Hey Chicago and New York: Get away to Mexico City this Memorial Day for cheap

by Grant Martin on

People often don’t think about traveling over the holidays before it’s too late and ticket prices have gone through the roof. Good thing you’ve got me around. Just be glad you don’t know me personally, I’m always pestering people to buy tickets and they hate me for it.

Anyway, we’ve been looking for good tickets to buy for my girlfriend and I over Memorial Day, and blogger Jeremy (aka, Yaro, aka SATIJ) stumbled on a great fare to Mexico City over that weekend. For a paltry 280$, you can get yourself into the cultural and economic center of our neighbors to the south from either Chicago or New York, leaving Friday or Saturday and returning on Tuesday, the day after the holiday.

Oh but it gets better. If you want to book today or tomorrow, there’s also a 50$ off rebate that you can use with Northwest. So your ticket price drops to 230$.

Use a month long search on the NWA website to find your tickets out of Chicago or New York. You’ll also find that the fare is good for multiple weekends in April and May as well.

Mexico City to big and dirty and scary for you? It’s actually not as bad as it used to be. Take a gander through their wikitravel page and I think you’ll be impressed at what you see. And if you need any personal advice, ask Yaro for some tips and he’ll hook you up. Ask him about his nicknames while you’re at it.

I’ll see you in Mexico City. Just don’t forget your passport.

Federal appeals court overturns New York’s Passenger Bill of Rights

by Anna Brones on

For a brief second I thought that airline passengers just might be making headway in the notoriously frustrating airline industry. That was until today when the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a law requiring airlines to provide basic necessities to passengers stuck on a plane delayed on the ground.

When New York passed the Passenger Bill of Rights last August — intended to take effect at the beginning of this year — several other states joined in and proposed their own bills, all in the name of passenger comfort. Granted the bill didn’t provide for anything too luxurious; it only required commercial airlines to provide things like food, water, functional restrooms and fresh air when a flight was pushed back and held on the tarmac for over three hours. But in today’s airline industry where a meal is a bag of three unsalted peanuts, it’s easy to get excited about the little things.

The Passenger Bill of Rights may seem to require the bare minimum of what airlines should provide to passengers in such situations, but the airlines, represented by the Air Transport Association of America, appealed the bill anyway, as reported by CNN. With today’s official ruling that “New York’s new state law interferes with federal law governing the price, route or service of an air carrier,” we can probably assume that other states aren’t going to get much farther.

Looks like we passengers still have a long way to go.

Pillow library, librarian offer dreamy experience

by Catherine Bodry on

I consider myself a sleep connoisseur. Though it’s super frustrating, I require a minimum of 9 hours of sleep per night, and I usually squeeze in 10 hours on the weekends. At one time I even owned 15 pairs of pajamas. It’s hard to imagine how much work I could get done if I only needed 7 or 8 hours, so I don’t. Instead, I embrace sleep as one of my favorite activities. That’s why I’d probably embrace Kimpton’s 70 Park Avenue Hotel’s new pillow service.

I suppose it’s not surprising that a hotel touting its Romance Sommelier and complimentary yoga baskets would have special pillows to sleep on — but 70 Park Avenue goes beyond lavender eye pillows. They’ve recently begun offering a pillow library with — you guessed it — a pillow librarian to help you choose the perfect pillow. Samples on offer include anti-snore pillows, body pillows, and “eye delight” acupressure pillows. Guests can email the pillow librarian ahead of time to let the librarian know about any sleep needs and to select the perfect pillow.

To “gently ease” you into sleep, the hotel also offers an oddly-named but blissful-sounding nightcap called Dreamerz “Chocolate S’nores,” described as an “all-natural, chocolate milk drink that helps you sleep.” I think the chocolate might give me an anti-sleep sugar buzz, but perhaps the tonic effects of my personally-selected pillow will cancel those out.

New guidebook series: Eyes Open

by Jeremy Kressmann on

I love the idea behind the new guidebook series Eyes Open by design company Ideo. Rather than busy themselves with the rote regurgitation of sights of interest, restaurants and hotels, Eyes Open seeks to help travelers shift their attention towards really looking and immersing themselves in their surroundings. The series recently launched with its first two entries, New York and London, with additional cities to follow in the near future.

I had a chance to peruse the New York edition recently and came away with some interesting first impressions. The book is organized by four themes – ‘observer,’ ‘diner,’ ‘shopper’ and ‘mingler.’ Each theme is meant to represent a different “lens” by which we can view our destination. Within each category is a series of short travel narratives on a variety of topics, focusing on everything from secret eating clubs to unique small businesses to hidden earthwork art installations. As I resident of New York who is fairly well-versed in the city’s hidden amusements, I found the entries both surprising and informative. At the same time, this approach is sure to leave gaps for some travelers. Ideo makes no apology for the fact their Eyes Open guides are not comprehensive. Visitors looking for the basic practicalities of where to stay and a basic overview of neighborhoods will probably come away disappointed.

Then again, there is something to be said for curated guides like Eyes Open. As each of us travels, too often we get caught up in “checking off a list” of the must-see sights and locations. Eyes Open is the type of travel aid that can help us take a step back and experience a place through an entirely new perspective. Sometimes that’s worth the extra 20 bucks. Think of it as nice supplement to a more traditional guidebook.

Salvation: Newark and JFK airport flights capped

by Grant Martin on

Looks like New Yorkers are starting to see some results from last year’s suffocating loads — and subsequent complaints — out of and the Newark and JFK. If you remember the piece published in the New Yorker late last year and several of the subsequent articles that ran here at Gadling, you may know that the three airports suffer from terrible congestion, resulting in late flights all over the country, hours on the tarmac and general misery for anyone traveling through the area.

Much of the problem lies in the sheer demand out of the three airports. Passengers want to fly out at optimal times so airlines pack flights into certain times of the day. But FAA and Air Traffic Control requirements stipulate that only a certain amount of flights can leave within a particular window.

Until recently, there were more flights than there were take off slots, which kind of creates a problem even before one even exists. Mix some crummy weather and mechanical problems in and you have what’s known as today the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Now, the maximum number of outgoing flights will be changed from 100/hour to 83/hour, which should ease some of the congestion woes. Extra flights that were during peak hours will be spread throughout the day, with the net result of extra flights overall during the day. Recall however, that even at 100 flights/hour supply was still extremely tight during peak times. If that goes down, will ticket prices go up? My guess is yes.

[Via CNN]