When asked to describe my travel habits, I would say I am a weekend warrior. Yes I travel a lot. Yes I have a full-time job. So in order to fill in my passion to travel into my work life, I tend to take a lot of weekend trips. Los Angeles is a fun weekend getaway from Austin. Southwest, United, American, and Delta all have…
My job takes me to the Texas coast a couple times a year. That entails a 4+ hour drive from Austin, through a bunch of small Texas towns including Lockhart, Luling, Gonzales, Cuero, Goliad, and Refugio, and ending in Port Aransas, a small island town due east of Corpus Christi, Texas. The Holiday Inn Express & Suites Port Aransas is the hotel I’ve been staying…
I travel a lot, but most of it is domestic travel. I tend to take one big international trip every couple of years. Hence why I seem so giddy and excited for this trip. This is one of the years of a big trip and I’ve previously written about the award flights I booked to Europe as well as the cruise itinerary and ports of call for…
I’ve been active with the scientific organization the American Society of Primatologists (ASP) since I was in college. ASP is an educational & scientific organization that aims to understand, conserve, and inform about nonhuman primates. Each year, the ASP membership gathers to meet and discuss their latest research. This year, the annual meeting was held just outside of Atlanta, in Decatur, Georgia. The conference hotel was the Courtyard Marriott Atlanta…
I recently did a quick weekend trip to San Francisco (like straight to the airport on Friday after work and back Sunday evening). I have a bunch of points with the InterContinental Rewards Club so decided to stay at the InterContinential San Francisco, which only requires 45,000 IHG Rewards Club points per night. Plus, since I hold the Chase IHG Rewards Club credit card, I will receive 10%…
I was recently in Seattle for the First2Board.com Sessions, a two day boutique travel-focused event that allows a small group of people to gather, share, learn, eat, and have fun in a new city every year. The event was held at the Sheraton Bellevue Hotel, which is a Category 4 hotel requiring only 10,000 starpoints. My partner’s corporate rate was able to score me a room…
A friend recently passed along an article to regarding dirty secrets of the travel industry. I spend a fair amount of time on airplanes and in hotels, so I found some of the ‘secrets’ interesting. Some interesting points from the article: Airlines lie about estimated arrival times. Airlines have to report departure and arrival statistics to the US government. One way to look good is to pad times on…
