Lifestyle13

TripAdvisor has just done a study on International Airports and what travelers think of them.  Here are the top 10 least favorite airports.

1. London Heathrow and Chicago O’ Hare (tied for first)

2. New York JFK

3. Atlanta International

4. Los Angeles

5. Miami

6. New York La Guardia

7. Paris Charles de Gaulle

8. Dallas Ft Worth

9. Newark

10. London Gatwick

Here are some things that were actually said by flight attendants.

1. On a Southwest flight, passengers were apparently having a hard  time choosing their seats.  So a flight attendant announced, “People,  people we’re not picking out furniture here, find a seat and get in it!”

2. On a Continental Flight the pilot said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached cruising altitude and will be turning down the cabin lights. This is for your comfort and to enhance the app earance of your flight attendants.”

3. On landing, a stewardess said, “Please be sure to take all of your belongings. If you’re going to leave anything, please make sure it’s something we’d like to have.”

4. There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane”

5. “Thank you for flying Delta Business Express. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride.”

6. As a plane landed and was coming to a stop at Ronald Reagan, a voice came over the loudspeaker: “Whoa, big fella. WHOA!”

7. From a Southwest Airlines employee: “Welcome aboard Southwest Flight 245 to Tampa. To operate your seat belt, insert the metal tab into the buckle, and pull tight. It works just like every other seat belt and if you don’t know how to operate one, you probably shouldn’t be out in public unsupervised.”

8. “In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, masks will descend from the ceiling. Stop screaming, grab the mask, and pull it over your face. If you have a small child traveling with you, secure your mask before assisting with theirs. If you are traveling with more than one small child, pick your favorite.”

9. ”Weather at our destination is 50 degrees with some broken clouds, but we’ll try to have them fixed before we arrive. Thank you, and remember, nobody loves you, or your money, more than Southwest Airlines.”

10. “Your seat cushions can be used for flotation and in the event of an emergency water landing, please paddle to shore and take them with our compliments.” 11. “As you exit the plane, make sure to gather all of your belongings. Anything left behind will be distributed evenly among the flight attendants. Please do not leave children or spouses.”

Copyright 1996, Jim Loy

The four-way stop is a drivers’ IQ test, that many drivers fail. It would seem to be a maneuver of approximately Blue-Angel caliber. But, it is really very simple, if you follow these few rules.

Case I - one car

You are the only one at the intersection. This is the simplest case. First you stop [complete stop (in or out of the cross-walk), rolling stop, 25 mph stop, etc.], then you have only five options:

1. Go.
2. Hesitate, then go.
3. Wait for 3 more cars to come along.
4. Wait for 2 more cars.
5. Wait for 1 more car.

A true Driver (with a capital “D”, master of four-way stops) would choose option #3. After all, they do call this a four-way stop. Most drivers modify option #3 by adding a time limit, like 30 seconds: “Wait for 3 cars or 30 seconds, whichever comes first.” This 30-second wait has degenerated into option #2, “Hesitate, then go.”

Case II - 2 cars

There are a few permutations here:

1. You got there first. See below, “Complication #3, who got there first?” In this situation, just go, unless you are a disgustingly polite driver (Complication #1).

2. He or she is on your right and you’re turning right. Go.

3. He or she is on your right and you’re not turning right. Wait.

4. He or she is straight ahead; and he or she is going straight or turning right; and you’re going straight or turning right. Go.

5. He or she is straight ahead and he or she is turning left or you’re turning left. Wait.

6. He or she is on your left and he or she is turning right. Go.

7. He or she is on your left and he or she is not turning right. Wait.

Case III - 3 cars

If it’s your turn, go. If not, try to imagine what can go wrong if you do go, and then go if you didn’t just imagine your own death. Actually, this case is a simplification of case IV - 4 cars.

Case IV - 4 cars

There are hundreds of permutations here. But, actually, it’s pretty simple. Go it it’s your turn, or if you’re turning right and nobody else is headed for that lane.

A man in Malaysia figured out a way to fly for free.  It may not be the smartest decision but he did it. 

He managed to hide himself inside a wheel well of an airplane that flew from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore.  Thankfully it was only a 55 minute flight.  When the plane landed the ground crew was shocked when the man crawled out unharmed.  He was a little dizzy from the lack of oxygen though. 

Security is now looking into how the man got through security and he is being charged with entering the island illegally.

1. Boston Children’s Museum

2. Long Island’s Children Museum

3. New York’s Museum of Natural History

4. The Building for Kids in Wisconsin

5. Maryland Science Center

6. Kidspace Children’s Museum in California

7. Minnesota’s Children Museum

8. Charlotte at Play in North Carolina

9. Chicago Children’s Museum

10. The Lynn Meadows Discovery Center in Mississippi

We’ve heard the expression “dance your life away.”  Well it seems these days more and more of us are spending our precious time stuck in traffic.

The average motorist in urban areas of the country spent 38 hours a year stuck in traffic in 2005.  This number up from 37 hours in 2004 and more than double the 1982 number of 14 hours a year.

Los Angeles drivers lost the most time in traffic, followed by San Francisco, Washington D.C and Atlanta. 

You may want to adjust your schedule to 5 or 10 minutes before or after you usually leave the house.  You may catch a lull in the traffic and save some time.

Try a different route or see if your company offers flex-time to miss the rush hours all together.

If you have to spend lots of time in the car, listen to the radio and relax, have a laugh with a funny morning show, listen to your favorite music, or book on tape.  Try to fight the urge to get angry.  Remember it’s time alone to listen to or learn or think about whatever YOU want.

Toby Keith has been inspiring people who love country music for years now. Toby released a song called “I Love This Bar” off of his 2003 album Shock’n Y’all. Not only did the song stay number 1 for 5 weeks on Billboard U.S. Hot Country Single and Track charts, but he also really has that bar in Las Vegas.

You can sometimes find him chilling out in his bar where there is no cover charge at Harrahs on the Las Vegas strip. The Bar is open nightly and offers plenty of good entertainment. Things that you could easily miss about the scenery in the bar, is the guitar shaped windows, and the patriotic guitar above the bar, and the “writing on the glass wall”. Every where you turn, there is either a record album, a guitar, lyrics, tires, and much more evidence as to why so many fans love this multi selling country artist. With Live bands, good looking flare bartenders for both men and women and down home southern cooking that’s worth eating, this place is a good, all around fun place to hangout.

Did you ever wonder what people in other countries call their “dollar?” 

 I found a site that gives you just that information.  If your planning an overseas trip or just curious like I was, this is an interesting site, XE.com

Going to Chile, Columbia or Argentina? You’ll need Pesos.   Bring Rubles if your headed to Belarus. Iceland uses the Kronur and India’s currency - the Rupees.

Wow! I don’t even know where to begin with this and can’t say enough about this show. This show is totally amazing. It is 2 hours of non stop thrills and entertainment. The show is featured at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas strip. Tickets run about $150 for a seat, but it is worth every penny.

The show features so many different types of acrobatics ending with everyone diving into a pool below them. The stage in itself is amazing. The stage goes from solid to pool many times throughout the performance without the crowd really noticing. So amazing. I would love to tell you about the storyline, but there is so much going on that I don’t know that I would get it right. It’s beautiful love story and worth everyone able to see it finding the time to do so.

The Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas has been around since the 1940’s and wow could I feel it. Let me explain why. As I role into Las Vegas and look around at all the lights and all the riches of all the other hotels you can tell that it’s time for the Flamingo to do some updating. Updating is just the start. A remodeling project has been started on the rooms. They call themselves ” GOROOMS ” and I didn’t see anything going on about them.

I also feel like it’s time to update the staff. Things are promised to people and then the staff doesn’t follow through with it. First I was told that I would be in a non smoking room. I got a smoking room. Well, that’s an honest mistake. It was fixed. Let’s see what’s next. Anne’s parent’s went with us, they asked for 2 queen beds, they got 1 king. Honest mistake again I guess, but the Flamingo fixed it. Myself and Anne were offered into a high rollers suite. How cool is that! I was so excited. They told us that it had a stereo and big screen TV and more square footage. Who else would turn that down. I’m in! We get up there to find more square footage for sure which was cool, but then we find no stereo which is really no big deal but we were told there was one. I also find a fridge, cool we can keep room service cold if we have left overs. Well at least that was the plan until we saw that the fridge was broken. I guess no big deal since we were put into a suite, but you would think that it would be up to date if they wanted people of our stature to return to their hotel. Let’s go back to that room service thing. Wow, that in it self is amazing to me. It was way more then I thought it was worth and then my brother in-law orders breakfast to find a piece of glass the size of a dime in a bowl of sliced banana’s. We should have sued! I am sure that this is not what Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel the founder of the Flamingo would have wanted.

What more can I really say, oh yeah how could I forget. If you walked down any of the halls of any of the 28 floors that are available for you to stay on you would find yourself as high as you could get. Now, I know that the Flamingo has no control over what people do in their spare time, but it just shows the type of people that the Flamingo is attracting.

I have to say, their were some really good things about the Flamingo as well. Like the wildlife that they have all around. Beautiful Flamingo’s, Giant Koi Fish said to be worth in the millions and all the different types of birds. The pools are magnificent, with waterfalls all around and wait staff to help your every need. The garden chapel is amazing. The weddings that they put on are stunning and of course the buffet is worth the money.

All in all I have to say that the hotel was rather fun and entertaining for all of us…….I hope that the new and improved Flamingo brings back the old luxuries of the Las Vegas Flamingo Hotel and Casino.

There were a few things that I was worried would go right for our wedding since I was not in Las Vegas to see them come along.  However, everything turned out wonderfully.  The Flamingo Hotel services did an excellent job. 

The Garden Chapel was decorated beautifully and ready to go when we got there.  They had people there ready to seat our guests,  someone was in the bridal room with me going over last minute details, and the pianist was great.  The bouquets were lavender and white roses in a hand tied arrangement and they were beautiful.  My bridal bouquet had 16 roses in it and the maid of honor’s had 12 roses.  Someone was also in charge of the flower girl and ring bearer to get them into position and off at the right time.  The photographer, who is hired from the chapel, took excellent pictures and we are very pleased with the way they look. 

We ordered our cake from the catering department at the hotel as well.  We emailed them a picture of what we wanted and they did it.  At first I ordered a 2 tiered cake that said it fed 25-30 people.  Then I remembered we are supposed to take the top back with us so I changed it to a 3 tiered cake.  It said it fed 35-40 people.  The cake was huge and would have fed at least 60 people.  We had so much cake left over.  Room service does offer travel boxes though to take it home.  Unfortunately the airport wasn’t so kind.  With no food allowed through security we had to pack it in our suitcase and by the time we got home it was just a big melted mess. 

So like Beau said, we had some ups and downs on our trip to Vegas.  The low point for me had to be The Amazing Johnathan show.  He is a comedian/magician.   He performs at the Sahara, which is on the end of the strip by the Stratosphere.  Not a great part of the strip. 

We purchased our tickets online before we left at $75 a piece.  The tickets have to be picked up at the box office by 4pm that day.  The show isn’t until 10pm.  So we buy monorail tickets to the Sahara, get our tickets no problem and head back to the Flamingo until its time for the show. 

Once again, we buy more monorail tickets, go back to the Sahara for the show.  We are standing in line and 10 minutes before the show is to start an usher comes out and says that the show has been cancelled, “Johnathan called in sick.”  What?  I mean I understand that people get sick but the guy has one performance a day for less than 2 hours.  And 10 minutes before the show starts.  One of the guys in line with us was just on the elevator with Johnathan and he said he seemed fine.

So now our choices are, to see the back up show which is one of the singers of the Temptations, or go get a refund.  Needless to say, everyone headed to the box office for refunds.  Now we’ve got 500 angry people standing in line in the middle of the casino floor and 1 person working in the box office.  This would be the time they should call in for some help.  Target even has back up cashiers, Im sure they can find someone working that night that could come give us a hand.

Its finally our turn!!  He asks us where we bought our tickets.  We said Vegas.com.  He says for us to call Showtime Marketing, they deal with all the refunds and they have already notified them of the cancellation, and gives us the number and sends us on our way.  We made sure we called and got it straightened out before we left the hotel.  So we call and she gives us another number to call.  When that woman answers she says, “What, the shows cancelled?  No one has told us.”  Imagine that.  Now we sit on hold while she calls the Sahara to verify.  After about 20 minutes she gets back on and says yes the show is cancelled and we will refund your money to the card used.  Fine, but that was 3 days ago and we have yet to see the money.