Your bucket list should actually be two lists: things you want to see and do and things you want to learn.
Yes, that’s simplistic. It’s also true. Let’s dive in.
This world may be full of infinite things to see and do, but it can get dull quickly. How? Let’s illustrate with an example: Rome.
Though it’s not nicknamed ‘The city of churches,’ — why is that Adelaide?! — Rome is exploding with them. They’re like Starbucks in New York City, but they won’t let you charge your phone or make you buy something to take a dump.
In five days, I saw so many pietas, frescoes, domes and naves I nearly converted. Then my brain went numb, and I got painfully bored of it all. Seeing too much of anything makes it feel ordinary.
This is true of everything. I once knew a guy reviewed adult films and got so tired of watching people have sex that he stopped having it himself. Mountains and museums don’t stand a chance against T&A.
The solution is simple: Mix it up.
See some churches, great, but then visit a brewery. After that, ferry across a fjord, ride a pony and attend a poetry slam in a language you don’t understand. Or take a cooking class, a hot air balloon over a glacier and a tango lesson with an old lady before you go see more churches.
If you don’t, you’ll turn into my friend Phil who described Durbar Square in Kathmandu as “Y’know, just more temples.” Clearly Phil has seen too many temples. Shame on Phil.
To help you organize, I put everything into eight categories. Click through each for suggestions to kickstart your list, and dip into each as equally as you can.
Travel is a great excuse to bring fun things home. I have a friend who takes this to the extreme and can literally shop until the airport shuttle picks him up. I’m the opposite.
He collects beautiful things and I collect off-the-wall stories and knowledge which I swear will someday prove useful. Somehow both of these end up costing a lot of money, but one takes up a lot less space in a bag.
Again, I’ve organized everything you might want to study into seven categories. I don’t think I missed anything, but if I did, sorry. You can get it right on your blog.
Tap each to check out your options.
There are a million pretty buildings, zoos, museums, restaurants, etc. in this world, so you have to prioritize. But how?
Simple: the uniqueness standard. Ask yourself two questions:
If the answer to either is yes, it goes on the list. If the answer to both is yes, don’t miss it.
Judging on uniqueness focuses your consideration and almost never leads to disappointment.
My privacy policy is simple: I don’t share your information.
Yea, it’s just a name, email and nationality, but I’m sure there are people who would pay for it. My thoughts on that: fuck those people and fuck those fuckers who sell personal information to them. You’ll find none of that monkey business here.
If I get hacked and your info get stolen, I’ll shoot you a note to let you know. I don’t deal in passwords, credit cards or anything like that though, so there’s almost nothing for anyone to take.
To see the full privacy policy — it’s pretty boring and cost me a lot of money — you can follow the link at the bottom of the page or in the confirmation email.
These are the ‘human’ things that are usually old and always give you that magical feeling of being a small speck in the history of mankind — which should depress us, but somehow doesn’t.
This includes things like:
Those are the big ones that you probably already know. As you start to dig deeper, you’ll find some familiar and unfamiliar things like:
Once you have list — and all your lists —drop them on a map, which we’ll discuss here.
Can you name the seven wonders of the world? I can’t. Know why? Because there are like 63 of them. There are the seven wonders of the ancient world, modern world, underwater world, Jurassic world, Mattress World, yada yada. It goes on forever.
The most ludicrous are the wonders of the natural world. What kind of “experts” decided Victoria Falls is a bigger deal than Iguazu? What’s the big whoop about the harbor in Rio de Janeiro? Or any harbor for that matter? When they picked a random volcano in Mexico over Cotopaxi or Mount Fuji, what were they smoking? Can they pass it my way after their second puff? Manners, people. Manners.
The simple truth is there are an infinite number of natural wonders in this world, so just make your own list. Here are some of my faves for illustration.
The most spectacular natural sights are usually remote, which is probably why they haven’t been paved over or polluted with golf courses.
As a result, access can be tricky. Guided tours might be scarce and booked up well in advance or there will be lotteries for permits. A year out is definitely not too far ahead to contact a tour operator. A seven minute conversation will usually reveal some flaw in your plan.
If nothing else, confirm when places are inaccessible or unpleasant. Monsoon and hurricane seasons are consistent and animal migrations run like clockwork. Full moons happen every 28 days, and unless you live in Westeros, winter comes at the same time every year. Most everything else is roulette, but ask.
While you’re checking seasonality and planning your trip, look into how long you’ll need to really see each place. This applies to cities as well, so I’ll revisit it later, but it’s particularly pertinent to the outdoors. I’ll draw on a domestic example to illustrate.
Once you have list — and all your lists —drop them on a map, which we’ll discuss here.
Every city has a museum. Some have lots. Some have too many (I’m talking to you, New York). They’re generally all pretty good, especially with the right guide. I don’t think I’ve ever actually been to a bad one.
You can definitely overdo it though. Too many museums and they numb your brain like ketamine and Bravo marathons. Unless your last name is Guggenheim and you’re there to shop, apply moderation. I like to bucket anything fine art related into four categories and dip into them equally:
Make sure you follow on social to find out when new pages go live on the blog. I have posts planned for the most important works of fine art as well as the most important architectural relics from antiquity and my roundup of strange museums. All fun stuff.
People who have had the mixed fortune of having been raised by an architect or who have dated one will understand why architecture matters. For the rest of you…
When you go to a foreign place, you want it to feel foreign, and it all starts with structures. Beautiful buildings exist in nearly any place except Florida, but some really stand out. Look for those with districts of old or innovative new structures. If an area is recognized by UNESCO, go there.
I’m a crazy list lady, so I wrote out the most iconic buildings and realized they all fell into roughly six categories.
Most of the food you eat when you travel will be pretty mundane. Trying to make an event of every meal is just too exhausting. However, some meals are so good they’re worth whatever hassle and cost they demand.
Three qualities make a meal exceptional: food, atmosphere and history.
I focus more on trying specific dishes. For each one, there’s a restaurant that created it or mastered and made it famous. Often they’re still open. Go there and enjoy each of your favorites in its purest form.
There are also, of course, restaurants famous for exceptional food overall. Some people like to visit the top restaurants of the world, those of famous chefs or places they saw on Chef’s Table, but I opt for those that have cultural roots:
Reservations are always essential for these, so schedule reminders for the days when you need to make them. Also, consider your wardrobe. You won’t be packing formalwear, so look for places that don’t require it.
Restaurant architects are pretty clever, so there are restaurants teetering on cliffs, perched atop skyscrapers, submerged under water, buried deep underground, suspended over cities and more. The list of novel places is long, but here are a few standouts:
If you’re a restaurant junkie, there are the most important restaurants, the ones that changed fine dining.
There are many restaurants far older than the United States. I like this list because it doesn’t change. Some people mince technicalities and create debate about which officially qualify as the champs, but old places are old places. Calm down, people.
It’s also fun to try the oldest restaurant in each city or country. Historic eateries generally have unforgettable food and atmosphere, which is probably why they never go out of business.
These are tricky because they happen only at specific times and are therefore inflexible. Fortunately, the best festivals tend to happen at the best time of the year to visit a particular place.
Everyone has their favorites. Here are mine:
I wanted to do everything on my list, but some happened on the same days and some happened at times when I had to be elsewhere. You’ll experience this too, so don’t feel bad. This won’t be the last trip you take.
I, like most backpackers, favor traveling alone, but not for festivals.
I learned this at San Fermin when I watched the entire city of Pamplona descend into complete, joyous mayhem, and I couldn’t fully participate. Of course I had a good time — having a bad time is impossible — but friends would have made it unmistakably better.
From that point on, I redoubled my efforts to recruit friends to join me for any remaining celebrations. When that failed, I chose social accommodations, like party hostels.
I’ll write a blog about this, but remember this: if you know you can’t talk anyone into attending a particular event, for example, Carnival in Trinidad, and your natural inclinations or other circumstances might limit your ability to make friends after you arrive, you may want to skip it until you can gather a squad.
Few things are more culturally revealing than what people watch for entertainment. It says a lot about what they find funny, exciting, romantic, etc. I love to see local theater, even when I can’t understand what they’re saying.
Here’s a list of some unique spectator events around the world and some culturally insensitive things we can infer about the people who enjoy them.
Spectator sports fall into this category too. They’re different everywhere, and they’re wonderfully authentic expressions of culture.
Soccer in Brazil, for example, inspires more hysteria than any religion. Each game is like the Olympics on amphetamines. Turkish oil wrestling is the Top Gun of athletics: macho and comfortably homoerotic. Cricket in India is confusing, but a whole lot of fun. But confusing. And also confusing. Sumo in Japan is oddly thrilling, especially if you sit ringside where you might actually be crushed and killed.
If you’re not into sports, think of them as high impact theater and see if that little semantic backbend convinces you. If it doesn’t, I’ll add that most countries have strip clubs, and they’re all really unique.
Or so I’ve heard.
I have this friend. His name is Michael. He likes pandas. A lot. He likes pandas more than China likes pandas. Michael would name his children Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing and he’s a perfect example of how seeing animals can be a really big deal for some people.
Most people have some animal with which they identify. Sea turtles, Siberian tigers, owls, orcas, snow monkeys, Kardashians, it’s different for everyone. If you have one too, find out where you can see it and then go.
Go to zoos, but don’t just go to zoos. Do you love crocodiles? Tour the Blue Nile or visit Australia. Learn how to wrestle one. Buy a pair of croc-skin boots,,or change your name to Mick Dundee.
Adventure excursions to animal sanctuaries and preserves are already a thing for people who want to get their Attenborough on, so you won’t have trouble finding tours.
People generally share a common desire to swim with tropical fishies or watch a lion snack on a gazelle (gruesome, but no more so than Smithfield bacon). However, there’s a lot more to see than scuba and safaris.
Every year, massive numbers of animals all do precisely the same thing in precisely the same place. I’m not talking about Coachella.
If you love butterflies, go to Mexico and get swarmed during the migration of the Monarchs. Every year on Christmas Island, the whole place similarly gets overrun with zillions of tiny red crabs, which sounds spectacular and horrifying. I wouldn’t know firsthand though, because I think crabs are just ocean spiders.
Long ago, my friend Barb volunteered at a dog shelter in central Puerto Rico. Soon after, I had a friend work with elephants for three months in Cambodia. You could do the same for birds of paradise in Colombia or orangutans in Indonesia. While you’re there, you could rescue palm civets and drink overpriced coffee made with beans pulled from their poop. You could also save the whales in Japan, or, if you’re a heartless savage, hunt and eat them in the Faroe islands.
If you thirst for blood but wish to serve a higher ethical purpose, consider bowhunting invasive feral pigs in Hawaii who eat rare orchids. Or practice your marksmanship on possums in New Zealand who are munching the eggs of helpless native songbirds and spreading bovine tuberculosis. As a bonus, you can bring back a pretty fur coat and brag about doing the wet work yourself.
After all, it’s one thing to say “Do you like my jacket? I just bought it.” And it’s a whole other to say “Do you like my jacket? I just killed it.”
If you’ve ever heard that learning a language is impossible beyond a certain age, you’ve been fed bullshit. I hope you didn’t believe it.
The truth is, I spent five weeks at a Spanish school in Medellin at the age of 39 half-assing my way through classes and powering through hangovers. In the end, I learned enough Spanish to romance a Paraguayan half my age.
If you want to learn another language so you can travel more easily or simply curse with more color, you absolutely can do it. The only question is which.
To help you choose, here are the world’s most commonly spoken languages:
Sheer numbers of native speakers are pretty useless. Take Japanese, for example. Yes, it’s fascinating as fuck, but unless you plan to spend real time in Tokyo or reading tentacle porn, it won’t get you too far. Same goes for Mandarin or Hindi.
If you wish to travel with a second lingua franca, seek languages with the widest geographic spread. Here’s the list of languages that colonists spread like smallpox. Their respective countries are listed too.
If you’re looking to learn a language for business, that’s a whole other list. It’s hard to rank them, so here they are in no particular order.
Almost as important as which language is where you choose to study it.
The accent you’ll acquire matters. Case in point: I was initially supposed to study French in Tours, France, where people speak classic, slow Français. I would have sounded like Sophie Marceau after a bottle of rosé. Thanks to a visa issue, I attended a school in Canada, so I sound like The Fonz after a fifth of Kamchatka. I now speak tough-guy French and it’s great.
Consider the culture too. Living in Quebec, for example, added up to ten weeks of beautiful architecture, incredible street and body art, progressive politics, Xavier Dolan films and truly out-fucking-standing food. Oh, my, god, the, food.
It was a refreshing surprise to feel so enriched by a province which up to that point I’d only known by its three primary exports: pancake syrup, Celine Dion and snow.
If you’re one of those artsy people, you probably already know which fancy thing you want to master, but I’m writing the rest of you a reality check.
The Countess says money can’t buy you class, and the same is true of artistic talent. Either have it or you don’t. Still, you’ll find there’s no shortage of people who’ll separate you from a few bucks with the promise of unearthing dormant artistic genius.
If you’re in doubt, consider the wisdom of Amy March in Little Women. “Talent isn’t genius and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing.” Go with that.
If you have a creative urge, there are other ways to indulge it that aren’t necessarily artistic in the traditional sense. Maybe you suck at oils or carving Carrera marble. Not all of us can wail on a Spanish guitar or sing in Jojo’s upper register. Who cares though? If you can’t pick up a fine or performance art, pick up a functional craft.
Learn woodworking in Bali, leatherwork in Florence, fragrance mixing from perfumers in Paris or go to Osaka and discover Ikebana, the art of Japanese flower arranging.
The options are limitless, and you don’t have to have a reason for choosing your choice. I’m always trying to convince my friend Mandala to learn Tibetan mandala for pure irony, and that’s more of a reason than anyone needs. My friend Samantha would agree. She went to Italy to learn how to make mosaics from old masters for no reason at all and is now an incredibly successful artist. Even if she hadn’t done a thing with her newly minted talents, the experience would have been worthwhile.
Learning how to make something is a perfectly legitimate end unto itself. This is coming from a capitalist pig who sees literally everything as a profit-bearing enterprise and thinks hobbies are just lazy careers. But of course I’d say that. I just sold you a book about my vacation.
There are few skills in life so fundamental that I tell people they’re deficient for lacking them. Cooking is number one.
Everyone thinks they can make a hamburger, brew coffee, chop vegetables, fry an egg, bake chocolate chip cookies and filet a fish, but I swear to god and Anthony Bourdain, almost no one knows how to actually do those things.
My favorite is the archetypal guy with the wooden deck and vinyl siding who swears he’s a grill-master, a title which has become so meaningless that I think the only qualification is ownership of a penis. Virtually nobody I’ve met knows how to grill anything properly, especially a steak. You probably don’t either, but you can learn.
The obvious answer is to go to France or Japan or wherever and take a few courses. You’ll master the mother sauces, learn how to butcher an animal, carve poultry and fish, properly handle a knife, prepare food with some measure of predictability and eat without staining a white shirt.
For culinary education, consider the alternative routes as well.
You can cozy up to bedouins in the Middle East and learn how to kill and cut up a goat. Or go down to Argentina and crucify massive slabs of meat over a campfire asado style with a gang of gauchos. Maybe work on a fishing boat in Alaska for a month and eat a Halibut you clubbed like a caveman taking a wife.
If those all sound too carnivorous, you could pick tea leaves in Assam or peppercorns in Kompot like my friend Louis. You can even roast coffee for espresso in Melbourne, the Shangri-La where caffeine junkies like me go to die happy and hyper.
Simply put, there’s literally no reason anyone should come back from a trip around the world without a few culinary tricks up their apron. At the very least, you’ll be able to revisit the tastes of your travels for the rest of your life, which is the best way to relive any journey.
Sports are like fruit. You leave the continental US, and suddenly you realize that are so, so many you’ve never heard of before. This can be tempting, but once you’ve reached an age where a trip like this a self-funded possibility, taking on a new sport may be unwise.
Of course if you’re a 28-year old disgruntled Wall Streeter whose bonus after three years is so profane that you can dick around for a year before you begin law school, then bon voyage, fucker. Have fun cross-fitting in Fortaleza or taking up rugby with the Scots.
For the rest of us in our thirties, forties and beyond, this is no time to take up a new sport and risk exotic new injuries. Also, who wants to go somewhere an burn up a visa at the gym?
Taking up offbeat things for non-competitive reasons can be great though, especially when they’re cultural.
A week or two is totally sufficient to get a taste of horseback riding and buzkashi in Mongolia, for example. Same goes for kite surfing in Brazil, Köraş oil wrestling in Turkey or curling in Sweden. You can even risk going to an ashram in Rishikesh and becoming one of those insufferably chilled out yoga people.
Alternatively, if you happen to be in the UK in springtime, there’s a sport called cheese rolling where hapless gits literally tumble down a hill after a giant wheel of Double Gloucester. First bloke to reach the bottom wins the whole thing.
That’s nine pounds of cheese, people. I’m not making this up. This is a real sport. Maybe the greatest sport ever conceived. I’m training for this right this very minute with a bowl of poutine. I might even train for it tomorrow.
Regardless your feelings on religion, it’s often a cornerstone of culture. Look around any place and often the most impressive structures will be shrines and houses of worship for religions both living and dead. In general, it’s all pretty interesting. I actually can’t imagine a degree of atheism that would dismiss the richness of places like St. Basil’s, Hagia Sophia or Potala Palace. Maybe I’m wrong though. It is religion, after all. You’re allowed to think whatever you like.
If religious exploration is your thing, you don’t need me to list out the great sites of pilgrimage and worship. I do, however, have a few offbeat suggestions to inspire you to mix things up.
For a more academic approach, the long stretches of time on planes and trains presents a rare opportunity to read the great holy books of the world, like:
If those don’t ignite your curiosity, there’s always Dianetics.
What constitutes “academic” is open to debate, but I define it as any kind of knowledge sought with purpose. It’s a wide net to cast, but few people have the mind for philosophy, history, ethics or their highbrow counterparts which traditionally qualify as academic. And thank god for that, because if that’s all anyone studied, mankind would be really, really dull.
There are infinite things to learn in this world, so it would be a shame not to come back without having sought out new knowledge of some kind. Outside the obvious collegiate drudgery, there’s music, creative writing, geopolitics, costume design, reiki, agriculture, sailing and more.
Many moons ago, my friend Blair said he wanted to learn archaeology, so he volunteered in Jordan. While I was in Petra, I literally saw the reassembled ruins he helped excavate, which was more than a little bit cool.
I keep a list of things I want to learn before I die, but if you don’t, take a quick trip back through time and think of all the classes you took as a child. Which ones held your interest? Was there a project you wished had led to a career? It still can.
Growing up, I was sure I was a fat kid. Look at photos of my childhood and by contemporary standards you’ll think I appear malnourished, but that was before Type 2 Diabetes became an American pastime.
Whenever I ever moped about being quasi-obese, my mother sprung into action with a canned response.
“You’re German,” she’d say. “You’re just big-boned.”
Apparently being of Teutonic stock indicated a predisposition towards sturdiness. But that itself wasn’t the whole truth, because while my father’s family was German, my mother’s was English. True, English people are Germanic, but I don’t think that’s what she meant. She probably wanted to shift the blame for a chubby kid onto my dad. Either way, I know my roots well.
This was top-of-mind when I sent away to have my genome tested. Surely, I thought, there must be something else in there. Maybe a Native American princess or a Nubian warrior? A Kazakh archer or a Sephardic milkmaid? I had to be something, anything other than white and another shade of white, right?
Yea, no. It came back a perfect 50/50: half German, half English. I could have written the report myself.
So please forgive me if this section is an anecdotal letdown. I know a lot of people travel to their ancestral homelands and connect with a fascinating culture long lost to the paper shredder at Ellis Island, but I’m not one of them. I have very little to contribute.
You could instead talk to people like my friend Megan, who traveled to the rural village in South Korea from which she was adopted to learn that she wasn’t just a twin, but actually a triplet—an identical one at that.
You could talk to almost anyone, actually. Pilgrimages for most people I know seem to lead to incredible revelations. I’ve heard riveting stories from those who went to Ethiopia, Jordan, Costa Rica, South Africa, Greece and Lebanon and had truly life-changing experiences.
But me? I went to Germany and had beer.
Domestic American air travel is a racket run by three major companies and a few smaller ones who effectively collude on prices to screw passengers and support their bloated executives and corporate structures.
Even regional jets, which are technically independent, are fucking death traps that I literally never, ever fly.
It’s not this way in other countries, because most people are sensible and see transportation as akin to a public utility. It’s therefore common to find flights on foreign carriers for under $100. I frequently see fares less $50.
Booking far in advance is therefore unnecessary, except of course in places where tickets sell out. Avoid the temptation to book months or weeks out if you’re just trying to save money. Not only will doing so lock you into dates you might regret, you may end up paying. Why? Booking sites now sniff for your computer’s location and display higher prices for foreigners.
Rude, right? Blame the mirror. We invented that.
First, some bad news for most Americans: automatic transmissions are as rare overseas as manuals are in the US. Unless you want to seriously overpay, make friends with someone who owns an old Miata and learn.
Second, anyone who wants to rent a car should obtain an international driver’s permit. This is easy — just 30 minutes at AAA.
When it’s time to rent, don’t get tempted by lower prices with small, local companies. Go with a big multi-national.
Understand your insurance situation through-and-through. Know the limits of your credit card’s automatic coverage and have a printout of the policy. If you can get a translated copy, even better. If you’re still in doubt after all that, just pay for their coverage.
Research the scams. Before you drive off the lot, walk around the vehicle and video record it. When you return the car, do the same. Also record yourself locking it and depositing the key in the night box if you return after hours.
If you get a notice from the rental company later saying you owe for damage or not returning the car, you can send them those videos with an E-vite to go get fucked. You might also copy tourist law enforcement, so they get fined to oblivion.
It’s tricky, but you need to basically study each country’s road laws and signs like you’re getting your student driver’s permit again. Most places have tricky rules, and they love to fine gringoes like us for violating them.
In Cyprus, for example, you can be fined for eating or drinking anything behind the wheel, even a Snickers. In Denmark, you’re legally required to look under your car before you get inside to ensure no one is underneath. In Spain, drivers with poor vision have to carry a spare set of glasses. Dirty cars are illegal in Russia, as is splashing pedestrians on a rainy day in Japan.
In some places, driving is really difficult. I pity any fool who tries to drive in Cairo. You can also very swiftly kill yourself on a German highway if you’re untrained. Driving at 120 MPH is far more complex than simply pressing the accelerator further.
Fare classes are highly inconsistent.
First class in one country is generally different to first class in any other. The same is true of second, third and so on. They vary wildly by country and system.
If it’s fiscally reasonable, I choose first for early mornings and overnights. They really are better, even just for security of your belongings.
The one time I settled for a second-class overnight, I had to physically fight a mouth-breathing Russian girl who was sweating vodka and wouldn’t stop burying her face into my lap to huff my underpants like Whip-Its. I wish I was making this up, but it’s true. I arrived sleepless, angry and ugly. It ruined my first day in Lisbon and I only had five. First class would have been worth the cost. Second class is my usual go-to. For shorter trips or anything after 9 a.m. I go second.
If I want an adventure, I go even lower. Some agents won’t sell those tickets to tourists though unless you insist.
Nomads and backpackers who don’t do the travel hacking thing usually buy cheap flights. Be careful of taking that too far.
For starters, you need to observe weight limits on baggage. In the US, no one gives a shit, but elsewhere they care. The care deeply. Never buy a ticket that forces you to pay weight overages.
Seats are also important, but not for comfort. I never take bulkhead or exit-row seats unless I pay for early boarding. Both offer less (or zero) under-seat storage, so being in a later boarding group puts you at risk of having nowhere to put your carry on — or as you’ll hear them called “cabin bags.”
I’ve even been on a flight where the attendant nearly made me check my personal item. I shut that down by threatening to create a scene and de-board, but I could have avoided it by paying $8 for priority boarding.
Countless people have asked if I used an around-the-world plane ticket for my first trip.
My simple response: Don’t ask dumb fucking questions. Also, no, I didn’t.
ATW tickets are nearly useless. They typically require you to book your stops in advance, so there’s too little flexibility. The fine print is also brutal and changes constantly.
Last time I researched them, the price was based on allotments of miles. The number of stops also changed the equation. All of them required you to choose a direction (east-to-west, for example) and none permitted travel in the reverse direction even slightly. Some airlines even insisted all departures had to occur from the same point as arrival, meaning if you traveled by land elsewhere, the airline penalized your mileage allotment.
I said airline there, but ATW tickets come come from a single carrier. Instead, you buy into an alliance, of which I believe there are still only three. Quite the lack of competition there.
ATW fares do lend themselves marvelously to itineraries where you go to a different city each month and make it the base from which you explore the region. This is something we’ll talk about later when we discuss hub-and-spoke travel.
If you have status with a particular airline, you may want to consider their ATW option — emphasis on ‘may’ — but be warned that flying everywhere robs you of some great experiences.
Domestic American air travel is a racket run by three major companies and a few smaller ones who effectively collude on prices to screw passengers and support their bloated executives and corporate structures.
Even regional jets, which are technically independent, are fucking death traps that I literally never, ever fly.
It’s not this way in other countries, because most people are sensible and see transportation as akin to a public utility. It’s therefore common to find flights on foreign carriers for under $100. I frequently see fares less $50.
Booking far in advance is therefore unnecessary, except of course in places where tickets sell out. Avoid the temptation to book months or weeks out if you’re just trying to save money. Not only will doing so lock you into dates you might regret, you may end up paying. Why? Booking sites now sniff for your computer’s location and display higher prices for foreigners.
Rude, right? Blame the mirror. We invented that.
The beauty of hub cities is the slow pace. How slow you take it will vary according to the number of side trips as well as your pace. If you commit to a month though, this introduces the possibility of renting an apartment. Even if you don’t plan to stay the full 30 days, apartment rental is generally very cheap. It can also make cooking easier, which also saves cash.
Cooking for yourself doesn’t have to mean eggs for breakfast and chicken dinners. You can dial up the adventure full throttle if you sign up for a greenmarket food tour and a cooking class right after you arrive. Not only will you know what to do with the local ingredients, you’ll eat better. Plus if you know what you’re doing, the vendors may screw you less, which will offset the price of the guide.
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