Spendthrift Shoestring

Update: London moving dates & (budget) travel

Well hello there, old friends. It's been a while. 

The main bit of news is that our departure for London has been delayed. We'd been working with the assumption that we'd be taking off in early December. Now it appears that we will in fact be departing in late January. Fingers crossed.

Over the last few weeks we've begun the moving process, with uneven progress. On the home front, we had Thanksgiving visitors and our dear renter moved all her things into our apartment. On the travel front, I made a super exciting West Coast run to visit family and friends, spending time in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Napa. The only really vacationy component of the jaunt was the time in Napa, where highlights included meals at Ad Hoc and Bistro Jeanty and a blissful overnight at Harbin Hot Springs.

I also made a trip this past week, first to Panama City, where I got thoroughly drenched, and then on to Bogotá. The buzzy stories circulating about Bogotá are all on the money. I'll write about both destinations in upcoming Gadling posts.

On the subject of Gadling, I've been publishing more budget travel-themed posts there. So, right, what are you waiting for? Go on and check out Gadlng's beefed up budget travel section.

Chicago: Anatomy of a Decadent (Last-Minute) Frequent-Flier Reward Day Trip

I flew to Chicago very early yesterday and returned in the evening. I spent the day with my friend Mike. We ate (Eleven City Diner for breakfast, Muskie’s on Lincoln for lunch, the Publican for dinner), spent time with his dog, caught up, and walked around Andersonville, my favorite Chicago neighborhood.

As much as I travel, such day trips are very rare for me, and in fact, this was my first ever quick day-trip jaunt by air. I ended up booking the day trip after being given a round-trip voucher on Southwest that had to be used very quickly. At first, determined to visit all of the 50 US states, I decided to get to one of the two states I haven't yet seen, namely Oklahoma. I did my research. Last month, on a flight between Oakland and Portland, I polled Southwest flight attendants, one of whom raved about the city's "awesome river walk" and downtown bars. Interesting, though perhaps not really my thing. I turned to Twitter and received an unusual number of extremely helpful tips. The star Oklahoma City tip-giver was travel writer Robert Reid, who grew up in Oklahoma. Reid made me psyched to sample the city's Vietnamese restaurant scene, among other things.

Ultimately, given scheduling and flight times, an Oklahoma City excursion would have meant about 17 overnight hours on the ground, so I passed. Now that I've got some really enticing tips, however, I know I'll visit Oklahoma City relatively soon. 

My day in Chicago was budget-friendly, all things considered. My budget came to $102, as follows:

• $5 Security Fee for use of Southwest round-trip voucher;

• $68 car service to & taxi back from La Guardia, including tip;

• $5 Chicago Transit Authority transit card;

• $5 coffee at Coffee Studio in Andersonville;

• $19 lunch for two at Muskie’s on Lincoln.

Of course, this could have been much cheaper had I been willing to undertake the slow public transportation slog back from La Guardia at night. And it would have been considerably pricier had my friend Mike not treated me to breakfast and dinner.

The experience got me thinking about this sort of scenario, which is no doubt common for those who are strapped for time and money: having a voucher that has to be used quickly and within a tight time frame.

What might make daytrips by air particularly worthwhile?

1. Length of Excursion. Take the first flight out and return on the final flight of the night. To make your day away count, you’ll want to make sure you have as much time as possible in your destination city. Try to get on an early morning flight and return as late as possible. You can catch up on sleep afterward.

2. Proximity of Destination. Your destination should be no more than two hours flying time from your home base. Farther than that and you’ll be spending too much time in the air.

3. Goal of Day Trip. One day does not provide enough time to see a place in a satisfying manner as a tourist, so don't try. Develop a goal that sets the day apart from the general project of tourism: a restaurant to try, a museum to visit, a friend to see.

Germanwings's Half-Million Cheap Tickets

Today through Sunday August 30, Germanwings is selling off 500,000 tickets priced at just €19.99 apiece. This sale fare includes taxes. Not included: checked luggage surcharge & transaction fee. The latter runs €8 per payment.

These fares apply to Germanwings' entire route map, and are good for travel from September 6 through March 27, 2010.

The Germanwings route map is distinctive for a few reasons. The airline serves the former Yugoslavia more comprehensively than any other low-cost carrier. Also impressive are its routes to Turkish cities, Kiev, Moscow, and St. Petersburg.

English-language search engine here.

Where is the Cheapest Bed in the Caribbean?

For a few months now I've been stealthily working on my new big project, a budget/independent Caribbean site. Though the site is still in an early beta phase, feel free to take a look.

In researching cheap accommodations in one of the world's priciest regions for travel, I've often wondered if I might be able to identify the very cheapest bed in the Caribbean. Setting aside free accommodations—surprisingly common in the form of free campsites, couchsurfing spots, and beds offered up in exchange for volunteered labor—super-cheap beds are altogether less rare than you might think.

Here are a smattering of super bare bones beds in the region. I should clarify that beds even cheaper than these exist in the Caribbean, all of them just waiting for inhabitation by extreme shoestringers.

1. Rates for beds at the FUAJ youth hostel in Morne-Rouge, Martinique begin at €11 per night.

2. Rates at a campsite with access to facilities at Jungle Jeanie's By the Sea in Hopkins, Belize are just  $7.50 per night.

3. A $9 dorm bed (or $15 for a private room sleeping up to three) can be found at Rancho Wendy in Bonao, Dominican Republic.

4. A hammock at Rosalie Forest Eco-Lodge in Rosalie, Dominica is just $13 per night.

5. The rate for a single room with shared facilities at Hotel Rios Tropicales in Lívingston, Guatemala begins at $8.

Faroe Islands: Two Signs & Five Tips

Street sign, Kirkjubøur.

The Faroes are incredibly expensive to visit, but they can be done on a reasonable budget. Here are five quick tips.

1. Stay at a hostel. Marisa and I plumped for Bládypi in the center of Tórshavn, which set us back DKK 650 a night. Dormitory beds go for just DKK 200 here.

2. Buy a bus/ferry Travel Card. For DKK 600, an adult can ride all bus and ferry lines—excepting those to Mykines—for seven days. A four-day pass costs DKK 400 for adults. For anyone planning to really see the islands, this pass will end up saving you loads of money. (An obvious aside: Budget travelers in the habit of avoiding taxis in general should run from them in the Faroes. Even taxi drivers comment on the outrageous taxi fares.)

3. Shop at supermarkets. Restaurants are so expensive in the Faroes that even hardcore foodies might want to source their lunches and dinners from supermarkets. Markets are Nordic-pricey here, not extortionate. 

4. Prepare for Sunday. Observant Tórshavn is quiet as can be on Sunday, especially until the restaurants open in the afternoon. Stock up on snacks in advance and eat as much as you can for breakfast at your hotel. And then stop by the very friendly Tutl music shop at Reynagøta 12 for a caffeine fix. During our visit the clerk on duty was offering coffee to shoppers. Gratis. 

5. Befriend a local. This may be generally good advice, but you should take it to heart in the Faroes. If you're lucky, your new local friend will drive you around and show you hidden villages and spectacular views and offer some insight into this very unusual territory.

Tórshavn harbor.

British Elle on Hip Hostels

OK, I'm now officially blaming August for Spendthrift Shoestring's dreadful drop-off in posts. I've got several Nordic adventure posts on deck yet have been, apparently, unable to summon the energy to edit and post them. They are forthcoming. I swear.

Meanwhile, the September British Elle made its way to Fort Greene last week courtesy of a houseguest in from London. (Spoiler for those with unread copies of the issue lying around: cover girl Lindsay Lohan is troubled!) I was interested in the uncredited feature on stylish hostels deep into the magazine (pp 346-7). Five hostels are reviewed, and the least expensive of these is Gyreum in Sligo, where the cheapest double is just €34. The article closes with a plug for hostel booking giant Hostelworld.

Happily, the global recession has brought with it a lot of features like these. I love them. I wish magazine editors would take the next step and begin to extol the coolness of creative, independent, budget-friendly travel on a regular basis. Reduced glorification of the aspirational model of travel would be a good thing all around.

Nordic Airline Bonanza

I wrote a post for EuroCheapo on Tuesday documenting my airline adventures across the Nordics. Read why I graded Finnair higher than Atlantic Airways. (Spoiler: my heart is accessed through my stomach.)

Return from the North

A few housekeeping matters on deck.

I found out late last week that Tripbase awarded Spendthrift Shoestring eighth place in the Budget Travel Blog category of their 2009 Travel Blog Awards. I'm psyched. Thanks Tripbase! Check out the competition here. The upper echelon of the Budget Travel Blog rankings include the EuroCheapo blog—a blog I previously had the honor of editing—in second place and the superb Less Than a Shoestring in sixth place. My one question for Tripbase: why no links to the winning blogs in your award listings? 

Also check out the Helsinki budget tips post I wrote for EuroCheapo, published last Thursday.