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We took a week to circle Lake Erie. We never visited Lake Erie itself, just a few interesting points.

Day 4

After breakfast at the hotel, we left Rochester and headed for Letchworth State Park, voted the #1 state park in America. It was scenic.

Here is the view just after the entrance, at what I think was the first overlook spot.

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We took a week to circle Lake Erie. We never visited Lake Erie itself, just a few interesting points.

Day 2

Upon leaving Old Fort Niagara, we drove a while to Rochester, NY. We went straight to the children’s museum – the Strong Museum. We allowed for 2 or 3 hours there, but the kids could have spent longer there. Part of the problem was that we weren’t able to fit a good meal in there so people were running out of energy.

But they had a bunch of displays.
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We took a week to circle Lake Erie. We never visited Lake Erie itself, just a few interesting points.

Day 2

Drive to Old Fort Niagara. We crossed over the Rainbow Bridge into New York. The US border patrol was more intense than the Canadians were the day before. I was not prepared for the automatic photo, so it was probably even worse than my passport photo. But I didn’t get to see it. Another extra thing the US did was have me roll down the kids’ window so they could see the kids clearly. And the US people must have more paperwork to do, because they held our documents for a few minutes while they typed in a bunch of things. But we got through there and headed north to Lake Ontario, to the point where Old Fort Niagara is.
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We took a week to circle Lake Erie. We never visited Lake Erie itself, just a few interesting points.

Day 1

Drive to Niagara Falls. One hour in the USA and 4 hours in Canada. The border crossing was uneventful. The CBP asked us a few questions, mostly relating to the fact that we were not coming back into the US via the same point we were leaving it. Really, the only issue was that my wife was wearing her sunglasses and the guard asked her to remove her sunglasses so he could see that she looked like the picture in her passport.

We got to Niagara Falls, checked into our hotel, then walked to the falls. We stayed on the Canadian side, but I saved a bit of money by booking a hotel that does not have a view of the falls. In fact, here is the view from our balcony:
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Welcome back, those of you who read Part 1 of my recap.

This part, the second and final of the set, concerns the airplane portion of the trip.

• It had been several years since I was on an international flight, and the entertainment options are vastly improved since then. Now, you get a USB plug to charge your devices, WiFi if you want to pay for it, and about 50 movies that you can watch and control for yourself, thanks to touchscreens in every seat. More on that later…
• Regarding airplane food, avoid the entree with meat. On the way over, I chose chicken instead of pasta. That was a bad choice – the chicken was rubbery and not tasty. On the way back, they were out of the pasta by the time they got to me, but they did have a Cobb salad. The chicken on that had been cooked but was cold on the salad. That was fine. Apparently chicken cooked before getting on the plane is okay, but chicken cooked (or at least heated) on the plane is not. That’s my assessment having had one of each.
• Here’s a photo for those of you who have forgotten what it’s like to fly:

  

• Here is a photo of my first sight of the Netherlands:

  

• It was fun trying to guess which lines were roads and which were canals:

  

• And here is a photo of our plane landing:

  

• One thing that struck me on the flight back was how mindlessly passive everyone was. The flight there was an overnight, so I watched a movie because it was novel and I could, then I tried to sleep. Then I read and tried to sleep again. After sleeping and eating, I watched one more quick movie before landing. So I didn’t notice that the whole plane was dark because it was night and it was supposed to be dark.

  But the flight back was a daytime flight – it was midday the whole time. Left at 1pm, flew for 9 hours, and landed at 3 pm – following the sun the whole way. Almost kept up with it, too. So I expected the plane to have some daylight.

  But for various reasons, they ask people to close their window shades closed so the plane stays dark. The reason stated was so that people can watch movies without glare. But I suppose some people who wanted to nap would appreciate it too.

  And I just thought that was sad. “Here’s a window seat so you can look out at the glorious sunshine if you want – but don’t. We don’t want you to.” I watched a movie, then I read, then I scribbled some notes and stuff. I had to turn on my overhead light to read and write, which I shouldn’t have needed to do because there was plenty of sunshine available.

  Out of several dozen other seats that I could see, only a handful of other people had their lights on. As best I could tell, all the rest were watching movies or TV shows. I’ll agree to some entertainment – I watched 3.5 movies on my round trip. But that’s about 5.5 hours of screen time out of 18 hours flight time. That’s still a lot of sitting and watching, but I didn’t have much of a choice on the sitting part.

  As I was looking around, in awe of how people were able to watch movies for 8 hours non-stop, I thought “how mindless is this?” I made a choice specifically not to watch a screen for a chunk of the time. That was harder than you might think, because as I am writing, my habit is to look up when I pause to think between items. And, even though I had turned off my screen, my eyes were naturally caught by the bright glow of the screen of the woman in front and to the right of me. And she had the closed-captioning on, so my eyes caught some bad words, too.

  In summary for this point, I am worried about our society, that people aren’t going to be able to do anything (or sit quietly) if it’s not on a screen in front of them.

• Here’s my view during the flight home:

  

• In case you’re wondering, the movies I watched were The Boxtrolls, Kiki’s Delivery Service, How to Train Your Dragon 2, and half of Captain Phillips.

For work, I had to go to the Birmingham area.

Birmingham, England.

Once we (my co-workers and I) arrived, we made our way to the hotel – Village Urban Resort. I guess they call it a resort because it has a restaurant and a fitness center attached – not the stereotypical image of a resort having palm trees and outdoor pools and spas and such.

Now for various things I observed on the trip:

• I appreciated that everything at the hotel started with the same letter, specifically V.

  Village hotel, Velocity fitness center (AKA gym), Verve restaurant, Victory pub. I was disappointed when someone pointed out that their conference center is called The Hub

• I also appreciated their cold water. The water coming out of the bathroom sink was the coldest I can remember. I suspect they increased the air pressure in the rooms so they could allow the water temperature to be below freezing.
• Everyone in Europe uses credit cards with chips instead of magnetic stripes. Everyone taking our cards assumed a chip and put the card in a chip reader, and we had to tell them to swipe it instead. And their reactions were always along the lines of “Oh, I haven’t had to do that in years!” And it would take them a few tries to get it to go through.
• Our first night we had dinner at Miller and Carter. Ignore whatever people say about British food – that was the best steak I ever had.
• Our second night we went to Jimmy Spices. Avoid that place if possible. It’s an international buffet – they have a variety of foods from all over. It’s all-you-can-eat, and the emphasis is on quantity over quality. And it’s not that much cheaper than a quality place. Note: they have the driest brownies ever. Not hard, just dry.
• The next night we went back to Miller and Carter. The other guys got the same thing they got the first night, but I opted for the salmon. It was fine, with a nice presentation, but it wasn’t worth it. I would have rather had the steak again.
• The steak was around $30. I could enjoy eating that steak because it was on the company dime. Or many dimes, I suppose. I would have enjoyed the steak even if I had paid my own money for it. While $30 is high for a meal, I know there are steak places around home that will charge $50+ for a steak meal. And I can’t imagine getting double the enjoyment or nutrition out of that steak compared to the $30 steak.
• The next night, we went to The Farm Inn. They had more variety than Miller and Carter, and everyone liked the food.
• The next night, we went into Dickens Heath and ate at Giovanni’s. That was an Italian place, of course. The owner/operator had a thick Italian accent, but his wife had a Scottish accent. The food selection was limited, but the quality of the food made up for it. I’ve had smoked salmon before, but it has always tasted more like raw fish and I didn’t like it. I tried the smoked salmon on the appetizer sampler at Giovanni’s and it was quite good. I did not try the mussels, but others did and they said they were the best they’ve had – “the first time I’ve had mussels that weren’t rubbery”.
• The last night, we tried to go to Morton’s, which is right next door to Giovanni’s. Unfortunately, this was a Friday night. Whereas both places were sparsely populated during the week before now, this was the start of the weekend so it was different. The place was standing room only. We did not have reservations (or, as they asked us “Are you booked?”) so we were turned away.
• We left Dickens Heath, not wanting to go to Giovanni’s two nights in a row, and went back to Miller and Carter. I got steak this time, not wanting to miss out on another chance at the best steak I’ve ever had. This time, however, I got the fillet (pronounced as fill-it there – the British are decidedly not French) instead of the ribeye. I must say I preferred the ribeye. I’m not a fan of the texture of a fillet – it seemed squishy. Some people might call that tender, but to me it’s squishy.
• The desserts were also very good at Miller and Carter. We all got different things and everyone was pleased with them.
• We did more than eat while we were there, but I’m guessing that most people reading this don’t want to hear about our meetings discussing motor control software.
• I didn’t drive in England, but I was a passenger of the guy who was driving for the first time on the left side of the road. Driving is intense in England because there are no pauses. Here in the US, there are plenty of stop signs or stop lights – you get a few seconds to stop and look at road signs or think about your next traffic decision. In England though, with all the roundabouts, you can make your whole trip without ever stopping at all, so you need to know what you’re doing ahead of time.
• And if you ever drive in England, it’s good to know that you are not allowed to turn on red. They do occasionally have a traffic light. But no turns on red, unlike here.

Stay tuned for the next installment – the airplane.

Day 4

Church in the morning, then some downtime inside due to rain.

I think the boys watched some car racing on TV and read.

After lunch though, the sun came back out and the boys went fishing.

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