Weekend Blitz

Don’t miss out on Flying Blue’s Fall promo where Air France/KLM awards are 50% off in September & October 2013:

Award bookings on Air France/KLM routes have been reduced by 25-50% for travel between Sep 1 – Oct 31.

For those of us sitting in ‘Merica, we’ll be most interested in:

All destinations below. Note: Everything is to/from Europe.

You’d think that this was a cut and dry topic, but it’s far from it. What flights should count? Non-stop only? Contiguous countries? Territories and dependencies (they do often have the same currency and government as their mother country)?? As a result we’ve had to categorize the list a bit. We’ll start with a little background:  the IATA (International Air Transport Association) defines “domestic” as two places with the same ISO country code. Contrary to the IATA definition, however, the regular passenger considers domestic flights as those where they do not need to pass immigration on departure and arrival.

Area: Plateau Mont-Royal 994 Rue Rachel E, Montreal, QC $ – Canadian, Diner fare Open 24 x 7

We didn’t order dessert at Phayathai (link to review) to save a little bit of room to at least try the classic Canadian dish poutine on our visit north of the border. With a quick Google search of something like “Poutine Montreal,” you can’t help but notice that La Banquise is one of the most popular hits. It seems like a crowd favorite with many great reviews and a large number of devout fans speaking quite highly of the fast food diner. So, we biked a little outside of downtown to give it a whirl.

When we arrived around 11pm,  there was [...]

1) Get Scrubbed to the Bone in a Turkish Bath

Ok, now before I experienced this, it was both a “can’t wait to do this” adventure and a “what the heck am I getting myself into?!” feeling. Traditionally, men and women are separated into totally different areas (yes, that meant separating from the one person I knew on the continent and putting myself into the trusting hands of… old women who scrub you down while you’re naked? And they’re just staring at you and laughing in a language you can’t understand). Yes, daunting to say the least.

So, Jeffrey and I took the wimpy way out and voted to go to the one [...]

Pros: RailEurope.com is a good resource for researching entire rail network in Europe and is the only place to book a multiday rail pass that covers numerous countries and service providers

Cons: If just booking a simple roundtrip or one-way ticket, it can cost 20-40% more than going direct to the train website

When planning our France trip, we needed to book about 3 train tickets to get us from CDG-Bordeaux, Bordeaux-Nantes and then Nantes-Paris. So, when trying to research the best way to book, we checked out all the venues, starting with RailEurope.com.

We were looking at taking the 11h05 [...]

Bordeaux was our first stop in our France trip. Roughly three hours away by train, we only had to wait a short while once we arrived at CDG (in first class style!) to board our train straight from the airport.

Jeffrey studied abroad here in the spring of 2009, so he knows this port city like the back of his hand. It was my first time here, and it was so fun for me to explore where he lived. We even got to have dinner at his host family’s restaurant! How cool!

On the Garonne River, the water plays a large part in Bordeaux’s history. And, as the fifth largest city in France (with a population of 1.1 million), Bordeaux is the world’s wine industry center, [...]

First stop on our whirlwind, nostalgia-inspired tour of France & Italy (index here) was our flight from New York-JFK to Paris-CDG. I was able to find low-level award space using Delta SkyMiles for the flight (which is a feat in and of itself), but throw in the fact that I found Air France Business Class low-level award space using SkyMiles and it was downright impossible.

The trip really started for me about 2 or 3 days before takeoff as a winter storm was pummeling the Northeast. You see, because of Delta’s horrible award space availabilty, I booked the JFK-CDG, CDG-FLR and then VCE-JFK legs on the award ticket. To get from CHS-JFK-CHS, I [...]

Turkey is a magical country with a culture unlike any other in the world. East meets west here, and the people are a literal interpretation of two continents colliding – coupled with a rich history of luxury. The souvenirs you can find are unlike any other. And, although Jeffrey is definitely not a souvenir hunter, I managed to trick him into finding a few good places to do a little hunting.

First things first, I did my research before leaving the states – before you ever land in Istanbul, you need to know what Turkey is known for and therefore what to look for when browsing. Obviously, Turkey is most famous for their rugs. Now, because they’re world-renown, [...]