Nyarlathoblog: travel

Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Embassy Suites is a Huge Waste of Space

I love Embassy Suites. I get multiple rooms (hence the Suites) and free beer (hence the Embassy). But I noticed something. The vast majority of every Embassy Suites is just a big empty waste of space.

Embassy Suites hotels are in a square formation. The first floor has the front desk and a large square breakfast/manager's reception area. But every floor above that is just a square of rooms along the outside. This goes up about 12 stories. So you end up with the breakfast area having natural light and every room opening inward to look down on this breakfast area

Is the effect of having this cavernous space on the middle worth the money they could be making by actually building floors and putting rooms in them? I guess so.

Fuck it, I'm getting another free beer.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Lengua

So, I was in San Diego (which may or may not have been why I was flying over El Paso) and had the joy of eating at Tacos El Gordo. Now, if you ever eat anywhere that claims it's an authentic Mexican place, I want you to find the first waiter you see, punch him in the throat, and spit in his eye, because they are fucking liars.

Tacos El Gordo IS authentic. Basically, you order at a counter to guys who probably don't speak English. What do you order? Tacos, goddamnit! They are about half the size of Taco Bell tacos on a corn tortilla or two (but they're not crunchy). They cut of whatever meat you choose and add (usually 2) predetermined toppings, depending on what you ordered. Each one is more amazing than the last. I had a pork one, a chorizo one, and a steak one.

When I went back up to get more, I decided to go for broke and got the beef tongue taco. It. Was. Amazing. It tasted kind of like flank steak, but fell apart as you ate it because they had cooked it for probably upwards of 17 hours. I was the only white guy in the place to get it. I highly recommend it.

Monday, September 12, 2011

What's going on in El Paso?

So, I was flying across the country as I do from time to time. As I approached El Paso, TX, I noticed one of those undeveloped cities. There is a large network of what appear to be unpaved roads without any buildings or anything. It's creepy from the air, so I can only imagine what it's like on the ground.

Also, there was this:

...which I'm clearly not the first person to notice.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Alabama

Last month, I went to scenic, beautiful Mobile, Alabama!

This is Mobile, AL's actual skyline. ...You can stop laughing now.

I saw the sight there. (Yeah, there's only one.) The USS Alabama (BB-60). It was a World War II-era battleship. (Interesting fact: They filmed parts of Under Siege on it.)

It's got everything from giant guns of death...

...to what must have been the worst thing about WWII.

That's right. Sailors had to poop into troughs while sitting on two planks of wood in a doorless half-stall. What you can't see in this picture is that the half-stalls all face another stall, so you had the added bonus of watching the dude in front of you, too!

At least the sleeping arrangements were ni-- OH GOD! Now I know why they call beds on ships "racks". Nowadays, they have the much more comforting name of "coffin racks". As horrible as they are, at least they're not like this!

It is quite an epic buoyant deathbringer!

Later on, on the way to Mississippi, I saw this:

That chalkboard says "THIS PoLiTicain Don'T Lie" (sic). This... thing... was on a property along with a doubletall trailer. It looked like the landowner built a lower level himself, mostly out of plywood, then stacked his mobile home on top of it. I didn't get a picture of it because I was fleeing for my life at that point.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Southwest Has Ruined One of The Best Things About Them

Southwest Airlines has overhauled their frequent flyer program. It's so simple, it takes 3 YouTube videos to explain it.

Without writing something the length of a doctoral thesis on the details, let me see if I can explain it. In the old system,
1 flight = 1 point. 8 round trips = 16 points = 1 free flight.
Done. That's it.

The new system is as convoluted as it is terrible. First of all everything's different for different fare tiers, of which there are three. For the cheapest fare:
1 flight to Location A_x = x points
20x points = 10 round trips = 1 free flight to Location A_x
Now assume x > y.
1 flight to Location B_y = y points
1 free flight to Location A_x > 10y points

You would have to fly more times to Location B_y to get a free flight to Location A_x. And who knows if the flight back from Location A_x is the same as the flight there?

Oh, and mind you, x and y aren't low, simple numbers. They're in the thousands so they're harder for people to wrap their head around.

Now the numbers above are different for different fares, which I assume they did to get more people to fly business class (which just means you board earlier). Why not instead just make business class flights worth 3 points for round trips then and make the free flights cost more points if you want the higher fares?

The only plus side is that your points don't expire. That's good because if they did, they'd be gone by the time you figured out where the hell you can fly for free.

What's next? Baggage fees? I think this is the beginning of the end for Southwest.