Stéphane Lee

The Cabot Trail on the Cape Breton Island is probably one of the Seven Wonders of Canada. Great time spent there!

Back in January 2007, I listed some places I’d like to visit but I did not visit any in 2007. Instead, I went to San Francisco and the Silicon Valley and my second trip was to the United Kingdom and Hungary. This year, my objective is to fly in a small airplane to some places in North America. If I have a more experienced partner-pilot with me, we could fly to California, Florida or even Alaska. I think I can scrape two weeks of vacations to take by end April from work and will probably use my air miles if I fly commercial. After that, it will be 2008 vacation days. Next summer, I’ll see if a semi-planned road trip through Western Europe still holds. I’ll evaluate the option when time comes.

Two weeks ago, we crossed the border by car and went to Plattsburgh, NY. During that week-end, they were commemorating and re-enacting the Battle of Plattsburgh in which the US held off Britain’s attack from Canada in 1814. Plattsburgh was OK and has only 20k people. Quite a small town but very typical like elsewhere. You have the usual Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and other retail chains. The border crossing is not something you want to do every day. The border agent asking you what is your nationality while he’s holding your passport in his hands. On the return, they focus more on charging the tax on the products you’re bringing back. Anyway, it was nice going there but I’ll not be returning so soon. With the Cdn dollar reaching parity with US$, it is tempting to cross the border for your shopping. But the border crossing hassle does not make it worth.

So far, I think that Frankfurt Airport is the worst that I’ve ever been. The ventilation pipes are visible. The smoking area is only a kiosk with ash trays. The smoke is not extracted properly and you can smell it all around. The security is a bit too physical for my taste. They do not have the walk through (door-frame) metal detector. They use a portable metal detector and palpate you a bit too much. They could have put more walk-through metal detectors. Some signs do not work. It seems to be undergoing some renovations.

Paille-en-queue in Frankfurt Airport

Munich airport is much better (no palpation, no smoking areas) and has even a sex shop in the terminal. No kidding!.

I got a chance to go to Manchester for a few days. I’m not a big fan of Premiership football. It is quite a big city. The amount of police car patrols are above average in the Curry Mile. The Old Trafford stadium seems to be falsely small when entering it. It can hold 80,000 spectators in fact.