Getting Around Like a Dutchman in The Netherlands on Business

Flying to Amsterdam is easy.  Schiphol Airport is a joy to use, with great air connections worldwide, including intra-European flights to everywhere.  The train service that connects the airport to Amsterdam is a snap to use, too, both convenient and frequent.

Opting to travel by rail from other European cities to reach Amsterdam, it's hard to beat the frequent and comfortable Thalys and ICE TGV-like fast train services (like the one pictured below that just arrived Amsterdam from Paris Gare du Nord).  

 

Trains from other cities and from the airport arrive to Amsterdam Centraal in the heart of the city.  From there it's easy to get a tram or an expensive taxi to one's destination in the city, or simply to walk.  But once there, how do you get around to conduct business? 

Most Dutch depend upon their bicycles for a good deal of local transport, not only in Amsterdam, but throughout all cities and towns in The Netherlands--for business conveyance as well as for personal trips.  Bikes are faster, cheaper, easier, and far more convenient than other modes of travel.  This is especially true in an environment where a great deal of the land is reclaimed from the sea and hence is very precious.  

Living on reclaimed earth has brought a different perspective.  Room for roads is limited, let alone the square footage needed to park one's private automobile, and consequently the little space allocated for motor vehicles is expensive and hard to find.  

Thus the Dutch bicycle culture prevails.  In fact, biking is the most common means of urban and suburban transport.  Take a look at the bike parking spaces at Amsterdam Centraal, for example (below photos).  I couldn't even find the parking lot for private autos, assuming there is one.

Bike parking wedged between the train station and the canal in Amsterdam

A sea of of bicycle parking just outside the Amsterdam train station 

Dutch city streets have been engineered to favor public transit, pedestrians, and bicycles.  Dedicated bike lanes are the norm, and even have their own traffic signals.

Traveling to other Dutch cities from Amsterdam on business, it's common to take one of the many all-day trains that connect the towns and cities of Holland.  Train service is clean, convenient, modern, and frequent, as can be seen from the below pictures.  It's possible to get almost anywhere in the country throughout the day by train.

Trains run all day between Amsterdam & other Dutch communities

On-board screens track train schedule & progress

Dutch trains have silent zones conducive to working

Many Dutch train travelers, including business travelers, take their bicycles with them.  Due to the strong cycling culture, trains in Holland are routinely fitted to accommodate on-board bikes.

It's normal to bring your bike on the trains in The Netherlands

Dutch towns and cities, as these photos demonstrate in Leiden and in Enkhuizen, are extremely bike-friendly places, with bicycle parking conveniently located almost everywhere very close to trains.  By contrast, in none of the Dutch city and town stations I visited was automobile parking apparent.

Bike parking at the Enkhuizen train station is just a few steps from the trains

Bike Parking at the Leiden train station as far as the eye can see

The sheer number of bicycles in Holland is staggering compared to the U.S.

Covered bike parking is available at most rail stations for commuters

Of course private cars are available, along with public buses.  Yet despite the population density in Holland, most streets and roads there are not as congested as in America because so many business and personal trips are made by bicycle and rail rather than by motor vehicles.  

An uncrowded roundabout near Leiden as seen from the train

Almost every street and highway in Holland has dedicated bicycle lanes, and most bike lanes are very busy with cyclists day and night.  Bike lanes even have dedicated rail crossing warning devices, as seen in this photo:

Dedicated warning devices at rail crossings for cyclists

Once a meeting is over in a remote town or city, the typical Dutch business traveler returns to the train station by public transit (tram or bus) or bike for the trip back to Amsterdam:

Going home to Amsterdam after a business day trip

Of course Dutch everyday use of trains, bicycles, and public transit modes as the principal means of getting around, on business as well as for personal trips, is hardly news to anyone who has spent any time in Holland.  I greatly admire the Dutch culture of biking and taking the train.  

While it's certainly true that not every Dutch business trip is, or can be, made using trains and bikes, the fact that it's the norm--the default means of getting around--is in striking contrast to American practice. We should aspire to this paradigm to counter our total dependence upon the private automobile as the means of conveyance for every trip in America.  

Living Large Near the Opera in Paris

A frustrating truth about business travel to beautiful locales like Paris is lack of time during the work week to enjoy what's around you.  To give myself time to adjust and to sample what a primo city like Paris has to offer, I have often arrived on a weekend, even a couple of days early.  No need to employ such a strategem, of course, if traveling to, say, Toledo, but not to imbibe a little local culture in Paris?  I mean, c'mon!  Whether your first trip or your fiftieth, cities like Paris are never dull.

During a recent trip to Paris, I booked into the Millennium Opera Hotel on Boulevard Haussmann near the ornate opera house.  I arrived on a Saturday and managed to get to Musee d'Orsay to see all the impressionist masters' works before it closed at 6:00 PM.  Wandering around leisurely, something I have never before had time to do at the d'Orsay, I found an entire room on the ground floor of Toulouse Lautrec (north side off the main floor).  As an admirer of Lautrec's work, I lingered there. 

Later that evening I enjoyed a memorable dinner at Au Petit Riche on Pelletier just a block away from the hotel. Their housemade fois gras was superb, as was the fillet au poivre. To accompany the good French beef, I ordered a Cote Rotie, one of my favorite Rhone varietals. The particular bottle poured, a 2007 vintage, was disappointing.  The delicious creme brulee, however, helped to make up for the vin tres ordinaire (forgive my terrible French).

Au Petit Riche Restaurant, Paris

After eating well at dinner Saturday night at Au Petit Riche, I kept it simple on Sunday: a light breakfast and a simple fromage crepe (with Gruyere) for lunch.

As it wasn't a work day, I did a lot of walking, first to the Louvre, where I fought with record-breaking hordes even before noon (I thought they'd be in church on Sunday). Standing in front of the Mona Lisa with my back to her, I took photos of the thousand or so adorers struggling to get an iPhone snap of her famous enigmatic smile (she looks as though she just passed gas to me).

Watching people gawking at the Mona Lisa

Then a leisurely walk along the Seine (a long walk) to the Eiffel Tower where I was surprised the earth didn't open up under the weight of so much flesh standing beneath the four corners. So many people had gathered, you'd have thought they were dropping barrels of free €50 notes off the tower to folks.

But no, they were just rubber-neckers, come to gawk at Gustav Eiffel's contraption built for the 1889 World's Fair. Parisians then loathed the thing, calling it a giant asparagus. One critic famously quipped that he often ate lunch in the tower restaurant because it was the only place in the city he couldn't see it.

Another divine dinner Sunday night, that one at a well-known, mainly local brasserie called "Le Vaudeville" directly across from the Bourse (stock exchange) on Rue Vivienne, about a 12 min walk from the hotel.  Its reputation as a local favorite not overrun with foreigners seemed right. After all, why not eat like the natives? 

The mainly local haunt, Le Vaudeville

I wanted to try the Aux Lyonnaise, a bistro only a block away from Vaudeville that specializes in heavenly Lyonnaise cuisine using ancient recipes revived into epicurean delights. Sadly, it was closed that night.

Arriving to Le Vaudeville at 7:45 PM I was seated with no wait. By 8:00 PM it was totally packed, mainly with Parisians out for Sunday dinner. The few foreigners were seated in the front room by the windows. Somehow I rated a table among the locals in the main room in back.

I eyed the wine menu for bargains and found none, though the selection of Rhones included 3 fine old reds at astronomical prices. Knowing one can never go wrong with a nonvintage brut Champagne, I ordered a reasonably-priced Bollinger because I like the Bollinger house "dosage" (the secret mixture of Cognac and flavorings all Champagne houses add to distinguish their bubblies). It was perfect for enjoying the good fare and watching the passing scene.

Tables were, as usual, placed within millimeters of one another, which pleased me. The closer, the better. Made me feel like part of the aggregate community of French men, women, and children.

Every possible menu selection was ordered and produced at each table nearby, and I enjoyed the passing culinary circus being whisked to hungry patrons: cooked crustaceans of every variety, oysters on the half shell, steak tartar, and many other unidentifiable but appetizing courses. A wonderful experience!

For what the French correctly call an entree (which means "enter" or "entrance") and we Americans call a starter, I ordered foie gras de canard (duck liver pate). It was very, very good, but not as tasty as the previous night's housemade wonder at Au Petit Riche. Dessert was a molten chocolate cake with almonds and a small scoop of rich ice cream that was vastly superior to the knock-offs like it in the States.

My main dish was a perfectly-prepared, melt-in-your-mouth tender, to-die-for slab of calf liver (foie de veau) with a superb accompanying sauce and whipped potatoes. I felt guilty eating it because it was so sinfully good.

But then I noticed that half the Parisians around me had ordered the same and were putting the veal down their gullets with gusto. As did I.  I wondered if Vaudeville was famous for its veal and seafood.

Price for dinner, service, and taxes included, was €27--about $36--not including the Champagne. That's incredibly cheap for a real dinner in Paris.

Before heading back to the hotel, I stopped by for a gander at the very famous and most spectacular restaurant in Paris, Le Grand Vefour, which is only one long block away from Vaudeville. Vefour opened in 1868 and its current chef, Guy Martin, has maintained an amazing 3 Michelin stars...and prices to match.

If only I could afford to dine here!

Their fixed price lunch is €98 ($125) per person, and I have read that one can expect to spend €250-300 (up to about $400) per person for dinner, one of the reasons I didn't go there (and won't). Must be good, but I thoroughly enjoyed my meal that night at Vaudeville at one-tenth the price.

All these grand sight and culinary experiences in Paris in a day and a half on the weekend before the work week had even begun!  

Hotel Comfort, Bus Revelation In London

Nice shelter if you can get it

Praise heavens for the London Millennium Mayfair Hotel!  Situated in the heart of Mayfair on Grosvenor Square close to the American Embassy, it's a great location for business or leisure travelers.  

I booked my family in there over Spring Break and got a good deal, too--at least for a Central London hotel property.  Our $282 rate included a gigantic room even by U.S. standards (room 438).  With the fold-out couch for our two kids open all day, there was ample room to move around.  

We also enjoyed a complimentary full breakfast buffet every morning, use of the executive lounge throughout the day (which included complimentary cocktails and wine in the evenings), a daily £15 discount for room service or in the lobby bar, and 20% off at the swanky in-house Avista Restaurant.  The nice front desk staff also let us check in early, a real plus after an all-night flight.

The hotel's location on Grosvenor Square means it's quiet and calm. Being in the center of Mayfair, much of Central London is within reasonable walking distance, too. 

The seventh floor executive lounge was spacious and dignified, and always staffed by professionals.  Lounge staff always made us feel welcome and anticipated our every need.

Also memorable were the bathroom features:  The shower's water pressure like the Colorado River after the spring snowmelt, so strong that you literally have to brace yourself not to fall over from it.  No wimpy toilet flush like the USA, either; at least two times the pressure and water volume of American toilets.  Straight-across shower curtain instead of the bowed-out ones.  Bath sheets big as blankets instead of ordinary towels to dry oneself.

Perhaps best of all was the service throughout the property.  We encountered a great number of staff in several departments, and they were universally kind, helpful, and upbeat.  Not a rotten egg or sourpuss in the bunch.

Such courteous service makes any hotel experience, especially on business. That's one reason this is my preferred property when in London on business.

London Transport city buses?  Really?

On business trips to London I always take a taxi to my clients' workplaces (or walk, if close).  Cabs are very expensive, of course, especially with the extra Central London "congestion" charges applicable in Mayfair.  

Since this was a pleasure trip, we eschewed cabs and used London Transport's Oyster Cards, good for all-day travel on the Underground or city buses. We pre-purchased cards good for zones 1 and 2, which includes most of Central London.  To my great surprise, we found the buses wonderfully easy to use.  In fact we never used the Underground at all this trip.  

London Buses on Piccadilly near Green Park
as seen from the upper deck of a similar bus

I have my wife to thank for the bus discovery.  Before we left home, she printed a one-page bus map of Central London which we found indispensable.  

It was all so easy.  I've been traveling to London since 1973, and yet I never tried to master the city buses until now.  How sad is that?  Next time I am there on business, I will use the buses instead of cabs wherever I can.  

The Central London bus map can be found at:

http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/fms/MRSite/acad/lgri/summer-school/central_bus_map.pdf. 

It doesn't include every route, just the major ones. But that's sufficient.  Here it is:

On the Twenty-First Century Limited London-Paris

Why fly to the Continent when there's Eurostar, the channel tunnel train?  Central London to central Paris in three hours in comfort and with minimal hassle:  It's a no-brainer. 

OK, it's not the elegant service it was 15-16 years ago.  My wife and I took Eurostar in the 90s when it was new and operated from Waterloo. We somehow snagged a discounted First Class fare. The service seemed luxurious then, as well as fast. Our trip recently from London to Paris was in "Standard" class and much more akin to a bus service, with nothing luxurious about it. 

Nothing wrong with that, though. In fact almost every seat was filled, a credit to its operating "above the rail" profitability and a model for Amtrak to emulate, if it ever can.  

(Capital costs for the Channel tunnel and the trainsets themselves have been written off or absorbed. Both the Eurostar London-Paris and London-Brussels and the Thalys TGV-like service Paris-Brussels-Cologne-Amsterdam are profitable on an operating basis.) 

In fact I've been told today's frequent and cheap Eurostar service has created a whole new class of commuters.  There are folks who now live in the Paris suburbs who use Eurostar to get to work in London.

Amazingly, we paid $63 one way for each of three tickets and $45 one way for our daughter's ticket (she is 9).  It's a great bargain and far better than flying despite the slight hassle of security and passport control at London's St. Pancras Station--still far faster than at any airport. 

We pre-purchased nonrefundable tickets online which I printed at home. The barcode opened the security barrier for us at the DIY gate at St. Pancras. All very well thought-out and efficient. Here's what the boarding area looks like at St. Pancras--comfortable and clean: 

When our train was announced on the departure board, the gate and escalator opened automatically, and we found our car easily, as the car numbers are printed on the platform opposite the doors.  Here are photos of the boarding process:

Once on board, there is plenty of overhead space and at the ends of cars for stowing luggage.  We chose four seats (in advance, online) in the center of the car facing each each other with a table in the middle:

The train operated dead on time. Pretty soon after exiting London, we were flying towards the tunnel.  I went to the cafe car and bought a half bottle of Champagne to enhance the experience (we were, after all, on vacation).  The cafe car is nothing fancy--really more like a standard Amtrak cafe car now--but it was clean, well-maintained, and the selections were decent and the Champagne cold (and even reasonably priced):

Out of the tunnel we accelerated to well over 150 MPH through the French countryside.  My wife and I sipped our Champagne and enjoyed the scenery on a rare sunny day in France.  

At times our Eurostar reached 300 km/h, or 188 mph, which is achieved on the "LGV Nord" between the channel and the northern outskirts of Paris. (LGV refers to the tracks: High Speed Line in French).  It was an incredibly smooth ride, too. 

I even bought two carnets of 10 Paris Metro tickets each in the cafe car when purchasing a pizza for our kids.  Saved a lot of time at Gare du Nord.  

Pretty soon we were slowing for the Paris burbs, and grabbing our bags for disembarking.  I was amazed at how fast the trip seemed--because it was fast.  

In decades past I had occasion to commute between London and Paris on job assignments, but it was an all-day ordeal then: a (not very fast) train to Dover; a (very slow) ferry boat to Calais across the choppy, cold, dreary English Channel; another (not very speedy) train to Paris.  It wasn't cheap, either.  

Eurostar was a great way to travel for fun with the kids, of course, but I couldn't help marveling at how it's been perfected into a fantastic business tool since I traveled on it in the 1990s.  It's the ideal mode now for professionals to use between London and Paris, and between London and EU headquarters in Brussels: inexpensive, frequent, reliable, no hassle.  It's a business model we need to import to the United States.

Economy Comfort and Other Little Travel Provider Fibs

The experience of travel exposes each of us, of course, to the vagaries of reality.  I don't know about you, but ofttimes the travel services advertised or expected are not what I get.  

To most modern flyers, for instance, it may seem petty of me to gripe about the diminution of aircraft (from full-sized jet to RJ) now in service on Delta between Raleigh and New York.  After all, it's just a smaller airplane, right? 

True, but that's not the full story.  Since at least the 1960s through the early 2000s, airlines serving RDU and the New York area airports supplied 727s, 737s, DC-9s,  MD80s, and even occasionally 757s for the route.  The flights then were full of business customers, just as today.  The short one-hour service was never fancy, but it was comfortable.  

Frequently, we were connecting to international flights and had paid a great deal of money for the privilege of flying in First or Business Class.  The "premium" experience started in the domestic First Class cabin at RDU when we boarded the plane, so that it was seamless.  Even in economy, the planes were roomy and the seats tolerable.  It gave us comfort to think our money was well-spent.

Not any more, though.  Tiny, tinny, and tired regional jets now ply the route to the Big Apple from Raleigh.  The crews are typically third-party contractors, and it often shows.  RJ crews are more likely not to show up or to be late to the gate.  So your flight's late and you miss a connection?  They still get paid.  

Though Delta has announced future 2-class refits to some of its regional jet fleet, their RJs out of RDU offer one class of service: cramped.  If you bought an international First Class or Business Class ticket, forget about it.  You are just one sardine wedged tightly into the can until you get to your international flight at JFK, no matter how much you paid.  You don't even rate a free cocktail en route to New York.  The seats are small and close together.  City bus service is more comfortable.  

RJs fly slower than full-size planes, too, so the trips take a bit longer than they ever have.  Flights using RJs have a tendency to be late and never really catch up on their schedules.  When service disruptions caused by weather or ATC occur, airlines typically begin cancelling RJ flights first because each RJ impacts a relatively smaller number of passengers than a full-sized jet.  

Altogether, RJ flights are not comfortable and have eliminated every bit of fun in flying.  Put in context, therefore, my complaint is valid.  I don't mind flying RJs to smaller markets like Omaha, but between Raleigh and New York, they are a sour note.  Give us back full-sized jets to New York, please!  

Full-sized aircraft are no guarantee of comfort, either.  At JFK for a recent Delta flight to London Heathrow with my family, I had used my Platinum privileges to reserve four seats in  Delta's "Economy Comfort" section of coach. I snagged the best seats in Economy Comfort, too, on the bulkhead starboard side right behind Business Elite.

However, the trouble with Delta's Economy Comfort is that often it's not.  Sure, the first few rows of coach seats are called Economy Comfort.  But Delta has so many airplanes on international routes that it hasn't converted all of them to true Economy Comfort, which they define as having four inches more "seat pitch" (distance between seats for better legroom) and four inches more recline.

Certainly the Economy Comfort seats on our 767 to Heathrow didn't live up to those standards, nor did the Airbus coming home (Amsterdam/Detroit, an old Northwest plane and route).  Those seats didn't feel as if they were any more distant between rows  than the infinite number of rows of economy behind us stretching to the rear of the aircraft.  

Having made two round trips in Economy Comfort on Delta's 777 aircraft between Atlanta and Johannesburg, I know the difference.  Those long-haul 777s make a 16-hour nonstop flight ATL/JNB, and the distance between Economy Comfort rows lives up to the advertising claim.  Being in Economy Comfort seats rather than regular coach seats makes those long flights less hellish.

The other Economy Comfort service elements on our flights to Heathrow and back from Amsterdam did not differ any from the rest of coach: the same mediocre food trays, the same insipid white wine from a milk carton (I called that wine "roach killer" and asked for a Heineken instead).  However, the movie selections were free for us, and I am not sure whether the ordinary coach passengers had to pay for theirs or not.

Same lack of truth in advertising with the Heathrow Express train from the airport to Paddington Station in London:  Overall, it's not really that fast.  Yet they charge as if it is truly an express service.  It's an expensive option.  Once you follow the endless signs to the underground passages and then walk through the long tunnels, it's usually a connection train that awaits you.  That train isn't always standing at the platform and often involves a lengthy delay waiting for a train to arrive.  Once there, the connection train takes Heathrow Express passengers to the central Heathrow station where all must get off and find the real Heathrow Express train on another platform reached through further tunnels.  

When finally there on the actual platform, another wait is required if a train isn't present (as often is the case).  Once on board, yet another delay occurs waiting for the train to depart while stragglers arrive.  Finally underway, the Heathrow "Express" eventually surfaces to daylight to join the busy track network into London and becomes, well, just another passenger train headed for Paddington.  As such, it experiences slowdowns and delays like every other train (it's not treated special just because of its name, "Express").

So why do people use it?  Well, I do because it's still cheaper than a taxi, and the London Underground connection from Heathrow into town is hard for me to find.  I haven't found a good alternate option to Heathrow Express.  But I resent paying a premium for the train that claims to be an "express" when in fact it can take an hour start to finish to get to Paddington.  I would prefer they choose a more modest name, such as "Heathrow Connection" even if it's still expensive.  

Point being, it's a mistake to automatically put one's faith in travel providers to live up to their claims of service. Especially not the airlines.  It's a dice throw every time you board a plane to see if you get what you booked.  In the case of "Economy Comfort," Delta uses the word "comfort" indiscriminately and hopes you don't notice that it's often actually not any more comfortable than the rest of coach.  At least I didn't have to pay extra for it; many folks did.

Spring Break:
Getting to London

Six months ago my wife and I looked for tropical places we could escape to from Raleigh with our two kids over their Spring Break in late March/early April.  When we found only scary-high airfares to favorite destinations like the USVI and Belize, we checked Europe instead.  Surprisingly, the fares were cheaper, so we planned a trip to London for 3 days, then Paris for 3 days, and ending up in Amsterdam for 3 days before flying home.

We didn't want to fly back from London because of their absurd departure taxes on air travel.  Those taxes don't apply, though, when flying into the UK.  Our open-jaw tickets on Delta were cheap enough that we could easily justify the rail fares to get us from London to Paris and from there to Amsterdam.

Used to be Delta had real planes flying RDU to the New York airports, but these days it's mostly CRJs and ERJs.  Ours was a Canadair, uncomfortable as always, and late to boot, but we made up a bit of time en route owing to the fat built into the schedule, landing at JFK on time at Gate 18.  

Still, we had a short connection and had to fast-walk to our departure Gate 8 to catch DL03 to Heathrow.  From gate 18 to gate 8 sounds close, but it's in fact very distant.  Even moving swiftly through the old Pan American World Airways terminal, I could see it was as shopworn as it had appeared to me in 1979 when I flew PanAm quite a bit to London.

The flight was boarding by the time we made it to gate 8, and we walked down the jetway with no wait.  My Delta Platinum status had allowed me access to Economy Comfort, the rows near the front of coach with 4 inches more legroom and recline--or supposedly so.  Our seats were 15FG and 16FG, the first two rows behind Business Elite.  They didn't seem to have more pitch to me, but we did have free movies on demand and the relative privacy and comfort of the front rows.

The seats were not comfortable, not even for the short 7-hour flight, and the meal service was typically an abomination of mediocrity.  Nonetheless, the crew was attentive and kind, and the movies plentiful.  As we taxied in at Heathrow after an on-time arrival, the Purser walked back from Business class to offer me a Fast Track pass through Immigration and a Yotel voucher for a short-stay room at Heathrow to shower and freshen up.  I took both, gratefully.  She thanked me for my five million miles on Delta.

After the typical rat's maze very long walk to reach the Immigration barrier, we joined the long queue labeled "Fast Track" while observing the much longer regular line.  In a few minutes we realized the Fast Track line moved at a snail's pace because it terminated at just two Immigration stations, while the regular (non Fast Track) line moved far quicker to reach what looked like ten or more immigration clerks.  By the time we realized Fast Track was a joke, we had too much time invested in the queue, and simply waited it out.  

False advertising:  Fast Track took 42 minutes of waiting, not at all speedy.  Turned out the real VIPs were brought by airline staff not to the Fast Track line but to the adjacent "invalids" queue and let in there for a very short wait to reach an immigration agent.

Oh well, we were on vacation, so we absorbed the delay without undue stress, just some complaining on my part.  Once done, we shot through the Customs line (we only had carry-on luggage, as always) and exited the secure area in search of the Yotel short-stay mini-hotel.

It was easy to find and close-by.  The Yotel room was tiny, like on a modest sailboat, but fine with a great shower.  Afterwards, with a clean set of clothes, I felt almost human again.  

Truth is, I adjust to very long flights and time changes, such as to Asia and South Africa, better than I do going eastbound to Europe.  Jetlag kills me going to Britain or the Continent.  That's always been so for me, and the only way I can reset my internal clock is to stay up all day the first day.  Nothing better than a shower and change of clothes to launch me into the job of not falling asleep until nightfall.

Having pre-purchased the "Family Fare" on the Heathrow Express train to Paddington, we found our way through another maze of hallways, tunnels, and connection trains to the central Heathrow station where the actual Express train departs.  It takes about as long to wend one's way down to the connection train, then wait for it, and then take the connection train from one's terminal to the central Heathrow station, as it does to ride the actual train from there to Paddington.  

It's always amused me that they claim the Heathrow Express is so speedy.  It takes twice as long start-to-finish from Terminal 4 or 5 to Paddington as they claim because they only count the Express train itself and not the time to reach it.  Even their own map (from their website) demonstrates to the alert reader that the 15 minute trip is longer if you're connecting to or from Terminals 4 or 5:

The ride in was fine, but Heathrow Express once again announced repeated apologies for delays en route due to other trains ahead.  I've never ridden the Heathrow Express when they didn't make such excuses.  For me, at least, they have had a zero on-time performance.

Paddington was, well, good old Paddington.  I used the station often when way back in early 1970s I studied at Oxford, so it has a special place in my heart.  We stopped at one of the "Delice" bakery products shops on the way out to buy some fresh croissants, and they were, as advertised, delicious!  Croissants almost as good as in France available in an English railroad station?  Now that's something you certainly couldn't find at Paddington--or anywhere in the UK--during the final year of the Nixon administration.

Getting Home on Delta Wasn't Easy

Last week I detailed how Delta Air Lines compounded their early morning error into a long day of travel uncertainty, stress, and misery.  However, I didn't quite finish that story.  I flew to Houston and back from Raleigh for a ninety minute business meeting.  Sounds simple, but my day began at 4:15 AM, and I got home almost 20 hours later just before midnight.  

At the close of my previous post I had finally managed to get boarding passes straightened out for the two return flights (IAH/ATL and ATL/RDU).  I was prepared to collapse into my seat on the first flight and take a much-needed snooze after imbibing an adult beverage, maybe more than one.

After all, the airplane and crew were in Houston on time and seemed ready to go on time, and we boarded on time.  Just before the door was closed, though, the captain announced there was very rainy weather in Atlanta and a ceiling of 700 feet.  He predicted a "few minutes delay getting to our gate, at worst." 

I didn't believe him for a minute.  Just as my Bombay Sapphire G&T had been served, I tensed up for the umpteenth time that day. My connection time in ATL was less than an hour at best, and I knew from many similar experiences that lots could go wrong and probably would.  I decided to have only the one pre-flight drink and to stay alert.

The ride got extremely bumpy soon after we reached altitude and stayed that way, which didn't surprise me based on the captain's description of the weather.  The flight attendants were told to stay strapped in, so no one got another drink.  Once close to ATL, it took a lot longer to get slotted into the landing sequence than the pilot had been told.  

The ceiling was low all right, almost to the ground by the time we hit the tarmac, giving me my first view of where we were: way, way on the far south side of the airport on the most distant of the new runways.  I knew it would be a long taxi to our gate, and it was, a good 15 minutes of stop-and-go shimmying to cross active runways and to avoid the conga lines of planes queued up all over the rain-drenched airport.

Thank God for FlightStats.com.  As we shuffled along, I inquired via smartphone about our arrival gate (Delta no longer announces the arrival gate or connecting flight gates as they used to): A9, not too bad a location.  But I groaned upon seeing that my connecting flight was E1, a darn long hike from A9.  And it showed my connecting flight posted on time, too.

By the time we arrived at the gate, I had 15 minutes to make my flight.  I ran all the way down the A concourse to the escalator, dodging the large, lethargic crowds (people wandering around airports always seem to be either confused or in no hurry), then brushed past everyone standing on the down escalator (Americans are notoriously reluctant to walk down escalators even when unburdened by bags), and barely made the "Plane Train" (you'd think the ATL airport authority could have come up with a more clever name).  

Once off the train at E, I bounded up the escalator (causing many heads to turn--no doubt few Americans are ever seen walking, let alone running, UP an escalator unless the law is after them), then sprinted the length of the concourse to the very end to reach E1, arriving just about one minute prior to departure time.  

There, to my astonishment, I found the gate open and welcoming.  They seemed to be holding the plane for me.  Could it be?  Out of breath, but grateful, I profusely thanked the gate agent taking boarding passes for waiting for me.  

"Oh, we are not waiting just for YOU," she drawled, "We're waiting for a LOT of people."  

I should have reaffirmed my gratitude, but I was having trouble recalling many Delta flight connections in the last three decades that have waited on anybody.  Sure, this was the last flight to RDU that night, but that never stopped Delta from leaving me behind before.  

Mainly, though, I felt foolish that I had run like a madman from one end of the airport to the other, only to find that I could have lollygagged along and made my flight without penalty.  Nothing on the Delta screens indicated the plane would wait.  I sullenly boarded in silence.

Oh well, I thought.  I took my seat and kept my trap shut, deciding I was lucky that I made it and should lower my expectations.  I imbibed another Bombay Sapphire G&T and nodded off.  After a bone-shaking ride all the way from Atlanta due to the bad weather, we arrived RDU only about a half hour late, and I got home by midnight.  Despite the manifold trials of travel, I was grateful to have made it out and back again and still be in one piece.