Zipcar gets a bit cheaper
Zipcar, which I have started using in the past couple of months and greatly prefer over the time-wasting experience of a regular rental car, has just dropped their rates in Toronto: it’s now $10.50/hour or $69/day for their baseline cars, or $12.50/$87.50 if you want to drive a Mini. This price drop puts them well [...]
Canada Customs gets weird
When I arrived in Toronto from Boston today, the customs process was a bit odd. Only gone for three days, I had no checked luggage and nothing to declare, and I filled out the customs form as usual: checked “business” as the purpose of my trip, the “no” to all the questions about if I [...]
My first Priceline experience
Thanks to Jevon MacDonald and Priceline, I’m in the Hilton at Boston Logan airport for $65/night: regular price about 4 times that. First time that I’ve used Priceline, I was always a bit wary of the “name your price” option, but when I specified the area and the minimum number of stars, I realized that [...]
Expedia WTF
I used Expedia for the first time when I travelled to Las Vegas recently: they got me the airfare and hotel at the same price as I could have independently, but threw in a room upgrade and two free spa passes, so overall a great deal. After the trip, they requested that I write a [...]
Hard to ignore that global warming thing goin’ on
NASA’s Earth Observatory issues a weekly newsletter with links to the most interesting satellite photos of the week. This week, one of them showed how a piece of Greenland that was previously thought to be a peninsula was revealed as an island due to the melting ice cap. You can subscribe to their weekly newsletter [...]
Interested in cypress knees? Look no further
In Austin earlier this year, I went for a walk by the river and saw some really interesting cypress knees, the part of the root of the cypress tree that extends above the ground/waterline. These don’t grow this far north, and I’ve always been fascinated by the structure. Last week, I received a request via [...]
My first WestJet experience
Today, I flew with WestJet to Montreal and back — my first time flying with them. It was weird to go into Terminal 3 in Toronto again, I haven’t been there for ages since I’m an Air Canada points whore, and it looked a bit tired next to the shiny newness of Terminal 1. The [...]
Niagara weekend
I spent the weekend in Niagara with some friends from the Opimian Society, a wine club that I don’t belong to but probably should, tasted about 60 wines over the course of the weekend, met some winemakers, ate some great meals and bought a ton of great wine. Now I just need to find a [...]
Air Canada compensation
The day after my incident on an Air Canada flight last week, I received a phone call from them ostensibly to check up on me (maybe to find out how litigious I was feeling), with a promise of a follow-on letter. I gave the caller an earful of my concerns about the carry-on baggage handling [...]
Travel notes
In the last 7 weeks, I’ve attended 5 conferences in 4 cities (Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Las Vegas), making presentations at 2 of them, plus squeezed in a 6-day vacation in Nova Scotia that was relatively stress-free right up to the point when the landing gear of my flight collapsed on touchdown on my return [...]
