Tag: Europe

Podcast

Episode 13: Travel Myths

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Occasionally we hear things- people’s fears, their hesitations their personal
opinions- that may or may not be based on facts. In this episode, we’ll be further exploring some of these travel ideas for some Myth Busting fun!

Myths we tested on this episode:

#1: “It costs too much to travel to Europe”.

#2: “Cruises are boring. There’s nothing to do on the ship”?

#3: “Mexico is unsafe.”

#4: “Airbnb and other vacation rentals seem more complicated than booking a hotel.”

#5: “Lyft and Uber are dangerous.”

What travel myths did we miss? Please add yours below in the comments. And, we’re open to rebuttals on our “busts” above!

We’re not sponsored by nextvacay.com, but we’d be open to it! 😉  Rebecca just flew to Iceland for a bit over $200 from a deal she was made aware of by nextvacay.com. For $25/year, they alert you to awesome deals and then you book as normal through the actual airline website or your favorite booking tool. We recommend you check it out!

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Tip 47: Room key turns on electrify in many global hotels

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Many hotel rooms in Europe, Mexico and beyond require the room key to be placed into a receptacle to power the room on. This is brilliant for energy savings, but it takes some getting used to.

In Germany, I had to make two different trips to the desk to request a new key as I walked out without mine. Shame on me…but I often leave my TV on when I am leaving the room so that habit overrode the one to check for my key in my purse before I walked out. :/. Thankfully this receptacle is most always right by the front door so it should be a good reminder before you head out.

As a hint, if you need to use your key (maybe someone else in your room needs to go somewhere and needs a key later), often – but not always – you can also slide the envelope for your key in this slot as a placeholder.

sparkling water
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Tip 38: Gas or no gas in your water?

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Yep, it’s a thing. In parts of the world, you’ll be asked if you want your glass of water to have “gas” or “no gas”.  You might also be asked if you want “sparkling” or “still”.  As you might guess, no gas and still are the same as regular water.  Sparkling and gas water have bubbles/carbonation. So which do you prefer, gas or no gas?

Hotel Room
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Tip 28: Hotel room sizes vary around the world

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Hotel rooms vary in size around the world. A “double” in Paris, as an example, means it holds two people not two beds. Be sure to look at the details when booking.  In general, European hotel rooms are quite small. As are New York City rooms sometimes, as compared to other parts of the US.

The same goes for Airbnb or other home sharing sites. Just because it “sleeps 6” does not mean the accommodations are “normal”.  There could be couches, etc. involved or all 6 beds could be in the same room so you cannot assume there are separate bedrooms.

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Tip 23: Adjusting to time changes/dealing with jet lag

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There is a saying about traveling through time zones that “west is best; east is a beast”, but I’ve found both are difficult and it varies by person. Honestly jumping forward 8 hours (even with super early European arrivals) is easier for me than traveling to the California falling back 3 hours.

We suggest making your arrival plans based on the time changes you’ll experience on the trip.  For example, we recently flew overnight from Chicago to Amsterdam.  When we arrived in Amsterdam it was 1:00am “body time” but 7:00am local time in Amsterdam. I had pre-arranged an early check-in at our Airbnb so we went there first and took a nap for a couple hours before heading out to sight see. I knew none of our party slept well on overnight flights so we planned accordingly and it all worked out for the best.   That short nap helped us feel rested yet also allowed us to be sufficiently tired at the normal bedtime and just like that we were on European time for the rest of the week.

Here’s some more tips and tricks:

https://www.skyscanner.net/news/jetlag-15-tips-beating-timezone-tiredness

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/05/09/snyder.jetlag/index.html