From the New Europe: Urinating and vomiting in the streets of Prague no longer cool

by Iva Skoch on

Watch out, binge drinkers and pigeon-feeders! Offences such as feeding pigeons, spitting, urinating and vomiting in the streets will soon be punishable in Prague.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, Prague is trying to lure wealthy tourists. It’s sick of budget travelers. That’s not exactly how the government officials put it, but I can read between the lines. They want to accomplish this not only by creating commercials that advertise Prague as “the city with beautiful women. Come here and check them out,” but it is now trying to figure out how those solvent tourists are going to feel about Prague when they step into dog crap the minute they get out of a cab. And probably get ripped off by the taxi driver at the same time.

Well, you know, those folks don’t really see that as adventure travel.

To help things out, Prague City Hall has come up with a new decree that will come into effect this July. According to the Prague Daily Monitor, people in Prague will be fined CZK1000 ($70) for throwing away cigarette butts, chewing gum, food scraps and other waste, feeding pigeons, failing to remove their dogs’ excrements, spitting, urinating and vomiting in the streets.

A lot of people consider Prague a dirty city. Those people include me. And I am from here and like it here. However, I honestly wouldn’t mind if people picked up after their dogs every time.

The thing is, Prague will never be as clean as Singapore. It’s, in essence, a dark, sinister, messy kind of place. How clean is too clean for deal old Praha?

Are we in Los Angeles yet?: A Greyhound bus story

by Jamie Rhein on

My mom just arrived back in Columbus this morning at 7 a.m. from her trip to New York City on a Greyhound bus. The bus was one minute early. Wow! I thought that she’d be late due to the wicked thunderstorm that tore through here all last night.

When I pulled into a non-parking space in front of the station (there was just enough room to maneuver behind another car actually parked at a meter), there she was with her small pull behind that she was allowed to carry-on. If she had checked it there would have been no charge.

One more point for Greyhound.

As I posted previously, my mom took the Greyhound because it was cheaper and easier than flying at the time she found out she needed to get to New York. That still seems to be the case.

Unless, you are the woman my mother told me about who got on in Newark, New Jersey.

“Where are you going?” My mother asked her.

“Los Angeles,” the woman said.

“My!” said my mother. “When will you get there?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?!” My mom wondered how that could be.

That couldn’t be. When they changed buses in Pittsburgh, the woman found out she didn’t have a clue. She won’t arrive in Los Angeles until Saturday.

My mom said she had an accent, so perhaps when someone explained the trip details, she missed something. Obviously.

I hope she didn’t have much planned for the next couple of days and thought to bring a good book with her–or several. If nothing else, she snagged the best travel mistake story I’ve heard in awhile.

(In case you’re wondering. If you go from New York to Los Angeles, it will take 2 days, 12 hours and 25 minutes minimum and you would have had to make one bus change. Some schedules take longer with two transfers.You will have traveled 3072 miles. It costs $192 if you don’t want a refundable ticket or $215 if you do. There is one ticket left for today’s bus that leaves at 11 a.m.)

Why you should never buy frequent flyer miles

by Grant Martin on

Perusing your favorite airline’s frequent flyer web pages, you may have noticed that many of them offer a service to sell and transfer miles among friends. Points.com is a website that specializes in this task, and many programs from Jetblue to Delta to American Airlines participate in their miles purchasing programs.

Take heed before you get your wallet out and buy miles though: it’s a horrible horrible deal. Take a look a these prices for buying miles taken from the Northwest Airlines website:

2,500 = $95
25,000 = $725
30,000 = $865

Now, if you recall from your frequent flyer mile handbook, a domestic ticket costs 25,000 miles — so this basically equates to buying a ticket for $725. Any ticket, domestically in the US, whether this is between New York and San Francisco or New York and Detroit even if you’re having the worst day of your life, shouldn’t cost $725. And if it does, you can pretty well be sure that the flight isn’t going to have award availability either.

Similarly transferring miles is also expensive:

5,000 = $75
25,000 = $300

With a $25 transaction fee. And the airline isn’t even selling miles — it’s just moving them from column A to B in their spreadsheet.

Why would anyone take up this deal? Well, the least irresponsible excuse for buying or transferring miles is because you need to top up your account. You’re just short of that 25k or 50k award and need another 5k miles to book your ticket as soon as possible. But it’s important to remember the amount of cash you’re dumping into your miles just to make them work. If you’re dumping $100 dollars into a ticket to get it over 25k and your miles are valued at $0.02/mile (a common market ratio), you’ve just lost $600 in equity on a ticket. Was the market value of the itinerary that much? Could you have bought the ticket for $200 cash?

If you do find yourself in the above situation, try the following solution: take a deep breath, take your wallet out, hide it under the couch and take a good sharp look at your travel plans and finances for the next six months. There may be a time that you’re traveling in the near future during which you can accrue a few more miles and balance out that account.

Or you’re short on time and out of money, consider checking Gadlings guide to topping off your frequent flyer account.

Gadling’s guide to topping off your frequent flyer account

by Grant Martin on

After 17 long years of flying America’s skies, you’ve done it. You’ve almost saved up enough frequent flyer miles for a free ticket to anywhere you want to go in the United States. Nice work. Most people who remember to put their frequent flyer number into the box before departure forget about their miles and let them expire.

But you’re just a couple of miles short. And you really really want to go see Aunt Ximena in Palm Springs over Labor Day. Distressed, you check the airline website and see that you can buy two thousand miles for sixty bucks. And you’re so excited about In-n-Out and Aunt Ximena’s Uruguyan Barbeque that you’re just about to cough it up. But you shouldn’t.

Hold on fellow passenger! There are ways to accrue those miles without wasting money straight from your pocketbook. At the very least you can use your money practically and earn the miles on the side. Here are a few great ways to do that.

  • Check the website for promotions. Several carriers host small promos for new program members to indoctronate educate newbies on the advantages of their specific product. These change every so often, so it’s helpful to go back and make sure that you’ve qualified for all of your excitement.
  • Go shopping. Many airline programs have deals with an online (or in air) mall that let you purchase goods from a regular retailer (GAP, Home Depot, etc) and earn miles per each dollar spent. So if you needed to buy dog food for Fido or flowers for your mother anyway, you can get 5 miles / dollar online at petsmart or 10 miles / dollar at FTD.com. Not all of them mark up goods either — most gateways go directly to the vendor website.
  • Go out to eat. Sites like Dining for Miles let you enroll your favorite credit card or visa/MC debit card in a program that earns miles per dollar spent at a restaurant. You can peruse about to see if any of the restaurants are near you, then next time you’re out to lunch with co-workers, pick up the bill and take cash from everyone else.
  • Transfer miles from another program. Points.com gives you a pretty serious shaft when transferring miles among programs (I equate them to the TravelEx money exchange in the airport), but they’re good if you’re in a pinch and haven’t got a ton of spare cash. There are too many participants to list them all, so check the website and see if your favorite points program is listed.
  • Take some surveys. Several online sites let you accrue points by taking surveys that you can cash in for miles. E-rewards has worked well for me a few times, although I no longer have the time to take their somewhat elaborate surveys.
  • Get a credit card. This is a little more risk-involved, but if you were prepared to get some plastic anyway, it might be worth looking into a signature or platinum card that gives you 25k miles or a free ticket upon enrollment. You’ll have to pay an annual fee of course, but that should be significantly less than a round trip ticket.
  • Beg. Yes, airlines do give away coupons for free miles that do (illegally) get circulated around the internet. If you’re ready to live a life of sin, check ebay, flyertalk or your local craigslist for people giving away or selling miles. Don’t tell them I sent you though.
  • Go on a mileage run. I know it sounds crazy, but if you need a few extra miles, it may be cost effective to actually fly somewhere just to reap the miles from the trip. Check out Gadling’s Guide to Mileage Running for more info on that.

Finally, the best thing to remember is to be patient. Award availability does dry up pretty quickly and I’ll admit, if you’ve found an itinerary that works, you want to book it as soon as possible. But you don’t need to do anything brash to get tickets before the end of the day. Have some juice, think about your options and find a good workaround. Your miles and your pocketbook will thank you.

Renovated National Aquarium offers an inexpensive option

by Jamie Rhein on

Gas prices aren’t the only expense of a vacation that pinch the finances. Admission fees can be a real downer. If one is traveling with young children, huge, expensive museums can be overwhelming.

These are two reasons why the National Aquarium in Washington, D.C. sounds appealing to me.

At $5 for adults, and $2.50 for children, the admission is not even close to the $18.75 amount for adults to the Newport Aquarium in Newport, Kentucky. The Newport Aquarium, the last one I visited, is quite impressive, but sometimes I’d rather opt for a simpler venue for less money.

Last year, when we went to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, much of our time was spent finding a bathroom and each other. Due to time constraints, we hurried through sections where I wanted to linger. When mixing children with large museums, it’s often necessary to leave out entire exhibits in order to not have a kid meltdown halfway through.

With a smaller museum, like the National Aquarium that claims you can see the whole thing in 45 minutes, you don’t have to pick and chose among options. At the end of an hour you can end up at the gift shop satisfied and have time and energy left to take in something else close by. I’d head to the outdoor sculpture garden at the National Gallery of Art for starters.

Along with the aquarium’s renovations that include new signage, carpeting and exhibits is a new theme–“America’s Aquatic Treasures.” Look for alligators, eels, sea horses, a baby loggerhead turtle and more. [see Washington Post article]

If you can make here on August 9, it’s Shark Day. There are several activities geared towards kids and talks adults would enjoy.