Travel from Denver to home

Denver to Tallahassee

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

After successfully finishing the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Crystallographic Association at Denver, CO and after giving oral presentation, I left early morning from Denver, CO via Dallas Fort Worth, TX back to Tallahassee, FL.

Unlike the way in where I had plenty of time to take public transit, I had to rent a car to get to the airport since the public transit didn't start until 5:45 AM and I had to be at the airport earlier than 6:30 AM for my 8:00 AM flight.

Then from Dallas-Fort Worth, TX, I took another flight back to Tallahassee, FL.

Travel to Denver, CO

Travel to Denver, CO

Saturday, July 23, 2016

I left this morning to Denver, CO in American Airlines from Tallahassee via Dallas-Fort Worth, TX. My first flight was from Tallahassee International Airport (TLH) to Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. The flight left around 6:40 PM local time and after approximately 2 hours landed in DFW airport at 7:30 AM local time.

DFW airport, Dallas Fort Worth, TX

After a short break I left on my next American Airlines 620 flight from Dallas Fort Worth, Texas airport to Denver, CO airport. This flight was about the same time as the first one and arriving around 9:45 AM at the local time.

DEN airport, Denver, CO

I gathered my luggage and left the airport and bought a 5-day pass for the 2-stage public transport than included the train from airport to my hotel in Englewood, CO.

I then traveled in University of Colorado Line A from Airport to Downtown, Denver, CO. 

Then I took the Mall ride bus and took train E (actually I made a mistake and took the wrong D-train) to Dry Creek Station. 

Visit Ringling Museum

John and Mable Ringling Museums

Sarasota, FL

Friday, May 6, 2016

Bhanu and I visited the John and Mable Ringling Museums in Sarasota (SRQ), Florida. We arrived around 11 AM after driving for about 45 minutes from Clearwater, FL. Since The Ringling Museum is part of the Florida State University and since I am faculty at FSU, I got a special rate while Bhanu paid the full amount.

The Ringling located on a 20 acre property off of the Sarasota Bay on the west coast of Florida peninsula has many individual museums: the circus museum, the Tibbals Learning Center, Mable's Rose Garden, Ca' d'Zan (House of John in Venetian dialect), Banyan Cafe, Center for Asian Art (opening in May 2016), Museum of Art, and Searing Wing.

We saw many of the buildings including the Tibbals, circus museum, the rose garden, the Ca' d'Zan, Asian Art, Museum of Art, and ate at the Banyan Cafe. The weather was perfect and unusually cool and dry (78F) for an early May.

We spent almost 6 hours at the museums and left around 4 PM toward Palm Harbor.

Travel Back to Panama City

Panama City, FL

Dec 17, 2015

We started our journey back home on Thursday morning. We decided to vacate the hotel and go to the South side the island before dropping off the car at the airport in the afternoon. So we packed our bags, returned our towels, and checked out of the resort one hour earlier at 10 AM. However, when I tried to start the car it won't start due probably to a dead battery. That meant we had drop our plans to visit the south side.

Even though the Hertz representative up-sold all amenities (s)he rented me a bad car. Fortunately, it happened on the last day in the resort. We called Hertz and within 20 minutes (that was the good part) a tow-truck came gave us a jump start. We didn't want to take anymore chances of getting stuck in a remote place so we went directly to the airport.

We told the Hertz rental about our problem and went into the airport and the Delta counter was not even open since we were at least 3 hours earlier. So went to 14Bis Restaurant and ate lunch there.

We went through customs and immigration in Aruba itself instead of Atlanta. That meant at least 1 1/2 hours of lines and checking. Finally we left Aruba's Reina Beatrix Airport toward Atlanta. We left at 4:45 PM AST and arrived earlier at 7:10 PM EST in ATL. We didn't eat food during our flight of 3 1/2 hours. We went from Gate 4 to Terminal E Gate 2 (the same gate we left three days earlier)

At Atlanta we went Terminal E food court and had our dinner. Our next flight to Panama City was at least 2 more hours away in Terminal B.

We then waited for our plane which was delayed in arriving from Oklahoma City and left at 10:30 PM EST at Atlanta and reached Panama City 10:40 PM CST. We then collected our luggage and went out to the long-term parking lot. 

We then went to the hotel for overnight stay.

Travel to Aruba

Oranjestad, Aruba
Monday, Dec 14, 2015

We woke up very early in the morning at a hotel in Panama City, Florida and drove to the Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP). We parked our car in the long-term parking lot and took our luggages to fly to Atlanta. We were at Central Standard Time Zone.

Panama City (ECP) airport

Our flight was by Delta Airlines and we checked in early with Zone 1 boarding and headed off to Atlanta. Unlike previous night we could feel the skies were getting cloudy and there was a possibility of rain. However, we arrived in time in Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. We flew an MD-88 and there were no beverage services. We left at ECP Gate 5 and arrived at ATL Gate B11 after an hour. We were at Eastern Standard Time Zone. 

We had plenty of time for our next flight via Delta to Queen Beatrix Airport (Aeropuerto Internacional Renia Beatrix) in Oranjestad, Aruba. So we stopped by the Terminal E food court and had our breakfast. The rain that was delayed in Panama City caught up with us and started to rain. I was lucky to see that our luggages were being loaded into the belly of the airplane. Then we took our flight to AUA around 10:30 AM and arrived at Oranjestad, Aruba late in the afternoon. 

Our luggage (blue bag) being loaded to our flight

As we started to fly the rain stopped and I could see the blue green seas of the Bahamas on our way into Aruba.

On the way to Aruba, the Bahamas can be seen below

During the 3 1/2 hour flight there was no free food but only snacks. We, however, ended by buying some food. We flew on a Boeing 737 with movie entertainment. I watched one movie and some others segments. 

The flight was okay. We left ATL Gate E2 and arrived Gate 6.

We then went through some customs and passport checks. Once outside the airport, the Hertz Car Rental was walking distance. We picked up our car and took full protection and gas tank surcharge (the latter was unnecessary as there were pumps next to the airport).

Queen Beatrix Airport, Oranjestad, Aruba

We then drove few miles to get out destination hotel Tropicana Resort. It turned out there was a big super market for food called Super Food Plaza and Taco Bell fast food just next to our resort. We had dinner at Taco Bell and purchased groceries as our room was a full fledged one-bedroom apartment with separate bedroom,  bathroom, living room, kitchen with stove, fridge, microwave, coffee machine, toaster, plates, cups, knives, pots and pans. We also got local currency (Aruba Florin and cents)

Aruba Florin (Afl or Awg) and cents 

We then went to bed at a new time zone (Atlantic Standard Time)

Head back home

Travel back home

Friday, November 27, 2015

After spending few days at Novi, Michigan and visiting Ann Arbor, MI, we headed back home on Friday evening. The snow in the ground started to melt yesterday and had completely melted by this morning. There was intermittent rain throughout the day.

We had nice breakfast with the family and played some carrom board with the kids. Then it was time for lunch and packing. We showered packed our belongings and put away several winter clothing inside the luggage as the temperature was going to warm at home.

By 3:15 PM we were at the DTW airport and we checked our luggage and went inside. The crowd was very thin as most of the Holiday travelers will be hitting the airport 2 days from now. Inside the McNamara North Terminal airport we took the Express Tram to reach our gate.

We then took our flight back to ATL. The flight was supposed last 1.45 hours and due to heady thunderstorms the flight flew at lower altitude of 28,000 ft (8.5 km) rather than normal altitude of 32,000 ft (9.7km) to avoid turbulence. So we arrived 10 minutes early at ATL.

We had few hours at ATL and since we already knew going on an early but empty flight will not only be costly but also means that we have to come back to the airport claim our baggage (we were told about this in no uncertain terms at the central check out area). So instead of paying the airline exorbitant money (they would rather fly empty but not make reasonable accommodation for passengers) and having to come back to retrieve the luggage we spent our money on a fancy restaurant at the airport and had satisfying dinner in a relaxing atmosphere. 

Our flight back home was fine and we retrieved our luggage and arrived home just before midnight.

Travel to Novi

Visit Novi, Michigan

November 25-27, 2015

We traveled to Novi, Michigan during the 2015 Thanksgiving Holiday break. We left on Wednesday, November 25, 2015 from home to Detroit Metro Airport (DTW) via Atlanta (ATL). We flew in Delta flights as that is one of the few flights out of our hometown.

Our early morning flight was pleasant and quick, however, we had to have our bag late-check in and that would make it hard to get the bag on our arrival in DTW. We had to come back to the airport for the next flight to get our bag.

We reached ATL by 8:00 AM and our next flight was only at Noon. So we checked to see whether we could go early but the cost of changing the flight was very expensive. So we went to TGIFriday and had breakfast. Even though the food was good it was very expensive with coffee costing extra $3.00/person even when we had breakfast!

Then we boarded our flight to Detroit and as we reached Detroit our plane flew over the Lake Michigan. We arrived in time at the Metro Airport. As expected our bag didn't make it even though our wait time at ATL was more than 3 hours long. We went and grabbed some lunch and picked our bag before heading home in Novi, Michigan.

Detroit airport Holiday decorations were nice.