Routine Order

In researching for my upcoming trip to Europe, I have had a tough time finding good, pointed information about what to do in the major cities. I found some useful information about hotels in Paris at cityvacations.com. Looks like accomodations in the Rive Gauche area are more affordable for tourists like me. Rive Doite is the other extreme, and perhaps, when I am old and (hopefully) filthy rich, I’ll get to look for the better options there.

If you visit Barcelona, cityguides has a little useful information. The pages containing information about cities are organized by function - here’s an example shopping in Atlanta page. Since I have been shopping in Atlanta before, i can see that the page doesn’t yet list all the options. The pages are not all complete, and the site advices visitors that there are more blogs, forums and reviews coming soon. It can’t come soon enough. Posting on travel forums and waiting for responses gets old too fast, and the information you find on website might not be the whole deal. So forums, articles, blogs and reviews are all essential in one single website to minimize my effort.

GIC Argentina’s program where you can learn Spanish in Argentina sure looks tempting. The deal is - you spend some time in Argentina, either teaching English, or participating in an outreach program, in one of the many volunteer programs in Argentina.


So you volunteer in Argentina, and in exchange, you can learn Spanish, in situ. The program is not entirely limited to Argentina, in fact, you can volunteer in South America, including in Misiones and Iguazu National parks. It sounds like the perfect thing to do between academic programs, or after college. You have to be at least 18 years old to participate in the program. The minimum time commitment required is 2 weeks, though, of course, a longer period of time might be more beneficial. The best of both worlds is if you can make it in winter. You can get away from the cold and immerse yourself in Latin American culture, and learn Spanish the natural way. I wish I had looked up something like this and taken a year off after college.

Like I said earlier, a plan is in the making for a trip to Europe. I am planning to visit France while I am at it. In addition to the site I mentioned in the earlier post, I found a good listing of France car hire options at francethisway.com. In addition to that, francethisway.com also has listings for Gites. What’s a Gite, you ask? Here’s an appetizer:


Simple put, a gite is a house that you can rent for an extended period. Some call them vacation property. Some of the gites in France look really inviting. I wish I could stay there for a month, instead of the week or two that I plan on spending in France. Make that a week or two of driving. I wonder why we don’t have the equivalent of Gites here in the US. If they’re here, they’re really hard to find. Remember that movie with Drew Barrymore and that girl from the Titanic where they swap homes for the holiday season? I forget the name, and I really have to finish writing this soon. Something like that in real life would be awesome.

In the US it is relatively easier to find great deals on car rentals when you are planning your travel. In planning for a Europe trip, I found that it is not so easy to find a website that gives you all the deals up front for different countries. Of course there are the big-ticket sites but how do I know they are specialists in Europe? Well, finally I found a car rental site, though the European’s seem to prefer calling it “Car Hire” instead

I expect to need a car for use in the UK, France and Spain, and it is kind of neat that Argus has seperate pages for car hire UK, car hire France and car hire Spain. I sort of wish there was a way I could hire a car in France and return it in Barcelona, Spain. Maybe I should give Argus Car Hire a call and find out if that is possible. They do have a couple of numbers in the US, so its easy enough. The company says it’s been around since 1996 - they must surely have figured out a way to do what I want

Wow, this is exactly the kind of thing that crosses my mind occassionaly but I never get around to doing. The process of learning what to do, what to buy, where to by it, and deciding which of the options in each case is better is in itself enough to keep from doing it.

Jeffrey Yago simplifies things a LOT in his very detailed article about how to assemble a 10-day survival pack of emergency supplies for your vehicle for only $25. You may need to replace and replenish the supplies, but all said and done, this is some information I definitely could use.

The two biggest complaints I hear from people when it comes to buying emergency supplies are the high cost for items they may never actually use and the need to replace out-of-date food that was never eaten. Yes, those tasty freeze-dried, ready-to-eat meals from most camping stores are expensive, and yes, many may never actually be used. But that is also true of buying a fire extinguisher, as you don’t intend to ever actually use it either, but it’s a real life saver if you do.

To address these high-cost concerns and the difficulty to locate camping stores that stock hard-to-find survival equipment, I decided to assemble a 10-day emergency food supply by shopping only in a typical chain grocery store, and I kept the total cost under $25. This is very cheap insurance if you travel through areas where you would not want to be stranded, and you will not be out that much if you have to occasionally replace items that have reached their expiration date.

Read 10 day survival pack for your vehicle for just $25 by Jeffrey Yago, P.E., CEM Issue #104 for excellent tips on what to get and keep in the trunk of your car to help you survive out in the wild for 10 days.

Okay, this is the last post for today - looks like I am overdosing on blogging to make up for the lost week. I’ll try and keep this one short, too. So, like you know, Egypt is beckoning me and I am thinking do points garnered at places like leisuretime promotions count anywhere you want them to? The idea is simple, you buy a membership where you get points and then you get preferential treatment when you try to buy tickets, or book accomodation etc.

Now the question is, are you restricted to only, say RCI resorts, or can you travel/do whatever you want? Also, how is the cost of membership offset? I mean, this has to be profitable for both the company providing the membership and for us, the travellers, so who foots the bill? I suppose the destination - the resorts promoted by the club, like leisuretime would be paying them money to promote their facilities, which leads me to think that maybe you can only enjoy the benefits of the points within a network or maybe multiple networks. But I may be wrong. I have asked a question at the site using the Contact form. Lets see what gives. If any of you phantom readers have an idea, or have been a member of such points clubs your opinion will be most welcome Come on guys, write me some comments, let’s make this a two-way conversation

Channel 9 got its name from the channel on airplanes where travellers can hear to the communications the pilots have over the radio.

For those not in the know, Channel 9 is a Microsoft discussion forum used to promote conversations among Microsoft’s customers targeted at Microsoft Windows users. Robert Scoble was a huge reason for the popularity of Channel 9 - he was behind many of the videos produced for Channel 9.

Microsoft can be creative too. What a surprise!

Gosh, I wish I had find seatguru.com much, much earlier. I did recently, thanks to boing boing.

The site tells you which are the cool seats, and the bad seats on all airlines. It also tells you what amenities are provided on different airlines. Information about the airlines… man this is cool!