Travel Tuesdays: the big expenses
Last week I thought I had found an acceptably affordable one-way ticket to London, but this week, when I went to book it, it was gone. After two hours of concerted searching on Booking Buddy, I turned up an acceptable alternative for just $34 more than the first. Having learned my lesson about not letting these things get away, I jumped on it. I was exceedingly pleased with myself as I claimed my free one-way ticket for the flight home using frequent flyer miles — then somewhat less pleased to discover that “free” does not include $118 in taxes and fees.
Whoops!
Mind you, I’m not complaining. I’m still saving about $250 over any round-trip ticket I’ve seen for the dates I need to travel. Nonetheless, the moral is that it’s best to estimate high when you’re deciding how much you can spend, then look for bargains so you come in under budget.
Airfare will always be one of your top two expenses. Lodging is the other. Don’t stint on cleanliness or safety, of course, but be willing to be adventurous to cut costs here — do you really need to drop $200 or more a night on someplace where you’ll mostly be unconscious and thus unable to enjoy it? Probably not.
While I’m in York, I’ll be staying in a largish house on the University of York campus with several other volunteers. We’ll share a kitchen and bathrooms, but we’ll each have a private bedroom. When I leave there, though, I’m heading to London for three days, and I don’t yet know where I’ll lay my head. Time for more research!
In the past, I’ve stayed in a small hotel near Victoria Station, an historic (built 1851) house which offers a special rate on single rooms tucked up under the eaves. These rooms are tiny, with slanted ceilings, dormer windows, twin beds, and shared bathrooms; they’re also a little shabby and can only be reached by climbing four flights of stairs. They were probably the servants’ quarters when the building was a private home. I find them charming — not least because they’re also ridiculously cheap: if you book online, you get an Internet-only special of about $65 a night at current exchange rates, and paying in full in advance knocks off an additional 10%, bringing the per-night cost down to $58.50. In a city as expensive as London, that’s a bargain indeed.
However, I’ll be at the tail end of my trip, and if past experience is any predictor, I’ll be starting to worry about money, so I want to bring my costs down still further. That’s why I’m planning to book a bed in a hostel. I haven’t shared a bedroom since college, but I’ve found a couple of hostels with small dorms and no reputation for party atmosphere, and I plan to invest in good eyeshades and earplugs. This will let me whittle the cost of my lodging for three nights in London down to $30/night — thus almost balancing out the aforementioned taxes and fees from my “free” ticket. As a bonus, the places I’m considering are near both King’s Cross Station, where my train from York arrives, and a tube station on the Piccadilly line, which will take me directly to Heathrow airport when it’s time for me to leave. Location, location, location.
At this point I refer you to this excellent, detailed post by Audi of Fashion for Nerds about saving money on flights and beds. In future posts, I’ll share some further thoughts on the topic, as well as advice on the smaller expenses, like food, entry fees for attractions, and getting around once you’ve reached your destination.
Questions? Experiences? Thoughts?
Filed under Uncategorized, progress | Comments (2)Now on offer
You may have noticed this blog looks a little different lately. There’s an extra something in the right-hand column, something with several photos on it. It’s a widget which, if you click on it, will take you to my new shop on Zazzle.
This is a big step for me. It’s all part of my effort to put my photography out into the world, and I’m nervous and excited about it. At first, I hesitated, because I thought, “What if no one wants to buy?” But half a dozen different people have asked me in the last month where they can buy cards with my work, so maybe someone will! At the very least, I can get some for my own use, right?
I’m gradually stocking the store with greeting cards (5″x7″), folded notecards (4″x5.6″), and postcards (you know, postcard-sized) featuring my best photographs. All the cards are blank so you can write whatever the heck you like to your favorite correspondents. You can also frame the cards, but if you want an actual print, you can contact me through Zazzle or right here on this blog and request one in any size up to 16″x20″.
Filed under Uncategorized, triumphs | Comments (4)Travel Tuesdays: one-way frequent flyer tickets
American, Delta, and United now let frequent flyers book one-way tickets for half the number of miles necessary to book a round trip ticket. But be careful! If you book a one-way award, you’re not getting 50% off a round trip ticket. You’re getting a free trip in one direction. Going the other way is on your dime, and if you’re not careful, that one-way trip may end up costing you as much as a round-trip ticket would have. Do a little shopping before you book both legs on the same airline. It might be cheaper — a lot cheaper — to fly the paid half of your journey on another carrier.
Case in point: I have 30,000 miles on American, enough to cover a one-way trip between the continental US and Europe, which I plan to use for my trip to England later this year. I can’t use the miles on the outbound leg of my trip — there’s no available awards seating for a solid week on either side of the date I need to arrive. By default, therefore, I’m going to be cashing in my miles for my return trip (which is fine; I have a lot more flexibility on dates coming home). But how am I going to get to England in the first place?
I know I can fly into either London Heathrow (LHR) or Manchester (MAN). Both are about two hours from York by train, and if I take a redeye over Saturday night and arrive early Sunday morning, that makes it more than feasible to show up at my lodgings in York in time for my afternoon check-in and orientation. (Alternatively, I could fly in on Saturday, but that would involve the expense and hassle of finding a room for Saturday and then moving lodgings the next day.)
I first checked American’s own fares. A one-way ticket to either LHR or MAN would cost me almost $1000, thus wiping out everything I saved by redeeming miles. Looks like I’ll be taking another airline home.
Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, and Kayak.com all told me I couldn’t get there from here for less than $1000 — but thanks to Airfare Watchdog, I know I can do better. Time to start digging. I went to Booking Buddy, which searches multiple sites at once and lets you compare the results, apples to apples. Here’s the applesauce that emerged, listed by cost:
A site called Cheap Fare Guru said it could get me to LHR on United or Continental for $871.
CheapAir.com: $859 to LHR on United
Webjet: $787 to MAN on bmi
Priceline: $786 to MAN
CheapoAir: $757 to LHR on “major airline” or $803 to MAN on bmi
TripAdvisor: $747 to LHR on United
And then a site I’d never heard of before, OneTravel, popped up with a quote of $633 to MAN on bmi, taxes and fees included. Now we’re talking!
I’m going to do another search later this week to see if I can whittle it down further, but I think I may have found a winner. Stay tuned.
Filed under Uncategorized, progress | Comment (0)Still not perfect.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. – Voltaire
~~~
Well, hello there. I haven’t made a blog post in far too long, and I have no excuse.
Actually, that’s not true. I do have an excuse. I was procrastinating. And for the strangest of reasons: I was putting off writing a blog post because I really, really wanted to do it.
I’ve spent some time trying to figure out what that’s about — and to my surprise, it turns out to be connected with, yes, fear. I wasn’t too darn busy to get to it. I wasn’t enjoying the pleasure of delayed but inevitable gratification, the way I think happily in the morning about the delicious meal I plan to make that night. I wasn’t using making a blog post as a reward for completing a less enjoyable task. I wasn’t even grasping for ideas; I have half a dozen ideas stacked up and circling like airplanes over O’Hare in bad weather! I was just worried that I’d sit down and write something heartfelt, put it online, and realize nobody was interested.
In other words, I had an attack of perfectionism.
I think a little bit of perfectionism lurks in the heart of all of us. After all, who doesn’t want — even a tiny bit — to be instantly and effortlessly good at everything, and to universal acclaim? But sometimes that desire goes malignant and grows wild. When that happens, it can turn into the compulsive striving and monomaniacal focus of the stereotypical control freak. But it can also do just the opposite and flip into a vicious cycle of “why try?”
Here’s how it works:
I worry about being judged and found inadequate.
so
I think the only alternative to being inadequate is being perfect.
but
I know I can’t be perfect, even at the things I’m very good at indeed.
because
No one is perfect. Even Nobel laureates, Olympic medalists, and great diplomats have failures.
yet
I don’t find that comforting
because
I feel Nobel laureates et al have earned the right to flop sometimes, but I haven’t.
so
I procrastinate, because doing nothing seems safer than exposing myself to criticism for doing something imperfect.
Avoiding doing things because I can’t do them flawlessly is like a baby thinking, “If I can’t skip the awkward toddling bit and go straight to a graceful run, why should I bother trying to stand up at all?”
There’s only one medicine for the “why try?” disease: deliberately choosing to do something in a half-assed way, or at least what I think is half-assed, and see what happens. To my surprise, what I think is “nowhere near good enough” looks just fine to other people. The draft I pounded out in an hour rather than revising every sentence three times? It didn’t come back for revisions. The photos I shot on the fly, snapping five times as many as I ordinarily would have? I nailed a handful of shots I probably would have missed otherwise. The awkward conversation I didn’t allow myself to rehearse in my head for three days straight? I didn’t have to be as eloquent as I thought I did.
And that’s why I’m going to post this right now and not allow myself to go back and tweak it later.
Filed under Uncategorized, fears, progress, quotes | Comments (2)Interests and values
A blogger I read regularly makes fairly frequent posts about how what matters in relationships are shared values, not shared interests. Recently, she revisited the topic yet again, and as I read the comments, I arrived at a jaw-dropping realization:
A surprising number of people don’t know the difference between interests and values.
Actually, that shouldn’t surprise me all that much. Look at any dating website. Read a few profiles and notice what people emphasize. They talk about how they love hiking and biking and want to meet someone outdoorsy. They brag about their advanced degrees and say they’re looking for someone who makes a six-figure income. They discuss their swank lifestyle and specify that they want to fall in love with someone tall, slender, and well-dressed. They say they’re looking forward to meeting someone for marriage and kids. Those things are interests.
It’s possible to reframe interests as values, if you dig into them. The people in my examples could say “I value a healthy, active lifestyle,” or “I value security, which I believe a good education and income provide,” or “I value my image, which the right person will burnish,” or “I value family life.” Those things are values. You and I may not share all of them, but they’re values nonetheless.
Interests are what people do. Values are who people are.
Some things are both interests and values. I am not interested in parenting and do not date men with young children; I value a childfree lifestyle. I am interested in good food and good drink, though not to excess; I value reasonable amounts of sensual pleasure. I don’t care what people do for a living as long as they pay their bills; I value being self-supporting and responsible. I’m interested in doing my job well and being paid fairly for it; I value treating my skills and talents with respect. You get the idea.
I know someone who had an affair with a married man. She kept telling me they had so much in common. They were both into baseball, Shakespeare, and punk rock. They both wanted to live in Italy some day and loved going out to eat. Neither of them was especially close to their families. How could two people so compatible not be destined to be together? Except that what she valued was True Love Forever, and what he valued was Getting A Little Sumpin’-Sumpin’ When The Wife’s Away. Bzzt. Irreconcilable difference there.
After a lot of soul-searching, she realized that. She also realized that she didn’t seem to value True Love as much as she thought she did. What her actions said she valued was Sitting Around Waiting For A Lying Cheater To Be Honest And Devoted. (As she said later, after coming to her senses: “Thanks for being such great role models, Mom and Dad.”)
I’m not sure how the definition of “values” got so blurred, but somehow, it has. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not judging, because lordy, have I ever been there. I wrestle all the time with the difference between what I believe my priorities are and what my actions indicate they actually are. I say I value being good to myself, but then I deprive myself of things that would give me pleasure. I try to justify it by saying I value being sensible with my money, but then why do I waste money on things I don’t really enjoy? I claim I value honesty, but my reluctance to speak up when it’s called for suggests I actually value not making waves. I say I value putting my own needs first, but when someone accuses me of being selfish, I default to valuing Not Giving Anyone A Reason To Dislike Me.
So my primary value these days is being clear about my values (and then sticking to them, come what may). And anyone who tempts me to violate them is someone I need not to let too far into my life — no matter how many interests we might have in common.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (3)