travel stories

Podcast #178 — What Remains from Pandemic Times; Best Restaurant and Bars

Last month’s travel got me wondering what travel changes are going to stick after the COVID pandemic begins to recede. With all the restaurant and bar closures caused by COVID lockdowns, I’m updating my recommendations list based on recent travels. And I’m way overthinking our first post-lockdown international trip. All this and more – click…

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Podcast #177 — B-Sides and Rarities… Interview Outtakes

After a 2-week, 2,500-mile and $120 in tolls driving expedition through the Northeast, I didn’t have much time left to write a new episode. So, I mined the audio files of recent TravelCommons interviews for some good stories that got left on the cutting room floor. We also talk about planning for a bike trip…

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Podcast #176 — Why Business Travel Is Coming Back; Learning Airport History

Business travelers are getting itchy. They know Zoom calls can’t replace a face-to-face meeting, but they can’t meet with people who aren’t in their offices yet. We also talk about how surprisingly great the LaGuardia Terminal B renovation is, and then talk about airport history with Professor Janet Bednarek, professor of history at University of…

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Podcast #175 — How to Find Local Tour Guides; Rebuild Travel Muscles

I can feel travel beginning to come back. TSA checkpoint volumes are hitting post-pandemic highs, business travelers are starting to come out from behind their Zoom sessions, and vaccination rates are prompting more people to make travel plans. So on this episode, we first talk to Paul Melhus, CEO of ToursByLocals about the state of…

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Podcast #174 — How the Pros Plan Their Taproom Tourism

Looking at the Beer section of this new website design, I saw I needed more content. So I got hold of Rob Cheshire of the This Week in Craft Beer podcast to talk about our approaches to taproom tourism and to trade taproom travel stories. I also talk about mask hassles on a couple of…

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Podcast #174 Uncut — Taproom Tourism

Started trying to edit down my 90-minute Zoom call with Rob Cheshire, long-time TravelCommons listener and host of the This Week In Craft Beer podcast, and decided to post the whole chat as an “Uncut” episode. Think of it as an AMSR video for beer nerds. For those without loads of spare time, the *much*…

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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…

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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…

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