Boarding Gate 101

One of the highlights of my weekend visit to Seattle is a swing to the Museum of Flight, my first aviation museum since the Intrepid Museum in New York (not counting the California Science Center , which although has aircraft on display, is not a pure aviation museum). The museum is located in Tukwila, Washington, just outside Seattle, and a few minutes drive from the city. My kumpare and my god-daughter accompanied me there. The Museum of Flight is the largest private air and space museum in the world. It was established in 1965, and is located in a piece of land just adjacent to the Boeing Field, an airport.  The F-14 and the A-6 Intruder outside the museum The weather was already showing its typical Seattle character, threatening a deluge with  gray-colored clouds just when we arrived in the museum. After finding a parking spot, we proceeded inside, lining up for our tickets. I was literally giddy, trying to contain my excitement and anticipation.  ...

I spent a weekend in Chicago during my business trip to St. Louis last November, taking a five-hour trip on a Greyhound bus (which is a whole, uhm, new experience all together) to the Windy City a week before I flew out. The trip, which is my second to  the city, enabled me to explore the city more. I met my travel buddy  +Ronaldo Villamarzo  there, who drove all the way from Wisconsin.  We didn't really have an itinerary so we only visited the places that we felt like it. We primarily went around the area surrounding the Magnificent Mile, where the hotel is located, and also to the Millennium Park. We also had the time to visit a museum, the Art Institute of Chicago (more on that soon). One thing that we tried though was to sign up for the architecture tour around the city - in a boat plying along the Chicago River. The retro-futuristic architecture of Marina City Architecturally Chicago is very diverse, and full of skyscrapers. The first modern skys...

Between the trips to the US and Japan was the weekend trip to Taipei. I got my tickets to it first as the US trip was unexpected (as I already had a business trip to it back in March), and I only got my tickets to Tokyo a month later. If it weren't for the one-peso fare promo of Cebu Pacific I wouldn't have planned it al all. I am still wary of Taiwan, as the country has been behaving dickishly towards the Philippines on the diplomatic front, and I have all but written off the country as a destination. Still, the one-peso fare (and the prospect of visiting a new country) beckoned like a siren to a hapless sailor, and I booked my ticket as soon as the airline announced the promotion. Taipei 101 mall As I mentioned in this blog so many times I am drawn to skyscrapers, and Taipei has a notable one - Taipei 101. It is one of the popular destinations in the city, and I set aside half a day to visit it. The building is also right up on my list of supertalls that I wante...