Layover

Happy Souvenir Sunday from the WorldShop & Richmond Int’l Airport

Airport shops, Airports, Bars, Fun Stuff, Layover, Museums, Observation Decks, Shopping, Souvenir Sunday, Souvenirs, , , , , , , ,

Lufthansa pilots have scheduled a four day strike beginning on Monday, February 22, 2010.  Negotiations are currently underway, but if those talks fail to avert the strike, the carrier will be forced to cancel most of its flights. And that will leave passengers stuck at the airport.

The upside? If you do end up spending more time than you planned at a German airport, you’ll be able to find plenty of things to do.

Munich Airport, for example, has an outdoor observation deck and a great indoor/outdoor beer garden with an on-site brewery.

munich airport Airbrau

The Hamburg Airport also has observation decks as well as the Airport Model Exhibition – a miniature version of the airport complete with buildings, taxiways, runways, landing strips, and 8,000 light-emitting diodes that light up the tiny airport’s night sky – all on a scale of 1:500.

Hamburg Airport model exhibition

And at the Dusseldorf, Munich, Hamburg, and Berlin airports you’ll also find Lufthansa WorldShop stores, which offer a promising spot to do some Souvenir Sunday shopping.

The airline recently opened its second WorldShop store at the Frankfurt Airport (Terminal 1, Area B) and, like the others; the store is filled with travel items, backpacks, travel accessories, electronics, model aircraft, toys, and some other fun stuff.  Shoppers can earn Miles & More award miles for items purchased here and – here’s a nice twist – also buy items using accumulated miles.

I’m especially taken with this A380 Cookie Jar

The cool container sells for about $107 – or 22,000 miles, so we can’t make it our pick for Souvenir Sunday, which usually has an upper limit of $10.  But poking around the WorldShop catalog I did find this cute guy, which sells for 9 Euros (about $12) or 7500 miles.

But since this is Souvenir Sunday and do we have that under $10 rule (which may need to be re-adjusted soon for inflation..),  we offer these items sent along by the folks at Virginia’s Richmond International Airport(RIC), where a variety of local museums are represented in the  Hudson News store in the airport’s Atrium area, next to the security screening checkpoint for Concourse B.

These items are from the Edgar Allan Poe Museum

Beer mugs - Poe Museum

(Beer mugs! )

(Poe action figure – with removable raven! )

Have you found a great souvenir while stuck at the airport? If it’s under $10, “of” the city or region and, ideally, a bit offbeat, please snap a photo and send it along. It may show up as our pick for a future Souvenir Sunday.

AeroTrain running at IAD; Mobile lounges still on duty

Architecture, Aviation history, Exhibits, Getting around, Layover, Lounges, Transportation, , , ,

Last week the Dulles International Airport (IAD) started using its AeroTrain airport train system to replace some, but not all of the mobile lounges that have been taking passengers between the Main Terminal and the Midfield Concourses for years.

I really like those kooky lounges. Riding on them always offers a unique view of the airport.  And there’s a black and white picture somewhere in the airport’s archives that explains the “lounge” part perfectly: it shows females attendants serving drinks to passengers on their way to the plane.

Even this photo shows travelers who seem to have no worries at all about making their connecting flights.

There are certainly some upsides to the AeroTrain.

One benefit is that right now there’s a photography exhibit in the tunnel connecting the temporary Concourse C with the C-Gates AeroTrain station.

(Photo by: Kanji Takeno)

The exhibit “Washington, DC: Through Our Eyes,” includes photos shot by members of the White House News Photographers Association. The 44 photos currently on display are just the first group of more than 200 photos that will be displayed on a rotating basis.

And,  if you find yourself with a long layover at Dulles International Airport (IAD) and have wrung all the excitement out of riding the AeroTrain and looking at the photo exhibit, then check out the cool stuff at the National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center just down the road.

The museum is big enough for the to Smithsonian to display thousands of aviation and space artifacts that just won’t fit on the National Mall.  Like the Boeing B-29 Superfortress  “Enola Gay.”

Love the layover: straight to the moon from Düsseldorf Airport

Air Travel, Art, Environment, Events, Exhibits, Fun Stuff, Layover, , , , ,

Next weekend, February 6 and 7, 2010, visitors to the Düsseldorf International Airport will be entertained by skiers and snowboarders performing stunts and jumps on a 130-foot long ski slope set up right in the shopping arcade of the terminal.

Pretty impressive by itself, but if you’re heading to Düsseldorf to see the world’s first indoor ski jump at an airport, you may as well go visit the moon.

(The ‘Largest Moon on Earth’ – sculpture and photo by Wolfgang Volz)

A reproduction and exhibit of the solar system — including an 82-foot wide moon sculpture that is the largest moon sculpture in the world — is on display inside a 380-foot tall former gas container, in nearby Oberhausen.

The exhibit, Out of this World – Wonders of the Solar System, also includes impressive replicas of the sun and its planets and is open through December 30, 2010 as one of the projects of “Ruhr 2010”, a year-long series of art events and exhibits in Germany’s Rhine Ruhr area, near Düsseldorf.

Love the layover: airport adventures on Oahu and the Big Island

Air Travel, Airport shops, Art, Aviation history, Exhibits, Free Stuff, Fun Stuff, Layover, , , , ,

Snowstorms, mudslides, rain, more rain, and tornadoes.

Sounds like a good time for a trip to Hawaii.

If you go, or just want to dream a bit about going, be sure to check out the slide-show I put together for MSNBC.com – Cheap and Offbeat Oahu – about activities that are free, cheap or bit offbeat.

Included: the tale of the fish auction that takes place 6 days a week, beginning at 5:30 am;

Information about a free exhibit at the Hawaii State Art Museum that’s filled with historical objects and photographic portraits that tell the history of Hula,


(These pot holders are not in the exhibition, but you can buy them at the airport..)

And a reminder to travelers that there are a trio of tranquil cultural gardens – Japanese, Chinese and Hawaiian – inside the Honolulu International Airport (HNL)

If you’re going to go to Oahu, you should also pop over to the Big Island.  And if you do, you’ll be able to visit the Astronaut Ellison S. Onizuka Space Center at the Kona International Airport.  On January 28, 1986, all seven crew members were killed when NASA’s Space Shuttle Challenger exploded less than two minutes after launch. One of those crew members, Ellison S. Onizuka, was Hawaii’s first astronaut.

To space center has oodles of fun, hands-on activities as well as exhibits that include a moon rock from the final moon landing of Apollo 17 in 1972, an authentic NASA space suite, and personal items that belonged to Ellison Onizuka.

My favorite items in the collection are the freeze-dried macadamia nuts and the freeze-dried Kona coffee that NASA created especially for Onizuka. Today’s astronauts can still choose these items from the space menu.