Spendthrift Shoestring

State of Quasi-Neglect

Apologies for neglecting Spendthrift Shoestring over the last few weeks. I'm sorry. I'm also tired, having completed far more medium-haul travel over the last month than I ever intended to do—and having one more leg ahead of me, to boot. On Wednesday, I'll fly to Barcelona, meet my mom, and, if our tight connection allows, immediately transfer to a bus to Andorra. After a night in the Pyrenean principality, we'll make a line from Toulouse to Bilbao by train and bus. It will be entirely new territory for me. Needless to say, I'm really excited.

I return on April 23. Following my return, it will be almost three months before I travel internationally again. I'll return to a better blog posting schedule then. 

Meanwhile, in a completely independent development, Calvin Harris' new single makes me wonder if I somehow woke up this morning in 1999 or 1985. The video's a bit distracting, but the song's so good I don't really care—and nor do I particularly feel the need to resolve my temporal confusion.

Spendthrift Shoestring: Heads Up

You can now find this blog at www.alexrobertsontextor.com. There's no need to adjust your bookmarks, unless of course you're particularly obsessive about such things. But yeah, there it is.

Hectic

Things have been insane over the last few weeks and posts have accordingly been few and far between. I expect to return to more regular posting schedule soon.

Delmarva, Virgin America, Islip

I've spent the last two weeks in a strange vortex, going from working madly on some projects to serious chill-out family time and back again. I spent a day in New York taking care of some business and a week and a half on the Delmarva peninsula doing very little. This was my third time visiting Chincoteague, a town just south of the Maryland-Virginia border on the Delmarva peninsula. This year the area was greener and lusher than I'd remembered.

We got to Chincoteague with Virgin America via Dulles. Matt's first comment on board: "I like it. I just feel like I'm going to Tomorrowland." And in fact the experience is a curious mesh of fun technology and an aesthetic that looks and feels very much like yesterday's well-scrubbed version of the future. But on balance, I'm a fan. The flight attendants appear to enjoy their work. The instant messaging component of the entertainment system is gimmicky but irresistible. The best component of all is the menu ordering system, which allows passengers to order and pay for food and drinks from their seats. Plus fares appear to be very reasonable. I'm hoping for smooth growth for the airline.

Then, in returning to Delmarva from New York, I flew from Islip to Salisbury, Maryland. Despite having lived in New York for five years now, I'd never previously flown in or out of Islip. In this case, my decision was motivated by budgetary constraints. My one-way from Islip to Salisbury, Maryland via Philadelphia cost about $130. The fares I was seeing from JFK and LaGuardia were over $600. I took the train to Ronkonkoma and caught a $5 van shuttle from the train station to the airport. Evidence of the latter can be seen here:

Real Housewives of NYC, Olivia Giovetti, and Me

The 'flu is something I wouldn't wish on very many people. I'm just today emerging from a terrible few days of sickness, which were useful for very little. I couldn't get any work done and accordingly fell behind on some freelance work.

I did learn a few things during my sickness hibernation, while I sat, mesmerized yet lifeless, watching all four episodes of the Real Housewives of New York City back-to-back. Among the lessons: certain rich people are not very sophisticated about travel. Example: raving about St. Barts as your favorite place in the Caribbean, because it's, you know, so European. Why go to the Caribbean in the first place? Or why not dig just a little bit deeper and come up with someplace less clichéd, like, say, Les Saintes, an island with a quaint little village and lovely beaches that feels awfully European yet also Caribbean, a place where few Americans travel? It's the desire for a Caribbean stripped of any regional characteristics that bugs me. That and the lack of imagination. Limitless amounts of money mean unlimited imagination, right? Apparently not.

What else did I learn? It's completely kosher to knock your friend for going to St. Barts during the summer—and to actually sound aggrieved because said friend paid $300 (versus your own $2000 outlay) for a night at a hotel, as long as you do it in a confessional and not to your friend's face. Let's see, what else...oh yes, the Lower East Side is scary and bad. I learned that as well.

It's nice to emerge from sickness to see my guest playlist on Olivia Giovetti's amazing blog, High Culture on a Low Budget. HC/LB is chock-full of tips and suggestions for blazing a budget-savvy trail across Europe. If you haven't bookmarked and favorited it to bits, you should. Thanks, Olivia, for the opportunity to reminisce!

This and That

Tomorrow I'll head to Eleuthera for three nights with Matt Armendariz. We'll be scouring the incredibly long and skinny Bahamian island for treasures. Matt and I will return with a collaborative project, and I'll also write a few posts suggesting how budget-minded travelers can spend a few days in the Bahamas without going broke.

Also on my mind...

1. On Friday, I looked at Ryanair and SkyEurope's December statistics in comparison. It's not just the Irish and Slovak budget airlines that are grappling with falling load factors. In December 2007 (against December 2006 numbers) easyJet's load factor fell 2.3 percent, Aer Lingus saw a 4.6 percent slip, and Air France-KLM stumbled .8 percent. See this MarketWatch piece (via Air Scoop) for more information.

2. The December/January Monocle, which has been around for weeks and weeks and really shouldn't be cited in a blog, came with a "Travel Top Fifty 2007/8" booklet. As one might expect, Monocle's universe is no budget paradise, but it is seldom about spending money for the sake of spending money. This translates into a true interest in value and some surprisingly inexpensive recommendations. To wit: two family-run hotels in Barbiano near Bolzano, Bad Dreikirchen and Briol. Rooms at Bad Dreikirchen start at €54 per person including half-board in low-season; at Briol, rooms start at €60 per day per person, also including half-board. Very nice. I've been sensing an upcoming moment for Süd Tirol for a while; this sort of coverage of glamorous yet affordable properties can't hurt.

A Few Days Away

Tomorrow, I'm off to the Caribbean; I'll return next Wednesday evening. I've decided not to take my laptop, so posts will be few and far between until the end of next week.

Introducing Spendthrift Shoestring

I'm a travel writer and editor based in New York. I've written for magazines, newspapers, and Web sites.

After writing for other blogs for some time, I recently decided that it was time to set up a blog of my own. In addition to showcasing my published writing here, I'll write about places, travel news, consumer items, and sensations--whatever strikes me as interesting. The goal, of course, is that this blog will serve as a home for the emergence of my own travel aesthetic.

So welcome. And yeehaw.