July 17, 2015
For a hermit/homebody, I’ve sure been doing a lot of travel deals scouting.
It’s a restless, bargain hunting soul that’s trying to rev up the trip planning machine. There’s nothing quite so satisfying as nailing a deal combination that gets you to a Must See Destination for way less than expected. Add to that the desire to travel before the Wiggle Worm doesn’t fly free anymore and you get a particular sense of urgency. So I figure why the hell not? I’ll figure out how to juggle travel and work and an increasingly active baby.
Destinations we’re stalking bargains for now through 2016: San Diego, Hawaii, Seattle, Asia, Chicago.
***
All my flights of fancy trips are big time-consuming things, requiring lots of time off and probably a lot of patience, possibly more than either of us have. No reason not to dream, though, right?
Someday trips:
Take the whole family on a road trip across the States. Take a few months to do it properly and go through: the Eastern Seaboard (visit friends, eat seafood), Louisiana (visit friends, eat seafood), Tennessee (visit friends, eat BBQ), Montana (just because), Iowa (visit friends, food?), Utah (I’m told the drive is spectacular, but what food is there?), Colorado (visit friends, food suggestions?). I think other states were suggested on Twitter: Massachusetts, Kentucky, Washington. Am I missing any?
Australia for a month. Maybe Australia + New Zealand for 6 weeks? I’m hearing that food is expensive in at least Australia, though, which isn’t awesome because travel is all about food for me.
Japan for a month for all the Japanese food I can think of, particularly sushi. Katherine at Feather Factor has blogged about some really neat ryokan I’d love to try.
Iceland. Peru. Thailand (again). Italy (again). Galapagos.
***
Then again, I get the yearning for home after two weeks abroad, almost like clockwork, so maybe these month(s)-long journeys aren’t truly my cup of tea. The trek across the States could happen if we got truly brave and did an RV, maybe, so Seamus could come with us. Missing home is much worse when missing the dog is part of the mix. Being away is much better when your whole chosen family’s with you.
June 17, 2015
Thanks in large part to PiC, our reputation as hosts for the SF Bay Area remains untarnished. If there was a Great Hosts Club, I think we’d be eligible to join. A dear friend spent a weekend with us and with a bit of planning, a lot of flexibility, and a soupcon of adventurousness it couldn’t have been more perfect.
It could have been actual perfection if we had miraculous recoveries from our various health issues but other than that, it was perfect.
Most of the time was spent catching up, talking about life and money and kids and travel and just, oh, everything under the sun. We tend to fail miserably at exploring our own city but having guests is an excellent way to kick us out and discover.
When we ventured beyond the front door….
Remember the Nopalito fail? We redeemed ourselves with take out.
The painted tiles are gorgeous. Who knew?
16th Street painted tiles
My suggestion of NOT trying to cross the bridge and get an excellent view of it: great!
Our first visit to Crissy Field
Crissy Field, view of a foggy Golden Gate Bridge
I had forgotten what delectations can be had from Arizmendi Bakery (a co-op).
Cheese bread, peach strawberry scone, oat scone
We actively practiced respecting our limits, not being fools or pushing ourselves too much. One of the stupidest mistakes I make when traveling or hosting is failing to recognize when my body’s about to bow out. Another is failing to flock to the birds of my feather: those who are considerate of all physical limitations and find ways to have fun without catastrophic regrets.
So this weekend? Mutual respect, good memories, happy plans to make more.
May 28, 2015
eemusings called me out for not having more pasta in my last posts, and she was right, I just forgot where I’d stashed the pasta pictures!
Am I the only one who is always disappointed when ordering ravioli? Not because it’s not tasty as all get out but because everyone thinks that six-seven ravioli is a meal! Don’t look surprised when I then consume 3 loaves of bread to fill up because six ravioli, no matter the size, is hardly a snack. Seriously, what adult is satiated with 6 bites of delectable filled pasta?
Italia: The less frugal adventure
Food and fun in Italy: Part 2
April 22, 2015
We recently experienced a little improvement in quality of life, and so decided to take on another challenge.
Since none of my family had met the newbie yet, and his family was ready to take another crack at it, we loaded up a rental and drove down the coast. Here’s how it went….
Night 1: we left an hour and a half behind schedule. I blame Enterprise. They botched pickup, they didn’t have the car at the location even after I confirmed with them two days in advance AND they didn’t have a clean car ready to go when PiC finally arrived at the 2nd location where the cars were allegedly ready. They threw us exactly 1.5 hours behind.
We rented a minivan because STUFF and we wanted to be safer w/Seamus and LB. I hate not being able to crate him for the drive but there is no way to fit a Seamus-sized crate in the car. A truck, sure, but I’m not a fan of popping the dog in the truck bed, exposed to the elements. And LB, of course, requires a car seat and numerous other accoutrements. We tried to minimize as much as possible and consider this a learning experience for future packing.
I haaate running out of diapers and paying full price so I packed nearly 100. For 5.5 days away. It’s called pooperation, alright? I also packed twice as many doggy poo bags as Seamus could use. Very little worse than being stuck in a shitty situation with no clean up available.
Surprise: LB still hates being strapped into the car seat and hates sitting still in the car but loves freeway driving. We prepared our souls for multiple stops and screaming, instead ze slept the whole first 4 hour leg.
Day 2: we made an extra stop on Leg 2, making it 2 of 3 stretches before we made it the Home Base and that 45 minute delay put us in the middle of hellish traffic. 2:30 and like a bloody spider, GPS showed traffic stretched out every direction from the body of LA. Of course. It was a quick tutorial in why we can never move back. Every trip would take at least 45 minutes, if not 2 hours, because our friends and family are scattered everywhere.
LB ran out of “sitting in a car seat, putting up with freeway” steam at the tail end of Leg 3 so we rode the rest of the way serenaded by hir increasingly ragged roars. We slept pretty well that night, when we slept. It was a parody of our routine at home: sleep til ze wakes, one stumbles to get the bottle and the other weaves over to the sofa with hir, both collapse while ze is fed and patted back down. Stay on the sofa the rest of the night.
Day 3: Most of the morning and afternoon was spent recovering from the long drive and then ze finally met part of my family that night. Ze was full of chatter and what we call “crab bubbles” and then crashed hard.
We got to visit with some friends briefly that evening, and wind down almost like regular people, except we had to keep checking on LB since we didn’t bring a monitor.
Day 4 was the most intense day. We had a morning to early afternoon engagement, a small reunion, and ze decided that since we had to be up at 715 anyway, why not get up at 620 and stay up?
Thanks to, again, SoCal traffic, we didn’t get home til after 3, and then it was back out again for a dinner. This dragged on far longer than was civilized for a tiny infant and ze passed out in the car. Blessedly, this was the night of the long sleep. Ze actually stayed asleep for 8 hours. Hadn’t happened before, hasn’t happened since. But boy did we need it.
Day 5 was one last hurrah gathering of family and arguably the best one. LB was whisked away by Grandma, only to be seen again when hungry, then whooshed off to a cuddle and feeding with Grandpa. Aunts and Great Grandma finished up the rounds of baby passing and ze fell asleep in PiC’s arms. I don’t see this branch of the family often enough and boy do I miss them. Ze was also surprised with a handful of amazingly timed baby gifts: all things ze needed and I hadn’t even thought to mention them to anyone. Psychic family, I tell ya.
Logistics!
Packing. We were pretty sure that we overpacked but didn’t want to take the risk that going too minimalist would be to my detriment. I can only handle so much manual stuff, before you factor in the stress of travel, disrupted routines, and the energy drain of socializing.
Turns out we didn’t need: the spare cozy blanket (we brought two heavy/cozy and one light blankets, 2 were used regularly); the baby carriers (we were too tired to wear hir); a picnic blanket. I could also have packed about 10 fewer diapers but let’s never skimp on packing diapers because I don’t want to pay full price or live with regrets.
Feeding the Bean. I planned to do combination pumping and formula for hir feeding so we could be flexible. Turned out we didn’t need most of our handy formula packets. When I didn’t have enough prepumped milk packed, I nursed hir, and most days I was able to get nearly 20 oz in just two pumping sessions. Really quite convenient.
Costs. The car rental was nearly $400, and of course we had to fill up about three times. We stayed at places with breakfast provided and packed enough food and drinks along in our cooler so that we only paid for takeout twice. The convenience of not having to cram everything into our smaller cars and risking things falling over on Seamus or fighting with squeezing stuff into every inch was so worth that outlay.
March 16, 2015
By special request, more pictures from Italy! In no particular order ….
February 25, 2015
Long have we been talking about going to Italy, long has it been out of reach. Until we recently made it happen.
I wanted to take a leisurely time to sightsee in Florence and the Cinque Terre region, but our time constraints put paid to that notion. We did a bit of criss-crossing through the country to keep it interesting instead.
We skipped the rental Ferrari experience, instead opting to put the Italian rail system through their paces for all the big hauls. I bargain hunted for train tickets, carefully mapping each stage of our journey so we could buy tickets on discount sites before departure. Cheaper AND nicer trains = two thumbs up (but not that cheap, it still cost almost $300 for the two of us just for that part of transit).
The rides varied from excellent to terrible.
Italo, privately owned rail: Ferrari inspired design, air conditioned cars with free WiFi, ability to reserve seats and second class was as good as first from what I could tell. SUPER fast. Bonus: space agey bathrooms! Clean and sleek.
Frecciarossa, government owned rail: standard type commuter design, air conditioned cars with free WiFi, comfortable and relatively quiet. Didn’t use the bathroom so not sure how that was.
Regional rail: terrible. Just terrible. We were crammed like sardines in a botulism ridden tin, our car had no air conditioning for a 2+ hour ride in 80+ degree heat. People were sitting on the stairs in an effort to avoid passing out. Bonus: we survived. We saved a lot of money as these were the cheapest of the lot but I would have been happy to pay the $200 for a private car had I expected that. (Then again… I’m notoriously cheap sometimes…)
So obviously we compromised where we didn’t care much about the thing to save money but NOT on food. I simply wasn’t going to make the effort to go on such a big trip while uncomfortable AND deprive myself. We brought a lot of snacks for travel days and lunches, planning to have breakfast at our hotels where they were providing breakfast without extra cost, and eat dinner out.
Experience-wise, that was the best choice I think, as I picked places with pretty fantastic breakfast spreads.
We, not even kidding, breakfasted for three hours one morning! We might have looked like gauche and greedy Americans but I never got that feeling from the amazing and so-very- friendly breakfast servers. My money is on they were humoring the then visibly pregnant lady. 🙂 By the time we left, we had bonded with Maria who was super excited about LB and had to give us hugs before we left. We were both disappointed that we wouldn’t see each other (and that glorious breakfast!) the next day.
We got to know some awesome restauranteurs of smaller establishments, and were repeat diners at the best of them. Dinner was a serious business. 🙂 I didn’t enjoy any wine but I rarely care about that. I did, however, feel deprived over the prosciutto! Still: pastas, fresh fish, pastries, pies, random “fast food”, pizza … So. Good. So very good.
Travel Costs
We managed to cash flow both trips even though we spent more than annually budgeted for travel back in 2013 and a also bit more, well, not recklessly but more freely than usual. I chalked it up to the Pregnancy and “when are we going to do this again?” Tax.
Like the London trip, using our biggest pot of miles, British Airways, was pointless.
I did redeem a truckload of Chase Rewards points. I had the option of using them to book flights, hotels and car rentals directly for an extra 20% in points value but none of their options were any good for our destinations. We weren’t driving and none of the areas we planned to stay had anything useful on the list of redemption hotels.
The best value was booking lower cost, family-run hotels, then redeeming the points for cash to pay for them. All told, we cashed in enough points for about a thousand dollars which nicely defrayed the cost. And we earned yet more credit card points for charging the hotel bills – the circle of rewards points life!
We also used a big whack of our Starwood points for two luxury hotels priced at remarkably low redemption costs for the category rankings. I’ve never stayed at a Category 7 hotel and I’m not sure if we will again any time soon.
That was about twelve hundred dollars of value. If we didn’t pay with points, though, I’m sure we would have just stayed at cheaper hotels.
Fancy: that is indeed CNN you see in the television built into the mirror.
The weather was miserable for much of the trip, going from an unbearable sweltering to a grey gloom and downpour. Packing extra lightly meant I was ill prepared for both extremes, and even more so because I had put on another few pounds before leaving. I never knew what a difference a few pounds around the waistline made and I’ll never take my reasonably stable weight for granted again, if that ever comes back.
January 26, 2015
PiC and I finally went to London!
It was a short trip but we’d been talking about doing it for years and an opportunity came up that we couldn’t resist. Besides, with LB on the way, I don’t anticipate international trips figure large in our immediate future.
We had a good wander about: we explored Covent Garden, had fish and chips, and visited with some friends we don’t see often. I loved that display of Paddington Bears – for years, as a child who only explored other worlds through books, the adorable bear in a yellow hat represented England.
Due to my very limited energy, we saw a lot of things in passing but didn’t stop in for a full gander: Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, a statue of Abraham Lincoln (???), The British Museum. We waved at the London Eye, feeling too cheap and pressed for time to actually go up, that’ll be for another time when the weather is more certain.
We spent some time in a smaller neighborhood, exploring the local cuisine and shops, picking up more than a few specialty chocolates to bring home. I’d told PiC for years that chocolate from across the pond was different and he was more than willing to indulge in taste tests with me.
Next time – and there will be a next time! – I’d want to do a little bit more than we did this time but it was a good relaxing visit.
Usually when I travel internationally, I make it a point to learn to like a new food but this time was more about sharing my favorites with PiC.
Travel Costs
We flew British Airways coach, and while it was no great shakes back there in coach class, it was still better than our usual domestic airlines by a good stretch. Maybe not better than Virgin America Main Cabin Select, but we don’t often splurge on airfare, especially on international travel. Someday though, we’ll have enough money that first class won’t be but a drop in the bucket. SOMEDAY!
I tried to use miles for the flight but as it turns out, BA miles are pretty worthless for international flights. They’ll charge a fuel surcharge that is very nearly the same as the cost you’d have paid for the ticket out of pocket. I saved them for another time.
I did redeem a truckload of Chase Rewards points though. I had the option of using them to book flights, hotels and car rentals directly for an extra 20% boost in points but they weren’t any good for our destinations. We weren’t going to drive and none of the areas we’d planned to stay were on the list of redemption hotels.
The best value was to book lower cost hotels and just redeem the points for cash. We had enough bonus and regular points to redeem for a thousand dollars in cash which nicely defrayed some of the travel cost.
Experience-wise, that was the best choice I think, as I picked places with pretty fantastic breakfast spreads. Seriously I think we breakfasted for three hours one morning.