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[Travel] Travel to exotic places and get stuck in the airport.
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And a heads up for the more casual travelers. As of the 22nd of last month, the TSA will not accept driver's licenses from the following states as ID: Washington, Montana, Minnesota, Missouri and Maine. Technically this applies to all federal agencies. But this is the travel thread.
If you're looking for a neat place to visit in the South pacific, can definitely recommend!
It's still a French protectorate, so everything is in French, but it's close enough to Aus/NZ that most people speak English. Some are even able to converse in Japanese.
It was fairly left along up until WWII when it's location made the island a great place for planes to stop. It was quickly invaded/inhabited by the US/UK/French armies. The infrastructure within the capital city of Noumea was mostly built by the Americans. Especially the first airport and the numerous hospitals around the city. Mainly because this was a primary stopover for injured soldiers in the Pacific Theatre.
Primary industry is nickel, but there's a big push going right now to up their tourism industry.
We had the best time. And as two women traveling with an 11 month old, everybody was amazing. The people were super friendly and helpful, both the hospitality staff and just those locals that you'd see on the street.
We'll definitely be going back.
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But I will make a longer post another day.
Today I am here to say I just booked a flight to Vegas on Spirit and I'm hoping it won't be super terrible.
I guess there is a first time for everything.
Everyone else's prices for the first weekend of spring break were much higher
Sigh
Luckily it's a quick trip so I definitely don't need to bring bags or anything
I understand evaluating based on price but you wanna stop before you get to Spirit. I'm sure you already know they have the Ryanair model of "There is a fee for that" in a way that makes the other airlines seem generous. But the bigger issue with Spirit is that they often don't fly the same route multiple times a day. Or sometimes a week. And they don't have an interline agreement with anyone. So if you're flight is cancelled, then you're stuck. And they generally don't do vouchers.
Also, check in online with them. Because there is a $10 fee for printing your boarding pass. But hey, unlike Allegiant, you have pretty good odds of the plane landing with same number of parts it left with.
Is your flight more than 7 days out?
Yep end of March so easy cancel and refund.
You just sit in your seat and you get to your destination. No amenities, no nothing.
Because if Spirit has any disruption they tend not to get you there. If the flight is canceled you're dependent on when Spirit flies that route again. Which can be a couple of days. And given how much the ripple effect can play havoc with flights it's a gamble. Allegiant's issue is that they tend to buy planes that have been ridden in the ground and spend the least amount on maintenance possible. Their shit just scares me.
And there are other ultra low cost providers like Frontier who do a slight better job on both fronts or the merely low cost providers like Southwest or JetBlue which don't have either of the issues that Spirit or Allegiant has.
Also, my wife and I are going to Taiwan in a few days, should be fun!
Are you flying Eva Air? If so please advise if they're good or not.
Also, use Google Flights. I say this as a travel agent that hates booking airfare, and they don't even pay me.
Also also, use a Travel Agent for anything longer than 3 or 4 nights. You get to talk through it with an actual human, they can give you tips and info that google researching it yourself overlooks, and in the age of the Online Travel Agency, they're more willing to go the extra mile for your business. All of these things go triple fold for international travel.
And they're paid commission by the travel supplier for bringing them business, so it should be at the same cost as what you buy direct. Misconception is you pay extra for using an agent, and its just not the case. But being a commission based industry, dont be surprised if they try to upsell to higher priced products.
Oh, for the love of...
My team at work is heading on a trip for training next Monday, and this directly impacts us. I just sent an email to everyone about this - not looking forward to the responses.
Edit: Looks like the deadline is 1/22/18. Which is good for us, thankfully.
What do we absolutely have to do while we're there? We're generally quiet people, so we're more likely to enjoy museums than nightlife.
Munich? I'm going to go with beer. The city is famed for its breweries and beer halls.
I've heard mixed things about Eva in general. We're flying China Eastern because it was a few hundred cheaper. Their online/telephone customer service is pretty bad, but my wife flew with them last month and thought the onboard service was pretty good. The planes themselves are also very new, so they have things like outlets for every seat, which is nice.
I'm of the opinion that all airlines are basically the same with the exception of low cost carriers and a few which have premium amenities/service.
Okay, consume enough beer that, on the return flight, I'm categorized as a foodstuff. Anything else?
You go to the Olympic Park to people watch, the BMW museum should be renovated (when I went they just had a crappy little makeshift museum in Olympic Park that was a waste of 10 euros)
Hofbrauhaus is the main beer hall there that is actually a good tourist spot, their beer is the best (Dunkel 4 lyfe). There's also a church over to the right of the train station in a shop.tourist area that's kind of a big spot, I just remember it had stained glass of Ben Franklin and some USA stuff.
The only thing you gotta watch are dickheads harassing/grifting people right at the train station entrance, it's probably worse now in the past few years but they were trying to stare you down and talking shit in german and harassing women who were by themselves and such. It was the only place in Europe where it was a genuine annoyance, other places they were just on a street corner, never at a major place of business.
This got pushed to January 2018. I had a mini panic attack about it when I remembered I needed to check on it in December before flying home in mid-January.
Side note Minnesota and those other states are stupid for just completely ignoring that federal ID regulation for this long. The rule came out like 5 years ago.
We (Montana) didn't ignore it, but outright called Real ID gooseshit. Which, frankly, it is.
Be that as it may, states don't get to decide what laws they do and don't follow. Especially when it can royally screw your residents. I was kinda pissed when I moved and had to switch from a compliant ID to one that isn't and now probably will have to get a $150 passport that I shouldn't need.
A quick 20m train from Munich to Oberschleißheim in the suburbs will get you to about 5m walk from Deutsches Museum Flugwerft Schleissheim. A lovely little aviation museum, and a nice quiet area to stroll about. I really enjoyed it.
Salzburg in Austria is also doable as a day trip from Munich.
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Any other suggestions?
Not looking forward to the flight.
Even shortish flights wipe me out completely, something like this will destroy me for a week.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
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Central Grocery created the Muffuletta, which is a nice italian style sammich that is actually best eaten cold a day later. Just buy it and take it back to the hotel with you.
There's also Harrah's casino just to kill some time.
Can't stand gambling but the reprobates I'll be traveling with adore it, so looking for other stuff to do while they're blackjacking off in some neon hell.
I've used Eva Air three times when going through Taiwan to the Philippines. They're not anything amazing, but they work well enough. They're also consistently a few hundred bucks cheaper than anything else for getting from SF to Manila when we look, so *shrug*
Coming back from Taiwan to SF, we usually seem to have a delay (but usually due to airport, not airline).
The one thing that I will say was infuriating was that they start this pleasant music when you start your descent. One time when arriving in Taiwan, there was a HUGE back-up at the airport itself so we ended up sitting in the plane for close to an hour. The music never stops. It stops being soothing very rapidly. :P
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymphenburg_Palace
We didn't have enough time in the city to do a whole lot, and we plan on going back at some point.
To be honest the only airline I straight up trust without any doubt is KLM.
Oh hey I'm thinking of going here too!
I'll be taking the train from Vienna to Merano Italy in May (and back in early June) and am thinking about stopping here and/or Innsbruck for a night or two on the way. Any suggestions of cool stuff to do/see?
Actually, just thought about it, and we've actually only used them twice (although we also purchased through them when paying for my wife's family to come to the wedding. They didn't complain to me :P *shrug* ). Taiwan is one of the airports which does the "free tours outside of the airport" if you've got a long enough layover. We didn't get a chance to take it because for the one time our layover was long enough, they didn't realize that she had a green card and not just a Filipino passport - not every country is granted 1 day visas, but I believe that green card should be included with US citizens.
National WW2 Museum is there (used to just be a D-Day museum because of the Higgins boat). Its an excellent museum with lots of walkthrough exhibits. Plan to spend 4 to 6 hours though to get your money's worth.
There are a ton of great eatery's and bars and music spots that are outside of the French quarter, which every time I've gone I have not been impressed with unless i was 3 hand grenades in. Uber service is pretty excellent, as are the AirBnB options. Just make sure to google the neighborhood that the property is in, because there are still some super rough sections of town. That being said I traveled with two females and never had a single instance of feeling unsafe.
I agree with this. The WW2 Museum was pretty good. New Orleans is famous for so many different foods, and we tried a lot of them. One thing I regret is that we didn't catch a live concert while there. There's a ton of good music, even if you just wander around.
I went to NO for work a year ago and got to walk around a bit, and it was super depressing, poor, and dirty. Every street was just plain grimy. Also went to they beignets place at my wife's urging, and they were very mediocre. Alcoholic slushys sold in middle of the day every 30ft in French quarter. Tons of buildings still ruined from Katrina out of it.
Where are you headed in Costa Rica? I've been there twice, but both trips were pre-2000, so I'm way out of date on when to book activities. Can make some recs potentially though for activities or places to see depending on what area you're in.