Weekend Blitz

Monticello, located in Charlottesville, Virginia, is the perfect escape for a morning or afternoon. You can’t beat the Virginia countryside and the tour of the home itself is a can’t-miss. The house is located at the top of the mountain, so you’ll park at the base and buy your tickets, then a shuttle will drive you the final few minutes. That being said, be sure to get there in time to park, purchase your tickets and then make your shuttle for the 10-15 minute drive … so, don’t arrive just 10 minutes before the last tour of the day at 4:10pm.

If you’re just interested in the basics, the Monticello Day Pass and House Tour is the one for you [...]

After a fantastic meal at Schwartz’s (link to review), we continued our trek on foot to the corner of Avenue des Pins and Rue Peel (link to specific address, I suggest opening on your phone when you’re ready to go) to take a hike up Mont Royal and check out the park and view of the city.

All in all a pretty nice light walk on a beautiful day.

The steps were daunting, but not even a tenth of what we climbed to see a temple in Thailand–now that was grueling. At the top of the 200 hectare (appx 495 acres) park is a huge chalet–Chalet du Mont-Royal–with a nice, large viewing area that overlooks downtown [...]

Just a few short days until our honeymoon! Here’s a brief overview of where we’re headed and how we’re getting there:

Our 24,606 mile trip will take us to 10 countries (including connections) over 16 days:

Part 1 -New York

We’ll fly from Charleston-JFK to New York-JFK  on Delta…

…and spend 1 night in the city to get our fill of the Christmas spirit.

Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree

Part 2 – Bali, Indonesia

Our award ticket starts in New York as we fly out of New York-LGA and, appx 33 hours later, land in Denpasar, [...]

After doing our research ahead of time and researching how to buy tickets (SNCF vs RailEurope.com post here) and then arriving to Charles de Gaulle airport and making our way to the train station (post: Taking a train from Paris Airport CDG-Charles de Gaulle), it was time to begin our first train journey of the trip.

We were scheduled on the 16h21 train (that’s 4:21pm to you Freedom-fry-loving guys in ‘Merica). Because this train didn’t originate at the CDG airport, we had to wait until about 15 mins before departure to see which track it would be on. The trip was scheduled to take 4 hours 16 mins (!) and put us at Bordeaux St. Jean right [...]

Fresh after landing at Paris-CDG, we had hoped to have a chance to check out the Air France Arrivals Lounge at Charles de Gaulle but were worried about making our train connection. So we just sucked it up and scurried out to baggage claims, but not before passing a very casual form of “Customs and Immigration” which consisted of an area with a few French police/military decked out in fatigues and submachine guns. They stopped me, seemed confused that I spoke French and then insinuated that I’d just come off the flight from either Casablanca or Cairo, when I corrected them and said that I came from New York JFK they seemed even more confused, checked the arrivals board and then waved [...]

Fresh off our 14-hour overnight train journey, we hit the ground running. Places we visited on this journey:

View 54 Hours in New York in a larger map

With the clock ticking, we hit the ground running by grabbing a cab to the [highlight color=”grey/color”]THE WESTIN GRAND CENTRAL[/highlight] (previously The New York Helmsley Hotel).

No trip to the Big Apple would be complete without a trip to Times Square, no matter how many times you’ve been before:

We grabbed a quick lunch on Rockefeller Plaza with some family at [highlight color=”grey/color”]BRASSERIE RUHLMANN[/highlight]

Ahh yes, Spirit Air:  the self-proclaimed “America’s Only ULCC-Ultra Low Cost Carrier.” The champions of nickel-and-diming, Spirit charges the customer only for what he uses. If you want to carry on a bag, you’re welcomed to for a fee, but they don’t add it to the ticket cost because they don’t charge those who don’t want the service. No matter what your opinion is on the big change in the airline industry, you can’t deny that Spirit Air has some damn cheap fares on their routes.

I don’t necessarily expect the same level of service on a $40 flight as I do on the $8,000 trans-Atlantic First Class ticket, but we all expect a minimum level of service [...]

I had a reservation at a Sheraton property that I made many weeks ago at the Fed/Gov’t rate. On the morning of my check-in date, I received a call from the hotel manager explaining that they were overbooked for the night and were starting by calling all SPG Platinum/Gold members to see if they would be willing to accept Starpoints for having their reservation cancelled. He said that they’re offering 7,000 Starpoints for volunteers (this is equal to 1 free night at the property)–I paused and thought about my travel plans:  they were, in fact, flexible and I didn’t have to stay at that particular property.  Suspecting that they [...]

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 [...]