jonathanchaoDOTcomâ„¢

*edit- Oh btw, I made about 300CDN playing poker at Rama.  However, I bought my extended family dinner, which blew out about…$290CDN of it.  Oh well.

Welcome to Cyprus.  Here is a quick tutorial on the history of the land so that you can appreciate the following more.

After getting off the Milpensa Express, I headed to the Cyprus Airways check in desk and got my boarding pass and lounge invitation.  As it appeared, most ground handling out of Milan is outsourced…but thankfully not to India.  My ticket did give the check in agent a few questions, so she simply called up a supervisor and took care of it instantly.  It only took about 5 min to check me in and before I knew it, I was on my way to the lounge.  Boarding was swift on the brand new A319.

The seats were quite nice and reminded me of the Air Canada First Class seats, but were newer and bound in soft leather instead of cloth.  Oddly enough, that made it more comfortable.  Predeparture drinks was my choice of champange, OJ, or water.  One we got in the air, some crustini type appetiezers were provided and more drinks.  The main course service weren’t too impressive, but was served on one of the most full trays I have ever gotten. 

Cyprus airport is one tiny airport, with ONE terminal and seven gates.  Reminded me of a bus station where all the terminals turn onto one door, the one out to the buses.  They do use new buses to get to and from the plane.

I noticed a pattern in Europe.  No immigration questions.  None. Zip. Zilch.  I didn’t even get asked how long I was staying.  They just literally stamped my passport and sent me on my way.  I think the US can learn something from the Cypriots.

Found out the Cypriots are quite lazy as the city BUSES only operate between 6:30am and 5:30 pm.  Forced to take a cab- a Mercedes E class to the hotel.  Cost 10 CYP (~22USD).  On the recommendation from someone that worked for Air Canada, he recommended the Crown Resorts Henipa which was exactly what he billed it as, cheap, clean, and functional.  Granted, the hotel reminded me of the 60’s and 70’s a bit too much and was the cleanliness of a roadside motel 6, but at 15 CYP/night (35USD) it still was worth it.  I promptly fell asleep and woke up at 5am since I was severely jet lagged.  At this point, I had already slept through 4 different time zones in 1 week. (Pacific/Eastern/Italy/Cyprus).  Turned on CNN Europe for the financial news and then watched the sunrise from my balcony.

I got bored so I decided to walk to the beach and take some video of the “beach”.  Compliments of Cyprus, please enjoy a few min of rest before you resume your workday.

Checkout was at noon so I went back to the hotel, took a shower, and went to the breakfast “buffet”.  It consisted of toast, good bacon, nasty sausages, cereal, milk, juice, coffee, and pleny of Cypriot OJ. 

My plan was to visit the “green line” and make a day trip to the Turkish side of the fence so I headed to Nicosia or Lefkosia depending on whom you might ask. 

The public bus system in Cyprus is horrible.  They have yellow bus stands with timetables sitting in the middle of nowhere, but oddly enough no bus will EVER pick you up at a stand- even if you jump up and down buck naked waving at the driver.  (Ok, I didn’t do that)  After an hour and two buses, a British/Irish expat headed to the store next to me took pity and let me in on their secret…you need to find “Da Man” who will flag down a bus for you to ride into town and sell you your ticket.  I asked who “Da Man” was, and he immediately pointed me out to a paunchy, chain smoking, old Greek guy who was sitting on a beat up leather lay-z-boy on the sundeck.  “Da Man” was wearing shorts, a dirty wifebeater, and a Dick Tracy hat.  Doesn’t that SCREAM bus stop?

I have NO idea what I was thinking when I didn’t ask him to flag down a bus beforehand. 

Nonetheless, in less than 5 min I was on my way to downtown Larnaka to catch my bus to the capital, Nikosia/Lefkosia.

Arrived at the beach in Larnaka, and I had a stopover of an hour.  I didn’t have much to do, so I took pictures, enjoyed the morning sun, and explored. 

The boardwalk:  (reminded me a lot of a mix between Santa Cruz,CA  and Waikiki, HI)

A cool looking cafe:

Beach view:

The empty beach:

After wondering around, I got onto the Nicosia bus and rode through the countryside for about an hour.  Somwhere along the way, I fell asleep and woke up in what I thought was Singapore!  Parts of Nicosia remind me exactly of Singapore.  Nonetheless upon arrival,  I called up Dave Welz to meet up and hang out.

We ended up in the Old Town, walked around, and eventually decided on some Lebanese food.

Afterwards, I met Dave’s GF Lori and their sweet little puppy, Cagney.  I was still jetlagged, so I went straight to sleep after making a few dark rum mojito’s for their friends visiting from another apartment.

I need to catch my plane for Rome right now, so I need to go.  I’ll have the next installment, my trip to North Cyprus ready by the time I land and make it into Rome. (+/- 12 hours)
Ciao!

Here is a quick preview on my trek to Northern Cyprus (Turkish controlled)

Antiquties:

(Radjbo has a great retouched version on her page)

Nuts!

I was walking around and ran into this guy making chairs by hand:

Food!

A cool looking Mosque:

The border along the “green line”:

Oh, and the fare of the day:

Go to Kayak.com

NYC to Madrid 474, Taxes INCLUDED until the end of schedule (Including SUMMER) on Air France.  Can you say, “bonjour”!
 

I am back in Toronto, Canada after returning through my first week long trip out to Europe.  I’m pretty tired right now, but in all fairness I did promise a trip report and some photos.  From the onset of my trip, I have traveled a total of 14,631 miles and have another 14k miles or so to go.  

Great Circle map of my trip so far:

If you have read my previous post, the first leg of my journey has been San Francisco to Boston then connecting to Toronto.  As I had some American airlines credit vouchers to use up, I figured I might as well use it before it expired. 

If you read the previous post, you might just want to look at the pictures instead.

AA150 SFO-BOS 3/14/07 2030h 757 Seat 23ABC

I purposely routed myself on this flight for three reasons.  1. It was only 30% full. So my chances of getting a row to myself was likely 2.  It was the redeye so I could sleep.  3. It was the longest route in N. America (about 2700 miles).  At checkin, I was offered a First Class upgrade for 15,000 miles, but I declined since most likely the plane wasn’t full per www.seatcounter.com.  As I predicted, I was able to secure my own seat and as almost everyone else, laid out over a row of three and was able to get a couple of hours of good shuteye.  I slept so deeply that I was woken up by the flight attendant to tell me to sit up for landing.

*Please note, typically this flight is packed to the gills, but somehow it wasn’t on this particular day

AA4606 BOS-YYZ 3/15/07 1030 RJ35 Seat 1A

This was my first time on the dreaded RJ (Regional Jet), and unfortunately it won’t be the last.  I would have to say, that this was probably the most claustrophobic flight I have ever been on.  The plane interior was literally the size of an SUV and had 37 people on the plane.  I myself am not a giant, but my head did scrape the ceiling when I stood up straight.  Thankfully this flight was only about an hour which I could barely tolerate, but survived nonetheless.   I was so cramped I didn’t even want to take any pictures.

After immigration in Toronto, I had to wait a few hours for the Alitalia ticketing officers to arrive and re-ticket my original ticket to Italy.  It was a mess that took two hours to sort out, but eventually it was sorted and I left as fast as I could to go see Grandma!  I hopped to the Enterprise rental car office where they gave me a brand new luxury Hundai (the new SUV) since I am a “family member” of an employee and drove to my grandmothers house.  (Thanks CC).  I ate a very late lunch with her then promptly fell asleep on the couch while watching Chinese TV.  Eventually, I woke up and drove my grandmother to my cousin’s house.  My Aunt, Uncle, Cousins, and Grandma then all went to a new Shanghainese restaurant and ate quite well.  Barely made it home before passing out and sometime in the morning I leisurely woke up, sent some emails, and then drove to the airport Enterprise location.  As part of Enterprise’s service package, I got dropped off right at the Alitalia departures terminal.  After snapping this picture I ran inside since it was freezing.

The Duomo cathedral

AZ157 YYZ-MXP 1830h Flight time: 8h30m

As posted last year about the YYZ-LCA fare sale, I was about to embark on a very interesting and special trip.  I was looking forward to the new Alitalia Business class and was excited to see Italy.  I knew I was really in for a treat when I walked right towards the very bored looking Magnifica class check in agent who immediately stated that I must be Jonathan since I was the only one flying business class that day who had not checked in yet.  I spied the very long economy line, grinned that I wasn’t in it, and handed my passport over.  I immediately received my boarding pass and a nice lounge invitation card for the Air Canada flagship lounge in Toronto.  I had plenty of time to get through security and relax in the lounge.

Air Canada Lounge

From my experience, most lounges aren’t more than a room with free newspapers and sodas/alcohol.  If all airline lounges were at minimum like the Air Canada lounge in Toronto, I would purchase a membership immediately.  All I had to do was to show my boarding pass and frequent flyer ID card and they let me in immediately.  Inside, there was a light buffet, large selection of self serve alcohol, couches everywhere, a business center, and even SHOWERS!  Although I did choose to enjoy some food, I figured I’d drink quite a bit on the plane so I didn’t touch any alcohol.

Magnifica Class

I got lucky.  My flight was the first flight from Toronto to Milan with the reconfigured seats which were leather lie flat business class seats.  I was assigned center aisle seat (2D) with excellent elbow room and legroom.  I was suprised about how roomy the seats were and immediately checked to see if my seat functioned as promised so that I wouldn’t be stuck in a broken seat if it didn’t.  

Upon takeoff, the stewardess and stewards immediately uncorked a few bottles of wine and was literally pouring nonstop until the food arrived.  Since I wasn’t sure of which wine I wanted, they gave me 4 cups and gave me one of each as a taste test.  I eventually decided on a red italian wine (Poderi di Luigi Einaudi 2004) which was quite smooth.

The starter was a somewhat cold pasta (shells) served with a red wine sauce.  For the dinner entree, I was given a choice of chicken or fish, of which I chose fish.  It was actually was quite tasty and was a light pan fried fillet of an unknown white fish (maybe orange ruffy) served with vegetables, bread, and more pasta!  When I was just about finished, the cart with olives, cut vegetables, and cheeses arrived.  It was red and black soaked olives, carrots and broccoli, and a couple of huge pieces of hard white cheese.  Upon nearly finishing that dish, I cart of AMAZING italian desserts appeared.  Opting for hot tea, I was presented with a very nice white chocolate mousse. 

Instead of watching too many movies and arriving jet lagged, I ran the seat to the semi flat position and slept for a solid 3-4 hours.  I woke up from a little turbulence in Italian airspace and changed back into my street clothes.  Immigration was a snap and since my flight arrived at 7am, it was empty.  Within a half hour, I had collected my luggage and was sitting on a bus headed towards the central station of Milan.  I took the tube to the Duomo Station and was checked into the Park Hyatt Milan with a smile. (Thanks Randy for letting me crash with you.)

Milano:

Randy and I hopped a cab to the open air market and much to my dismay, it reminded me too much of the street markets of Taipei.  That is, plenty cheap of stuff for sale…but I didn’t need any of it.  The only difference was that it was during the day and they were speaking Italian.  Met up with Flo, ate a pannini lunch, and then headed back towards Duomo to tour the Duomo Cathedral.

T he Duomo is the third largest cathedral in the world and was a huge tourist attraction.  After hiking to the roof, I decided to call it a day and take a nap.  Walked through the Galleria (high end european shops) and took a nap.

The Galleria

For dinner, I headed to a fairly famous Italian restaurant and was mildly disappointed.  We were headed back to the hotel via the subway when in the Duomo station I heard a bunch of explosions.  At first I thought it was an explosion, but upon exiting, I saw that it was a bunch of actors shooting off classic muskets.  Apparently they were recreating a battle scene between the Italians and I believe the French and Austrians from the battle of Cinque Giornate.

As promised, the VIDEO!

Greetings from Milan Italy. I am currently at the Park Hyatt Milan and am enjoying my stay here. The weather has been “real nice” as the locals have told me and I happened to stumble upon a few interesting places and events so far. However, I need to find a mini USB cable before I can share. If not, you will have to wait until Monday night when I can download the pictures and movies off of my camera.

I guess I will start my trip report so that you have something to read:

After a tiring day of work on Wed, I had to pick up my new SHINY passport since my current battle scarred passport was was due to expire. Going to the passport office in San Francisco reminds me exactly why I don’t think the government should get into the managed heathcare business. Imagine waiting at the hospital for a doctor with wait times that rival the DMV! Well I recommend all of my readers to get your passports NOW, even if you’re not going to go anywhere soon. Hell, it’s valid for 10 years so you might as well. Those wait times are amazing!

Nonetheless, I picked up my passport, went home to pick up my luggage, and then drove to SFO.

AA150 2030h SFO-BOS Seat 23ABC

I purposely routed myself on this flight for three reasons. 1. It was only 30% full. So my chances of getting a row to myself was likely 2. It was the redeye so I could sleep. 3. It was the longest route in N. America (about 2500 miles). At checkin, I was offered a First Class upgrade for 15,000 miles, but I declined since most likely the plane wasn’t full. As I predicted, I was able to secure my own seat and as almost everyone else, laid out over a row of three and was able to get a couple of hours of shuteye. I slept so deeply that I was woken up by the flight attendant to tell me to sit up for landing.

*Please note, typically this flight is packed to the gills, but somehow it wasn’t on this particular day.

From the arrivals terminal I had to wait for the Alitalia ticketing officers to arrive to re-ticket my original ticket. I then hopped to the Enterprise rental car office where they gave me a brand new Hundai (the new SUV) and drove to my grandmothers house. (thanks CC). I ate dinner with her then promptly fell asleep as I was very exhausted. Sometime in the morning I woke up, sent some emails, and then drove to the airport.

AZ157 YYZ-MXP 1830h Flight time: 8h30m

As posted last year about the YYZ-LCA fare sale, I was about to embark on a very interesting and special trip.

As Enterprise tends to do, I got dropped off at the departures terminal and since it was freezing, was inside in a hurry. I knew I was in for a treat when I walked in and walked right towards the very bored looking Magnifica class check in agent who stated that I must be Jonathan since I was the only one flying business class that day who had not checked in yet. I spied the very long economy line, grinned that I wasn’t in it, and handed my passport over. I immediately received my boarding pass and a nice lounge invitation card for the Air Canada flagship lounge in Toronto. Only then did I realize that this was going to be a special flight as I had plenty of time to get through security and relax in the lounge.

Air Canada Lounge
If all airline lounges were at minimum like the Air Canada lounge in Toronto, I would purchase a membership immediately. All I had to do was to show my boarding pass and frequent flyer ID card and they let me in immediately. Inside, there was a light buffet, large selection of alcohol, couches everywhere, a business center, and even SHOWERS! Although I did choose to enjoy some food, I figured I’d drink more on the plane so I didn’t touch any alcohol. Unfortunately from my experience, most lounges aren’t more than a room with free newspapers and sodas/alcohol.

I got lucky. My flight was the first flight from Toronto to Milan with the reconfigured seats which were leather lie flat business class seats. I was assigned center aisle seat (2D) with excellent elbow room and legroom. I was supriseed about how roomy the seats were and immediately checked to see if my seat functioned as promised so that I wouldn’t be stuck in a broken seat if it didn’t.

Upon takeoff, the stewardess and stewards immediately uncorked a few bottles of wine and was literally pouring nonstop until the food arrived. Since I wasn’t sure of which wine I wanted, they gave me 4 cups and gave me one of each as a taste test. I eventually decided on a red italian wine (unknown vintage) which was quite smooth.

The starter was a somewhat cold pasta (shells) served with a red wine sauce. For the dinner entree, I was given a choice of chicken or fish, of which I chose fish. It was actually was quite tasty and was a light pan fried fillet of an unknown white fish (maybe orange ruffy) served with vegetables, bread, and more pasta! When I was just about finished, the cart with olives, cut vegetables, and cheeses arrived. It was red and black soaked olives, carrots and broccoli, and a couple of huge pieces of hard white cheese. Upon nearly finishing that dish, I cart of AMAZING italian desserts appeared. Opting for hot tea, I was presented with a very nice white chocolate mousse.

Instead of watching too many movies and arriving jet lagged, I ran the seat to the semi flat position and slept for a solid 3-4 hours. I woke up from a little turbulence in Italian airspace and changed back into my street clothes. Immigration was a snap and since my flight arrived at 7am, it was empty. Within a half hour, I had collected my luggage and was sitting on a bus headed towards the central station of Milan. I took the tube to the Duomo Station and was checked into the Park Hyatt Milan with a smile. (Thanks Randy for letting me crash with you.)

Milan:
Randy and I hopped a cab to the open air market and much to my dismay, it reminded me too much of the street markets of Taipei. That is, plenty of stuff for sale…but I didn’t need any of it. The only difference was that it was during the day and they were speaking Italian. Met up with Flo, ate a pannini lunch, and then headed back towards Duomo to tour the Duomo Cathedral.

The Duomo is the third largest cathedral in the world and was a huge tourist attraction. After hiking to the roof, I decided to call it a day and take a nap. Walked through the Galleria (high end european shops) and took a nap. For dinner, I headed to a fairly famous Italian restaurant and was mildly disappointed. We were headed back to the hotel via the subway when in the Duomo station I heard a bunch of explosions. At first I thought it was an explosion, but upon exiting, I saw that it was a bunch of actors shooting off classic muskets. Apparently they were recreating a battle scene between the Italians and I believe the French and Austrians from the battle of Cinque Giornate.

As promised, the VIDEO!

Eventually after the Italian victordy, and I ate at Pizzeria Maruzze, where I had probably the best Marguerite pizza I’vy, I headed back to the hotel and slept like a baby until 5:30AM. I then went downstairs to surf the web, use the spa, and then ate breakfast. Randy and I decided to head to the Last Supper and wasn’t able to get in, but afterwards went to a supermarket to get a bit of shopping in and meet up with Flo at a park. We ate lunch in beautiful weather, then attempted to purchase a cable for my digital camera. Unsuccessful, I bought a new SD card instead.

Since Flo and her friends had to go study, I decided to take a nap as I was still a bit jet lagged. Headed back to the hotel, took a nap, and woke up in time to eat PIZZA! Flo, her friends, Rane ever had. At 8 Euros, it was a steal. It was cooked in a classic wood fired oven and had the smoky flavor which was honestly divine. Afterwards, headed to the “columns” to have some beers and chat the night away.

After arriving back at the hotel, I decided to hit the SPA, then packed for my trip to Cyprus. I noticed a card offering free shoe shines in a drawer and I called Housekeeping at 2AM. They simply said, leave your shoes outside now and they’d have it ready by 5AM! The best part? It was!

Hit the breakfast buffet at 7AM and then headed back to Milpensa (MXP) for my trip to Cyprus.

My stay in Milan was quite enjoyable for two days, but for some reason I believe if I stayed a more than a few days more, I would become bored. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of things to do, but as I don’t speak Italian, the fun factor was greatly reduced. For the most part, locals don’t speak many foreign languages.

Until next time! Happy travels.

Fare of the day:
LAX-SAL (San Salvador)
April 15 to June 12
On United Airlines.

Last night after the party mentioned in the last post Chris, Stephen, and I decided to go snowboarding.  So at 4am, we drove up to Tahoe in shifts.  At most, I think I got about 1.5 hours of sleep on the way up.

Arrive 8:15 AM
Meet up with Rolf and Carlton at the motel room across from Heavenly
Gondola at 8:30 AM
Rode up the gondola and started our skiing day.
10:30 AM Seriously enjoying the snow, especially off the groomed path…it is perfect, light powder yet heavy enough to grip onto.  Slopes are EMPTY.
12 Noon Getting tired.  Already went on over a dozen runs.  If you snowboard, you know how tiring it is cutting through trees in decent powder.
1:30 PM Call it a day, we board out way back to the car.
2:30 PM go eat a couple hundred bucks worth of food at a Japanese Restaurant
4:30 PM start our decent of the mountain.  I sleep until…
5:30 PM I take over driving and drive until…
8:45 PM arrive home.

I realize now how fatigued I am.  I have a raging headache and want to pass out.  Unfortunately, I am hungry now and am debating on eating again.  Oh, I know I’m out of shape and my age has caught up with me because my body is SCREAMING in pain.  Oh well, this trip was worth it…good times, great laughs, irreplaceable memories.

*edit- When I woke up this morning, my body wasn’t aching nearly at all.  I’m guessing that maybe I am more in shape than I thought I was.

On another note, maybe this is why i’m so unsuccessful with women.

Fare of the day
OAK-BOS (Boston) or BOS-OAK $129+ Tax ~$155 all in on AA, any day for travel.

Valid for flights on April 17 until June 13