travel

I thought I blocked off every weekend in March to stay home, for a change. I thought wrong. Yesterday, Delta made a huge mistake in pricing. When I say “huge,” I mean “this only happens every few years so jump on it while you can” – it lasted about 4 hours. Basically, they had all their US-Europe fares filed such that the international taxes were missing. The result? You could go roundtrip to Europe for less than $200, all-in. People were getting Philadelphia to Stockholm, for example, for $151, with all the fees included! Insane. So while I may have …

Up in the air Read More »

Many people can’t believe I went to Europe just for the weekend, and the most common question I’m getting is about the jet lag. After seeing how people behaved on the planes I took, I totally get why it’s such a common problem! So many people do it all wrong. Here’s the trick: For my flight schedule, I had a 5:30pm flight from Washington to Madrid, landing at 7am. I tried to go to bed pretty much immediately after boarding – that would mean 6 hours of sleep, which would be almost a full night. To do that, I had …

The secret to avoiding jet lag Read More »

Well, I didn’t end up seeing nearly as much of Geneva as I thought, thanks to the ever-present demands of work. I arrived around 12pm Geneva time (6am back home), and hopped on a public bus to get to my office downtown, across from the UN. However, I was anxious to check my email (it is a curse, it really is), so I pretty much went straight there, figuring I’d go out for a bite of lunch and use that time to see the town. But “just one more task” became a full afternoon of work, until it was 6pm …

First day on the slopes of Chamonix! Read More »

I had intended to sleep the entire way to Madrid, pretty much starting right at 5:30pm when I boarded (thank you, sleeping pills). Then I found out that there would be a meal service – which I totally forgot about since I’m so used to domestic flights – and decided to wait up for that, since it would be within 30 minutes of takeoff. Despite the fact that I had intentionally chosen a completely empty middle row on my A330 (configuration: 2 seats, 4 seats, 2 seats) in order to stretch out and sleep, the entire back of the plane …

Hola from Madrid! Read More »