Luzern & Zürich, July 2024

Fifteen years after being in Luzern for the first time, a visit that was included on a tour to Mount Pilatus, I thought it was a good idea to explore this city in more detail. A train would take us there from Zürich's Central Station.

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Luzern

In Luzern it's almost inevitable to start with the Chapel Bridge which caught fire in 1993 destroying  some of its famous triangular paintings.

The city of Luzern is built around the Reuss river.

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Museggmauer

Once part of the old town's historic fortifications, the Museggmauer is a 800 meters long wall with nine towers and you can visit the interior and top of some of them. The wall and its towers give wonderful view over the city of Luzern.

And back to the ground level city stroll...

One last view of the Chapel Bridge...

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Zürich

Before heading back to the hotel we decided to stop in Zürich. The weather was not that great despite being summer and we even had to face some drizzle.

Boston Common, Quincy Market & Long Wharf

To start the year visiting Boston is not a thing I would complain about.

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Boston Common

It's nice to see the Boston Common Park completely covered in snow while enjoying a gorgeaus day with clear blue sky, no wind and sub zero temperatures (Celsius scale).

In the last post I made about Boston I pointed out that the Frog Pond was not yet transformed into an ice rink. Now, there you have it!

It's been a long time since I visited the Quincy Market and the Long Wharf. So I decided to go there and have my lunch at the Wagamama restaurant.

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Quincy Market

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Long Wharf

If you click and enlarge the next couple of photos, you can recognise the iconic Logan Airport's control tower.

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Boston Sign

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Paramount Theatre

Airbus A320 Family random pictures

Just a few random pics I took either while on travel or on duty. Thought you might like them:

New York, Intrepid and Hudson River, July 2024

Yet another stopover in New York. I got plenty of them last year. This was the shortest of them but at least I would return as a deadhead crew. I had nothing to do or to buy in New York but I forced me out of the hotel room. On a personal note, I had a really bad start of 2024 and I was still fixing things up to get back to normal, so it was important for me to get distracted.

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Newark Liberty Airport
& Penn Station

From the inside of our tiny but cosy A321LR, after arrival:

And a view of Newark's Penn Station where I got a PATH train to Manhattan.

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Manhattan

Contrary to what I hoped, the stroll didn't improve my spirits. Usually when I start the day in a bad mood there's nothing I can do to help myself (even if I try hard) except waiting for the day to end, go to sleep and start another fresh day after some kind of brain reset. I had a million of thoughts in my mind that day. At some point it seemed that during my stroll I was running away from something, walking in a fast pace, in a totally random direction.

Still signs of the 4th of July celebration

I ended up walking all along the Hudson River towards uptown, seeing the same places and features I already saw hundreds of times.

Little Island...

Hudson Yards...

Intrepid...

Late that afternoon it started to rain I got under some kind of public structure where many others were too looking for shelter. Somehow I stood in front of an office door and after some minutes there an agent of whatever service it was got out and told it was not smart to stay in front of a door. I apologized but what I really wanted to say to her was "I'm so sorry for being such a dumb" because of the way she told me that. I was just trying not to get soaked as everybody else and the space was not abundant. My mood was already bad and this totally killed the rest of my day: I just wanted the rain to stop and go back to the hotel. Definitely I should've stayed in my room and read a book.

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Return flight

Next day, after a failed short visit to New York it was finally time to go back home.

A scene of David and Goliath

Mood lighting and moving flight map just before landing...

Better days would finally come in October.