Sometimes, you just have to treat yourself, especially at the end of an extravagant birthday week. I traveled a lot last year, and racked up a lot of Aeroplan points. When it came time to make a trip to Germany for a conference this month, I decided to burn up some of those points and book a first class ticket. Air Canada does business class to Frankfurt, which is nice: they have the business class “pods” in the Boeing 777. I was too late to get a business class flight on the long weekend, so decided to book Lufthansa first class to Dusseldorf instead. Air Canada only has two classes of service, but Lufthansa has three: coach, business and first. I have to say, Lufthansa First is really wonderful.

Lars was pretty much my own personal flight attendant: there were only 4 of us in first class, and he had part-time help from the purser and another flight attendant, so I didn’t want for anything. He was so adorable, I wanted to tuck him into my bag and take him with me. As I got on the plane, he was there to greet me by name, put my bag overhead, give me pyjamas, slippers and a ladies toiletries bag, and bring me a drink and a dish of macadamia nuts. He served me Piper-Heidsieck champagne, talked me into having the caviar as an appetizer as he walked me through my dinner order, and when I accused him of being a bad influence by offering me dessert, he said “I am here to seduce you” (I’m quite sure that the literal German translation of that is less innuendo-laden than the English).

Although the food was obviously prepared ahead of time, it was expertly plated and quite good: as good as many restaurants that I’ve been to. An amuse bouche of a seared scallop with mango salsa and a dollop of avocado; then the caviar accompanied by finely chopped egg, chopped onion, sour cream and toast. Technically the caviar was one of the appetizers, but I had also ordered the roast guinea fowl, which was a few slices of quite moist (cold) meat on a bed of thinly sliced beets with hazelnuts scattered around. The main was salmon steamed with ginger, a bit overcooked but to be expected for food that was prepared at least an hour before, with quite good rice and bok choy. And of course, Lars remembered to bring my fish knife. I washed that down with a glass of a German white burgundy, then had a taste of a muscat dessert wine with a slice of Cambazola and a few grapes.

I never sleep well on planes, and this was no exception. Although the seat lies completely flat, it’s a bit hard and lumpy – I think the lumbar support sticks up in the wrong place if you sleep on your side. However, dozing for a couple of hours does take the edge off an overnight flight, and the afternoon departure from Toronto meant that it was only midnight in my brain when we arrived in Dusseldorf at 6am. I’m completely looking forward to the return flight, which will be in daylight so that I can enjoy the excellent service even more.

If money were no object, I’d travel like this all the time. Instead, I do it every 10 years or so, on points – I think that the last time I did a long haul first class flight was going to Australia in 2001, also on points. That makes it an especially nice treat when it does happen, but does make it hard to go back to cattle class the rest of the time.

First class on the ICE train from Dusseldorf to Ulm, on the other hand, was a big disappointment: probably the most uncomfortable premium class seats ever, very shallow, lacking about 3-4 inches of support under my legs. No power at the seats (although with the magnificent HP Mini, I didn’t need it for the 3-1/2 hour trip) and no wifi. The tray table didn’t reach far enough out to put the computer on and type for anyone with arms less than three feet long, which meant having the netbook on my lap. To be fair, it was on time, fast and efficient; but I’m not going to miss the train ride if I end up driving back up to Dusseldorf.

I received an email this morning from a US company offering courses. Since I’m based in Toronto, they targeted me with the “courses in Canada” mailing, with one minor problem: the only course listed is in Edmonton. Edmonton is 1685 miles from Toronto, as the crow flies (further, if that crow wants to stay in Canadian airspace), which is further from me than Albuquerque, or anywhere east of that in the US. A direct flight takes 4 hours and 10 minutes to get to Edmonton, but only 3:31 to reach Denver, where they’re also offering a course.

Since I travel a lot on business, it’s not unusual for me to end up eating alone in a restaurant. I usually pick a higher-end place with an interesting menu and wine list, order good food, drink expensive wine, read a book or browse the web on a mobile device, and tip well when I pay the bill. However, I’m a strong believer in tipping for service, and I likely help to propagate the folklore of the low-tipping lone diner when I’m not treated well.

Recently I was in Boston, and had an extraordinary example of how not to treat a woman (or man) dining alone. I had a night free — or rather, opted not to attend the conference dinner event — and walked down to the Legal Test Kitchen, which is part of the Legal Seafoods chain. The menu on their website looked good, and their site said that they had wifi, which was doubly good for playing around on my iPod Touch.

It was a Tuesday night, so they were a bit busy but not overly so, and there was a free table immediately available. So far so good, until I had to wait 15 minutes for the waiter to take my drink order. I ordered a glass of one of the most expensive wines on their list (still reasonably priced), and asked the waiter about the wifi since I couldn’t find an open node. He didn’t know, but promised to find out. A long wait for my glass of wine, then I ordered the most expensive dish on the menu, a lobster Pad Thai, in part on the recommendation of the waiter who claimed that it was his “favorite dish”. No wifi information was forthcoming, and when a different waiter dropped off my food, I didn’t even get a chance to order a refill for my now-empty glass. The Pad Thai was okay, not great, and I really missed that second glass of wine. My original waiter came back when I had finished and asked if I wanted another glass of wine (um, a bit late for that, buddy), then asked if I still wanted that wifi information (ditto).

All in all, I felt ignored, and am unlikely to go there again. This may be an issue of a single diner, since the larger tables around me seemed to be getting fairly good service, although not from the same waiter — mine seemed to just disappear off the face of the earth for a long period of time, that being the time when I wanted another drink and the wifi information. I probably should have complained, or flagged down enough other passing waitstaff that one of them would have reminded mine that he had a customer here, but was feeling too lazy and non-confrontational to make a scene.

I tipped a standard 15%, feeling that I should have reduced it due to the bad service, but the bill amount was small enough that the difference may not have been noticed anyway. I was left with the feeling that I’d really like to get a message out to waiters everywhere: consider that we’re not leaving a crappy tip because we’re cheap, we’re leaving a crappy tip for crappy service.

It’s not the nirvana of free airport wifi, but better than nothing: 15 minutes of free wifi via Boingo in the Toronto airport, which is enough time to sync your email in a pinch.

I wrote a post back in October talking about Zipcar’s referral program, and included a badge (reproduced here) that would give anyone signing up through it $25 in driving credit, plus $25 in driving credit to me. Amazingly, someone clicked, and I received an email today saying that I have $25 in driving credit from a web referral! To whomever clicked, thanks for that, and have fun with your Zipcar membership.

Zipcar has a new referral program, where if I refer someone, we both get $25 in driving credit. Pretty good deal, eh? Click on the badge at the right to sign up for Zipcar using my referral code.

I’ve had pretty good experiences with Zipcar so far; I documented my first one here, and have rented with them a few more times since then. In Canada, I’ve never had the problem with the gas card that I had in the US on my first rental, it’s worked flawlessly. I have had a few times when the car wasn’t as clean as it could have been — the prior renter leaving crumbs on the seat or coffee rings on the console — although I have to admit that it’s still cleaner than my boyfriend’s car. They also dropped their rates a couple of months ago, making it even closer in price (or cheaper, depending on the length of rental) to a regular rental car while remaining much more convenient.

…and all I got was this photo credit.

I’m having a lot of fun watching how my Flickr photos pop up in different places around the web.

I’m in Florida this week on business (in fact, I’m enjoying the free wifi in Fort Lauderdale airport right now), and because I booked late, the only decent flights for price and schedule were on US Airways. I stopped flying US Air several years ago when their service was crappy and their on-time record — at least when I was on the plane — was even worse. And every flight into the US seemed to stop in Pittsburgh. As an Air Canada regular, I didn’t even consider flying them again until they joined the Star Alliance (which allows me to accumulate Air Canada points for a US Air flight), and even then it’s taken me a few years to return to them because of my previous poor experiences.

The flight down here on Wednesday was a really pleasant surprise. Except for leaving from Toronto terminal 3, which seems so outdated compared to the newer terminal 1, everything went smoothly. We flew to Charlotte on a 737-400 — an adorable little airport with rocking chairs instead of benches in the main concourse — then I changed concourses to board an identical 737-400 on to Fort Lauderdale, only to find the same flight crew on board, a weird coincidence. Both flights landed early, which means that they’ve likely set their schedules overly long to account for any delays, but at least that way there’s many less missed expectations. [I think that this is common practice now; I was on a flight back to Toronto recently that arrived 30 minutes early, which meant that I had to wait around for my ride since he was counting on the flight being on time.]

Even the in-flight magazine was great, with several articles of interest: ferry trips on BC’s inside passage, luxury “camping”, designer purses made out of auto upholstery fabric. I took it with me to the hotel to finish, and grabbed a few references out of it for future travel plans.

One last really nice thing: when I booked the flight at the last minute (less than 24 hours before I flew), only centre seats were available on the online seat selection. However, the online purchase process ingested my Air Canada Aeroplan number, and sometime between then and a couple of hours later when I did the web check-in, it had detected that I’m an Aeroplan Prestige (silver level) member and put me into better aisle and window seats. Bonus.

Although I prefer Air Canada because they tend to have more direct flights to places I’m going, I’d definitely fly US Air again.

I took this video early Thursday morning, somewhere over the American midwest (I assume, based on the time) on an overnight flight from San Francisco to Toronto. The lightening show had been much better about 15 minutes before, but I didn’t think to get out my camera.

My last day in San Francisco before I moved down to the airport Hyatt for my next conference, and since I was staying right on the edge of Chinatown, I decided to treat myself to a little dim sum. City View, located on Commercial right around the corner from the Hilton, was highly recommended on a couple of internet sites over the more upscale Yank Sing. As a single diner, I was able to snag a table at City View right away and was served a pot of jasmine tea immediately although had to wait for a few minutes for the first of the carts to come my way. The room is large, bright and airy, with a long mural along one wall; filled with predominantly Asian families but a few white faces mixed in. Waiters pushed steam carts filled with dim sum, as well as some hand-carried platters for less temperature-sensitive items. Hard to believe, but I ate 5 plates of dim sum: pan-fried dumplings, shrimp in rice noodle rolls, mushroom and shoots in steamed dumplings, BBQ pork with steamed buns on the side (sort of like BBQ pork buns but with the pork, buns and sauce all served separately), and snow pea greens and shrimp in steamed dumplings that looked like a perfect representation of a certain part of the male anatomy. Ahem. All were delicious, although the pan-fried dumplings were a bit greasy, and I won’t be eating dinner tonight.

Afterwards, I walked down to the ferry terminal — making a perfect attendance record there for the past four days — for a chai latte by the water’s edge. The blue skies also had a perfect attendance record: although there was some fog when I awoke this morning, it cleared before I stepped outside and has been great ever since.

With a bit of a trip and some work to do before I met up with friends at the conference hotel tonight, I grabbed my bags and headed for BART to experience tremendously bad transit karma: the train for SFO pulled out just as I came down the steps, making for a 20-minute wait, then I just missed the Hyatt shuttle at the airport for another 20-minute wait. It did give me a chance to finish Ysabel, the fascinating Guy Gavriel Kay book that I was reading; I’ll have to search around for something else to read on the flight home.

That’s likely it for my San Francisco adventures, although I don’t get home for a few more days: the conference blogging will be over on my business blog.