bobmacliberty

I've flown business class on an Emirates A380 a few times. It's an amazing experience, especially in Dubai where you take an elevator from the upper floor lounge directly to the jetway entrance, bypassing the gate area. Too bad the A380s are being phased out in favor of more efficient smaller planes. Makes sense from an airline business perspective, but not from a passenger perspective.

We had this in our house in Ohio. Best money we ever spent. Not really needed in Florida. 🙂

Hotel Jazz is about 2 blocks from the "top" of La Rambla...an easy walk. It's also convenient to the Universitat Metro stop. We took the Metro to Sagrada Familia and it was easy. We've been to Sagrada Familia twice and both times we pre-purchased tickets rather than use a tour. They have audio headsets (which I think we paid for when buying the tix) that do a good job of telling you a lot about the church...the history, the symbology, etc.

I'm really kicking myself for not going to London this week to watch the Bills play the Jags at Totenham Hotspur Stadium. I've seen a lot of videos showing Bills Mafia taking over various places in London. Looks like a lot of fun. What's retirement for if not the ability to go somewhere on short notice? I'd also really like to see the Stadium since it's supposed to be spectacular. The new stadium that the Bills are building in Buffalo (ahem...Orchard Park) is supposed to be largely modeled after the Totenhan Hotspur Stadium, so it would also be cool to get a bit of a preview. I'll need to settle for going to our local sports bar at 9:00am and watching with 30-50 of my closest Bills friends. The bar is opening early for us (and I guess for Jags fans also 😉). They have a bottomless Mimosa special for $15. That could be dangerous. The Bills aren't a champagne kind of team though.

I would also recommend the Amoon Restaurant. It's a short walk from Hotel Jazz, down a side street before you get to La Rambla. The hotel recommended it to us, which doesn't necessarily mean that it's good since they probably get a kickback from the restaurant, but we liked it. Enjoy Sagrada Familia today. It's an amazing and unique place.

I thought I read somewhere that for environmental reasons, you MUST be able to plug into shore power if you want to cruise out of California. Any idea if this is true? Another great review Harry! I've missed your reviews. They are not just reviews, but epic stories with a lot of detours into interesting side discussions. I know that it takes a LOT of work to put together a review like this and I greatly appreciate your efforts to both entertain and inform.

The Tower of London is definitely a must see. I'd also highly recommend adding a Verger guided tour of Westminster Abby to your itinerary. The Abby has incredible history and the Verger will tell stories and take you places that the general public can't go, like the tomb of Edward the Confessor. It felt strange to me to be standing within inches of the burial place of so many famous kings and queens. St. Paul's Cathedral was also great, especially the dome if you can physically handle all of the stairs. If I had to choose just one though, I'd go for Westminster Abby.

Stay safe Dani!

We did Ovation from Vancouver to Honolulu last fall. Weather was cool the first couple of days...not outdoor pool weather...but warmed up the closer we got to Hawaii. I would think that temps near Hawaii would be fairly consistent year to year but more variable as you get closer to Vancouver. Our biggest problem was that we got a little bored. Bored is probably too strong...more like the sea days were just sort of meh. We are port people, not sea day people. There was a lot to do during sea days, but much of it didn't appeal to us. Some of the things that we did felt a little like we did them just for something to do, if that makes sense.

A sad day. ☹️

We took the train from London Euston Station and stayed 2 nights in the Macdonald Windsor Hotel. We really enjoyed Windsor beyond just visiting the castle (which itself was great). We had some fantastic food and enjoyed walking around, including along the Thames. It was a really nice change from London. Very convenient to Heathrow also.

I think Symphony has been my favorite. Started with the synchronized drones flying to The Who's I Can See For Miles.

We have a couple of peacocks that like to wander around our neighborhood. I was walking by one of them last night and decided to take a video. I don’t think he liked that. I didn’t know that peacocks could honk. IMG_0835.mp4 Oops...coverting from .mov to .mp4 somehow rotated the video. You get the idea.

For us, it was our Golden Retriever. When we saw ducks in the pool we'd yell "DUCKS" and open the back door. No matter where our dog was, or how sound asleep she was, she would immediately fly out the door and start barking loudly. The ducks would quickly fly away. She'd come trotting back into the house, very proud of herself. Of course, she got some serious lovings for being such a good girl.

Great news! What are your doctors saying about the outcome of the treatments? I hope you're able to enjoy your cruise.

Damn you! I'm definitely going to "infect" others with this.

Huge win, although potentially a very expensive win. Preliminary reports are that Tre White is out with an Achilles injury. Could be season ending.

I think I've asked before, but would you adopt me?

And I've been told it's easier to use than JFK when going to Manhattan.

You piqued my engineering curiosity, so I had to learn more about these wheels. Here's an overview video of the Ci2 model, but I think they use the same front wheel design in all of their chairs. Although they don't go into detail about how the wheels work, I can't think of a better way to describe it than your side spinning discs description, which pull/push the front of the chair left or right. Very impressive from an engineering standpoint and I imagine very helpful to a user from a turning radius standpoint. The tech geek in me also likes the ability to remotely control the chair, which I originally thought was more of a gimmick than a useful feature. A different video however mentioned a few use cases where that might be very useful, like moving the chair out of the way when going to bed at night.

We'll be at the same concert. Flying into LGA. It's been a few years since I've been to that airport and I'm interested in seeing the improvements that have been made. Supposed to be much nicer now, but that bar was pretty low before.

I saw them "face to face" on a late night talk show a few years ago. Probably was a promotional bit for that tour. Elton's voice didn't seem to be what it used to be. He had to change how he sung some of the lyrics, often avoiding the high notes. I've watched a few videos of the U2 kickoff concert in the Sphere in Vegas last night and Bono's voice also didn't seem quite the same. I'm hoping that's not the case with Billy Joel. Father time is undefeated though.

The person who recommended The Book of Mormon to us also said that there is some content that could easily offend some. Fortunately, we're not easily offended.

I don't know if there's ever such a thing as routine back surgery, but Micheline's L4/L5 microdiscectomy is fairly routine. The way the Neurosurgeon explained it, the lumbar discs have a hard outer shell (collagen) and a gelatinous interior. In Micheline's case, something damaged the outer shell and the gelatinous interior pushed through the opening in the shell. If she bent/twisted/moved wrong, the gelatinous material would press against the nerves running through that part of her spine and cause anywhere from minor pain to flat on her back without moving pain. The surgery involved removing the exposed gelatinous material while leaving the collagen "shell" alone. The procedure itself only took about an hour but with pre-op and recovery time, we were in the hospital for about 8 hours. She didn't stay overnight and could walk once she got home. She was on Percocet for a couple of days and then wasn't supposed to lift more than 10 pounds for 2 weeks. This was to allow the opening in the collagen shell to harden again so that more gelatinous stuff wouldn't poke through. During the surgery, the nerves in the area are moved to get access to the disc, and it can take anywhere from a few weeks to a year for the nerves to settle back into place properly. There is a 95-98% chance that Micheline will not have a recurrence. So far, so good. I did a quick search on spinal stenosis, and it looks like a very different procedure. Like many things medical, the key is to get a good doctor. Micheline's doctor was recommended by 2 different friends here. We were both impressed with him when we met before deciding on surgery. He has the right combination of confidence (which I like in a doctor to an extent) and being personable. He explained everything very well and patiently listened to all of our questions. He never came across as being too busy for us. If Linda doesn't already have a neurosurgeon, definitely look around for someone who gets good referrals from past patients. Edit: Oops. Just saw OB's reply. Very different treatments indeed.

Sorry to hear that things didn't go well Dani. I think you need to immediately book travel for 2024 since next year should be great for you!