Weekend Blitz

In an interesting conflict of interest, I received an upgrade for which I had mixed feelings of “this is awesome, finally!” and “damnit Delta, why are you trying screw me?!” Delta (generally) has a policy of either upgrading all parties in a reservation or none. For example, if you’re a Gold Medallion traveling with a no-status “civilian,” the weakest link in the reservation will decide your position on the upgrade list. Examples:

Easy enough, right? Rule of thumb: Delta uses a “weakest link” scenario when it comes to [...]

Here’s our second installment in the Ultimate Honeymoon series and another easy pick:  French Polynesia.

Way out there in the middle of the Pacific

French Polynesia might be the most desired pick for a honeymoon or romantic getaway:

Note: A lot of info in this post refers to the 35% transfer bonus between AMEX Membership Rewards and British Airways Avios that runs until June 7, 2013. More info here: Deal Blitz Alert: 35% Transfer Bonus from AMEX to British Airways Avios. If you’re reading after June 7, 2013 you can still get some great value out of your Avios miles.

British Airways/Iberia Avios miles are [glossy term=”distance based awards”] distance based awards:  on the surface, it seems like you’re getting a bad deal on award redemptions. But, as with anything involving miles, it opens up possibilities to find great values on non-stop short distance flights.

One partner [...]

1235 Rue Guy, Montreal, Quebec, Canada Thai $$$ – Entrees for 15 – 20 CAD

Ready for a change after consuming several heavy French meals in a row, we looked (again, on Urbanspoon) for a great Thai restaurant. We found one in the Concordia University area, a place with plenty of nightlife around to check out after our meal. Easy subway access, but we, of course, chose to ride our rental bikes.

The restaurant, Phayathai, is on the second story and holds seating for approximately 30 people—pretty small and, again, we’re pretty sure we saw the owner busing tables. There were a few round tables that seat six, but, to be safe, you should probably make a [...]

Ok, so time to start planning the most fun part of getting married: The Honeymoon.

Just about everyone wants to get some place tropical complete with blue waters, whites sands and enough poolside fruity drinks to give you the [tippy title=”diabeetus”][/tippy]. So, to go domestic and still get your beach honeymoon on, you’ll be stuck with:

So basically “Insert Girls Gone Wild Filming Location Here” honeymoon destinations.

Don’t get me wrong, the U.S. has its fair share of nice resorts that [...]

While on our recent whirlwind trip to France and Italy to visit Jeff’s sister who is studying abroad in Nantes, France  (more to come on that soon), we spent a few nights in Paris.

The city of Paris is special to us because it’s the first place we ever traveled together (while we were studying abroad in Europe -Jeff in France, me in Italy- in Spring 2009). Who knew our weekend trip to Paris back in 2009 (long before we even started dating!) would turn out to be the foundation of our engagement?!

Here we are in Feb. 2009

It was snowing hard on Tuesday when we [...]

351 Rue St-Paul Ouest, Montreal, QC Bakery w/ Sandwiches $ to $$ — About CAD 9 – 11 for lunch

After the walking tour, we remained in Vieux Montreal and explored Rue St. Paul. Vieux Montreal, as we learned on our walking tour, is mostly inhabited by tourists. The main street, Rue St. Paul, is lined with restaurants and souvenir shops, and dotted in between is the typical crowd pleaser painted up in gold and throwing gold beads to the crowd–leave it to the Canadians and misinformed college freshmen that body paint is cool.

Love the sign, so typical of Quebec on many levels: [...]

Saturday morning, we were hunting around online to figure out what to do. We had heard great things about Fitz & Follwell Co. bike tours (TripAdvisor), but they didn’t appear to handle last minute reservations very well online and the 4-hour bike tour of the whole city left at 10 a.m. from the Plateau Royal district – the opposite side of town from us. Instead, we discovered that Guidatour (http://www.guidatour.qc.ca/) offers walking tours of Vieux Montreal daily during the summer, departing from Notre Dame (luckily, 5 minutes away from us).

Guidatour review: Tickets are about $20/person for a 90 min tour, which includes a brief visit into Notre Dame. Our tour [...]

On our recent trip to Paris, we were so lucky to experience the bizarre snow storm that hit Paris March 12-13, 2013. Although it shut down the airports, canceling hundreds of flights and disrupted all other train and car travel, it was a very scenic time for those of us in the city with no where to go.

Oh yeah, and we GOT ENGAGED!

Gare Montparnasse

Along Bassin de la Villette in 19th arrondissement

Along Bassin de la Villette in 19th arrondissement