Weekend Blitz

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 welcome 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.

Source: spirit.com

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

“Welcome to Guyana!”

We stepped off the plane and into the nice, warm and muggy air that we have come to know and love growing up in the Southeastern US.

No official gates here, just jump off and walk up

Making our way into the terminal, we were greeted by about a 60+ min wait to reach customs & immigration.

Before we left for Guyana, we did some brief research about the safety of the country and learned that they still have major problems with trafficking cocaine (exports, mainly). That said, I love the [...]

En route to Georgetown, Guyana and having just gotten finished with the free transfer from LGA to JFK, we had a lengthy layover in JFK. At the time of our trip, there were extensive renovations underway at the airport.

The flight was set to leave out of JFK’s Terminal 4, the main international terminal. It’s a pretty popular terminal and in fact, it’s the only one at JFK that isn’t operated by a specific airline. They say that, even on your first visit, you’ll feel right at home given that it’s been the setting for many movies: The Terminal, Syriana, Get Him to The Greek etc….

But I digress… point being, it’s a pretty cool terminal. [...]

Plateau Mont-Royal: 330 Rue Marie-Anne E , Montréal, QC French $$$ — Around 35-50 CAD/person

Hungry for some dinner and wanting to try something French (I mean we are in French Canada, after all), we referred to Urbanspoon and settled on Restaurant Le P’Tit Plateau. When calling to make reservations, they reminded me that they are a BYOB restaurant, meaning they don’t sell any alcohol but have a special license to allow for patrons to bring in their own wine. It’s a new concept to me and I immediately loved it—I mean why pay the 200 to 250% markup on a bottle of wine when they encourage you to bring in your own straight from the wine store? One thing to note, [...]

We took advantage of an awesome secret Delta perk when we took a free “shuttle” between LaGuardia and JFK airports. The shuttle ended up being a voucher with a $73 face value providing Town Car service to JFK!

Update 1/5/14: This still works! We used this last week on our way back from The Maldives. We were provided a free taxi ride from Newark-EWR to LaGuardia-LGA.

Delta has 2 hubs in the NYC area: LaGuardia and JFK. It is possible, based on flight schedules, that you’ll have to fly into one and out of the other. In most cases, the transfer is up to you and it’s not an easy one. If, however, you fly into Newark (EWR) or LaGuardia (LGA) and [...]

Translated, Guyana means “The Land of Many Waters” and, of their total area, more than 8% of it is made up of water.

Guyana is about the size of Minnesota, Utah, Idaho or Kansas (I know, all pretty boring-ly shaped states).

Put differently, and more appropriately for my narrow view, it’s the size of North Carolina + South Carolina combined. Or about 1/3 of France:

Its population is only about 750k people (similar to that of North Dakota or Alaska). As such, it has one of the lowest population/mi2 figures in the world (they’re 230th of 242 countries).

Guyana’s economy is driven by rice & sugar [...]

As a frequent reader of flyertalk.com, a mileage run deal caught my eye back in July (thread here) for a (relatively) cheap flight from JFK to Georgetown, Guyana. Flights were over 50% off, down from the $800s to $399. As if I needed an excuse to take an impulsive weekend trip.

The best piece of advice you’ll read when planning for Guyana: “It is a pain in the ass to plan for Guyana.” There isn’t much info online, there are no international hotel chains in the country and few hotels are bookable online. You’ll feel like you’re planning a trip in 1989.

Planning things to do presents an even harder problem: not only do tour companies [...]