Travel – Page 4 – Life Aboard the Traveling Circus

March 7, 2014March 7, 2014

Flying the Skies For (Nearly) Nothing

The only bad thing about finally getting airplane tickets is when you say to your friend, “Yeah, I got these tickets for only $300!” and then they come back and tell you, “Really? $300? I got the same ones to the same place for $100 two weeks ago.”

Even as seasoned travelers, buying airplane tickets can be frustrating, mostly because we are usually broke and not always awesome at math. However, it doesn’t have to be like this. You can have your cake and eat it too. Follow these tips below to always score the best prices and keep the ability to visit a new place and afford dinner.

1. Keep flexible. Studies show that when it comes to domestic travel, flying on Wednesday is the cheapest day (followed by Tuesday and Saturday) and the most expensive days are Friday and Sunday. Also, and for obvious reasons, flying early in the morning (like six am… may not be worth it after all) is the cheapest time to fly, so you can kiss your eight hours goodbye. The next best times are during lunch hour or the dinner hour.

2. Purchase at strategic times. It’s not just about the time and date you choose to fly… it also has to do with the exact date that you purchase your ticket. Studies show that the best time to purchase tickets is at 3:00 pm on a Tuesday (Tuesdays in general are pretty good for this) while purchasing on the weekends is the worst, since discounts usually get pulled out on Thursdays to beat the weekend rush.

3. Pick off one person at a time. Last time you shopped for you and the family, what did you do? Most likely, you entered in four adult passengers, however, this isn’t the best way to go. When you do this, the airline must sell each person the same price, which is obviously going to be the highest one. Instead, enter each guest, one by one, and you can possibly get some tickets for cheaper.

4. Don’t be an early bird. It is possible to buy tickets too early – that is, more than three months in advance for domestic and four months for international. Before this time, airlines don’t release many of the cheaper seating options available. The best time for purchasing domestic flights is about seven weeks in advance, according to CheapAir.com.

5. Clear out your cookies. This is pretty sketchy, but some airline sites automatically can raise prices based on how many times you have already viewed the page. So if you have looked at United tickets four times this week, the prices will skyrocket because they know you’re pretty serious about snagging these tickets. Make sure to clear your cookies or cache history to fool ’em.

Photo courtesy of Alex Ferrara

March 1, 2014

Thank You Camera Phone

My 20-year-old ne’er-do-well sister has a $1,000 Nikon camera that she uses to take selfies with on vacation. I have an iPhone which I use to capture centuries-old cathedrals, cerulean seas, wrinkly locals, and flaky pastries.

A couple years ago, this would have really bugged me, since before the time of the iPhone all us reject kids had to use was disposable cameras. Unfortunately, this caused me to miss out on timeless photos from my earlier trips like my first visit to Europe when I went to Norway to meet my long-lost family, a tour of Colorado where we drove from Denver to Ouray to take a look at the wild ponies and the Continental Divide, and my 18-year-old jumping-in-with-both-feet trip backpacking across Europe armed with one other confused teenager.

These are trips I will always look back on with a smile and read about teenage angst and newness in my old journals, but unfortunately, there really aren’t photos to represent the fog over an early mountain morning or the freeze of a Norwegian lake in the summertime.

However, thanks to the advent of the smart phone, social media blew up, public information went mad, and the world became more interconnected than ever before. But one thing we sometimes forget about in the smart phone, even the camera phone, is that suddenly, everyone had the chance to capture their own images without a $1000 budget and a photo degree.

I’m not saying that my college roommate has anywhere near as much photography talent, skill, and knowledge as a professional photographer with a budding portfolio – as a trained journalist, I know how annoying it is when people think that when it comes to the arts, it all comes easy and any kind of creative education is worthless. But what I am saying is that I think it’s pretty cool that my college roommate has as much Internet opportunity as anyone else does to capture, edit, and share their images with the world, even if only her grandma and her dad really appreciates them.

A blossoming opportunity for all will never be a bad thing. Instead, now when I venture off to see the world, I’m not hoping that my disposable camera film doesn’t run out or that the photos are too dark – instead, I feel confident to grab every lame sunset and every towering peak, lighten up every color and define every line so that not only can I show my mom the cool places I went, but I can look back on journeys that barely need words alongside them.

February 21, 2014February 21, 2014

Keeping the World in Your Kitchen

I’ve never been a foodie. I can’t tell you the difference between cooking with vegetable oil or olive oil, I rarely use measuring cups, and I’m still not sure how much pasta to throw in the pot for two people. However, I can tell you that nobody appreciates a gourmet meal quite like a kid who grew up on TV dinners.

When I was little and I would go to the grocery store with my mother, it seemed normal to just point out what microwave meals I wanted for the week. When I would eat them at the end of a long day, I would always feel empty, a little gross, and always hungry, hungry for something with a taste; with flavor.

Turkish lunch from Istanbul

Getting invited to other people’s homes for dinner was always a real treat, which was why I made it a point to get in the good graces of fat Italian mothers who made it all from scratch. In my head, they spent the day poring over cookbooks, stewing pots of homemade pastas and beating down tomatoes with their bare hands. At the end of the day they would emerge from their lairs, beautiful again, eager to present finely laid out meals to their happy families and their kid’s weird friend who may or may not have lived in a car.

However, living on your own finally gives you the opportunity to live life the way you imagined it from your pink bedroom. Besides learning how to pay bills, scream at conniving gas companies, and fix leaky roofs, I finally learned how to boil water and thus began my gourmet chefdom and eventual progression into the closest to adulthood that I will ever wander.

When I went to Italy for a few months when I was 21, my newfound obsession with cooking and creating was brought to a new level when I realized I wasn’t the only one. Unlike in America, when every Internet recipe screams “easy” and “quick,” Italian recipes whispered for dutiful chefs, qualitative cooking, rich spices, and savory, dark flavors.

Blueberry steak from Acqua al due, Florence

Although it was an adjustment to learn how to walk slower and talk faster, catching onto the beauty of food was not difficult. Finally, not only could I enjoy these creamy and pungent foods on a daily basis, but I could also create them, following vague instructions in Italian I learned from Giancarlo in my Pairing Food with Wine class and mixing flavors and spices in pots in my tiny kitchen and hoping the oven would work that day. I could spend hours hunched over dishes, but more often than not, the time would fly by and before I knew it, it would unfortunately be the time to sweep up the flour and figure out what I was going to pack for lunch tomorrow.

Thankfully, it didn’t end there – in every country I went to, I would never balk at meats, tails, or goop staring back at me – instead, I would smile, dig in, and ask for seconds. Running around the world, I have yet to run into a dish I found truly disgusting, and instead, I jump at the chance to try whale at the local fish market in Bergen, eat bratwurst and roasted nuts at Oktoberfest, and dig away at fish heads in Brac.

Seafood pasta dish from Split, Croatia

Back in America, I talk to people all day long who ate food for dinner that had already been cooked in a bag and they’re just grateful to have some time back in their lives; for themselves. But for me, cooking is for myself, whether I’m trying to recreate a Spanish paella, master the perfect bruschetta, or throw a bunch of stuff together that tastes strangely Creole.

Even if the world is keeping me at home, it will not keep the world out of my kitchen. By the time I finish cooking dinner and drinking wine it may be too late to do the laundry, clean my room, or watch some television, but I have yet to go to sleep hungry.

February 12, 2014February 21, 2014

A Life Of

I’ve always just wanted to travel.

This is a phrase I hear often, mostly from people who hold down full-time jobs and have a salaried income and are looking to settle down with a house and a dog and what could be considered a normal life, a real life. Even though I am all for the average person branching out and seeing the world; visiting new countries and meeting new people who live lives completely different from anything they have seen before, it still makes me a little nervous to hear this.

For some, travel is something they want to hit on the weekends, something that, for perfectly good and logical reasoning, is not worth giving up stability and a place to live for. They want to book a trip to the beach for two weeks a year, spending a couple well-earned days soaking up some sun with a fruity drink in their hand, or maybe even still visiting somewhere new and kind of scary and exciting.

However, when I hear this, I’m the one that gets scared because I know that is never going to be good enough for me. I know that two weeks a year, a measly 14-day break from my desktop computer and my coffee cup, is just not going to cut it, no matter if the destination is the Jersey Shore or New Zealand. To me, it’s not funny that some can’t wait to finally get to work just so they can begin counting the hours they can go home and do it all again the next day. It’s not ironic, it’s just very sad.

Right now, the seams-of-your-pants, no-strings-attached, washing-clothes-in-the-sink life doesn’t feel within my reach, which seems odd because in theory, this should be easy, at the least more fun, than nine-to-five cubicle life. However, it becomes remarkably easy to attach yourself to a detached normal life, one that involves a morning and evening commute and patent leather heels. You can really do it without even thinking and barely noticing, trust me.

But what I do know is that this isn’t the end for me, and the time I have spent trying to find my place in the big scary world and finding the perfect suitcase and crafting the perfect travel pitches has not been in vain, even if today, it all seems like another lifetime and the next chapter feels impossibly far away. People say that life is short and that they should enjoy it – I actually feel the opposite. Life is incredibly long and if you spend it being bored and complacent, it is a slow-moving dragging of the feet to nothingness.

For some, two weeks is fine (although four would be nicer). But for the rest of us, we would rather face a little uneasiness and a lot of fun instead of a lifetime of simplicity and typicality.

January 25, 2014January 25, 2014

For the Pursuit of Fun

When I was in school, everyday was another day. Every single day and every single hour was different, exciting, unexpected, fun. When I came home at the end of a long day, it would be hard for me to run out of stories to tell my roommates as we sat in our dark room on the shoreline, listening to the waves come in and our old crappy apartment rattle in the wind.

Those days, fun came pretty naturally, because even the work you did involved all of your friends. I guess because you’re surrounded by kids all day, you kind of feel like you deserve to have fun, like it’s just an expected everyday occurrence. Even still, you knew it was special. You knew you were happy, you knew this was the life, and you also knew it wasn’t going to last forever.

The moment I graduated, everything switched around. All of a sudden I felt guilty for having fun, even for just spending a lazy day having breakfast with friends and bsing with the neighbors and harassing the cat. As I peer over at my looming to-do list, I always feel like I should be doing something else.

This is an easy mindset to fall into once we quietly tiptoe into the real world – it’s easy to get caught up in running errands and making sure the laundry is done and you took your vitamins and the car has a full tank of gas. Soon, you’re spending everyday just preparing for the next, and you’re not even really sure what the point of preparing is if you’re just going to do the same thing tomorrow.

I miss the days where I lived life for the pursuit of fun. I miss when I felt like it was normal to hop on a bus to go to another country, or spend the day window shopping on the streets of Florence, the most beautiful city in the world, or it was just another day when you turned off your shower radio in the morning to listen to the man playing the accordion in the piazza outside the window.

So you know what? Let’s forget about the laundry and a dish in the sink never killed anyone. It may be a while before I’m out of my parent’s house and back in a real live city again and, oddly, actually live in the real world and maintain a real life, but I’m sick of that being the reason that I feel bad for wanting to remember what I did yesterday.

Never get so busy living that you forget to make a life.

January 19, 2014January 19, 2014

How To Haggle Like a Pro

One pretty cool part of traveling the world is that instead of wandering the mall on an otherwise boring Sunday, you can cruise the local markets of the world instead, whether it be the San Lorenzo Market of Florence, Italy, the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul, Turkey, or the German Christmas Markets. However, unlike the mall, you need to learn how to haggle like a pro in order to score some cool stuff without accidentally spending your dinner money. And, you need to do it while having fun – there’s no reason to be nervous about wanting to pay a price you think is reasonable and not being afraid to ask for it.

1. Make someone laugh. Everyone, even seemingly conniving shopkeepers, are looking for a laugh, especially at their day jobs. So while haggling, if you can get a little personal with the shopkeeper; talk to him about the cool stuff he’s got or entertain his lame pickup lines with a friendly smile, you’re golden. He will be more willing to entertain your offers if he sees you as a friend instead of just another tourist.

2. Never be the first to name a price. There’s been many times when I was willing to offer a much higher initial price but then I heard the shopkeeper’s price before I even said a word. For this reason, don’t be afraid to ask, in a non-desperate way, how much something costs. And if they ask you in return how much you want to pay, either go for a major low-ball or ask, “Well how much are you looking to sell it for?”

3. Don’t be afraid to walk away. The best move you can make, even for an item you’re absolutely in love with, is to walk away when a haggle is totally not going your way because the shopkeeper isn’t budging. There will be times you will walk away, seemingly without a care, and no one will call you back. Guess what? Come back around in ten minutes and no one is going to remember you anyway. However, more often than not, you’ll get a frantic Wait! Wait! Trust me, they want to sell that crap just as much as you want to buy it.

4. Enlist a partner. It’s always good to have someone on your side who is as awesome at haggling as you are to say, only to strengthen your case, “Come on, that’s too much money. It’s not worth it.” There’s strength in numbers. If a shopkeeper knows it’s going to be two against one he is more likely to compromise. Pick a code to signal to your partner when you’re in need of some help.

5. Don’t be stupid. In Canal Street, especially if you’re a dumb looking girl with a fancy bag, people are going to mob you and try to get you to follow them for blocks and blocks to come to their shop (one that most likely is hidden in a basement or behind a fake wall). Be careful with this kind of stuff. Never get too close to a van, no matter how cute those bags are, and never wander down those sketchy stairwells. It’s never going to be worth it.

6. Lie. Twenty bucks too much for that crappy bracelet? Yes, I agree. Because you saw it down the street for $10… except not really. Don’t be afraid to make up a little white lie to get the price you want. No one is ever gonna know that you haven’t even seen the item yet besides in this shop.

7. Don’t allow yourself to be charmed. Obviously, it’s OK to flirt – this goes hand-in-hand with haggling. However, don’t think you’re the only one who is trying to charm – usually these suave shopkeepers know their game just as well and will tell you anything you want to hear to get you to buy that $300 leather jacket. Keep in mind that yes, laugh, smile, and be friendly, but you’re also the 18th person today that they have told has beautiful eyes.

8. Take your time. If you feel like you may be getting too caught up in the fun and are going to make a regrettable purchase, you can always say you’re going to think about it and come back later. I particularly like doing this for huge, overwhelming markets, because I don’t want to spend a ton on one item only to see it ten minutes later being sported for half the price. Take your time. Trust me, it isn’t going anywhere, especially if they tell you that it is.

9. Keep those wandering hands at bay. It may seem easy enough to grab something off a table when the keeper isn’t looking, but this is a really bad idea. All of these shopkeepers are friends, people, and even if yours doesn’t spot you lifting, somebody else will, and trust me, you’re going to be wishing there was a cop around if you get mixed up in this kind of sketchy business.

10. Never be taken for a schlub. Especially when you’re a girl, people think that you have money to spend and it’s easy to be taken advantage of. Show them that this is not the case. Speak confidently, don’t be afraid to bargain or walk away, and hold tight to the price that you want.

Continue reading “How To Haggle Like a Pro”

January 12, 2014January 19, 2014

How To Pass The Time In the Skies

If you’re reading this, it’s because you have a thirst for the world. You have a need to try the oddest looking foods, ravage the most dangerous cities, run from the scariest thieves, and see the most stunning sights. However, getting to these places costs a high price. And that price; besides giving up the security of a 9 to 5 job and a cushy salary and any semblance of a normal life, would be that you have to spend a lot of hours stuck in a boring airport, complete with recycled air and screaming babies and freeze-wrapped food.

Passing all of these hours in the airport isn’t easy. Finding things to entertain you takes real effort and it’s hard to give up so much time accomplishing nothing. However, I have some answers to your woes. Read below for ways to pass the time in productive ways at the airport and on the plane.

1. Pick up some books on tape before you go. Since I have the work commute from Hell, I have been spending a lot of time at the library scoring books on tape. Reading Steve Jobs may be a little boring to actually flip through, but listening to it in the relaxing voice of whoever got paid to read that is much easier to get through and enjoy while you zone out on the airplane and fall into another world. Some that I have been particularly enjoying recently are America by Jon Stewart, Tough Shit by Kevin Smith, and Dude, Where’s My Country? by Michael Moore.

2. Read your guidebook. Before you’re blindly wandering around your next destination wondering where you can find a bathroom, read through a guidebook beforehand so you have a grasp on the secrets of the city, the top destinations, and the top restaurants to hit. The airplane, a hole of a place where there isn’t much else to do anyway, is a perfect time and place to get this done.

3. Download some podcasts. In realm with grabbing your books on tape, downloading podcasts is a cool way to listen to some of your favorite radio stations, find some new material, and generally expand your horizons besides listening to the same albums over and over again.

4. Write down your thoughts. Especially if you are embarking on a true journey such as visiting a new continent for the first time, studying abroad, traveling with a new person, or maybe roaming alone for the first time, writing is a great way to get your thoughts down so that one day when you’re a worn traveler, you can look back and remember how you felt before it all even started. Plus, since you’re gonna be jammed on that plane for awhile, you have all the time in the world so you aren’t rushed to get it all down on paper without really feeling it through.

5. Get drunk. On European flights, wine is generally given out as lax (and free) as soda is, even it tastes like toilet water. However, beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to getting a little free buzz pre-adventure. Plus you’re gonna need a confidence boost before going to try to pick up that guy in the seat in front of you.

January 3, 2014January 3, 2014

How To Be a Winter Wanderer

This morning, I was fully committed to getting to work. I am aware that most of the time when people tell you that a huuuuge storm is coming, it probably isn’t.

I woke up on time, took a shower, put on my carefully planned outfit, and walked outside ten minutes early so that I could warm up my car and shovel off some snow. This plan was all going accordingly until I abruptly fell off my own porch because I couldn’t see the steps under the piles of snow. Well the effort was there.

Regardless of the fact that I get to work in my pajamas today, it is imperative that travelers of all shapes and sizes, including commuters and cross-country wanderers, complete the basic necessities to make it through when there is an actual blizzard outside.

This is Norway… in September

1. What to Pack – I’m a neat freak and my car is always pretty empty, besides a few basic necessities. In your car, make sure you always have:

A small first-aid kit
Tissues
An extra pair of pants, shirt, underwear, socks, boots, and sweatshirt (never know where you’ll be sleeping tonight)
Ice scraper (duh)
Collapsable snow shovel (these are awesome)
A water bottle
A couple granola bars
Bag of kitty litter
Jumper cables

2. What to Clean – Trust me, I want to get out the door too. But now that I have a beautiful gem of a vehicle, I now am very strict about cleaning off all of my car before driving after a snowstorm. This means making sure there aren’t snow and ice chunks waiting to fall off the roof of your car and the headlights and taillights are cleared well. Don’t be lazy!

3. How to Drive – SLOW. Once again, I’m probably just as late as you are. However, when you lose control of your car on what looks like a clean road, you’re going to wish you had some more space between the car in front of you and yourself.

4. How to Maneuver – When people lose control of their vehicles on black ice, their first instinct is to pound on the breaks and veer the other direction. However, this is the worst thing you can do. Think about it – you have the least amount of control of your car when you’re braking. Instead, turn the wheel in the direction that your wheels are turning to regain control.

5. How to Stay Alive – If you get stuck, put on your emergency lights (even though they look dumb), park in a reasonable spot that is visible but not obstructing a busy road, and stay in your car. You may be tempted to get out and try to find help, but a cop or someone will come by eventually and you probably have a cell phone anyway. There are some crazies out there.

December 23, 2013December 23, 2013

The Best Travel Words of Wisdom

All day long, myself, and many other travel bloggers alike, spew our pretty words to you about how Beautiful! Exciting! Extraordinary! a place is. We tell you about how Anything is possible! and The world is your oyster! However I, or anyone else, for that matter, am not the only one(s) with some useful travel words of wisdom. So, see here some of the best travel quotes in the business.

“Travel is the only buy that makes you richer.”

“Life is not a journey with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a ride.'”

“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”

“We must take adventures to know where we truly belong.”

“Live the life you want. Let nothing stop you.”

“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are for.”

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”

“To travel is to discover everyone is wrong about everywhere else.”

“The first condition to understanding a foreign country is to smell it.”

“Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.”

December 13, 2013December 13, 2013

The Best Travel Jobs in the Business

Everytime I tell someone that I want to be a travel writer, they look at me like I just told them I want to be a Disney princess. The eyebrow raises and the slow smirks usually make me feel kind of crappy, and sometimes, if I’m down enough that day, the whole debacle makes me want to throw in the towel and say FINE! Just chain me to a desk for the next 43 years and we can call it a day. However, this feeling usually doesn’t last too long, because:

1. Forty-three years is a really long time

2. I would rather die

3. Within the next hour of any given task of any day, I am soon looking up itineraries/travel pictures/travel blogs/daydreaming/posting on this blog.

At the same time, I have to remember (and we all can remember) that there are lots of awesome jobs out there for those of us with wings on our hearts. So next time your neighbor is trying to convince you that being a credit collector is sooo fun, and you’re wondering why the hell you bothered going to college in the first place, take a look at this list and remember that there is no reason at all that you have to throw in the towel and install that back protector on your swivel chair.

1. Event Coordinators do the job that you used to do when you were 16 and your parents went away for the weekend (but not really) – they plan special events, like functions, shows, dinners, and festivals – for various organizations and corporations. Get yourself involved with a big name company and you could be the one flying around the world looking at huge venues, choosing the best entertainment, and shaking hands with well-connected people. The average salary in the United States isn’t the best ($39,000 – $56,000 depending on various sources) but hey, it beats being a travel writer. WOMP.

2. Cruise Line Workers also don’t exactly bring home the big bucks with their salaries of between $1000 and $4000 a month, but then again they spend their days on a cruise basking in the sun, meeting new people, and visiting beautiful destinations so what is there to complain about. Resorts such as Club Med offer their employees the opportunity to work at several of their destinations, giving them the chance to see the world. Plus, there is no background you “need” to have – tons jobs are available, such as server, shopkeeper, masseuse, entertainer, bartender, etc.

Hopefully this doesn’t happen on your cruise

3. Tour Guides, who sometimes are the remnants of college history buffs, have the chance (with the proper background) to work and live in various cities all over the world, interact with international citizens, be out and about all day long, and be the ones to show people that “aha” moment. Even if you get burnt out by tour guide life, there are always more jobs behind the scenes coordinating logistics, finance, and finding that one lost old person.

4. Archaeologists have the opportunity to travel to remote and unknown parts of the world, exploring that location’s history and artifacts with their trusty Masters degree. People in this career need to be good writers, meticulous, detail-oriented, patient, and not too squeamish in touching people’s old bones, garbage, and the like. To an archaeologist, everything is important. Not including the median annual salary of $53,000.

5. Athletic Recruiters used to spend their days playing college football and sitting at the local sports bar on Sundays, and now they live the dream, scouting the world for the next greatest talent. Professional sports organizations and colleges employ these recruiters to visit games and schools to find new athletes… giving you the opportunity to see the world and stay in fancy (and not-so-fancy) hotels in the meantime…. for $36,000 median a year.