Username/OP combo!
My great aunt flew on the Hindenburg. She enjoyed it; according to her air travel’s been getting faster, but less comfortable ever since. She only had one small complaint about that flight.
The aluminium piano sounded dreadful. 
She wasn’t on the flight that crashed.
In my 20’s I was seriously considering an around-the-world-tour on a Concorde with William F. Buckley.
Aahhh youth.
Yes, and no. The early trans-Pacific flying boats had amenities that modern planes don’t; full meal service, seats that converted to beds, even private cabins, I think. They were also loud, cold, bumpy, slow, and had to stop at island bases to refuel. The shorter the period of confinement, the less luxurious it has to be. And so we now have the planes that we do.
I also guess part of why it was retired was because people just don’t need to be places quickly anymore, Internet and all that.
I have seen one parked at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, Filton airfield in Bristol (UK) and at Yeovilton museum (also in the UK). You can go on the Yeovilton one and poke around. The Filton one was an open exhibit but someone sadly fell off a gantry and died a couple of years back so it is now closed to the public. A pity as it is one of the locations where it was originally designed.
I’ve also seen them taking off in London and was in Bristol for the final “tour” around the UK the day they retired, saw it very close over Clifton / Bristol City Centre, it was an amazing sight. This is the famous picture of it over the Clifton suspension bridge on that day.
What happened to it? As I recall, Aeroflot had them on regular service for a while-then the planes vanished-anybody know the story?
The Tu-144
It was never very successful. Big crash at the Paris airshow, but it had problems apart from that. The engines weren’t great, and they never got the cabin noise below a deafening roar. They had it flying mail and cargo for a while, NASA actually used them for some testing and then they got mothballed.
Fans of the Concorde may enjoy this ~6-minute video, supposedly an internal presentation for British Airways staff, showcasing the history of the Concorde in a very nostalgic way.
She flew on PanAm’s flying boats too (though not trans-Pacific), she said the Hindenburg. Private cabin, meal service, lounge, no turbulance or audible engine noise, and it was nonstop from Frankfort to NYC.
Yes, those Sikorsky FBs were noisy-and they had to stop-I believe that longest “hop” for them was Canton Island-Tokyo. Still, they were a lot faster than a passenger steamer. Plus, you really needed a GOOD navigator-no LORAN, GPS, or even radio beacons back then!
To me, the Boeing 314 is the classic. If I remember correctly, there was regular trans-Pacific service before trans-Atlantic; Pan Am built refueling sites on islands and so the individual legs of the trip were shorter.
Bumped.
There’s a proposal to rehab and fly a Concorde again, but strong opposition from Airbus: http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/21/travel/concorde-return-to-flight/index.html