Pleasent surprise from American Airlines again - return to Dallas

I have to say that I really enjoy American Airlines, my whole family got upgraded to business class on Boeing 777 and now the kids get to see how I spend most of my travel... Working on my 3 million miles on American Airlines..... Our vacation is over now, final leg from Miami, Florida to Dallas, Texas. Our vacation was beautiful, refreshing and we met people from differnet cultures around the world.

Miami city and boat tour aound the Miami neighbourhood

We spent our day today on a nice short bus tour in downtown Miami and then finished our trip by having a 90 minute boat tour that let us see the rich and famous Star Island and Fisher Island house owners (many of them). The weather was beautiful, the boat was not packed as it could have been and the pictures I was able to take with my Nikon D80 were perfect!

Tomorrow, we will fly back to our Dallas, Texas home! I really miss our three Lowchen dogs! I am sure they will be happy to see us. My next longer trip will be in the end of August and will take me to Helsinki, Finland and Bratislava, Slovakia.

Miami South Beach hotel and neighbourhood

We stayed in the famous South Beach area in a hotel that is built in art deco style. This hotel South Sea is OK and we had a view to the sea and beaches from our corner room. However, as in lots of Florida hotels, do not expect much of them being new..... they are not.

San Juan, Puerto Rico - Miami Florida flight on Boeing 300

The flight to Miami was smooth, but we were hit by a thunderstorm immediately after landing. This resulted in a boring 1 hour "sitting in the plane without drinks or anything" and kids started to become impatient and screamy.... Oh well... Now we have been waiting for our bags to arrived for more than an hour....

How did Royal Caribbean International do - final ranking

The cruise is over and my somewhat lame feedback on the service levels of Royal Caribbean International during the first two days were balanced with very good service during the rest of the cruise.

The ship "Adventures of the Seas" is much nice one than the "Carnival Destiny" we used last year and the state rooms and overall service stations with bars, food etc works better on RCI. If you visit this ship, make sure you test the Portofino restaurant that is top-of-breed food with very good service.

Back to San Juan, Puerto Rico

We are on our way back to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Seven days is over and we have seen unbelievable places and islands. The Royal Caribbean Cruiselines has changed the immigration to be more smooth... It is done already on St Thomas, which is US soil so there is not as much hassle in San Juan in the morning. We also have to catch our flight to Miami, where we will spend a couple of nights in the beautiful Southbeach area......

St John's and St Thomas are pearls of the Caribbean

This morning we arrived to the US Virgin Islands, St. Thomas. Having now seen 11 Caribbean islands, St. Thomas and the neighbouring St John are our favorites.... no question about that.

We participated in an arranged excursion that included a 45 minute ferry ride to St Johns and then a 2 hour bus drive around the island. Beautiful scenery, and two of the 10 most beautiful beaches reside on these two islands: Megans Bay on St. Thomas and Trunk Beach on St. Johns.

I am sure we will visit these islands again, maybe purely coming to St Thomas and staying on both islands for a week or so.

Early arrival to St Martin

The morning was beautiful and we had decided to take a combined island sightseeing and catamaran trip. The only way to see the true nature of these islands is to take the tours as you have typically less than 8 hours time to explore and 2 hours of this goes to eating and security controls.

This island was pretty nice, but not like St Thomas.... I am amazed of the amount of trash that one gets to see on these islands when driving around. The other noticable thing is the uneven quality of buildings..... You can have a nice house and a dumpdter beside it.

During our catamaran cruise we got to see Microsoft Bill Gates two mansions that he ownes on these islands. One was a huge thing overseeing the bay and the other one was also very impressive.

Fun at the Caribbean sea - from Curacao to St. Martin

It took a full day and night to sail from Curacao to St. Martin, which is an island divided between two countries: France and Holland. During the day of sailing I decided to take it easy and read and sleep. In the evening it was time for Mohito and dacing with 80s music.

Full day on the sea, next destination is St Maarten

We are on our way to St Maarten and as we are very south as of now, it will take a while to get to our next destination. After this trip, I have seen 10 Caribbean islands, from south, east to north. Each of these island have their own flavor so do not assume you have seen them all when having seen one.

Are we destroying our nature - our jeep trip opened my eyes

The former head of Nokia, Jorma Ollilla is the chairman of the board for Royal Dutch Shell and one of the refineries is located on the island of Curacao. According to our guide, the plant is among the third largest in the world. We drove for three hours on the jeep and the island is very dry and not much green can be seen anywhere. At some point in time my nose picked up a familiar smell that I got used to when passing Porvoo Finland oil refineries. The sky of Curacao was full of dirty smog and the smell of oil was very noticable. What was even more interesting that Europeans buy luxury time shares from a luxury resort which is directly under the smog that tens of different pipes spit out.

I do understand that it is about money, but what is sad is to see the pollution taking foothold in these beautiful Caribbean islands.

Early arrival to Curacao this morning

One more island to visit. This time we arrived to Curacao that is 42 miles east of Aruba and 35 miles north of Venezuela. The capital of Curacao, Willemstad, is also called little Amsterdam and I do not wonder why... It is a beautiful little city with Amsterdam-like houses with hundreds of shops. The cruise ship was able to dock very close to the downtown area and there is a bridge between the downtown and the cruise ship. There are approximately 170.000 inhabitants in the island of Curacao.

We really liked the downtown area and had a nice cup of coffee by the water. Three hours of walking was enough to explore the style and pricing of the island.

Aruba as a shopping paradise?

I spent 3 hours today shopping in Aruba main streets... Based on our "collected intelligence", Aruba and Curacao are more expensive than St Thomas, St Maarten or even San Juan, Puerto Rico.

My wife compared the pricing of some merchanise in the Tommy Hilfinger and some of the stuff was 4 times more expensive when compared to the factory outlet in Dallas, Texas.

The Aruba center is made for tourists, so the feel you get is to spend money on stuff which is ok as the whole islands lives on tourism nowadays.

Scuba diving and sailing

We went today immediately to scuba dive with a sailboat. I just had just read about the presence of the largest oil refinery in the world on these islands and I could not be without thinking what that does for the environment.

The second stop on our scuba trip was a location with a shipwreck.... And some of the parts of the wreck were only 2 feet deep. I was able to see lots of fish and some very large fish when scuba diving.

Aruba by early morning

We arrived to Aruba in the Caribbean islands early this morning. The view was beautiful, as it was raining in one part of the island and sun shining in the other. The ship is docked very close to the downtown area, she guests can pretty much walk down to the shops.

Aruba has around 100.000 inhabitants, mostly with Dutch heritage and the island became independent in the seventies but is part of the Dutch kingdom.

Carnival Cruise vs. Royal Caribbean

I have to say that I am amazed of the lack of urgency to serve on the "top of the line cruise ship". Last year we spent our vacation on Carnival Destiny where the crew really wanted us to enjoy... Here on Royal Caribbean it is like the clients are an annoyance if you ask anything. And by the way, I am paying twice as much on this cruise.... So.... Can I have this ship with the crew from Carnival please.

Our Caribbean route this summer

We are on the ship, so our two nights in San Juan old town Sheraton is over. The ship Royal Caribbean "Adventures of the Seas" is headed first to Aruba and we will be there on
Tuesday which means that we are going to have one night cruising and Wednesday our trip takes us to Curacao (tropical mini Amsterdam) for a day.

Thursday we will spend one day at the sea and Friday we will arrive to St Maarten, Saturday is St Thomas.

Sunday we will arrive back to San Juan, Puerto Rico and we will fly to Miami where we will spend a night in South Beach Miami.

Tuesday we will return back to Dallas. Texas.

Mobility is everywhere

I wrote in my previous blogs that it is time for independent software vendors to start innovating around mobility. It is obvious to me that people around the world are just waiting for more applications they can use to drive business. I was amazed last year how widespread the cell use and GRPS was on the Carribean islands.... This year it is even more obvious with lots of new handheld devices.

Borders Bookstore want to go out of business?

I am amazed how badly Borders bookstore keeps it premises. I thought it was just one place in Dallas, but the one here in San Juan, Puerto Rico is worse and to the point that I do not want to visit the place anymore. Borders will lose its clients at least that I represent.

Prisoners of our own habits

This is the second time in San Juan and yesterday when we arrived, we visited three places that I hate to admit we did. First of all, we decided to have Starbucks coffee.... secondly my kids wanted to visit Hardrock Cafe San Juan.... These are not even close to be Puerto Rican, so why are we humans so used to our own habits.... Of fear? Of convinience or what... The third place was something we from the past... A local bar with the very good Medalla beer that was refreshing.

The thing we all have to learn from Puerto Ricans... They are very polite, nice to talk to and I would be very happy to spend longer times here in Puerto Rico.

First night over in San Juan, Puerto Rico

This is a wonderful city, we spent last night in downtown San Juan and our hotel (Sheraton) is very exclusive with good service. Today we are headed towards Plaza de la Americas where we expect to do some shopping. The weather yesterday was humid with a couple sprinkles of water but today the sun is shining. Our luxury cruise is departing tomorrow evening and the first stop is going to be Aruba (close to Venezuelan coast).

San Juan, Puert Rico here we come

It is the time of the year where we are headed again to the Carribean. Our flight from Dallas Fort Worth to San Juan which is the beauitiful island of Puerto Rico. We are sitting in the beautiful D terminal in the brand new Admirals Club that is worth every penny!

Week in Denver, Colorado is over

This was probably one of my most busy week ever. The Microsoft Worldwide Conference 2007 is over and I had the opportunity to meet people from all over the world and nothing beats that! Last night we had a nice end of conference party at the large Coors baseball field. I am now sitting in the American Airlines Admirals Club with a beautiful outlook over the airfield. Also, the architecture of the main terminal is very interesting and reminds me of northern part of Finland. The flight to Dallas is less than 2 hours so I have a change to get home in time.

Microsoft WPC 2007 is here again

The Microsoft worldwide partner conference started today and this is my third conference. The first one was in Minneapolis, then in Boston and now in the beautiful Denver Colorado. This is the first day an I am sitting here in the huge convention center listening at the first keynote.

Denver here I come

I am on my way to Denver, Colorado for a conference with a golf tournament tomorrow Sunday. We have made history here in Dallas when it comes to rain... It has been pouring water for a month now and whole mobile home parks have been swept away. This morning at 06.00 AM the sun was getting up and now we have one of the most beautiful mornings one can have. The flight from Dallas to Denver is less than 2 hours, so this time I do not have to sit here for long.