Spendthrift Shoestring

Some Good Signage

We take off tomorrow. Lots to do. No words. Instead, pictures.

Vienna. July 2007.

Thessaloniki. July 2007.

Singapore. June 2007.

Ljubljana. July 2007.

London, Soon

Preparing for a longish period away from home, as I pointed out on Monday, really does take an enormous amount of time and energy. I've been truly walloped by everything that's had to get done.

A few days after I arrive in London I'll depart for Belgrade, where I'll be attending this year's Eurovision Song Festival. Starting Wednesday, May 21, I'll be blogging about Eurovision for the New York Post's travel blog. Be sure to click over to read my reports.

More soon, I swear.

Treats from Argentina, Mostly

Preparing to be away from home for 15 weeks, it turns out, requires the completion of many tasks. Thus, the reduced posting pace of late.

Over the past week I've had the happy fortune to snack on an entire box of Havanna alfajores, brought back from Buenos Aires by my sister. I've had alfajores in the past, but honestly they just didn't thrill me. These Havanna confections, however, are a different story altogether. They were exquisitely delicious, and I loved their presentation, in a bright beautiful yellow box of individually-wrapped alfajores. I'll leave it to others to parse the magic of the alfajor. I'll just say that the approximations found in Manhattan pastry cases aren't even in the same ballpark as these babies.

Also from Argentina via Marisa: current issues of Pronto and Paparazzi. I admire the full narratives on the cover of Pronto, a magazine that does not believe in the gentle tease. Paparazzi trumpets "¡El Embarazo Del Año!" on their cover, claiming that the pregnancy of the year belongs to Argentine actress Dolores Fonzi, the girlfriend of Gael Garcia Bernal. In actuality, it appears that the two haven't even acknowledged being in a relationship. Also, her pregnancy doesn't officially exist. Great cover, though. 

What else? I'm glad that I bought my June London-Isle of Man air ticket from Flybe rather than Euromanx, as the latter has gone belly-up.

April 2008 LCC Performance Digest

With the continuing stream of bad aviation industry news, you could be forgiven for imagining that Europe's low-cost carriers are all in crisis. In fact, this is not quite the case. To wit: April's performance stats for Ryanair, Air Berlin, and SkyEurope.

Ryanair's load factor fell 4 percent in April against last April 2007's numbers, from 83 percent to 79 percent, while their passenger numbers rose 15 percent, up to 4.72 million passengers. In offering an explanation for the former stat, Ryanair's press release notes that Easter occurred in March this year, thereby explaining last April's high load factor and, by extension, this April's 4 percent load factor decline. One understands why the airline failed to mention the positive effects of an Easter bump in their March 2008 statistical round-up.

Air Berlin had universally sunny numbers in April, with a 4.5 percent load factor increase (from 74.3 to 78.8 percent) and a 6.5 percent jump in passengers, to 2.24 million. Air Berlin's stats include passengers served on some other airlines, all part of the Air Berlin Group: Belair, LTU, and Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter.

On its surface, SkyEurope's April performance appears to be the worst of the three. The airline's load factor fell from 82.1 percent to 70.7 percent, while the the number of passengers flown declined 4.7 percent, to 280,000. Note that SkyEurope's press release title erroneously trumpets last April's passenger numbers. Odd. These numbers don't look good. I'm hoping that the changes made by the airline over the last many months will improve their future stats. 

Quick Trip: Chicago

What is JetBlue minus functioning DirecTV on board? And, for that matter, what is JetBlue with inoperative Wi-Fi at the airline's terminal at JFK? Just another airline, that's what. Also, while I'm addressing the airline that remains, barely, my favorite domestic carrier, I have to comment on the screechiness of JetBlue's public address system at JFK. I really wish they'd fix it and maybe train announcers to modulate their voices a touch.

The point of this post, however, is not to complain about JetBlue or offer further evidence of my slide into curmudgeondom. It's to write a bit about Chicago. I spent Sunday and yesterday there visiting my friend Mike. We had a great time. He recently moved to Andersonville, a very likeable hood. It has an interesting retail base, which includes one of the best home furnishings stores I've ever come across, the absolutely beautiful Scout, as well as a more recent high-quality addition, Haus. There's also a fab newish coffeehouse in Andersonville called The Coffee Studio. Wow. Great coffee, educated baristas, clean concept, beautiful space. If I lived in Andersonville I would move in.

Also lovely was the all-too-brief time we spent with Sarah at Bar on Buena, a place with an impressive beer menu. I loved the beer selection and I loved our friendly beer-smart waiter, too.

Friday List: Currencies, Rome Grub, Brussels

Here are a few things that have been driving my attention over the last few days...

1. FXHistory. Curious about the Serbian dinar-Swiss franc exchange rate in August 2005? Check out FXHistory, an historical currency conversion table. It's the perfect tool for travel writers heading to their accountants. And for currency nerds, of which there must be a few. My only caveat: if you are paid for your labors in U.S. dollars, don't research old dollar-euro exchange tables and fantasize about the vacations you can no longer afford to take.

2. Annie Shapiro's tips on finding good, cheap food in Rome in the EuroCheapo Blog. I may be wrong, but I'm fairly sure that Annie took me to one of her favorite listed restaurants (Da Augusto in Trastevere) in 2006. It was scrummy. I'm annoyed at myself for not taking notes.

3. Brussels. I'm getting really excited to visit Brussels by Eurostar this summer. I'm especially looking forward to visiting the 'hood of Les Marolles/De Marollen—despite evidence that gentrification has been underway there for quite some time. Check the neighborhood out here, or get a more cinematic sense of it in this advertisement for Broederlijk Delen, a Flemish NGO. I was last in Brussels in 2002, and look forward to having the opportunity to explore it anew.

Ukraine Gets Cheap Flights

Back at the end of December, I predicted that 2008 would see further low-cost carrier expansion in Eastern Europe, with more routes into Romania and Bulgaria and the tentative development of routes into Ukraine and Moldova. I thought that we might see SkyEurope and even Ryanair beginning some routes to Kyiv by the end of the year.

But the first serious move comes from Hungarian Wizz Air, who will be launching seven Ukrainian domestic routes in July. Wizz Air's Ukraine hub will be Kyiv; they'll fly between the capital and L'viv, Kharkiv, Odessa, Simferopol, and Zaporizhia, and will also fly routes between Simferopol and both L'viv and Kharkiv. Details are here. The airline is not running any international routes in or out of Ukraine.   

Servas: No-Cost Accommodations

The weak dollar has prompted emergency newspaper travel section articles suggesting alternative forms of accommodation. All sorts of options, including hostels and apartment rentals, are being floated as ways to deal with the terrifying exchange rate. This is all well and good, but if such options are acceptable when the dollar is tanking, keep in mind how cheap they'll be if (when?) the dollar returns to a less shocking rate of exchange—and keep in mind how cheap they are for people whose currencies are flying high. These alternatives, which cut against the model of aspirational travel that characterizes most U.S. travel magazines, should be a much more established part of the terrain.

There are even cheaper options than hostels and apartment rentals. This past weekend I was reintroduced to a family friend who belongs to Servas, a hosting service that pairs travelers with hosts. Servas understands itself as a peace organization devoted to the goal of bringing people from different cultures together. The organization has a pretty extensive list of hosts in many countries; these hosts are expected to spend some time with travelers, introduce them to their locales, and ideally eat dinner together. Joining Servas is not expensive.

Servas isn't for everyone, but for those who crave a little local contact and an insider's introduction to a culture, it's a great no-cost accommodation option.

Nylon Thoughts: NYC's Rain; London's Cultures

Burgertastrophe! Today's rain has forced a change in dinner plans. Because it's no fun to eat your burger in the rain, Shake Shack is off the table.

Among this past weekend's reading materials, Bob Sherwood's article in the Financial Times on the London mayoral election stood out. It looks at how "London's racial diversity and its attendant tensions" may drive voting patterns on Thursday. Were I closer to the flame—in a few weeks, happily, I will be—I'd be able to submit the article to a finer analysis. As a shameless lover of truly cosmopolitan cities, however, I can say that London's diversity is pretty thrilling to me, and is more or less what's driving my excitement to be spending a few months there. A fascinating note in Sherwood's article: of the possibly 400,000 Poles in London, 65,000 were registered to vote locally by February. How will they vote? Apparently, nobody really knows.

Three Telephones, of which Two Presumably Work

Card-operated telephone. Belgrade, Serbia. July 2007.

Out of order telephone. Pointe-du-Bout, Martinique. February 2008.

Hotel telephone. Stockholm, Sweden. August 2005.