Getting Around on Public Transportation

So maybe your one of those people who likes to hoof it everywhere, but if your not, a little research regarding available public transportation options can be a worthwhile investment. I hate driving on vacation, so one of the things I love about European travel is the availability of public transportation. Europe has some of the greatest methods of conveyance, that can help save some wear and tear on your feet and zip you to your destination quickly. With a large number of their transportation systems supported by taxes levied on gas consumption and vehicle ownership, these options can also be light on your wallet compared to taking a taxi or renting a car.

During my initial research and planning phase for trips, I like to look into the major transportation options, so I will not have to rely on cabs or walk everywhere. These options can include trains, buses, tramway systems, subways, water taxis, and rickshaw/pedicabs. They can cover large and small distances, so make sure you determine which would be best for your given journey and preference. For example, in London if you will be travelling a route along the Thames from the City to Westminster, it would be cheaper and faster to use the Tube (Tower Hill to Westminster, £4). However, if you have time it may be more enjoyable to take a boat cruise(Tower to Westminster, £8).

Many cities provide descriptions of their transportation options online, which includes a map of coverage, pricing (between zones), and the hours of operation. It is important to look these up before you go to reduce the possibility for confusion when you get there, especially if you have to deal with a foreign language. In addition, some major metro's offer travel cards that can provide unlimited (or reduced fare) travel for a given time period (24, 48, 72 hours). If you think you will be using public transportation, these can be worthwhile. For more info on European public transportation options, see my previous blog entry European Transportation Know Before You Go...

Cheap Meals While Traveling

Whether your traveling on a limited budget, frugal, or just want to try something new, there is another cheap meal option available while abroad that is oft overlooked, the neighborhood grocery store. There are a wide variety of markets throughout Europe that can provide an interesting peak into the life of a local or provide a respite from the flood of tourist fare. The options contain within might just turn out to be some of your favorite gastronomical delights, which will drive you mad trying to find at home (Crabby's Ginger beer, I'm looking at you!).

I've had several occasions to wander into foreign grocery chains looking for components of a meal and all have turned out interesting at the least. In the UK, I found a lasagna sandwich (Tesco speciality) and in France I discovered my love of Kinder Bueno. I've gone in search of lunch, snacks, and in the case of an interesting bring your own drink Indian restaurant, beer.  For a long train ride from Inverness to Edinburgh, my family bought an interesting assortment of food from Tesco. Between the view and the interesting nature of the food, nothing was wanting.

So if you're looking to put together a picnic or just want to try something different, don't forget about checking out the local neighborhood grocery store. Here are a few to get you started...

Estimating Meal Costs for Travel

One of the common questions I have seen posed on message boards is what to budget for meal costs while travelling. Unfortunately, these type of questions cannot be answered with a simple response. There are multiple factors that go into properly estimating this cost, the areas you will be travelling to (urban vs rural), the number of meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks), the expectation of the meal (counter service vs sit down), and the quality of the meal (mass produced vs custom created).   

In order to get an accurate estimate of meal costs for my own trip planning process, I follow the following steps:

1) Determine location. In other words, identify the cities or regions you will be in for specific days or meals. Geographical location will influence the cost of meals, cities or urban centers tend to be more expensive than rural areas. These locations should already be a part of your travel itinerary at this point. If they are not, err on the side of caution by estimatating where you think you will be and use the most expensive findings for your plan.  

2) Determine a pattern of meals. When I travel I try to stay away from three big meals and instead focus on a small to medium breakfast (included in a B&B), a snack for lunch (street vendor food), and a large dinner (three course set menu at a restaurant). This identification of a pattern provides a framework I can use to identify typical meal costs for an area.

 

3) Research dining options. Once I know the type of meals I will be purchasing I then start to research specific restaurants or dining establishments of interest in an area. I like to use TripAdvisor to locate restaurants with high recommendations that are convenient to where I will be staying or plan to be at a given time. For example, after researching Paris, I discovered people were raving about the hot chocolate at Angelina's. I visited their website and found they have a location in the Louvre, which I will be spending a day at. I reviewed their menu and was able to come up with an estimated cost for lunch. When you do your own estimation, I recommend you do so liberally and do not forgot to add the appropriate gratuity. That way if you spend less you will be able to use it later in your budget. 



4) Determine an acceptable level of service and quality. Will you be celebrating an important event or will you be pressed for time to fit a meal in? Will you want crepes from a street vendor or to sit down for a meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant? These are important questions to ask yourself as you design your travel intinerary. If you will be dining out to celebrate, I suggest trying to obtain reservations as soon as you can. That way you will not be dissappointed if the restaurant is filled or there is a long wait for a table. Because the purpose of this exercise is to identify a budget, not necessarily define exactly which restaurants you will eat at, identify a good sample of dining options. Take the time to read reviews and when possible examine their menus. From reviewing the available information, you should be able to determine what an exceptable level of service and cost for dining is for your specific plan.



I used these guidlines in my own travel planning and so far they have worked well. If you estimate liberally, the worst case is that you will come home with extra unspent money or have more money for beer. However, if you do not budget enough you will be stuck paying off those bills. In addition to setting up a good budget, you may find some great out of the way dining options you never would have found by wandering the tourist areas...





Purchasing European Thalys Train Tickets in the US

Ever since I was a kid, I've loved trains. When I was 12, I saved my allowance all summer and bought an "N-scale" Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV) set. Twenty years later and I will be riding on the latest generation of this train, on the Thalys Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam (PBA) route. Needless to say I am very excited, but when I began planning this trip I did have some trepidation after hearing about problems purchasing European train tickets from the US.

In the end I did not have any issues, but I did follow a few simple steps before I purchased:

1) Used the Thayls website to determine the available trains, times, and purchase prices.

2) Compared against the fares advertised on RailEurope, which tend to be higher. Sometimes a discount code is available that can make these fares very competitive.

3) Contacted my credit card company and informed them that I would be making European purchases

4) Placed the order, direct with Thayls, after confirming they were the cheapest option. I had to make two seperated purchases because I will be departing Amsterdam and stopping in Brussels for a couple days before continuing on to Paris. I selected the "Book paper ticket" option, selecting the appropriate starting country as the country of collection. After providing my credit card information and confirming payment, I was able to open the ticket in an Adobe PDF reader window. I made sure to not only print a paper copy of the ticket, but I also saved a copy of the *.pdf file to bring with me on my phone/iPad. I then repeated the process for my second ticket.

5) After purchasing my ticket, I logged onto my credit card account and confirmed the proper amount was charged.

Thayls customer service can be reached at +32 70 66 77 88 (international tarif applies), from 02:30AM (EST) to 12:30 PM (EST) from Monday (Sunday evening/Monday morning) to Friday (Thursday evening/Friday morning). They can also be contacted online at: http://www.thalys.com/be/en/practical-travel-guide/after/suggestions-and-complaints?section_aide=information

Know Before You Go (Typical Tourist Scams In Europe)

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" Benjamin Franklin...

These words ring true for many situations a traveler may run into while abroad, but the one that could transform your dream trip into a nightmare is being caught unprepared for theft or scams. Europe, just like any major tourist destination, has its share of petty crime. However, there are several steps you can take to make yourself more knowledgeable before you depart, that could save you money, time, and personal sanity.

The first measure of prevention is to make sure you have backups or copies of all your important travel documents, such as passports, reservations, trip insurance paperwork, credit card numbers, contacts, and itinerary. I personally like to scan all of these items and then email them to my personal email address and load them onto a password protected device such as my iPad or Android phone. That way, if any of the originals are lost or stolen, I have the copies. If your passport is ever lost or stolen, immediately report it to the local US Embassy to either obtain an Emergency Passport or a transportation letter to fly home on a direct flight. Make sure you write down the contact number for all local US Embassies in the countries or cities you will be traveling through before you leave and add this to your copied travel documents.

When possible, store these important travel materials in a lock box in your hotel or at the least, within a locked bag in your room. Pacsafe makes some great products that can provide some measure of protection, when a lock box or safe is not available. I also prefer to bring my driver's license with me to use when purchasing alcohol or proving my identity. If that is lost, the replacement cost is pretty cheap and can be done immediately when I get home.

The second measure is to wear a money belt and only access it in complete privacy. Keep your large denomination currency, spare credit/ATM card, and important documents (that you have elected to carry instead of leaving in a safe) in the money belt and have small bills and change in your pocket. This will reduce your chance of losing everything if you are pick pocketed. Also try to be alert to your surroundings when you are in cramped quarters with others, such as a metro/subway train or bar/pub.

The third preventative measure to take before traveling is to be aware of the many tourist scams practiced in Europe. Once you have been informed, you will able to recognize and avoid falling for typical scams (set up, ring drop, slow count, etc...). The following articles provide descriptions of the multitude of tourist scams being practiced abroad and the potential actions you can take to prevent theft:

Tourist beware Europe's latest travel scams

Tourist Scams in Europe

Summer Travelers: Avoid These Common Travel Scams

Legal thievery: The scams & rip-offs built into nearly every hotel bill

Contemplating Developing a Travel Course

I've recently been thinking about putting my travel research, planning, and budgeting strategies together into a course that I could offer at local libraries. My intention is to teach others how they can overcome some of the hurdles placed in front of the uninformed traveler regarding:
(a) Finding the best or most appropriate airfare/transportation options
(b) Researching destinations and cultures using online and print materials
(c) Methods of overcoming trepidation of leaving US soil for foreign destinations
(d) Estimating a trip budget and planning a payment schedule
(e) Developing a checklist to keep track of important activities/items
(f) Purchasing, packing, and organizing for travel

If you have been following my blog over the last year, you will notice many of these items already being covered. However, there are many out there who are not as technologically savvy as those of us who live our daily lives integrated to the online world. Teaching a course in a public space, would assist those folks in finding out what travel options are available to meet their needs. What are your thoughts on this? Any recommendations for topics? Please feel free to post in my comments section...

Spikes and Drops in the Euro

The Euro has been on quite the roller coaster lately. Working it's way up to $1.49 (in early May) and subsequently falling down to $1.42 a few days later due to news that Greece may leave the European Union. For now, it has stabilized around the $1.43 mark. For those travelers who have waited to purchase specific tour and transportation items/packages, this is good news. However, if you followed my advice and used the 5 year maximum conversion rate ($1.57 on July 7th, 2008) it is even better news.

If we continue to see the Euro hanging below the $1.50 mark, the use of the 5 year high in the planning stages of a trip will definitely pay off. Let's say you were leaving tomorrow and had a total travel budget of €3000 (meals, remaining lodging, tours, tips, etc...). If you used the 5 year high of $1.57, then you planned on those costs being about $4750. In reality they would now be closer to $4290, resulting in a savings of $460.  The recent drop in the conversion rate alone from $1.49 (May 4th, 2011) to $1.43 (May 7th, 2011), would save $180.

I take trip budgeting/planning very seriously, in so much as I have developed a fairly comprehensive spreadsheet in MS Excel, that accepts an overall amount I have available for a trip (i.e., $8000). The sheet can then be updated with the latest conversion rate value, which is used to calculate the actual costs of lodging (based on pre-entered amounts) and other "in country" costs (tips, meals, etc...) in their native currency.  The result is a dynamic amount for daily spending that can go up or down based on the fluctuation in currency and the amount spent on previous days within the budget. In a future post I will go into more detail regarding how you to can setup your own comprehensive travel budget plan to save yourself from financial headaches and worries, when you get back from your trip. Also, keep in mind the best way to exchange currency is through ATM machines in the country you will be visiting, which will provide the most economical way of obtaining local currency.