Category: Uncategorized

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Travelers: Wine of the Day!

Just read this and thought I would share…

Happy National Sauvignon Blanc Day!
That’s right, it’s that time of year again where is time to celebrate this delicious grape – as if we needed another excuse.
In honor of such a day, we’d like to take a trip to Styria – the place for Sauvignon Blanc in Austria with a style that’s uniquely its own. You won’t find any aromas of cat pee here, no, instead you will find bright fruit, minerality, refreshing citrus, and overall pleasure in a glass.
To start, let’s review the region of Styria. The region of Styria boasts a generally young winemaking history. Many of the estates found in the area were developed from agricultural properties from many generations before. It can be broken down into three main areas: Weststeiermark, Sudoststeiermark, and Sudsteiermark, and it is in the latter two that one will find world-class Sauvignon Blanc.
The highest producing area, Sudsteiermark, is a landscape of rolling hills, steep slopes, and soils full of ancient sea fossils that are, in some cases, as large as a human head. Variation in soils throughout the region, though, creates complexity and interesting stylistic differences and a variety of grape varieties grown. It is the Sauvignon Blanc, however, that has become best-known. Often referred to as the “Tuscany of Austria,” Sudsteiermark is a breathtaking arena for vineyards is truly special and it’s easy to lost oneself on a multi-hour hike. The wines are known for their fresh aromatics that are best portrayed in their “Klassik” style of wine.
Moving to the east, Sudoststeiermark hosts volcanic soils that add a delicate, mineral spice to the wines and readies them for long-aging. In comparison to Sudsteiermark, which boasts a Mediterranean climate, Sudoststeiermark combines this with a hot, dry, Pannonian climate to create an interesting microclimate for the region. Here, one will find make buschenschank, the region’s name for the heuriger or wine tavern, but also top-rated restaurants and many tourist attractions. Definitely worth the visit!
We leave you with a few breathtaking pictures of the region…So pop something delicious this evening and celebrate Sauvignon Blanc the Austrian way… with Styria.

From Austrian Wine
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Travelers: Water Bottles

If you’ve flown anywhere in the last several years, you know you can’t bring water through security. You need to purchase bottles of water once you have cleared security. If you need more than one bottle for a long trip, they get cumbersome to carry. Not to mention heavy.

Think about using the collapsible bottles that are basically flat when empty. Fill them up just before you board and you won’t have to drag around heavy bottles.

After they are empty, store them in your carry on and reuse them next time.

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Travelers: Airport Parking

You know you’ll remember exactly where you parked your car in the humongous airport parking lot. Right?

However, if you’re excited about your upcoming trip, remembering where you parked might not be at the top of your things to remember.

Next time, take a photo of the parking lot section sign with your phone or digital camera. Then forget about it until you return.

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Travelers: Addresses

How do you convey the address of your hotel to your taxi driver in Paris when you don’t speak his version of French and you can’t understand the questions he’s asking you? Maybe you saved the emailed copy of your confirmation…but you’re in a cab without wifi…and your phone doesn’t work in Europe.

What then?

You could show him your confirmation email that you printed and have with you. It may be ‘old school’…but it works.

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Travelers: Travel Documents

Do you back up your travel documents that would be catastrophic to lose? Copies of your passport, travel insurance policy, credit card info, or other identification info are vital to have when traveling.

You can keep these safe by using cloud technology like Dropbox, Google Drive, InfoSafe, and others.

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Travelers: Too Much

I know you want to see it all when you travel. But, you know what? That’s impossible.

In fact, you should leave room in your schedule for those unexpected delights. If you slow down and enjoy the trip…chances are your entire experience will be better.

Guess what…you can come back to take in the sights you missed or want to revisit. It’s a whole lot more fun that way.

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Travelers: Fare Searches

Many of you probably start planning your trips fairly early, especially if looking for flights to Europe, across the US, or a complicated itinerary.

When you start checking airfares, do you wonder if they will go down? Should you wait? How do you know?

One tool I found is to use Kayak. Put in your cities and dates. Then use their feature called Price Trend which shows whether the fare for your flight has been rising or falling. It also advises if you if you should purchase now or wait, with a confidence percentage.

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Travelers: Rental Cars

You know you need to fill up the rental car before you return it. But…you forgot to check where the closest place to do that is.

Next time, on your way out of the rental car facility…check for gas stations. Or…check your smart phone before you’re in a rush to catch your flight.

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Travelers: Check Out H.R. 4156

According to a post on Smartertravel.com…
Transparency in airfare. That sounds like something everyone can get behind, right?
But the Transparent Airfares Act of 2014 (H.R. 4156), currently pending in the House, has ignited a firestorm of controversy about the nature and benefits of pricing transparency.
There are, it turns out, two rather different conceptions of transparency in conflict here: transparency as understood by consumers of travel, which facilitates comparison shopping; and the kind of transparency advocated by the airlines, which obscures the true cost of travel throughout most of the buying process.
The first conception, encapsulated in the 2012 DOT Full Fare Advertising regulation that would be overturned by H.R. 4156, stipulates that airfare ads must prominently display the total price of a ticket, including all taxes and fees, up front. The taxes and fees may be listed separately, so long as the all-in price is the headliner.
That approach captures the common-sense understanding of transparency, and addresses the persistent practice of airlines’ quoting low “net” fares and burying the associated taxes and fees in small-type notes at the bottom of the page. Importantly, it allows travel consumers to readily make apples-to-apples comparisons of ticket prices.
The competing notion of transparency focuses on the taxes and fees, at the expense of the total ticket price. In a nutshell, H.R. 4156 “declares that it shall not be an unfair or deceptive practice for an air carrier or other covered entity to state the base airfare in an advertisement or solicitation for passenger air transportation if it clearly and separately discloses: (1) the government-imposed taxes and fees for the air transportation, and (2) its total cost.”
It’s the airlines’ way of highlighting the effect government fees have on the overall price of airfare. (According to Airlines for America, an industry trade group that is aggressively promoting H.R. 4156, federal taxes currently account for 20 percent of the total cost of a ticket.) And, not coincidentally, it will allow a return to the bad old days when airlines and other travel distributors only revealed the total ticket price after a consumer had all but completed the booking process. It borders on bait-and-switch.
It may well be that some of the government-imposed taxes and fees included in the total price of a ticket are unreasonable or inappropriate. But that’s a separate issue, best dealt with by the airlines’ extensive networks of lawyers and lobbyists and trade groups. Positioning H.R. 4156 as a pro-consumer piece of legislation is cynical and misleading. But that’s nothing new. It is, in fact, exactly the sort of behavior the DOT’s 2012 Full Fare Advertising rule was designed to forestall.
As the New York Times opined in a strongly-worded editorial (pointedly headlined “Making Airfares Less Transparent”), “The cynically named Transparent Airfares Act of 2014 can only hurt consumers… This push to mislead consumers is particularly galling since recent mergers, like that of American Airlines and US Airways, have made the industry less competitive. This bill will only hurt travelers.”
If H.R. 4156 wins, it will be a win for the airlines at the expense of consumers.

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Travelers: Walking

Have you ever been trapped behind a whole family walking together, slowly through an airport or on a city street?

It’s nice they all want to walk together. But, taking up the whole sidewalk or walkway is not only annoying, it’s rude. In fact, this was one of the complaints I recently read about in a survey of most annoying things travelers do!

Especially in an airport, everyone is in a hurry. Catching a flight…getting to baggage claim…going through customs. The last thing you want to do in an airport is get caught behind a group of people not paying any attention to other people.

Pay attention and try to get out of the way. Your fellow travelers will thank you.