American Things I Can't Live Without

I've been back in the UK for almost seven years now. It's home. But there are certain creature comforts from the US that I still can't live without. Just those little, inconsequential things that make me happy and that I haven't been able to find a suitable substitute for here in Blighty.

In the past, I would wait until work or personal travel took me back to the US and I would return with entire suitcases full of Americana to try and appease my wretched withdrawal symptoms. But slowly, over the years, I've been able to find black market (ok not really) sources for my stateside dependencies. So now I present to you the things from America that I can't live without.

Skippy Peanut Butter 

skippySuperChunk

This stuff, this stuff right here. If you think you've experienced peanut butter, you're wrong. The perfect blend of sweet and salty, ultra-thick, and loaded with peanuts. Which reminds me, be sure to get the SuperChunk version and not the smooth or anything else unless you're some sort of infant. You're not an infant, are you? You can get this on Amazon and I've seen it in Tesco too.

ZipLoc Bags

ZipLoc BagsAsk any American expat what they stock up on when back in the US, they will all, without hesitation, say ZipLoc bags. Despite a storied heritage of engineering excellence, the British cannot manufacture a plastic bag any more useful than a wet paper bag. Thank God then for SC Johnson (a family company) and their wonderful, reliable, irreplaceable ZipLoc bag. It's getting to the point now where I have an entire suitcase dedicated to boxes of these bad boys. No kitchen should be without them. The only place I've seen these for sale is Amazon.

Diet Dr Pepper

Diet Dr Pepper

"But Alex," I hear you cry "we have this in the UK, it's called Dr Pepper Zero!" No. No, what YOU have is the "Evan Almighty" of diet sodas, a D-list impostor that tries way too hard to be like the original but just ends up making you so angry you could punch a kitten. Dr Pepper Zero...how dare you. No, what I'm introducing you to today is the only soda that comes close to Diet Coke. Not too sweet like its pre-diabetic cousin Dr Pepper Zero, and with enough distance from the original Dr Pepper flavour to actually add something to the conversation, Diet Dr Pepper is so damn good that I've had the gall to ask friends visiting the US to pick me up a bottle in the airport departure lounge. Yes,  it's that good. You can get this on Amazon or any American food shop.

Glad Bags

Glad Kitchen Bags

Glad Bags...Glad Rags! Ha! I just figured that out as I was typing the title. *sigh* Solid gold. Anyway, few things make me vomit with rage quite like an over-filled bin-liner catastrophically evacuating its contents all over my beslippered feet at 6:15 on a Sunday morning. And I think my rage is justified. I mean seriously, how hard is it to make a bin liner with a shred of structural integrity? Pretty hard, I guess. And so began my quest to find the best and most robust bin-liner ever created by man. Shortcut, I went to TheSweetHome and found out that it's the Glad Tall Kitchen drawstring bag and I bought 500 of them at Target over the summer. Why are they so good? Doesn't matter....they're bin liners, who cares. But this reviewer sums it up best “I could probably fend off a home invasion by deflecting the blows of the enemy’s weapon with the incredible strength these vessels possess.” These are pretty hard to find over here but there are a few version on Amazon.

Arizona Original Green Tea With Honey

Arizona Original Green Tea With Honey

I have my friend Greg to thank for this one. I've never been a huge fan of iced tea in the past but during my recent "healthy" phase I'd been looking for alternatives to soda. Greg suggested Arizona Iced Tea, in particular the Green Tea version. He had no idea the monster he would end up creating with that suggestion. For this is the sweetest of nectars. It has a tiny bit of sugar in it but the real sweetness comes from honey which balances the slightly bitter green tea absolutely perfectly. The stuff is so, so good. Now I've had this in just about every form it takes; 500ml glass bottles (as pictured above), regular soda size cans, giant 23oz cans (that's over a pint), even powdered. Definitely go with the glass bottles; they're just the right size (the 23oz ones are impossible to finish), they don't have any of the artificial sweeteners that some of the US sizes do, and everyone knows beverages taste best when stored in glass. You can get this on Amazon but I've also seen it at delis and cafes in London.

Bisquick

Bisquick

Let me clear one thing up before I even start; I can make pretty damn good American-style pancakes from scratch. But at 6:45 on a Sunday morning when the kids have asked me to make them pancakes for 600th time, Bisquick is a godsend. Toss 2 eggs and a cup of milk into a measuring jug along with 2 cups of this stuff, jam the immersion blender in there for a while and intermittently huck dollops of it onto a hot pan, and 2 minutes later you have enough pancakes to silence even the whiniest of toddlers. And they taste pretty good! Good enough for me to ignore the "real pancakes, real good" tagline on the front of the box. Grab some boxes on Amazon as I haven't seen it anywhere else.

How to upgrade on Virgin Atlantic

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After my last post ("How I booked a £3000+ flight for £1427") I got a lot of people asking me about upgrades and miles on Virgin Atlantic so I thought I'd post a little How To on using miles for upgrades on Virgin Atlantic.

The first thing to know is that only certain types of tickets can be upgraded. It's not as simple as Economy, Premium Economy and Upper. Each cabin has multiple fares and each of those fares have their own uses and restrictions. Currently on Virgin Atlantic there are 13 economy class fares. Yes, 13.

If you've already booked your flight....

If you've booked your flight already, we need to see if the ticket you have is upgradeable with miles. (If you haven't booked yet, skip to this part.) The general rule is if you got a super cheap fare, it ain't gonna be upgradeable.  But the first step is figuring out what fare class you're booked in. The easiest way is to look at the e-ticket that Virgin Atlantic emails you right after you book. In that email, you can find your fare class:

Virgin Atlantic Fare Class

Ok so how can you tell if your fare is upgradeable? The folks over at V-Flyer have a really handy page that details all the Virgin Atlantic fare codes but for the sake of ease, the following fare codes are upgradeable with miles: Y, B, R, L, & M. So that means the following fare codes are NOT upgradeable with miles: U, E, Q, V, X, N, O, & T.

So you've found your booking class and it's upgradeable. Sweet! Now what? Well now we have to check if there are mileage seats available for you to upgrade into. In other words, are there seats in Premium Economy or Upper Class that have been released or allocated for upgrades. Fortunately, you can check this pretty easily on Virgin Atlantic's website. Just search for a flight as you normally would BUT specify the class you want to upgrade TO, and make sure you select "Spend your miles" in the final section:

Check Virgin Upgrade Availability

When you click "find my flight" you'll be prompted to login to your Flying Club account so make sure you do that. On the next page one of three things will happen:

- you'll get a message saying there is no availability anywhere near your requested date. If you get this message, don't despair. Keep checking back right up until the day before you're due to leave as they often release seats closer to departure. - you'll get a calendar of alternative dates because the specific date you requested is not available for upgrades. Poke around and see what you can find. - you'll get all the info you need to book a flight with miles, which means there is availability to upgrade. Score! N.B. Don't continue the process from here! We're not booking a flight, just checking the availability.

So if you land on the magical third option you need to act fast. Call Virgin Atlantic's reservation number (UK 0844 209 7777  / US +1 800 862 8621) armed with your confirmation code. Tell the friendly reservation agent that you want to upgrade and that you've already checked for availability. They'll be able to take you through the process of upgrading. N.B. You will need to pay the difference in taxes between your original fare and your new plush and fancy fare. But don't worry, it's never a huge amount and absolutely worth it.

If you haven't booked your flight yet...

If you haven't yet booked your flight you're in a good position because you can search for upgradeable fares before you book. Virgin Atlantic quietly rolled out a feature on their site that allows you to search by specific fare bucket which is EXTREMELY useful. If you go to the Companion Flight page you'll see a booking widget towards the end of the page:

Virgin Atlantic Companion FlightsUsing this widget, you can search for specific fare classes and they've already done the heavy lifting by only including fares that are eligible for upgrade. So go ahead and search for the flights you want, starting with M class and working your way up until you find a seat. Remember, as you go up from M all the way to Y, it will get more and more expensive.

Once you find a flight you're happy with in fare class that's upgradeable, WAIT! Go back and check that there are seats for you to upgrade into using the method I describe earlier in the article. If there are seats available then get on the phone to Virgin quickly and seal that upgrade!

This is the process I've gone through to secure a ton of mileage upgrades. Got questions? Let me know either via twitter (@cubedweller) or in the comments below.

How I booked a £3000+ flight for £1427

Last week I started planning our annual summer pilgrimage to California. This year we have to factor in school holidays for the first time as my eldest son is now in nursery school. So I started to have a play around with some dates on Virgin Atlantic's website...and quickly realised, this wasn't going to be cheap.

We're a family of four now and because Luke is 3 he has to have his own seat, and while he doesn't pay the full adult fare, it's pretty close (about 75% of an adult fare). Playing around with the dates, the cheapest I could find for anywhere in the July/August timeframe was £3024.10

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Ouch. I don't care who you are, that's a lot of money. And that was with us going for over a month, on the cheapest possible dates, which meant pulling Luke out of school early. If we'd left a day earlier it would have been nearly £3700, that's how tight everything was looking.

So I activated "travel nerd mode" and started to poke around. Was LAX cheaper? Nope almost exactly the same, even with 2 flights a day. Even if Deanne and Jack went early and Luke and I came when he finished school, we were still only saving about £100. After a few hours of checking alternate cities, alternate dates, and other city combinations, I was beginning to think we might have to postpone our trip.

But not one to admit defeat, I started to explore alternatives.

Now I've never been a big believer in using miles for flights - they're usually much more effective for upgrades. But I figured this might be the rare case where I can use them to pay for a flight. After a few minutes, that idea was torpedoed too. There wasn't a mileage seat to San Francisco until October! LA was no better. Dammit.

The remaining ace I had up my sleeve was my companion ticket. For re-qualifying at Virgin Atlantic's Gold level status, you get a free companion ticket. It ain't as grand as it sounds, the restrictions on fare class and availability make it pretty hard to use. I figured at this point I should give the (usually excellent) Virgin Atlantic customer service card a call. I explained my predicament and I could immediately tell the lady on the other end was up for a challenge - we dove straight in...

As I thought, there was no availability for companion seats to SFO or LAX so that was a bust. But, she said, what about Las Vegas? The Bay Area is a piece of cake to get to from Vegas and it would be a fun place to decompress and get over jetlag for a few days. A quick look at the cash fare revealed the same depressing fare though, around three grand for the four of us.

But then we started look at companion tickets. Ah ha! Availability! I'd need to buy a slightly more expensive ticket (an M class ticket for those keeping score) but  that might  be ok if the taxes and fees on the companion ticket weren't too awful. Here's how it was shaping up:

- £1162 for my M Class fare - £213 in taxes and fees for the companion ticket (Deanne) - £150 for Jack's infant ticket - £863 for Luke's child ticket = £2388

Ok, progress! Over £600 off the total airfare cost. But, as my learned friend on the other end of the phone pointed out, I had a stash of miles in my account. Should she run the numbers on a miles seat for Luke instead of cash? Sure, why not! So now we get to:

- £1162 for my M Class fare - £213 in taxes and fees for the companion ticket (Deanne) - £213 in taxes and fees for Luke's miles seat - £150 for Jack's infant seat = £1738

Boom. Now we're down over £1300 off the cash price. Just as I was about to hand over my credit card details, the voice on the end of the phone (after we'd been talking for over an hour) said "Hmmm...hold on....let me try something....what if the two adults are on mileage seats? You have enough miles if you transfer them over from your wife's account." By God, she'd done it:

- £213 in taxes and fees for my mileage seat - £213 in taxes and fees for Deanne's mileage seat - £863 for Luke's child ticket - £138 for Jack's infant seat = £1427

£1427. Down from a cash price of £3024. A saving of £1597. Same flight, same airplane, same service. And the best part is I still have a companion ticket left to use later in the year. Now because I used miles, I won't earn miles for this flight, or tier points towards re-upping my Gold card. But given the savings and the circumstances, I think it was well worth it.

The lady at Virgin had to jump through all kinds of technical hoops to get the reservation system to allow this ticket to be issued because of the child/infant dependencies, the miles coming from multiple accounts, etc. It was quite an extraordinary display of dedication and exemplified why I continue to fly Virgin Atlantic.

A few things are worth pointing out:

- redeeming miles on popular routes during quiet times is hard enough, and during peak season it's nearly impossible. So... - look around for alternate cities, alternate routes (into your intended destination, out of an alternate city or vice versa), alternate dates. - redeeming miles when the fare is already pretty reasonable is stupid. Pay the cash, earn the miles and tier points. Don't piss your miles away unless there are substantial cash savings. - further to that, in many cases it's worth paying a little MORE for your economy ticket so you're in an upgradeable fare class (that ultra-cheap fare you found won't be upgradeable.) I'll write a post about how to do that soon. - it pays to call the reservation line sometimes as they can see mileage and companion/reward seat availability better than you can.

My year in cities 2013

As I stepped off my final flight of the year, I have no problem admitting I was a little emotional. Not because the year's travel was coming to an end but because I was reminded that just a few years ago I was so scared of flying that the very idea of getting on a plane was enough to make me feel nauseous. Overcoming my fear of flying remains one of my biggest personal achievements. I'm proud of myself, quite frankly.

Revolution in Kiev

A few days ago I had the opportunity to witness a revolution. Despite assuring my wife that I wouldn't be anywhere near the protests in Kiev, on Wednesday night I found myself in the heart of Independence square, the epicentre of the Ukraine's latest political struggle.

An ode to London City Airport

At this point, the pilot gets the plane in the "dirtiest" configuration possible, i.e. the airplane is fully configured for landing at the slowest possible speed; flaps fully extended, speed brakes deployed, gear down. By now, the plane is on dat glideslope and dropping agressively. The speed brakes disrupt the lift over the wing creating turbulent air and the aircraft begins to shake, as though it's really struggling to stay in the air.

11 things I learned in New England

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  1. There are not enough Dunkin' Donuts in New England. Wait, I mistyped that. There are more Dunkin' Donuts than people in New England.
  2. Almost every single New Englander I met was outgoing, friendly, confident, and chatty. Even the surly ones were hugely entertaining. e.g. When I enquired as to how a supermarket worker's day was going, she replied "It's Saturday, I'm stuck inside, it's busy as hell...so pretty lousy. But the Sox clinched last night so I can't complain. That'll be 23 bucks, hun."
  3. A lot of people still smoke there. California and London have skewed my sense of "normal" on this one.
  4. It's one of the most beautiful parts of America I've ever seen. Water everywhere, tree-lined boulevards, quaint towns, pristine beaches.
  5. Hot sauce is quite hard to come by. My brother's explanation is that while west coast food has heavy latin american influence, east coast food is mainly influenced by European cuisine and therefore not as hot-sauceable. (It is so a word, shut up.)
  6. You haven't had clam chowder until you've had it in New England.
  7. Boston Logan International takes the crown for the worst airport in the developed world. Try parking there, I dare you.
  8. Tom Brady is 16ft tall and once threw over 400 touchdown passes in a single season.
  9. Clam bakes are delicious, entertaining, and scaleable. Everything good food should be.
  10. I could listen to a Boston accent forever.
  11. "Wicked pisser" means really great. And a "shit buddy" is a great friend. Not a shit friend. Counter-intuitive, I know.

The shittiness of the Saturday-night stay rule

A few weeks ago I posted on Twitter about the shittiness of the Saturday-night stay rule that airlines use to fleece business travellers. If you're not familiar with the rule, many airlines require passengers to spend a Saturday night in their destination city to get a half-decent fare. Wikipedia explains it further:

The rule is based on the airlines' assumption that business travellers are more likely than leisure travellers to spend Saturday night at home. For example, a business traveler may depart on a Sunday or Monday and then return home that Friday or Saturday.

Business travellers' demand for travel is less elastic and airlines attempt to increase their profits by price discriminating business travellers and leisure travellers. Business travels are also more loyal to a particular airline, and therefore are more likely to accept higher price.

Today, I came across a perfect example:

London to New York, roundtrip.

Leave on Wednesday, fly back at 10:25pm on Saturday night = £1521.45

Leave on Wednesday, fly back at 7:20am on Sunday morning = £480.45

Less than 9 hours difference in departure time but a cost increase of over £1000.

Dick move, right? The rule assumes that all businesses are big businesses and have huge travel budgets. What about the hundreds of thousands of small businesses that DON'T have big travel budgets. Or the leisure traveler who gets caught up in a rule that is purposely designed to screw the consumer?

Oh and here's the hilarious "WTF?" cherry on this horse poo cake. The base fare on the Sunday flight is only £124. The rest is taxes and fees. And yes, the taxes and fees are exactly the same on the Saturday flight. So the airline jacked up the base fare by 850%. So there you have it, a £1000 "convenience" fee for business travellers to make it home in time to spend the weekend with their families.

Saturday-night Stay Rule

My Year in Cities 2012

2012 was another busy travel year for me with work, speaking and personal travel taking me on 41 flights covering around 100,000 miles. If that seems uncharacteristically vague it's because OpenFlights and TripIt can't seem to agree on the miles I covered. OpenFlights says 95,164 miles and TripIt says 112,203 miles. Either way, I've been lucky enough to travel a lot this year and re-qualified for Virgin Atlantic Gold Status for the 5th year in a row. I didn't think that 2012 would be a busy travel year but, once again, I was proven wrong.

I visited 2 new cities, Tallinn and Beirut, both of which were incredible. And it's taken me way too long but I finally flew on the A380 for the first time - it's like being on a cruise ship only it's not completely awful. I racked up first flights on an ATR-72 and a Dash-8, the latter of which was particularly impressive.   I also flew on 3 new airlines, Finnair, LOT Polish Airlines and Turkish Airlines, all three of whom were excellent, particularly Turkish Airlines who recently won Best European Airline for the 2nd year in a row. A last minute trip to New York allowed me to experience Virgin Atlantic's new A330s and new Upper Class cabin, both of which were a vast improvement on their predecessors.

As always, here's a list of the cities I've been fortunate enough to visit in 2012 along with some stats that OpenFlights generates.

- San Francisco x 5 - Long Beach - New York x 3 - Paris - Helsinki - Tallinn - Uzès x 2 - Geneva x 2 - Reims x 2 - Vilnius - Seattle - Newcastle - Poznan - Singapore - Shanghai - Beirut

Average Distance: 2321mi Average Time: 5h16m Longest: LHR<->SIN, 6758mi, 14h00m Shortest: TLL<->HEL, 62mi, 00h37m

Airlines: Virgin Atlantic - 12 flights Finnair - 4 flights Lufthansa - 4 flights LOT - 4 flights Turkish Airlines - 4 flights Virgin America - 4 flights jetBlue - 3 flights Flybe - 2 flights Singapore Airlines - 2 flights

My year in cities 2011

I'm able to write this post a little earlier than usual as my trip to Istanbul was my last trip of 2011. This is the fourth year I've done this summary but I used a new tool to come up with the miles. In the past I've used the awesome Great Circle Mapper but this year I stumbled across OpenFlights which is a bit more weapon's grade. It spits out neat analysis of all the flights you enter, some of which I've listed below. So for 2011 I did 29 flights covering 80,732 miles, down substantially from last year's 103, 828 miles on 36 flights. But still a heck of a lot of travel. I made a conscious effort to travel less this year so I could spend more time with my wife and son and it seems to have worked.

Why you can't use your iPad on takeoff

The FAA has drawn a lot of ire for steadfastly refusing to relax the ban on all electronic devices during takeoff and landing, a ban which, as Joe points out, seems hypocritical when pilots use iPads on the flight deck as Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs.) As a recovering airline employee and airplane nerd, I have a couple of ideas on why this weird rule remains in effect.

Top 10 tips for easy travel

During a recent workshop I gave at FOWA Miami, I made an off the cuff comment about my obsession with the travel industry and the pleasure I get from "hacking" airfares and hotel rates. There was a stunned silence and a voice from the back said "Oh dude, you can't just say something like that and not share that shit!" Consequently we spent a good chunk of time after the workshop officially finished talking about travel, airfares, loyalty programs and the tactics I've used to get cheap flights and hotels. At the request of some of the attendees I started jotting down a few nuggets of experience. After I finished the 4th page of scrawled notes, it seemed to make sense to turn it into a series of blog posts because so much of the travel "advice" I've read over the years was clearly written by people who have never left their house, let alone the country. And that's how I arrived at this, the first of what I hope will be many travel related posts. I plan to cover the basics, "hacking" airfares, airline and hotel loyalty programs, and the fear of flying, amongst other things. I hope you dig! So without further ado, here's some basic travel tips that so many of us seem to overlook.

  • Don't buy flashy/expensive luggage. It's a good tip to thieves that the contents will also be flashy/expensive. Your criteria should be; durable, expandable, wheelable. That's it.
  • You can leave the kitchen sink. When you're packing, get everything together you think you need, lay it out on your bed……now put half of it back. You don't need it, you really don't, and there's nothing worse than having to lug around a heavy bag that's full of crap you're not going to wear or use. You can easily pick up extra clothes and necessities if you need them, hand-wash small items, or run them through the hotel laundry. Incidentally, my ebook reader was one of the best travel investments I've ever made - I have a library of books with me without the need for chiropractic spinal care when I get home from lugging my holiday reading around.
  • Hoard travel-size toiletries. I have a whole basket of them at home and I always stock up at Boots, Target, etc…..or in hotel rooms. This makes packing for a quick trip so much easier and you don't have to deal with buying full size toothpaste, shaving cream, etc at each destination or packing them in your checked-in luggage.
  • Prep for security. I know this sounds obvious but prep for airport security BEFORE you get to the conveyor belt. So many times people with a jacket, laptop, liquids, 2 pieces of carry on, a scarf, thigh- high boots, a hat and a water bottle screw it up for the rest of us by spending 15 minutes disrobing while the conveyor belt drags their bag away from them, flustering them even more. Loosen/remove your belt, take your jacket off, untie your shoe laces (or even better, wear slip ons), unzip the pouch on your bag where your laptop is stored, put your sunglasses, wallet, keys, phone etc in your carry on while you're in line - the people in line behind you will thank you.
  • Don't go nuts with the booze on a flight. Not only do the physiological effects of alcohol increase at altitude but it dehydrates you, can make jetlag worse, and you really don't want to be "that guy" on the flight. This especially goes for those who aren't comfortable with flying - more on that in a later post.
  • Ease through immigration. If you travel even moderately frequently, the government sanctioned immigration, customs, and security "fast pass" programs can be a huge timesaver. The UK's IRIS system is one of the best.
  • Tip the right people at the right time. Tip hotel housekeeping staff a lot at the BEGINNING of your stay, like on the first day. They work hard and it will ensure a pleasant stay. It irks me that we tip people for opening doors, showing us to our table, bringing us a soda but not for cleaning up our hotel bathrooms and beds each day. I'm completely with Chuck Thompson on this one. Oh and to my British friends traveling in America, the easiest way to (roughly) calculate the baseline tip on a restaurant bill is to double the tax - that usually gives you between 15-20%.
  • Buy the local transport system's commuter card. If you're in a city for more than a day, pick up their transport system's stored value card (like London's Oyster and Hong Kong's Octopus) and put a few bucks on it. Not only is it much easier than buying a ticket for each journey, in many cases (e.g. London) it's substantially cheaper than a normal ticket and will allow you to travel on undergrounds, buses, trains, trams, etc. Also, the lines for ticket machines at busy stations can be unbelievably long, especially during tourist seasons.
  • Don't eat in hotel restaurants. They are expensive and almost always uninteresting and sterile. Unless your hotel is in the middle of nowhere, there's going to be interesting local food just around the corner which will almost always be cheaper, tastier and a far better reflection of local culture and cuisine. Don't be afraid of "street" food either, I've had some of my favourite meals from hawkers, dai pai dongs, taco trucks, etc.
  • Let your bank know you're going to be out of town. If your bank is anywhere near as "proactive" as mine, as soon as you use your ATM or credit card overseas you'll trigger red flags in their system. Enough "suspicious" activity and they'll disable or even deactivate your card. There's not a whole lot worse than your ATM card not working when you're 4500 miles from home.
  • Bonus Tip for people visiting the US. GET TRAVEL INSURANCE. If you go to the US and get hit by a car or something (heaven forbid) and you don't have insurance, be prepared for a logistical, legal, and financial nightmare. So get travel insurance, it's not expensive and can save you from disaster. Check with your bank or credit card provider as many of them have insurance services built into their account/card products.
  • Bonus tip for people visiting London. The Heathrow Express and Gatwick Express are a rip off. The tube will get you to central London quickly and easily from Heathrow, and the scheduled national rail services from both Gatwick and Heathrow are a quarter of the price and not much slower than their overpriced "Express" cousins. Actually, I think there's a whole blog post on visiting London.....expect that soon.

Finally, if you have any basic travel tips, leave them in the comments, I'd love to hear!

My year in cities 2008

2008 was a ridiculous year of travel. Nearly 100,000 miles. Multiple, non-consecutive stays are noted with asterisks. London, England *

San Francisco, California *

Livermore, California *

New York, New York *

Boston, Massachusetts

Marrakesh, Morocco

Paris, France *

Amsterdam, Netherlands *

Helsinki, Finland

Los Angeles, California *

Long Beach, California *

Cancun, Mexico

Stockholm, Sweden

Budapest, Hungary

Johannesburg, South Africa

Manchester, England

Antwerp, Belgium

Bruges, Belgium

Helsinki, Finland

Newcastle, England