Working Around the System

As you know, my flight from Buenos Aires to Houston was canceled. Mechanical problems, they say. Well, apparently they added a new flight today to accommodate those who are currently stuck in Buenos Aires since there's only one flight a day. The new flight leaves at 10:30 and there's a second (normal) flight that leaves at 11:50. All the passengers from yesterday's flight who weren't placed on other airlines are scattered among two hotels - the Presidente (shabby) and the Panamericano (for First Class customers).

Originally, they had told us they (their remise service) would pick us up at 7:00 for the 10:30 flight. I said... I'd rather be picked up at 6:00, knowing that the "crack team" at the airport will be trying to handle two flights. Well, someone else heard me and they asked for 6:00, as well. This morning, when I went down to ask when I had to check out, he said we could stay until they pick us all up at 6:00. All? Us? Sounds like my idea spread to others. What does that mean? I no longer have an advantage of getting ahead of the masses.

So, what am I going to attempt to do? I made a reservation with First Class Transfers to pick me up at my hotel at 5:00. Yes... I know... that will get me to the airport around 4:45 minutes early. Besides, I have to foot the cost - AR$150 - not cheap but it's a good service. Why would I do this? Well, let's think about this...

1. Continental will have the personnel to handle one flight (slowly) but will have to process two flights.

2. Now the immigration tax window will have to be able to process one additional wide-body flight... that's a couple hundred passengers.

3. Once you get through that line, you've got to go through the notoriously slow security line.

Given all that, I have no problem going to the airport early... just so long as tonight isn't cancelled, as well.

We'll see...

On a less-serious note, if you're staying in Palermo Soho, you should make it a point to go off the beaten path to Atipica - located at El Salvador 4510 near Scalabrini Ortiz. It's a great little boutique filled with handmade items from local artists - jewelry, art, housewares and more. The owner runs the Trendy Palermo Viejo blog and is very friendly. Her prices are reasonable and there is a really nice selection of items that you wouldn't normally see in other stores.

Travel + Leisure's New List... and BsAs in sight?

The January issue of Travel + Leisure started arriving in subscribers' mailboxes and includes a list of their top 500 hotels in the world. I can't link to the list, yet, but rest assured it will show up online in a matter of days. As you can imagine, with 500 hotels to choose from, you'll see most of the names you would expect. I ran through a quick search of the list and spotted three that I've frequented... the Hotel Amigo in Brussels, the Grand Hotel in Rome and the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills. All three were no-brainers to make the list. Other "wish list" hotels made the list... places like the Llao Llao in Bariloche, Argentina.

The Famed Llao Llao Hotel near Bariloche

Speaking of Argentina, it looks like a business trip to BsAs is in the works. Our client has preferred rates with the Intercontinental Hotel - a nice place in an unfortunate microcentro location. Given my choice, I'm going to look elsewhere. So long as I can keep our nightly rate at or below the Intercontinental, I'm sure I can swing a place in Palermo Viejo or Recoleta. While I may lean on a well-known boutique hotel like the bobo or Five Cool Rooms, I might try out one of the new boutique hotels that's landed on the BsAs scene... maybe Mine Hotel Boutique? I've read great things about Tailor Made Hotel and 248 Finisterra but the Las Cañitas locations are a bit inconvenient for this particular trip.

We'll see...

Let Your Taste Buds Take You Back

Just this past week, one of our good friends in Italy commented to me that he felt one of the best ways to get to know a culture or a people is through their cuisine. I couldn't agree more. In fact, when we travel, I make it a point to eat local delicacies... a full-blown parilla in Buenos Aires, tiritas in Zihuatanejo or geschnitzel mit roesti in Zurich. Mmmm... geshnitzel.

OK... my mind and taste buds are wandering. Anyway, he made a very good point. In fact, not only can you enjoy local cuisine while on a trip, you can bring that local cuisine home with you. For example, during our July trip to Zihuatanejo, I made it a point to pick up a 750 gr bag of sea salt for a mere 30 pesos. You read that right... 1 1/2 pounds of sea salt for about $3.00. While in Paris, we saw 1 kilo bags of fleur de sel French sea salt for under 2 Euros. To me, using food products from another country make it easy to relive memories from a trip over and over. Just this week, we started a meal by cracking open a jar of locally grown olives we purchased in Milos, Greece. Tonight, I seasoned a batch of broccolini with a bit of fleur de sel de Camargue purchased in France.

You get the picture... so, here are some of the culinary items we've purchased during some of our trips to spark some ideas on what to pick up on your next trip:

• A jar of chimichurri herbs in Buenos Aires
• Wine in Italy, Greece, Spain, Argentina and, yes, even Canada.
• Local spirits like Nocino or Amaro d'Abruzzese in Italy and local rum in Gran Canaria
  
• Chocolates in Switzerland, Belgium and in Bariloche, Argentina
  
• Parmigiano in Italy
• Shrimp seasoning in New Orleans
• Maple syrup in Quebec
• Lizano salsa in Costa Rica
• Rosa mosqueta in Bariloche, Argentina
• Oils in Italy and Spain
  
• Red salsa mojo in Gran Canaria
• Delicacies in the food halls at Harrod's in London
• Bricks of Lavazza espresso coffee in Italy

Seek out a local grocery store, take a look at various local products, particularly those that don't look familiar and pick out a few to take home. Just make sure you're not bringing back anything that might get you on the wrong side of customs. Soft cheeses, packages of prosciutto, foie gras, etc... a quick look a the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol page will shed some light on what can't be brought back.

Motoring Around on Milos

I've been wanting to post so much about Milos but, simply put, being without power for 11 days makes it kind of tough. I suppose I could sit and write one blog entry after another from work but that might not be too wise. So, when I can, I'll post a tidbit or two until I can actually get online and post more.

Let's talk about something very worthwhile in Milos - renting a car. While there, we rented a car and used it to go all over the island. Since we stayed in Pollonia, access to good transportation was a must. From Pollonia, we would regularly drive to Plaka (the island's hilltop capital), Adamas (the island's main port) and beaches like Yerontas, Tsigrado, Firiplaka and more. Without a car, I would imagine it would be just about impossible to go to places like Klima, a picturesque fishing village on Milos Bay and an absolute must-see.

Now, we rented from Sea Sun Sophia - why Sea Sun Sophia? Simply put, they are the only agency on the island with automatic transmission cars. They are few and far between so, if you want one, that's who you need to contact. We paid 60 EUR/day for a Hyundai Matrix (included insurance).

You'll occasionally see people riding around in dune buggies or four-wheelers but they were slow and tended to clog up the roads. Mopeds? I wouldn't... no way you can drive to Yerontas on a moped - it's a rocky dirt road. Not ideal moped territory.

So, what can you access with a car that you can't access with public transportation?

Remote beaches like Yerontas

The stunning white rocks of Sarakiniko

Wrong turns that lead to this remote overlook near Vatos

The charming fishing village of Klima

Ever Evolving Travel Plans

I'm a big fan of keeping work and vacations completely separate. In my opinion, there should be a massive gulf (or ocean, really) separating one from work while on vacation. Typically, I leave my laptop at home and turn off my phone's e-mail capabilities. I don't want anything to do with work.

This time, we actually brought my laptop to Greece - the agreement was to not open Outlook so I couldn't read any work e-mail. I kept my end of the agreement. However, when Ike was about to hit and all travel plans went out the window, my laptop turned out to be a lifesaver. Combine that with Skype and the ability to make plenty of calls to Continental for $.02 a minute, we were able to constantly work on travel plans when everything was going to pot. Simply put, I would strongly recommend bringing a laptop when traveling on vacation - just be sure that you have the willpower to stay away from work or just leave it off unless you really need it. If you make the commitment to not work, as I did, you can do it.

Our travel plans have constantly evolved... essentially, we'll end up home 3 days after originally planned. Our flight from Athens to Paris took off without a hitch. After that, things got confusing. Our Paris to Houston flight was cancelled for two days. That left us in Paris for two nights. OK - not a bad place to be. On the day we were supposed to fly back to Houston, we found out our flight to Houston was cancelled again. We shifted to a flight to Newark (that included an overnight stay) with plans to then fly to San Antonio. Newark was fine (that's 3 unplanned nights in a hotel) but we later found out that getting a car in San Antonio to drive to Houston was impossible.

San Antonio was out so we worked with three ticket agents at the Continental ticket sales counter to then switch our flights from eTickets to paper tickets (I guess that's what they had to do to make the change) so that we could fly from Newark, via Nashville, back to Houston. The next day, when we went to check in, we were told that we essentially didn't have tickets on anything... Nashville, San Antonio, zilch. Hmmm... OK, not great. So, the agent started fixing the mess the last 3 agents had made. She worked over the phone with someone from Continental and actually found us seats on a direct flight from Newark to Houston - something we thought was virtually impossible. From what we know, flights should be taking off and landing in IAH so we should arrive back shortly after midnight on the 16th. Our original plan was to be back in Houston on the 12th. Juuuust a slight delay.

Wow... fun stuff. It's hard to keep sane but we made the best of it, enjoyed a bit of time in Paris and Roissy (more on that later) and tried to keep a sense of humor without strangling each other. Soon, I'll be able to post some pictures from the wonderful island of Milos and our stops in-between.

Staying Fit and Classic Cocktails

I've talked about being a fan of Craig Ballantyne and his Turbulence Training web page. One of his recent blog entries included some more good tips on taking care of yourself and staying fit while traveling. It's not the first time I've referenced him and probably won't be the last...

But I don't stop thinking about my fitness and DIET when I'm gone. However, most guys and gals use travel as an excuse for eating junk and skipping workouts. But travel is NO EXCUSE for bad body behavior.All it takes to succeed is a little planning. In fact, here's what I've done to stay on track while spending time in the airports and stuck in 13-hour per day seminars.

Read his entry for some good insight that is not hard to apply.

On an unrelated note, one of our favorite things to do when visiting New York City (although it's been a while) is to check out some classic cocktail bars. I'm not talking about your run-of-the-mill meat market; rather, the classic landmark cocktail bars that have been around since the 40s or 50s. Places like the Monkey Bar in the Hotel Elysee and Bemelmans in the Carlyle Hotel. Bemelmans is simply one of those places that must be experienced - the whimsical illustrations that decorate the bar's walls, the extremely knowledgeable bartenders, the outstanding service. It's a great place to start or end an evening. The Monkey Bar has a completely different feel - much more lively, less refined but still a classic art deco bar. My dad used to hang out there in the 50s and he'd probably find the place a bit too loud today. Bemelmans, on the other hand, would probably be more his style.

Fasting = Less Jet Lag?

At least that's Harvard's claim for mice who are heavy travelers...

Traveling to exotic places is great--except when you first get there and collapse from exhaustion and jet lag. But you may be able to beat jet lag; you just have to skip eating before you leave home.

A new Harvard University study suggests that fasting may fight drowsiness.

This makes no sense to me...?

The Chronicle has a lengthy Q&A article related to passports, new passport cards, entry rules, etc. on their web page. What I can't understand is why anyone who wants to do any type of international travel, even on a quick cruise from Galveston to Mexico, wouldn't get a passport? To me, it's a no-brainer. You have it when you need it and it's valid for a decade. Why not get one? Yes, it costs more but average that out to $9-10 a year and it's a pittance, really.

On an unrelated note, fares keep going up. I've been poking around summer fares to various places... I was surprised to see fares spike to over $700 for places like Seattle and Portland, despite Saturday night stays. Even typically inexpensive LAX is $300+ before taxes. Granted, I'm loyal to one airline so I can hoard miles but I know fares have been on the rise with other carriers.

More Tips on Staying Fit

I've mentioned before that I'm a big fan of Turbulence Training and Craig Ballantyne's articles in magazines such as Men's Health and Men's Fitness. This past weekend, I received his daily e-mail that shared some great tips on staying in shape when on the road...

From Craig:

Here are 7 tips to help you stay fit, not fat when it comes time for your spring break or next work trip.

1. It's up to you to pack good nutrition options for the road since it's almost impossible to eat right when you are stuck in airports.
Healthy, road-worthy snacks that you can pack in your bag include raw nuts, apples, pears, protein bars, and organic beef jerky.

2. Plan your business travel meals in advance if possible so that you can stick to daily nutrition totals. Airlines and hotels are more accommodating in meeting the special nutrition requirements of customers these days. Ask and you shall receive.

3. Find an adequate hotel gym or nearby fitness establishment so you can continue with your regular workouts. I hit the Honolulu 24-Hour Fitness location and didn't miss a workout. (Plus, I filmed a few new TT workout videos around the Island).

4. While your best option is to purchase a day-pass and go to a local gym for your TT workout, if there is no time, then hit the hotel gym or do a bodyweight TT workout in your room.

5. Schedule your workouts with as much dedication as you schedule your business meetings. Take advantage of whatever time slot is available during your travels for exercise. Training is another appointment that can also be used as an excuse to skip the unnecessary post-meeting cocktails and calories.

6. Travel with a "maintenance mindset". Stick to your plan and you'll return home without gaining any fat or losing any fitness.
Minimize the nutrition dangers of food, booze, and inactivity with a positive mindset. Holidays are not a license to binge.

7. Spend waiting time walking. If you are enduring a layover in an airport, walk around the airport if your schedule and surroundings permit. Don't be lazy!

For more travel workout options, get the Turbulence Training fat burning workouts:
==> http://www.turbulencetraining.com

Car Seats and Airports

Does anyone have any good insight on making the process of using a car seat in an airport any easier? I've seen a few options out there. The Cheeky Monkey Back Pack (see fig 1), The GoGo Baby Kidz Travel Mate (see fig 2) and the Sit and Stroll Car Seat Stroller (see fig 3). From what I understand, the Sit and Stroller isn't a very good car seat or a good stroller. The cost doesn't seem worth it, either. So, I'm down to the Cheeky Monkey or the Travel Mate. Which works best?

Fig. 1 - The Cheeky Monkey Back PackFig. 2 - The GoGo Baby Kidz Travel Mate

Fig 3. - The Sit and Stroll Car Seat Stroller

The 53 Places to Go in 2008

Although the article is a month old, I came across a piece in the International Times Herald called "The 53 Places to Go in 2008". Some great suggestions and some odd ones...

A great suggestion...

11. HVAR

As Croatia's Dalmatian Coast has become a new Riviera, Hvar has become its St.-Tropez: a tiny village that fills with yachts and international partyers over the summer. While the waterfront Carpe Diem (www.carpe-diem-hvar.com) remains the island's night-life center, narrow stone alleys are lined with chic cocktail lounges and hotel terraces, including the rooftop pool at the new Adriana hotel, Croatia's first Leading Small Hotels of the World member (www.suncanihvar.com/adriana).

An odd one...

40. DETROIT

Historically crime-ridden Detroit may not spring to mind as a hot tourist spot, but don't tell that to the city's bullish hoteliers. Newcomers include the MGM Grand Detroit (www.mgmgranddetroit.com), the MotorCity Casino Hotel (www.motorcitycasino.com) in an old Wonder Bread factory and the historic Book Cadillac Hotel, being transformed into a Westin (www.westinbookcadillac.com). Plus, the Detroit Institute of Arts (www.dia.org) just reopened after a $158 million renovation.

And a usual one...

53. NEW YORK

The lights are back on Broadway. And the strike settlement couldn't have come soon enough for several well-publicized productions scheduled to open before the May 7 deadline for the 2007-08 Tony Awards. Among the more highly awaited shows are three revivals: A 40th-anniversary production of "The Homecoming," Harold Pinter's play about a dysfunctional family (as if there were any other kind), starring Ian McShane; "Come Back, Little Sheba," the William Inge chestnut, featuring the Emmy Award-winning actress S. Epatha Merkerson; and an inventive take on "Sunday in the Park With George," Stephen Sondheim's Pulitzer Prize winner, which comes to New York via London and the Menier Chocolate Factory theater company. And for lovers of street theater, the action downtown in the meatpacking district continues to heat up with the arrival of the Standard New York hotel.

Hotel Room Workouts

Craig Ballantyne from Turbulence Training is a frequent contributor to Men's Health magazine and other fitness magazines. I've always liked reading his pieces because he provides good insight on exercise routines and staying in shape.

Looking through some exercise videos, I came across his Hotel Room Workout video - some good tips on staying in shape while on the road. As he puts it, you're really limited by your imagination. You'll see several ideas in his video - others that I can think of include lunges, wall squats, pike pushups and incline pushups.

Reward Seats to Greece

Tickets to Greece on Continental can run upwards of $2,500.00 or more per person. So, pssst... here's an inside tip. Want to go to Greece next year on miles? There are some standard reward seats floating around in September... (lots of them!!!) Save yourself some money and use your OnePass miles on a typically absurdly priced ticket.

Hampton Court with London Walks

Our December 2006 trip to London was relatively brief... enough to get out of town for a memorable New Year's Eve but not too long to get burned out. Given that we only had so much time to work with, we thought it might be worthwhile to take a little guided tour of something while in the London area. Now, mind you, we're not "guided tour" types. We're pretty much freespirits who, while relatively structured in our travels, do it all on our own.

So, we thought... what the heck... let's see how we can find a tour that will shed a little more light on the sites we see. After doing some research, London Walks came highly recommended. As mentioned on their own web page, Fodor's claims, "London Walks was the first and is the best of the walking tour firms." Wow... that's some endorsement... and we're sure that in many ways, it's probably true. I just don't know how true it was for us. Let me explain...

I printed out a few tour options before we left for London but we didnt' decide on what tour to take until we arrived. We opted for a tour of Hampton Court - the royal palace of Cardinal Wolsey and, eventually, King Henry VIII. We met Hillary, our guide, at Waterloo Station. What we envisioned to be a tour of ten, maybe twelve people turned into a tour of over forty people.

I don't have to tell you how well that worked for us... forty people? This isn't going to be very personalized, we thought. Indeed, it wasn't. Not only did we find that everything took longer (getting tickets, going into the palace), it was just hard to hear since we were in a crowd. Another big drawback was the guide. Yes, she was quite nice but her proper English voice lacked in the volume department. Not only that, her pace was dreeeeadfully slow. Not glacial... but certainly not brisk enough to keep our attention.

This commentary is scintillating!

In fact, the pace and the process was so hard for us to handle that, well, we left the tour. Granted, we ate the 15 pounds or so (I think) that it cost each one of us but we just didn't want to waste our time. We wandered to the Tudor kitchens and enjoyed the rest of the grounds on our own... and you know, we had more fun.

BUT... that was our experience. It could be that we just picked a busy tour or just had a guide that, well, we normally wouldn't pick. You'll have to find out on your own but, for us, it's either a "one on two" guide or we're on our own. Sooner or later, I'll post an entry on Hampton Court. London Walks aside, we highly recommend visiting. It is a splendid palace.

Tips on Traveling with a Little One

I need to sit down and read through all these but it looks like there is a ton of advice on this post regarding traveling with a teeny one

Using One Leg of a Roundtrip Ticket

So, I wasn't aware of this until I spotted this today on Hornfans.com... thought you might find it useful.

If for whatever reason you're not going to take the outbound part of a round-trip ticket, CALL THE AIRLINE AND LET THEM KNOW YOU'RE COMING BACK!!!

I had originally booked a round-trip ticket to see my fiancee. My company asked me to go to Boston last minute for training, and I had them book a one-way ticket to Boston, and then to my fiancee's city. I figured I'd use the return part of my R-T ticket to get home.

NO GO!!!

I just got back from the airport, where they told me since I didn't take the outbound flight on my R-T trip, they cancelled it and sold my seat. They rebooked a flight and charged me an extra $300 to go home tomorrow. All this could've been avoided if I had called them to tell them, but who the hell knows these rules until it happens?

Videos on Concierge.com

Concierge.com has just added a video page to its web page. It includes a handful of quick stylish videos on New York City, Miami, Paris, London and Rio de Janeiro. The longest one I spotted was nearly 7 minutes long and it was on "24 Hours in Paris". Some focus on the city as a while while others drill down into hotels, shopping, etc. They provide brief snippets of these particular destinations and I'm sure they'll add more destinations. In some cases, you can even watch videos with an interactive map so you can hop from location to location.

Googie Across America

I'm a real big fan of Googie-style architecture. If you're not familiar with googie architecture, let's just say it's that fun and whimsical architecture - usual commercial and retail - from the 1950s and 1960s. Think Bob's Big Boy or some of the wilder motels on Route 66. A great resource is Alan Hess's outstanding books, Googie: Fifites Coffee Shop Architecture and Googie Redux: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture. A perfect example is Mel's Drive-In at 8585 W. Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood (on the left - originally Ben Frank's). As you can see, the architecture is fun and futurustic and harkens back to the post-war days when Americans were thinking of space travel, new technology and relishing in the car culture.

Two of the best sites out there for researching googie architecture across the U.S. are the Lotta Living Message Board (particularly the Roadside Rambling section) and Roadside Peek. Lotta Living focuses not just on googie architecture but also other styles of mid-century architecture, restoration, etc. It's a great site. One current thread, for example, focuses on the amazingly intact La Villa Basque Restaurant and Coffee Shop in Vernon, CA. Roadside Peek, on the other hand, is packed with reader-submitted photographs of Goggie architecture, neon and other great mid-century architecture from across the country. Both of these sites are useful when planning to make architecture-specific road trips or "pilgrimages", so to speak. Photographs are subdivided into all kinds of categories such as Roadside Motels in Texas (see the Tradewinds Motel on the right from Grand Prairie, TX)

Either site will serve as a great launching point for your next cross-country road trip.

Monkey Business and an Update on Yapta

I never thought I'd see the day where this kind of quote appeared in an article...

"Other passengers asked the man if he knew he had a monkey on him,"

Oh... I'm still testing Yapta - so far, all it's showing me is that the fares I'm interested in keep going up (!?!). One things I don't like about it is that I'm constrained to specific travel days in my searches. Personally, we're flexible so to have to give very specific dates is a problem. Travelocity used to allow people to look at "time periods" but has since stopped doing that for international flights. That's a problem when the fares you're exploring are Rome and Buenos Aires.

Digging for Better Fares

I thought I would share something I just ran across earlier today. Here's the scoop...

I am considering visiting a client in Plainsboro, NJ for a face-to-face meeting. The client informed me they're roughly 45 minutes from Newark and 45 minutes from Philadelphia. After spending some time on Continental's page searching for fares, I found the following:

Houston to Philadelphia roundtrip - ~$340.00
Houston to Newark roundtrip - ~$1,050.00

So, by flying into Philadelphia, I save $700 and have an easier experience since getting in and out of Philadelphia is easier than Newark. Moral of the story - check alternate airports. Flying into a different airport can make a big difference.