Podcast #168 — Surviving Quarantine Theater; Traveling for Food
Trying to recover from a long weekend of eating and drinking through the neighborhoods of South Philly. Our movable feast reminded me that food may be the one experience of a place left that can’t be easily exported and bought on-line. We talk about the FBI’s cybersecurity warning to work-from-home types using hotels for getaway...
Podcast #167 — 6 Months On; Why Keep Travel Cards?
Spent a week in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula hiking, biking, kayaking, and running into a lot of other people getting away to do the same, which got me looking back six months to the start of the pandemic. I talk about a surprisingly good flight cancellation experience with American Airlines, and figuring out how to download...
Podcast #166 — What Is The Meaning of Travel?
Reindeer are ruining my cabin porn Trying to plan an August trip amidst dueling state quarantine lists and rapid lockdown changes while writing off my September plans for Barcelona. What’s worse – hotels cutting back on housekeeping or breakfasts? And talking with Emily Thomas about her new book The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad. All...
Podcast #165 — First Post Lockdown Flight; When Do We Travel For Business Again?
The hop taste isn’t coming through My first post-lockdown flight was a 90-minute Southwest non-stop from Chicago to Nashville. It wasn’t bad, but not as casually easy as my last pre-coronavirus flight in February. We talk about that experience as well as Hertz’s new cleaning program, my latest pair of Bose noise-cancelling headphones, and then...
Podcast #164 — First-Post Lockdown Trips; Travel Credit Cards
Can I leave my house now? I broke Chicago’s containment for my first post-lockdown trip, a fast drive down I-65. We talk about hotels swapping hospitality for sanitation, Hertz’s bankruptcy, and tips for travel credit card usage from Brett Holzhauer, the travel card expert at ValuePenguin.com. All this and more at the direct link to the...
Podcast #169 — Pandemic Holiday Gift Guide; Year-End Status Offers
No travel since the last episode, so I had some time to think back through my post-lockdown travel and come up with my top 10 gift ideas for your pandemic travelers. We look at the start of the year-end efforts by airlines, hotels, and credit card companies to keep their grounded travelers, unpack the work-from-hotel...