V-Flyer

My week visiting Petaluma, and Las Vegas for the CES finally came to an end.

I wondered if we'd have been better off flying from Santa Rosa to Vegas rather than spending best part of 20 hours driving. I suppose we all live and learn.

I was amazed at the $5 luggage cart charge for probably no more than a couple of hundred feet from entrance to check-in desk.

Check-in was very quick and easy, enquired about an upgrade to UC and was quoted $2404, declined as a little too rich for me.

There were only 210 passengers on board, and the usual announcements went out about staying in the allocated seat during take-off and landing. After that it was a free for all for the economy passengers to grab blocks of seats. I have to say i think most of them got the better deal than PE.

Was hoping to secure 28a again but alas a last minute dash to pick a Kindle fire my hopes were dashed, and i ended up in 33h. Not a great seat, but not a bad one either.

The controls for the screen were disgusting, something very sticky and brown all around the controller, didn't investigate too thoroughly, as new toy was waiting to be played with, and of course the obligatory Ipad had been packed. Film selection actually looked pretty good.

Nice view out of two windows (before all the blinds came down about 45 minutes into the flight).

Taking off from SFO produces some amazing views, oh to be allowed to have the camera in hand on take off is all i can say (flying in was pretty amazing too).

The food selection was better than the incoming flight, salad was edible, chose the chicken malai kofta kebab thing, which actually tasted pretty good. Unfortunately its been repeating on me all day today

Breakfast was a choice of full english or vegetarian omelette. Opted for the full english which was again edible.

Throughout the flight the cabin crew were pretty attentive, plenty of drinks doled out, though there were no snacks loaded for the trip, later into the flight, a fruit bowl was offered which i thought was quite a nice option.

Cabin lights came back on about an hour before landing, we sat in the queue for maybe 20 minutes and had a very smooth landing IMHO.

Immigration was pretty slow with only 3 or 4 agents on the UK passport side. Rushed to the Baggage carousel, shouldn't have bothered, as i reckon my bags were pretty much last off!

Out the door and back to normality unfortunately.

Thanks for the TR - how was CES?

Thanks for the interesting TR, sounds like a good flight and the IPad made it even better!

Have wanted to do CES for some years now, and booked this trip at very short notice (middle of december). Really enjoyed the show, saw lots of very nice tech, but nothing that really said "you are going to have to buy this".

There was a lot of 3D TV, and it appeared to be the main theme. There were also some very cool and very thin TV's - the samsung was the standout one there (I think it was just over 4mm thick).

I was surprised at how big the show was (Prompting a comment from my friend about how many times i'd been to the US, and still not appreciating the size of things). In all we walked just over 40km pounding the halls.

Highlight for me i have to say was watching the live twit.tv broadcast and seeing the wonderful Sarah Lane.

There was an interesting Ilounge area with some real cool ipad toys, one of which was the addonit keyboard / case, just need to find somewhere in the UK that supplies it now:

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articl ... -ipad-mac/

Well thats my quick show report, not sure if its posted in the correct place.

Rob

Thank you for the TR.