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Real quick TL;DR version of this post: Southwest had an IT failure on July 20th causing 2,300+ flights to be canceled over a 4-day period. We were stranded for 3 nights in Chicago with very little answers or help from Southwest and ultimately had to book a 1-way United flight to get home. As a result, we incurred $1,400+ of additional expenses to simply complete our trip home. I’m sharing this story in an effort to reveal how deeply flawed Southwest Airlines can be in the event of hiccups, big or small.
We were involved in the Southwest Meltdown/debacle/giant cluster f*** of July 20th. The technical glitch caused 2,300+ cancellations & thousands of delays [...]
Jakarta is an enormous city and usually isn’t high on a Western traveler’s To-Do list when visiting Southeast Asia. Even though it may not have pristine beaches like other parts of the area, there are still parts of Jakarta that are rich in interesting history and worth a visit.
Just to give you an idea of the behemoth that is Jakarta, it currently ranks as the 2nd largest metro area in the world with 30+ million inhabitants:
That being said, a trip to Jakarta can be as brief as you want to make it — we stayed for 2 nights as part of a stopover from Bali to Singapore and felt that we amply covered the highlights.
1. START: We [...]
We’ve getting pump about our upcoming trip to the UAE and Australia! Here’s a quick overview of where we’re headed and how we’re getting there…
In total, we’ll cover 32,661 miles over about 14 days and will be touching down in 4 countries (2 brand new ones for me and 3 for McCown)!
Part 1 – Charleston to Abu Dhabi
The first leg of our trip has us flying from Charleston to Abu Dhabi using an American Airlines award reservation.
We’ll fly American Airlines from Charleston-CHS to Washington Reagan-DCA and then make a connection to Washington Dulles-IAD for the long haul flight to Abu [...]
We walked across the Golden Horn Bridge one morning after trying to take the tram to the “newer” area of Istanbul, along the European side of the Bosphorus River. No one knew why the tram never arrived, but, later that day, we found out that someone had suicide-bombed a police station, so they had closed all the tram lines as a pre-caution. Yikes.
After walking around the newer area, we headed to Dolmabahçe Palace, Turkey’s largest palace, which is located right on the Bosphorus River and was used as the center of the Ottoman Empire between 1856 – 1922.
It was ordered to be built by the sultan, Abdulmecid I, as his current residence, the [...]
Dead and Company 6/10/16 Review – June 10, 2016 – PNC Music Pavilion – Charlotte, NC
See below for videos– the audio quality on the camera was pretty bad so most videos are using audio from chrisdavis’ source available for download here: http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=586987. Thanks for the audio, chrisdavis!
Here’s an excerpt from the JamBase review:
Grateful Dead members Bill Kreutzmann, Bob Weir and Mickey Hart brought their Dead & Company project featuring John Mayer, Jeff Chimenti and Oteil Burbridge back on the road on Friday night. The six-piece kicked off a 24-date Summer Tour on Friday at PNC [...]
It’s no secret that the TSA wait lines are historically out of control right now and are forecast only to get worse throughout the summer. A quick Google News search on “tsa wait times” reveals 120+ articles that have been written in the past 30 days on the subject:
“So far in 2016, more than 70,000 passengers have missed flights and over 40,000 checked bags.” “TSA airport incompetence hit an all-time high this year.” “The TSA has achieved breathtaking new levels of inconvenience in 2016, with wait times sometimes as high as 120 minutes.”The best way to beat the long lines this summer is to have access to TSA [...]
On our trip from Myanmar to Vietnam, we lucked into a 48-hour layover in Bangkok, one of our very, very favorite cities in the entire world. We first visited Bangkok in 2011 and it was our first foray into Asian culture. We loved it more than we ever thought we would and dove into Thai food and Thai culture head first – and haven’t looked back since.
Can’t get much better than a Bangkok sunset
After visiting a few other Asian cities and countries by now, Bangkok is still at the top of our list and we think it’s a great city to get your feet wet- [...]
When we arrived in Mendoza (after bussing over the Andes – see our review of our bus trip here), we took a cab to the Park Hyatt Mendoza. The front facade of the building is perfectly gorgeous and majestic, just like many of the other Park Hyatts we’ve visited (have I mentioned it’s my favorite hotel brand?!).
The 5-star hotel is a bit smaller than several other Park Hyatts, but it’s perfect for a small city like Mendoza. I really love how Park Hyatts stay true to the culture and history of the city and especially loved the restored 19th-century Spanish colonial façade.
The hotel lobby is grand and full of marble, with large, [...]
