{"id":667,"date":"2015-07-22T23:17:09","date_gmt":"2015-07-23T03:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sarcastic-travels.com\/?p=667"},"modified":"2015-07-22T23:17:09","modified_gmt":"2015-07-23T03:17:09","slug":"a-tale-of-two-cities-nyc-and-ottawa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sarcastic-travels.com\/a-tale-of-two-cities-nyc-and-ottawa\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tale of Two Cities – NYC and Ottawa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Our latest adventure involved a fair amount of travel as it included two cities, in two countries, transiting through yet another city on the way, all in the space of five days! We crammed a lot of adventure, some of it even unexpected but nevertheless wonderful, into a small space of time.<\/p>\n
We left for NYC on a Monday morning and arrived right on time. We had booked a car in advance but the way that service works requires you to call when you land and then they dispatch a car, this despite knowing in advance what flight you are on, arrival times, etc. Usually, this requires a wait of maybe 10-15 minutes, but this time we waited up to 30 minutes and the car didn’t show. Finally the driver called, he was stuck in traffic. Then he called again to say he had come past our terminal but didn’t see us. Nor did we see him since he was driving a tan sedan similar to something a suburban granny might drive, certainly not the black Town Car I had paid for. I was less than pleased and the driver wasn’t pleased with his minimal tip. The car service made the dreadful mistake of asking for a survey on their service. You can bet I filled it out. While we waited we saw innumerable Uber<\/a> service cars, most all of them very nice black Toyota Corolla and even black Toyota SUVs as well. Turns out Uber helps drivers finance these cars, which the drivers then own free and clear, unlike driving a cab where all you own in the end is your hemorrhoids. We vowed, next time we land in NYC, we are Uber-ing it to the hotel!<\/p>\n We thought we knew what hotel we were at but we were off by one block. Hilton has several different branded properties right in the same area so it can get confusing. We are tending to stay in the Chelsea <\/a>area because it is less hectic yet still close to transit, walkable to Broadway <\/a>shows, and has a few decent late night dining options nearby. We like it much more than Midtown.<\/p>\n We had no specific plans for Monday night so we just did some hanging out after a nap. We wandered around for hours looking for some late night food before settling for an upscale diner down on 14th<\/sup> Street. 14th<\/sup> Street and Union Square<\/a>, where 14th<\/sup> crosses Broadway, was not the best of areas back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when it was practically the center of my world based on school and work. But today, I would hardly recognize it as the technology revolution has somewhat centered itself in the area making it very upscale, trendy, and of course, expensive as well. But this is now true of much of the City and little remains the same.<\/p>\n Our sole reason for being in NYC again so soon was to see Darren Criss<\/a> play the lead role in Hedwig and the Angry Inch<\/a>. Yes, we had seen the show before but since it is, in essence, a one-man show, the lead actor really makes it what it is. Many people know Darren Criss from his portrayal of Blaine, Kurt<\/a>’s love interest, on Fox’s Glee<\/a>. Darren also performed at the Academy Awards and he is clearly an actor with a great range of talents and ability including a stunning voice. Honestly, I like his versions of many of the songs he sings far better than the original. Sorry Ms. Perry<\/a>… So, when we heard that Darren was the next to play Hedwig, we booked it. Our show was toward the end of Darren’s run, in fact the following Sunday would be his last performance. We saw him on Tuesday evening. Suffice it to say it was completely wonderful! We have long enjoyed the movie of Hedwig but nothing really beats seeing it live. Hedwig would play a very important role later in the week, but I didn’t know this at the time. Nor did I know that one of the songs\/stories from Hedwig, the Origin of Love, is actually taken almost directly from Plato’s Symposium<\/a>. I think it speaks loudly of how much more progressive the Greek culture was in reference to different sexualities than is the world we live in presently.<\/p>\n We were scheduled to fly on to Ottawa<\/a>, the capital city of Canada on Wednesday morning, but for reasons not entirely clear to me, Delta only flies to Ottawa from Detroit, twice a day. There are direct flights to and from Ottawa via Atlanta, on Saturdays, but only in the winter. The idea is for snow-bound Canadians to move through Atlanta on their way to somewhere warm and sunny. In the summer, what is the point? Summer weather is delightful all over Canada. Warm, but not generally sweltering. Why leave?<\/p>\n But, as sometimes happens with airline travel, the airline had different ideas than we did. There was a delay on the inbound aircraft, coming from Florida, and that set off a chain reaction for us. As we moved farther back in time, our limited time original connection in Detroit, only about an hour, came closer and closer to not being remotely possible. Had we called mere minutes earlier to the Delta Diamond Medallion<\/a> Desk, we could have jumped on to the 9:00am flight from La Guardia <\/a>to Detroit that was operating on time. But, because we called about 43 minutes before departure they could not rebook us due to some rules claiming to be in response to 9\/11.<\/p>\n Now, while the events of that day were terrible, the response, á la TSA<\/a>, is a joke. TSA fails over 90%<\/a> of the random checks they undergo where employees posing as passengers take contraband right through the checkpoints, including loaded firearms. TSA is obsessed, simply obsessed, with your boarding pass (I use the electronic one just to deny them the pleasure of writing all over it in highlighter pen) and yet, the hijackers that day had boarding passes, they had valid identification, and they did not carry anything through the screening point that they were not allowed to have. You can’t screen for homicidal will. And in reality, if you want to do serious damage to an airport, blow yourself up at the check-in counter. Reality is that NOTHING short of canceling all flights will ever make air travel 100% secure from a determined individual or group. TSA is a farce intended to lull you into security and it is a great employment vehicle for the otherwise unemployable. And, further to my point, the hijackers did not change their flight, not ever, and certainly not 45 minutes before flight.<\/p>\n Tim made a dash to stand-by on the 9am, but First was already closed with upgrades, we missed that window by minutes as well, and as we had paid for First we were not going to wash that and sit in Coach. So, we missed our connection to Ottawa and were double backed up on several flights to Detroit, which caused the Delta apps on our phones to simply fry and fail because they were not engineered to handle these kind of complexities, regardless of what Delta claims.<\/p>\n We did eventually take off for Detroit, about two hours late, but we left and I wasn’t too worried because when I booked the short connection it was with the knowledge that there was a second flight if something caused us to miss the first one. I don’t fault an airline for the weather, which is what caused the delay, although I have seen and heard many an angry traveler do exactly that. But I was disappointed in the flight crew on our Detroit flight. They knew that a plane full of passengers, including those with connections, as Detroit is a Delta hub, were waiting for hours, they knew connections had been blown, and for at least an hour, the frazzled gate agent had been telling us that we were waiting for the flight attendants, as it was obvious that the plane and the pilots were there. So, over a hundred waiting people were treated to sight of the flight attendants, finally, sauntering over to the gate, with Starbucks and sandwiches in hand, in absolutely no apparent hurry or concern, because what the hell, they gettin’ paid anyway, why should they hurry their sweet asses up? They should have at least pretended to be in a hurry, and to hide their meals which none of the passengers could get, so as to create even the illusion of a better customer service experience. Sadly, even the greatest company in the world will look poor when even one employee who represents that company has a poor attitude when it comes to customer service. And that is exactly what happened in LaGuardia Airport with those flight attendants. They tarnished Delta as a company with their lackadaisical attitude and indifference to the situation confronting dozens of passengers flying their airline, passengers without whom there are no flights, and therefore not any flight attendant jobs. They really ought to think about that more often than they seem to do.<\/p>\n We landed in Detroit and had plenty of time to get to our new gate, way out at the end of the C concourse, from which the tiny planes fly. While Delta flies in and out of Ottawa twice a day, they only take 50 passengers maximum at a time, so the plane is quite tiny, with only three seats across, the smallest plane<\/a> that Delta bothers to fly, and it is actually flown by another company on behalf of Delta, even though the plane and everything in it says Delta Connection. The crews who fly these small planes for connection carriers are grossly overworked and underpaid<\/a>, some of them living in parents’ basements and working odd jobs at 7-11 because they make less than $30,000 a year. They are also frequently tired and more likely to make fatal mistakes than mainline crews, but sometimes, to get to smaller cities, you take your chances, although I admit that a connection carrier flight is never my first choice.<\/p>\n One of the things that baffle me about the Detroit airport<\/a> is that it is simply architecturally stunning. The only airport I have been in that even comes close is perhaps Inchon<\/a>, in the Republic of Korea. The Detroit airport has high ceilings, massive amounts of windows, incredible views of the parked planes, and an overall feeling of light and air. Atlanta, and even worse LaGuardia and JFK, feel very cramped, too small, low-ceilinged, almost claustrophobic, and while LAX has improved, it isn’t world class by any means. And the reason this surprises me is that, as most everyone knows I think, Detroit is a totally bankrupt, decaying, and dying city that somehow has an amazing airport. There are some signs of recovery in Detroit, but the jobs, and the economy that once was, are gone forever, and unfortunately that means that most desperate of the city’s residents will remain passed over in the new economic world that Detroit may come to inhabit. So, while I wouldn’t recommend visiting Detroit the city, if you ever happen to have a connection going through there, don’t bemoan the stop, instead book your connection for a few hours so you can really enjoy and soak in the beauty and wonder that is Detroit Wayne International Airport!<\/p>\n The Ottawa Airport<\/a> is very state of the art, quite modern, and also very small. Almost all routes into the airport are serviced with small planes, and aside from connections coming from US airline hubs, all international flights will have arrived elsewhere requiring international passengers to make connections in more worldly cities such as Toronto <\/a>or Montreal<\/a>. Canadian Customs and Immigration<\/a> consisted of three people, but the planes are small, and it was after 9pm, so no big deal. Everyone, including Canadians, goes through the same line, unlike in larger Canadian airports where Canadian citizens just use entry kiosks. I wanted the bearded agent but instead ended up with the one female officer. Customs and immigration officers the world over are almost universally unfriendly and gruff (only the Russians are worse than the United States officers in this regard in my extensive experience), even Canadian ones, but every once in a while you hit the odd one in a good mood who wants to chat. That was our officer, but not as chatty as the one at London Heathrow <\/a>who talked to me at great length about Chaucer. This one was chatty about the weather, which she called hot, but clearly she doesn’t know Georgia hot and humid, but still asked the questions such people always do. Why are you here, how long, where are you staying, what have you been arrested for in the US, etc. etc. etc. And of course, knowing America, they want to make sure you know that in Canada handguns are just not OK<\/a>, concealed or not. Rifles for hunting something other than people, yeah, that MIGHT be OK, but nothing else, and they mean it.<\/p>\n We did a Canadian Uber to the hotel, which was very fast. My experience of Uber in NYC and Ottawa was that the same people who drive cabs now drive Uber. Almost always an immigrant from a country where motor vehicles are beyond the reach of the average citizen, meaning they have likely never driven extensively before becoming a cab driver, have limited knowledge of American English, and are a bit vague about traffic norms in our country. It can make for adventurous trips even after you land.<\/p>\n We had changed reservations from the Hilton property, which was not near anything (the other Hilton choice was at a casino across the river in Quebec) to the Lord Elgin Hotel<\/a>. It was a grand place, probably older, but very well maintained with uniformed doormen and such. Our room was enormous, especially coming from the closets labeled hotel rooms in NYC. We got lost that night looking for food, but we found it eventually, a small diner in the ByWard Market<\/a> area, which I would guess was once a run-down industrial area that has been remade into a lively shopping and eating area, which features fresh produce growers and vendors (as the sign says, growers only sell what they grow, vendors sell what others grow…just in case you were not sure). We would pick up some wonderful local berries there the next day.<\/p>\n But, sadly, the other thing that there were plenty of in Ottawa, especially around the ByWard Market, were homeless people asking for money. This doesn’t really fit with my idealized vision of Canada and I was disappointed. It has become rare, although I don’t know why for certain, to see homeless people begging in NYC, so perhaps they all moved up to Canada for the summer. I had guessed, apparently incorrectly, that Canada had a better social safety net that would prevent such desperate situations. Of course, I don’t know the back stories of anyone I saw on the streets, and maybe they are there not because of strictly economic factors but because of behavioral choices around drug or alcohol abuse, or perhaps as is so often true in the United States, they are mental health patients who have been turfed from care on the mistaken belief that psychotropic medications will solve everything, and maybe they would, but a paranoid personality type simply won’t take medication unsupervised. So, who knows what combination of factors contribute to it, but when in Ottawa at least, be prepared for many requests for your “spare change.” I am not sure what constitutes “spare change.” Is it money I don’t intend to spend myself because I have an excess? If so, that simply isn’t me. Although I confess that I left a $5 bill<\/a> with the man whose sign said he was HIV+. And yes, he could have been lying for sympathy, but regardless, what I gave him, technically, wasn’t change, not in any sense of the word, a fact I am aware of as well.<\/p>\n Our first full day in Ottawa we, or at least I, was awakened by the sounds of a marching band passing outside our hotel window.<\/p>\nMonday, Monday<\/h2>\n
Back to Broadway<\/h2>\n
Onward to Canada<\/h2>\n
A TSA Digression<\/h2>\n
Back to the Airport<\/h2>\n
Detroit Lay-over<\/h2>\n
Ottawa<\/h2>\n
Homeless, in Canada?<\/h2>\n
Chinese in Ottawa<\/h2>\n