Category: Travel

I’m back from the Valley of the Sun, and Lord knows why. Who would trade sunny, warm weather for the Autumn doldrums that greeted me when I finally made it home last night, sometime after midnight, thanks only in small part to the East Coast rain?

Still, the trip wasn’t ALL gooseberries and golden fun. After all, I did have to drive around in Arizona, where the drivers can’t keep up with the speed limit and randomly stop or swerve in to other lanes of traffic. And while this can be generally regarded as true anywhere in the state, nowhere was this more true than at the Grand Canyon. Who needs to go 15 mph BELOW the speed limit to stare at the trees? I can’t tell you how many times I found myself yelling at the cars in front of me to get up and DRIVE so we can actually get to something worth seeing.

Which is how I ended up taking to calling the Grand Canyon the Big Ditch. Easier to make up rhymes with a name like that, not all of them friendly.

But if driving up to the Grand Canyon was a trip in more ways than one, by far my favorite accomplishment was my Tuesday morning drive from Sedona to Phoenix Sky Harbor airport. I traveled 111 miles in 90 minutes, bad drivers be damned.

I’ll leave the math to the rest of you.

I was reflecting on my upcoming travels as I was booking some hotel rooms last night when it dawned on me – I have a LOT of travel planned for the next 8 months. Between now and the beginning of June, I’ll have arrived and departed from Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bangkok, Siam Reap (Cambodia), Tokyo, Toronto, Vienna, and Bucharest. That’s actually the most aggressive international travel schedule I think I’ve ever had, period.

Now I just need to win big so I can pay the credit card bills.

So, wouldn’t you know, I wake up this morning to the annuoncement of a good deal on NW/KLM from YVR-BUH (Vancouver to Bucharest, Romania, for those not versed in airline speak). Usually I dismiss these out of hand, since I’m nowhere near YVR, but this morning I figured I’d check it out.

Turns out it’s a relatively unrestricted, normally expensive, upgradeable coach fare.

Turns out it’s also available from Toronto.

All the way through the schedule.

With stopovers permitted both ways, pretty much anywhere in Europe you want.

For ~ $250 roundtrip, including taxes.

With all that being true, what else could I do? I booked a week split between Vienna, Austria, and Bucharest, Romania, the week of Memorial Day next year.

Now I just have to wait for the tickets to arrive.

In case you care about such things, I just finished loading all the photos from the past five or six months on to the server.

Fine, the Thais may not be the smartest, but those shopping malls are freakin’ unbelievable.

It’s been a quiet summer for travel, since I have not taken any trips since the end of May to Phoenix. And while there are several in the planning phase, nothing is on the horizon before September.

Truthfully, the hardest part now is due to the way I reorganized my finances. I’m now living on a fixed monthly budget, with all excess income heading straight to the savings account. Trying to stay within my means is proving to be more difficult than expected, at least when it comes to trip-planning. The recent cost increases due to the rebound in travel and reduction in capacity has only aggravated the wallet crunch.

Nonetheless, I’m still trying to decide between India and the United Arab Emirates for a post-Thanksgiving trip in November. While I would love to make the trip to India, it’s looking like an upgradeable ticket is running about $1000 more to India than the UAE. That’s partially making the decision for more.

The other factor? As one of my friends asked, “which are you more likely to make it back from unharmed?”

I sat down at my computer Monday night, checked my RSS feeds, and saw a curious posting about cheap airfare: TACA (Business), others:SFO-PTY, SJO, Other Central AM. <$250 All In.

Figuring what the hell, I sat down for a few minutes to play around with dates, to see what I could come up with. After a short while it became clear it was from more than just SFO, and to more than just PTY or SJO. In the end, I landed business class tickets from PHX – SAL for under $250 for a weekend in October.

It was only after I booked the ticket that I asked myself the two most important questions. Why did I book airfare from PHX? And why did I book airfare to El Salvador?

May you never find yourself in the back of an airplane, as this fellow did.

For background info, Snopes has the story.

Watching the last episode of Amazing Race, with the great shots of Thailand, reading some e-mails about travel to India and other parts of Asia, and just keeping abreast of the latest news has me dying to return to the region.

No lie, it’s just not as cool here…

I was checking the forecasts for Portland this weekend (that’s Oregon, not Maine, for you weirdos out there) to see whether to lean toward long-sleeve or short-sleeve shirts. Imagine my surprise when I checked Accuweather and Weather.com and found such a huge discrepency.

Day – Accuweather – Weather.com
Friday – 58 – 58
Saturday – 60 – 65
Sunday – 64 – 72
Monday – 64 – 69
Tuesday – 58 – 63

Normally a few degrees don’t make a huge difference. I mean, what’s the different between 84 vs. 92 or 44 vs 52 when packing? Not much, really. But at this temperature zone it can make a huge difference.