruling that “New York’s new state law interferes with federal law governing the price, route or service of an air carrier,” we can probably assume that other states aren’t going to get much farther.
Looks like we passengers still have a long way to go.
I consider myself a sleep connoisseur. Though it’s super frustrating, I require a minimum of 9 hours of sleep per night, and I usually squeeze in 10 hours on the weekends. At one time I even owned 15 pairs of pajamas. It’s hard to imagine how much work I could get done if I only needed 7 or 8 hours, so I don’t. Instead, I embrace sleep as one of my favorite activities. That’s why I’d probably embrace Kimpton’s 70 Park Avenue Hotel’s new pillow service.
I suppose it’s not surprising that a hotel touting its Romance Sommelier and complimentary yoga baskets would have special pillows to sleep on — but 70 Park Avenue goes beyond lavender eye pillows. They’ve recently begun offering a pillow library with — you guessed it — a pillow librarian to help you choose the perfect pillow. Samples on offer include anti-snore pillows, body pillows, and “eye delight” acupressure pillows. Guests can email the pillow librarian ahead of time to let the librarian know about any sleep needs and to select the perfect pillow.
To “gently ease” you into sleep, the hotel also offers an oddly-named but blissful-sounding nightcap called Dreamerz “Chocolate S’nores,” described as an “all-natural, chocolate milk drink that helps you sleep.” I think the chocolate might give me an anti-sleep sugar buzz, but perhaps the tonic effects of my personally-selected pillow will cancel those out.