How to find the best hotel and flight fares online!

Boston (while running along the Charles River)

“Mrs Skinner do you have a credit card?”

I felt smug. Usually I wouldn’t. I mean who would when you’re being asked to hand over a piece of plastic used for large charges. Especially after they messed-up my name (I’m still a Miss)!

Why was I smug? Because I had already paid for the hotel in Boston (it was part of my trip over New Years) on the online site www.hotwire.com.

You don’t know hotwire? Well Hotwire.com has one gimmick and only one gimmick. What is it? Good question. Essentially they claim to offer reduced prices for hotels and airline tickets.

“Sounds like everywhere else Robyn.”

Yes, I know, which is why reduced prices is not the gimmick, just the substance.

Hotwire.com is about gambling. While this reservation site will offer you explanations about the hotel rooms or cars you want to rent, i.e. the room is in a three star hotel, the site will not name the hotel.

So for Boston I selected a three and half star hotel in the Back Bay area (i.e. central Boston). Sounds like it could be expensive? I actually found it on hotwire.com for just $93 a night before taxes – it came to a total of $359 for three nights.

A little over my $100 budget on my recent trips from London (so Dover, Berlin, Stockholm, Brighton, to name a few), but it was a holiday. Plus I was splitting the price so technically it was still under $100 a day.

Which hotel did I book? After I gave hotwire.com my credit card they told me it was the Sheraton in the

View from my hotwire.com booked room

Prudential Centre (i.e. above a mall). I felt pleased with my gamble.

“But the room is already paid-for, right?” I said to the receptionist.

“Oh yes, this is just for incidentals.”

My piece of plastic was much more for the Sheraton. The hotel then decided to also charge me for the three-night stay.

But that’s not the worst part. Nope. Neither is the hassle I went through to deny this charge. The disappointing part was that the hotel was only going to charge me $288!! I might have saved more than $70 if I had booked directly through the hotel!

Which led me to this column: how to use these online travel agencies such as hotwire.com, expedia.com and orbitz.com (to name a few of the most popular). Who am I to write this after my Boston fiasco?

Well that brings me to tip one: don’t be lazy or too busy. I know, I know you can’t always make a lot of time to book your hotels and flights, but make half an hour to do a little research,(which is what I normally do and what I didn’t do for this trip) and you could save yourself close to $100.

Which is why, to be fair to tip two and to hotwire.com, I have to concede they were providing a service to me, which was pulling together a bunch of hotels in Boston, providing me with their descriptions and, according to the online agency, the best price on that day….allegedly.

Taking me to tip three be careful about these sites, which also compound the search engines. I discovered this as I gave myself half an hour to try and find flights than I could find on hotwire.com (why not try another portion of the site?). Instead of hotwire.com searching, however, I was directed to two of its partners (i.e. to search through expedia.com, kayak.com, etc…) to find flights. Hotwire.com was not even going to do the work!

This discovery led to tip four and my result, which was prices above and beyond what the actual airline was quoting. In the experiment I chose Boston again (on hotwire’s partner sites), just to keep it in the family, and both expedia and kayak were above the price quoted by the airline.

Delta leaves Bermuda

On Delta’s site the round-trip flight from Bermuda to Boston and back, from January 26th until January 30 was $315. On Expedia.com? That would be $322! An extra charge of $7 just to use that service, apparently.

Ok so this column is not meant to pick on hotwire.com. Unfortunately they are in my crossfires this week because I have had to pick-up my bank account pieces thanks to them.

But tip five is watch the small print because the booking site provides plenty of clauses that release them from me actually being irate at the higher prices. i.e. “Savings based on lowest published rate we’ve found on leading retail travel sites in the last 24-48 hours for the same neighborhood, star rating, and stay dates. Availability is limited and rates are subject to change.”

But that doesn’t mean I will return in the future and in fact many of these online agencies, such as hotwire, orbitz and cheapoair.com are facing a lash back from people much bigger than me.

I’m not the only one, apparently, who is tired of being taxed, which leads to tip six. American Airlines led the way by pulling out of advertising their fares on Orbitz.com.  Other airlines, including Delta, have contacted sites such as Airfare.com, cheapoair.com and OneTravel.com to also remove their flights.

Which is seven: don’t get caught in a flight pricing war because now even the sites are fighting back. Expedia.com actually removed American Airlines from it’s flight selection, while Delta contacted them and told them to discontinue the flight listings.

Low-cost carriers, such as JetBlue and Virgin America, decided to be Switzerland and just always did their own thing by listing their seat deals directly from their sites.

So to book the best tickets, hotel prices, etc… my tip eight is to initially visit an expedia.com or a kayak.com

Get ready to ski in Vermont!

and figure out the days that are looking cheaper to travel.

Then (AND ONLY THEN) do I touch on tip nine, which is to then travel to the website of the lowest airline, car rental or hotel to see if they have better deals BEFORE booking. Sure the want to book immediately and spend less time is there. But that brings us back to tip one: don’t be lazy.

Which brings us finally to tip ten: sign-up with the travel agency online sites to received their discounts and best prices. These can direct you to good deals, but again DO NOT BOOK through them. Take these as guidelines to then research on the actual provider’s site.

You will be happy you do especially when you save a possible $70 and can put that towards skiing in Vermont, which will be next week’s Rock Fever. And as always visit Robyn’s Wanderings every day for more tips and tales!

A taste of Bermuda in Chicago

 

Bermudian Doug Jones looking over Chicago

 

From wandering past a large eye-ball statue to imbibing a Bermuda-based drink, Bermudian resident Sam Strangeways and her boyfriend, Doug Jones, explored the highs (from the Willis Tower) to the lows (deep-dish style) of Chicago. Here Sam shares Chicago in the latest installment of Bermuda’s Postcards:

Ever noticed how Bermuda – tiny dot that it is in the middle of the sea – manages to leave little reminders of itself all over the world?

You can be in the unlikeliest of places on a desperately needed get-away-from-it-all vacation and still spot an obscure vestige of island life.

Hence why I shouldn’t have been at all surprised to see, in the sophisticated heart of Chicago, that Bermuda had worked its way onto a snazzy (and slightly pretentious) cocktail list.

Actually, it was the Drawing Room’s cocktail waitress who was, perhaps, a tad pretentious, albeit initially very friendly.

 

Bermuda is on the drinks' menu!

 

We’d found the North Rush Street basement bar and restaurant by chance after watching a hilarious musical version of The Breakfast Club on our second night of a long weekend stay in the Windy City.

After heading out of the theatre into the unknown and largely deserted neighbourhood of Lakeview, we hopped in a cab and hightailed it back to the centre of town.

Nothing could have been less pretentious – or more fun – than pH Productions’ adaptation of the classic 1980s John Hughes’ film about five wayward high school students.

So we were in pretty high spirits when we stumbled, starving, down the steps of the Drawing Room – and met (allegedly) the world’s most knowledgeable cocktail waitress.

She presented us with a vast, dazzling grin and a gigantic menu of gorgeous-sounding cocktails before telling us about the venue’s Master Mixologist (I had to suppress a giggle there).

“I expect you’ll have a lot of questions about the drinks and I’ll be more than happy to get the answers for you,” she said, a little sternly, before heading back in the direction of the bar.

I turned to my boyfriend. “I have no questions,” I whispered.

“Neither do I,” he replied. “Except: how do I get a drink and some food in this place?”

Then his face suddenly lit up – Bermuda, his beloved homeland, had come to the rescue.

Nestled in the list of alcoholic delights was a beverage named a Port Royal Fizz, with ingredients including Gossling’s (sic) Black Seal rum and ginger beer.

“It’s basically a trumped-up Dark’n’Stormy, bye!” he snorted. “How cool is that?”

We were ready with a barrage of questions by the time the waitress returned – was it named after the golf course? Had the Master Mixologist been inspired on a trip to the island? – but, I’m sorry to report, we got no answers.

Our waitress – the same woman from five minutes before – looked vaguely irritated by the queries and said she had no information on the origin of the drink.

“Have you decided what food you’d like to order?” she said primly, shutting down discussion on the Port Royal Fizz.

We may never know how a bastardised version of Bermuda’s national drink made it to Chi-Town.

 

Anish Kapoor’s stunning Cloud Gate

 

But I can advise that it tasted pretty good, like everything else we had at the Drawing Room, which provided us with culinary delights, including delicious deep-fried guacamole, and plenty of laughs.

That was more than could be said for Uno’s Pizzeria on night number three. I’ve never been one for guide books but I bit the bullet and followed a recommendation for the “best Chicago-style deep dish pizza” in town.

Being a huge lover of Italian thin-crust pizza I knew this was a risky move – and so it proved.

To be fair to Uno’s, a cosy restaurant on the corner of East Ohio and North Wabash, it may well offer the finest version of this beloved city staple.

It’s just a shame that, to my mind, Chicago-style deep dish pizza totally sucks. Chicago gets so much right – breathtaking buildings, amazing public art, a thriving theatre scene and really nice people – but it has got pizza so, so wrong.

Picture a pie crust covered in thick tomato puree. Now picture eating it. I couldn’t and left Uno’s with a rumbling tum.

Champagne in the Signature Lounge on the 96^th floor of the John Hancock Center helped fill the hole.

No mention of Bermuda on the cocktail list here – come on, that would have been too weird – but the late night view of a million twinkling lights across Chicago and beyond more than compensated.

The great thing about the John Hancock Center is that you get to see this spectacular sight just by jumping in and out of an elevator and ordering a reasonably-priced drink.

There are more laborious methods, as we found out the day before, on a visit to the 110-storey Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower.

We queued for a long time to get to the Skydeck on the 103^rd floor – at least an hour-and-a-half. But it was worth the wait and the $16 entry fee.

I’m scared of lots of random things but, happily, not heights, so I danced about with glee on the glass Ledge positioned on the building’s east façade, 1,353 feet above street level. Not so my boyfriend, who eyed the glass box rather more gingerly.

Still, he made it out onto the Ledge of the tallest building in the Western hemisphere and second tallest building in the world – no mean feat for a mild acrophobic.

 

A second view from The Willis Tower

 

The Willis Tower, completed in 1973 and rising to 1,450 feet, highlights for me what is great about the talented, ambitious citizens of big American cities – they make stuff happen. And, often, it’s really cool stuff, like this Chicago icon.

They hear about a tall building somewhere else and say: “We can do better than that.” And they do.

It doesn’t always make the US popular but it ensures their vast urban centres are very exciting to visit.

Chicago is just that way with its 552 parks, 33 beaches, nine museums, two world-class conservatories, 200 theatres and vast number of public works of art.

I think the latter – even more than the dazzling sky-high views and tasty cocktails – were my favourite thing about the city.

 

Random eye-ball sculpture

 

From Anish Kapoor’s stunning Cloud Gate sculpture in Millenium Park to the random 30-foot eyeball we came across after stepping off the “L” train at the corner of State and Van Buren streets, there was so much to see and enjoy.

Best of all was the Crown Fountain, also in Millennium Park, which consists of two giant video screens projecting images of the faces of Chicagoans and spurting out water.

Watching the delight of scores of young children as they skidded in and out of the fountain waiting for the next blast of water was fantastic, smile-inducing, free fun.

Frank Sinatra once sang about Chicago: “I will show you around – I love it.”

I couldn’t agree more. Anyone fancy a trip to the toddling town?

• Travel info: We travelled to Chicago from Bermuda via Newark with Delta and stayed at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel.

Five traveling Files for Friday

Yes, I am trying to drive a communist car. It’s not easy. Especially when it is stuck in a communist museum. Where? Just outside of Budapest. How traveling has changed…..from minis that were only allowed to travel within their country to airlines that move travelers at the drop of the hat to airlines who don’t want to fly you anywhere unless you have a million dollars.

It’s airway robbery! We’ve all heard the lament before. “There’s never any food!” “We have to pay for blankets now?!?” “Why do I have to be charged for a bag? How exactly am I supposed to go to Miami without clothes?”

Yeah airlines have not made many friends lately, which is why travel file one this Friday is that airlines have found a HEART! Yes…who knew? Hurricane Earl is making life tricky for those trying to fly off the East Coast of the United States. Delta, Jet Blue and AirTran Airways are all canceling or reducing the change fees on their flights! Awww…they must still be recovering from the mayhem that was the Iceland Volcano.

Singapore's Symbol: Lion Mermaid

Not only are airlines changing their business plans so are airports. Wifi is free, bars are loaded and shops are in malls. Not so bad if you’re going to be stuck there because of Earl. So what are you going to do if you’re stuck in Singapore’s airport? How about slide down water?!?!

Singapore does nothing mediocre.

40 feet tall, and reaching speeds of around 19 miles per hour the slid sounds amazing and scary! Think I will stick to their butterfly sanctuary that is also contained in the Changi Airport.

Which is what I did when I was traveling solo around the world. I did it by plane. What if you want to do it by boat? Well you’re in luck. The Norwegian Epic has introduced Solo Sailing! Previously singles, like myself, had to book both beds….kinda a waste. Now studios are available at a substantially normal rate. Check out the Epic’s studios. But don’t worry, you won’t be alone for long. With entertainment such as the Blue Man Group and the Bliss Lounge forget finding a travel buddy! In Bermuda CTravel can help book your Norwegian Epic Cruise.

A cruise with a unique perspective. What about a hotel with the same intrigue? Yeah we can all go to Expedia.com or Hotwire.com, but these usually have deals with big name brands. What about finding deals on boutique hotels? Somewhere to stay with some grit? Well that’s where Tablet Hotels comes in. Finding great deals on beautiful and inspiring hotels around the world they are the site for the discerning traveler.

Helping a Turkish Lady get home safely

I wish I could say I have volunteered abroad….but I haven’t. I do try and help just like we did picking-up this Turkish Lady when the rain was pelting down and giving her a lift home. So what do you do if you want to volunteer? Well one of the problems in the past has been the amount of time it takes to become trained and the time they want devoted to the task.

No longer! The US Parks Service is now happy for a day or two from their volunteers. They advertise opportunities on Facebook. Check out more information about volunteering on vacation and other traveling trends on Time Magazine’s website.

And happy Friday!

Will travel with…wifi

I’m not a blackberry addict. Can’t afford to be one. But I do start to have the internet shakes if I’m away from the computer too long.

Must….check….email….facebook….twitter…

So you can imagine how pleased I was this weekend when leaving Bermuda I didn’t have to leave my internet.

Not the most recent technology on the plane anymore

Ok well for a good 20 minutes. From the time it took me to pry my fingers from the keys, board the car, drive to the airport, and check me in. Ahh security screening done, I walked into the cool atmosphere of the departure lounge.

Computer out. Internet accessed. I had already missed 30 status updates, 2 emails and a world of news updates. What was I going to do when I got on the plane? That’s two hours without access.

No fear. Delta is here. I thought I would get in trouble. I forgot to turn the internet access off. Gogo internet picked-up my computer and I was back on my web. Phew. I can finish that article I needed to email and finally tackle a post for this blog.

Who knew about this? Apparently some bloggers, but I had no idea that flights to Bermuda would be able to access this technology.

Here is a list of the planes that will have it:

B737-700 10 (Fleet complete)
B737-800 71 (Fleet complete…note that 2 additional 737-800s will be equipped with Wi-Fi prior to joining the fleet)
B757-200 103 of 132
B757-200 ETOPS 17 of 17 (fleet complete)
B757-300 1 of 16 (deactivated pending STC)
B767-300 10 (Fleet complete)
B767-300 ETOPS 0 of 4
A319 47 of 49
A320 44 of 69
DC9-50 1 of 33 (deactivated pending STC)
MD88 117 (Fleet complete)
MD90 16 (Fleet complete…note that 12 additional MD90s will be equipped with Wi-Fi prior to joining the fleet)

Sorry to all those trying to escape the boss. “Um yeah I was on the plane,” is just not going to cut it anymore.

Well unless you fly American Airlines. There wireless doesn’t extend more than 100 miles from the US.

Do other carriers have wifi on their planes to Bermuda? Have you used the internet in the sky?