Congratulations, Skybird! I hope you enjoy working again. Will you have a regular route you'll fly?

By the way, thanks for offering to guide me through the Denver Botanic Gardens. I did go, but I did it with five other friends and it was thrown together at the last minute. We had a great time, and it was a very impressive place! I enjoyed downtown Denver, too.

Thanks, Steve. I will DEFINITELY be glad to be back in the air! Every other month I get a schedule so I know where Im going when, but if you mean "regular" as in going to the same place all the time, no. That seldom happens. And on the other months Im on "reserve," which means I only know which days I might go somewhere, but dont know where or when until as little as 4 hours before I leave. That parts not fun! But even then I love it once Im on the plane.

Glad you got to go to DBGand Im glad you got to do it with some of your friends, especially since theyre ones you dont get to see very often. I knew youd like it!

Id say hurry back to see some more of our beautiful state, but youve got your own beautiful mountains, so Ill just sayenjoy!

Skybird

Just out of curiosity, how often do you get to see much of any of the cities you fly to? I've traveled a lot on business and when people would ask me what did you think of (insert city here), I'd usually respond with something like, "They had an airport, a hotel and an office building."

Of course, some cities had restaurants, too, but some only had corporate cafeterias. Some had taxi stands, others had rental car agencies and others had train stations.

But I rarely got to really see much of any city I worked in.

LOL! I get to see the airport and hotelbut not even the office building, BP! Since 9-11 and bankruptcy, half our layovers are so short you need to decide if you want to eat or sleepwe usually celebrate when we get to do both! :-) Sometimes I walk out to a fast food place if theres one nearby, but thats about it on domestic layovers.

But international layovers (because of legalities) are longer, so I have had some fun times on those. It also depends on if youre with a fun crew or not. Its not a whole lot of fun to be out walking around a strange city all alone. At least not for me! Ive gone out walking for hours twice in Frankfurt, and had dinner. The second FRA trip was my funnest one---was with a really fun bunch of girls. Got to go to the Great Wall, Tiananmen, and the Forbidden City in Beijingit was my first intl. tripand I didnt have a camera! That was fun, but it was over 100 degrees! Went for a nice walk and to the 100 yen shop in Osaka once. The place across from the hotel where we went to eat was in the World Trade Center! I kid you not! Did a hop-on-hop-off bus in London, which included a short boat ride down the Thamesto the Tower of London--and have a picture of me in front of Buckingham Palace. That was fun! And had dinner in Paris when I was still in trainingbut I dont like Paris or Parisiens! Also went out walking there, so have seen the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, and walked over one of the bridges to the "left bank!" And Ive been thru the (very short) tunnel where Princess Diana was killed on the way to the hotel. We took the subway a couple times in Paris, and I couldnt believe it! We let the first couple trains go by because they were so full we didnt think we could get in, and finally realized if we didnt just push in, we were gonna be there forever, so we pushed in with everybody else, and youhonestlydidnt need to even try to hang onto anything. We were body-to-body wedged in-between the people and couldnt have fallen over if we had tried! The only thing I hung onto was my purse!

When I get to Honolulu or Kona, I usually go out walking for a whileby myself. In Kona Ive walked thru the oldest church in the islandsbut mostly just take a walk along the beach and thru all the little shops, and the same thing in HNL. The hotel is just a couple blocks from the International Market Place, so I usually spend an hour or so roaming around in there. Im not a big fan of humidity, so people will think Im nuts, but it can really be stifling over there. And I had a fun time on my first trip to Anchoragewhich is also considered intl. for us because its over water. It was December and there was 4 hours of daylitemore than I was expectingand I walked down to the Anchorage Museum which has a VERY interesting exhibit documenting Alaska from before the dawn of man to the present. Really, really interesting, and I highly recommend it if anybodys ever up there. The spooky thing when youre there, tho, is that we stay right downtown (tiny downtown!) on Fifth Street which is where something akin to a crack in the earth opened up during the 8.+ earthquake of 1964, and 4th and 5th Streets were offset by several feet when it was over with. And the tourist channel at the hotel tells all about it, complete with pictures, just so you dont forget about it!

About the only other thing Ive really ever done is, on the one Manhattan layover Ive had since 9-11, I and 3 other girls went down to ground zero. The public viewing platform was still up, and I cant begin to explain the impact it had on us all to be there. Then we went to a little sidewalk café a few blocks away and had drinks! The ride down and back to the hotel on the subway was something else tho! We were lost both ways! And going back to the hotel we were half drunk too, and acting TOTALLY insane (comic relief), so we were entertaining all the New Yawkers on the subway! When flight attendants get to goofing off, we often get into our evacuation commands, so, since we were lost, we were going, "grab your ankles," "come this way," "jump, jump!" I dont know what people thot we were doing, but we were all laughing so hard we were crying, and Im kinda surprised we didnt all get locked up that time! On the other hand, there are a lot of nutty people in NYC! But I am glad I got a chance to go to ground zeroand I DO have pictures of thatand of us acting goofy on the subway!

Thats allin 7 years! Otherwise its just straight to the hotel, sleep for 4 or 5 hours, and get up at 0200 to get back to whatever airport. It is DEFINITELY not the relaxed, romantic image most people probably have. The part I really like about the job is being in an airplane (I should have been born with wings)and helping people! :-)

Skybird

I'm happy for you, skybird! You'll be happy back in the air. Too bad you don't have more time to spend on layovers.

We'll be happy to have you blitz posting when you have some free time at home!

I liked reading about your travel adventures Skybird.

I'm a gypsy at heart :) We went to ground zero when we were on tour. I felt like the energy that surrounds the area is so eerily thick with sadness.

Hope you get to have some more travel adventures soon!

Have fun!

Charlene