Bonus miles/points can trigger a Pavlovian response for me – dangle the possibility of earning more miles/points and I start salivating before I have even read the fine print. My heart races even when its not a program I normally care about. Take this email: I’ve been selected! (I feel special.) DOUBLE POINTS! (That’s twice…
I was a waitress for several years. And because of that work, I often HATE being part of a large group in a restaurant. I know at some point during dinner, my server is likely to be fantasizing about the multiple cocktails they will need to have that evening to recover from the torture of…
Earlier this week, I made the dumbest mistake… or at least my most recent one. I have a history of doing really stupid things. For example, when I was in grad school, I was running late driving from work to campus on an evening when I had a big exam. The campus was 30 miles…
I haven’t been flying United much these days. And because I haven’t, I missed that one of my favorite Hemisphere features – One City, Five Hours about how to have great layovers with limited time in various cities – had not been published since 2011. Often my travels for work limit how much time I…
I love traveling solo. There is something blissful about experiencing a new place and being guided only by my own impressions of it. Yet I often wonder existentially whether if I have no photographic evidence of my time there, did I really visit? I should take more photos with me in them – but sometimes…
Occasionally I stumble across ways of earning miles that are so easy that I wonder how I could have ever missed them. Thanks Again is one of those programs. The website allows users to register credit cards and then receive miles any time a registered card is used at a participating merchant. I found out…
Picture it… a tight connection through a difficult airport (in my case, the furthest A terminal gate at Charlotte Douglas International Airport to the furthest E terminal gate) made worse by a delayed inbound flight (runway incursion, aborted landing, no biggie). I have to dash through the airport to catch the last reasonable connecting flight…
Are you stuck at home this weekend? Tired of flipping through travel magazines and Pinterest photos of must-see destinations good for a vacation? Need to find inspiration for your next adventure? Here’s a new twist on virtual touring – travel the world through sound. When I first heard this piece on NPR a few weeks…
I read a lot of travel message boards and blogs. Its somewhat of a necessity when you travel regularly and need to be a content expert while doing so. And as I do so, I’m sometimes surprised at how much people complain about little things. But I’m working on my own skills with saying “that’s not…
So lets be real. Traveling with food allergies is not fun. In fact, its stressful, often times annoying, and usually ends in frustration. Unfortunately, all restaurants do not have their foods labeled, separated and conveniently packaged for people who may be intolerant to a variety of foods. BUT, with a few advanced planning techniques, obstacles…
File this one under the category of being “sort of” right. Last week I posted about the potential for European volcano air travel disruption. Mother Nature has a sense of humor about these kinds of predictions, it seems. I had the volcano part right, but today’s red aviation alert is not for the volcano in Italy that I was…
I’ve drawn a winner in last week’s contest to receive one free month of Rise, a one-on-one nutrition coaching app that I reviewed. Our winner is…. Marlene Marlene is challenged by gluten-free travel, particularly internationally. I loved her idea in the comments to print cards with dietary requirements to give to food servers. I’m newer…