After settling into our cozy Airbnb in the Shinjuku neighborhood, we ventured out for our first taste of Tokyo. Vending machines brightly advertising popular beverages and snacks on every street corner provided a quick pick-me-up as we made our way to the famous Shibuya Crossing.

As we emerged from the train station, we stopped and stared – even having seen images of this iconic scramble intersection before, it was mesmerizing to watch the choreographed chaos unfold. Hundreds of pedestrians streaming across zebra crosswalks from all directions when traffic lights cycle green, coming just inches from each other yet maintaining order amid the controlled collision course.

Recharged from people watching and photo snapping at Shibuya Crossing, we devoted the afternoon to Tokyo’s pop culture playground – Akihabara Electric Town. Flashing neon signs advertising the latest electronics, anime and manga stores stuffed to the brim with merchandise, cosplayers posing for pictures, arcade games beckoning from every corner; sensory overload didn’t begin to describe this geek paradise.

We geeked out browsing shelves, played crane games hoping for a rare plushy prize, gazed upward at the retro gaming arcades scaling skyscraper heights, and fully immersed ourselves in Japan’s famously offbeat and playful otaku subculture.

The next morning, we headed to the Tsukiji Fish Market, arriving in the wee hours of dawn to observe the famous tuna auctions. Bleary-eyed but determined, we watched burly fishermen haul in giant frozen tuna and market vendors begin transactions on these prized catches.

The frenetic energy as huge bundles of cash exchanged hands contrasted with the almost religious rituals of examining each fish’s quality was fascinating to behold even at 4 am. Following the auctions, we roamed the outer market stalls picking up sashimi straight from the source and street food stalls for an early breakfast.

The sweetest, fattiest tuna we’ve ever tasted paired with steaming hot tamagoyaki washed down by bracing cups of hot green tea – a quintessential Tsukiji experience.

In the afternoon, we walked through the nearby Hama Rikyu Gardens – an oasis of tranquility amidst Tokyo’s high octane speed. Strolling paths winding through manicured landscapes, ponds filled with koi whose sparkling scales glinted in the weak winter sunshine, stone bridges arching over inlets – we soaked in the serene atmosphere, which felt worlds away from the busy metropolis surrounding the garden walls.

After recharging our inner zen at Hama Rikyu, we took the train to Asakusa district to visit Sensoji, Tokyo’s oldest and most significant Buddhist temple. Passing through the bright red Thunder Gate onto Nakamise Shopping Street, over 200 stalls flanked the path leading up to the main temple compound.

We couldn’t resist sampling various Japanese street food snacks like tempura, mochi, taiyaki stuffed with sweet bean paste, and traditional ningyo-yaki cakes molded into cute shapes while perusing the souvenir stalls.

Crossing the last stretch to the temple, we admired the vibrant statues flanking the pagoda entrance along with the smoking cauldron of incense wafting through the air. The eclectic combination of traditional Buddhist architecture set against a modern city background captured Tokyo’s skill blend of fast-paced urban identity grounded in centuries-old culture and customs.

No trip to Tokyo would be complete without paying our respects to the serene Meiji Jingu shrine set in an evergreen forest within lush Yoyogi Park – a relaxing escape from city life drawing locals and tourists alike. We approached the main temple building through a towering wooden torii gate, pausing first at the ritual cleansing fountain to purify ourselves before entering the sacred shrine.

We observed visitors quietly making offerings of coins, bowing in prayer, and showing divine respect while soaking up the tranquil atmosphere only disturbed by occasional chirps of wild birds in the dense foliage surrounding the shrine.

Back on the bustling city streets, we stopped for conveyor belt sushi to fuel up for a full night out in Shinjuku. The restaurant’s fast-paced atmosphere matched the vivacity we were starting to associate with Tokyo.

Plucking plates of nigiri and rolls in every shape, size and flavor off the circling conveyor belts, we witnessed firsthand the artistry of sushi preparation happening behind the counter. bellies satisfied with classic tuna, salmon, eel and roe options, we headed out towards the glowing Shinjuku skyscrapers dominating the night sky.

Spending an evening getting lost in the neon-lit alleyways and soaring towers of Shinjuku was a highlight. We soaked up the views from sky-high bars and restaurants, watched the coordinated light shows brightening up the city streets below, and explored narrow lanes revealing tiny yakitori joints, cozy jazz bars filled with salarymen unwinding after work, and even across some robot restaurant dancers to entice us inside for a kitschy experience. The nonstop energy and electricity vibrating through Shinjuku matched the kinetic pace Tokyo operated on.

On our final day, we checked off the last essential Tokyo must-see spots. We began at the Imperial Palace East Gardens – strolling through meticulously cultivated landscapes and soaking in views of the modern skyline juxtaposed behind moats and stone fortresses originally constructed to guard this historic seat of power.

Then a trip to Tokyo Station – this beautifully restored brick building served not just as a major transportation hub but as an architectural reminder of how Japan modernized and westernized to become the economic powerhouse it is today during the Meiji era.

Our last stop summarized the unique character of Tokyo – chaotic yet orderly, frenetic yet tranquil, deeply traditional yet fixated on all things modern and future-focused. A spiritual walk through the ancient Sensoji Temple complex in the morning followed by whiling away the afternoon in futuristic Odaiba district – home to rainbow lit bridges, human-sized mobile suit Gundam models, artificial beaches lined with palm trees along Tokyo Bay, and malls filled with kitschy toys and anime characters coming alive through virtual reality.

We explored both ends of Tokyo’s complex identity over delicious conveyor belt sushi watching the sunset over the Rainbow Bridge – a fitting farewell to our brief but action-packed time in this electrifying city that had truly captured our hearts after years spent dreaming of Japan.

The post Our Japan Trip Part 5 Tokyo appeared first on RidinKulous.

As we took off into the night sky, I gazed out the window watching the bright lights of LA shrink smaller and smaller. I tried to get some sleep since I had a full day of sightseeing ahead upon landing in Lima, but I was too keyed up. My mind raced thinking about the amazing sights, smells, and tastes that awaited me. The rich history of Machu Picchu, the rugged natural beauty of Rainbow Mountain, the fascinating culture of the Andean people – I couldn’t wait to experience it all firsthand.

Arriving in the Chaotic Capital

The next morning, I emerged bleary-eyed off the plane into the humid Lima air, ready to officially start my long-awaited Peruvian adventure. Lugging my overstuffed suitcase, I made my way through customs and hopped in one of the many yellow taxis waiting outside baggage claim. Zipping through the chaotic streets of Lima, I watched street vendors hawking goods, stray dogs roaming around, and crumbling Spanish colonial buildings covered in bright neon signs.

My taxi arrived in the touristy Miraflores neighborhood, where my hotel was located. After a quick shower and change of clothes, I was out the door ready to dive into Lima’s food scene. My first stop – the local market to try some fresh ceviche, Peru’s iconic raw fish dish. As I sampled the bright, citrusy flavors of the ceviche, the tangy lime juice dancing on my tongue, any lingering grogginess from my red-eye lifted. Fueled up on ceviche, I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through Miraflores, enjoying gorgeous ocean views along the clifftops dotted with parks.

Exploring the Historic Center

On my second day in Lima, I headed to the historic city center to explore well-preserved colonial buildings and squares. Stepping out of the taxi, the cacophony of car horns and street vendors overwhelmed my senses. As I approached the main plaza, kids played soccer while businessmen hurried past and street performers danced to live music. Green mountains rising up in the distance provided a dramatic backdrop.

Wandering narrow cobblestone streets packed with colonial mansions and intricately carved wooden balconies made me feel like I’d been transported back in time. I spent hours popping in and out of art galleries, museums, and the 16th century cathedral that held the remains of the conquistador Francisco Pizarro. Exiting the church, the sweet scent of grilled meat wafted through the air beckoning me. Following my nose through side alleys draped with strings of dried peppers and corn kernels, I arrived at a local grill churning out anticuchos – grilled beef hearts on a stick. Venturing well beyond my comfort zone, I took my first tentative bite of the smoky, rich meat. To my surprise, I loved it! Just another reminder not to judge a book by its cover when trying new foods.

With my stomach full of anticuchos, I hailed a taxi back to Miraflores. Gazing out the window at street art murals splash-painted across concrete walls, I couldn’t believe I still had nearly two more weeks to explore this amazing country that was already exceeding my high expectations.

Venturing Into the Andes Mountains

My third morning in Peru was an early one. Bleary-eyed, I gulped down a quick coffee before hopping in a van headed to the Andean village of Chinchero. I watched the bustling city transform into rolling green foothills as we steadily climbed up into the mountains. The fresh air and sweeping vistas were incredibly rejuvenating. I felt renewed energy and excitement for this new leg of my journey.

When we arrived in the sleepy village, our small group made our way to a compound owned by a local family who gave us a demonstration of traditional weaving using Alpaca wool. I was enthralled seeing the vibrant dyes made from natural ingredients and watching the intricate patterns emerge on looms made from sticks and rope. Next, we tried our hands at grinding corn using stone utensils, which was much harder than it looked! By the time we sat down to a homemade meal of potatoes, corn, cheese, and herbs picked straight from their farm accompanied by wood-fire baked rabbit, the family had a new crop of fans of their Andean culture and cooking.

On our winding drive back towards Cusco, we stopped at awesome photo vantage points overlooking the sprawling city nestled in a valley surrounded by rolling green mountains. The monumental fortress Sacsayhuaman, ancient Incan stonework, provided a dramatic foreground for selfies. With a light rain falling, we arrived back just in time for golden hour when the fading sun cast a magical glow over the city’s endless red rooftops. It was a picture-perfect end to an unforgettable introduction to the ancient allures of the Andes.

The post I Went on Vacation and You Didn’t – Peru Part 1 appeared first on RidinKulous.

Day 11: Flight back to New York

Day 5: Kyoto & Osaka

After the last entry’s cliffhanger, you must be wondering what we did on this morning that I was so looking forward to!

It’s the Fushimi Inari shrine!

If you zoom in close enough, you can read the banners they had lining the path to the shrine telling you that, according to TripAdvisor, Fushimi Inari was the most popular tourist attraction in Japan for two years running. So I guess we were just two of the many gaijin heading here.

Fushimi Inari is the head shrine of possibly 40,000 Shinto shrines in Japan. The shrine itself is spectacular and orange, but the real draw lies beyond the main buildings.

The torii gates are what Fushimi Inari is known for. There are 10,000 of these gates lining paths that traverse a mountain. They start out very large, as above, but soon decrease to human size. At the start of the trail, the torii are so tightly packed, you get the feeling that you are in an orange hallway.

You have to wake up pretty early in the morning to get photos devoid of people like that. By 8:00 AM, while we were on our way out, people were trying to get clear shots down the paths, and they couldn’t because of all the other people in the way.

The backside of the gates are painted with the names of Japanese businesses and people who have bought the gates. Purchasing a gate is thought to bring prosperity.

The trails that cover the mountain cover several miles. It’s steep, but not exhausting, to get to the top. Obviously, being hikers and completists, we had to do the entire hike. We made a good decision to get here early. It was peaceful, I’d say maybe the most tranquil place I’ve ever been in my life. All the way up the mountain, you encounter other small shrines off the path, and lots of fox sculptures, which is the kami for Fushimi Inari.

There are also refreshment shops on the way up the mountain. We were there early enough that they weren’t open yet, but the old folks who run them were getting them ready for the day. These shops would be super handy if you really wanted to make a day of visiting.

And at some point, we started finding lots of stray cats hanging out around the shrines and on the path. There was a woman putting food out for them at one of the shrines.

I found the  whole experience of walking through the gates strangely moving. Just the fact that there are so many of them, and the old ones get replaced… it’s kind of an overwhelming piece of communal work. I’d compare it to Opus 40, the enormous “environmental sculpture” built in Saugerties, NY, by one guy over the course of his life.

Oh, and if those gates look familiar to you, and you know you haven’t been to Japan, maybe you went to New York City in February of 2005…

That’s when Christo & Jean-Claude erected The Gates in Central Park. Marge and I went to see it, and I thought it was great. It has to be my favorite public art project. The orange gates with fabric draped on them lined all of the paths in the park. It really transformed the place in the dead of winter. Once I learned that The Gates was inspired by Fushimi Inari, I knew I had to visit the original eventually.

After Fushimi Inari, we had to get back to our inn, check out, and get on our next train to Osaka. Osaka is only 30 minutes away from Kyoto by train, and our hotel, the Intercontinental Osaka, is connected to the train station by a confusing series of walkways. We got there too early to check in, so we left our hefty backpacks at the desk for a bit and went exploring.

I knew Osaka was a business powerhouse in Japan and it was pretty commercialized, at least from where we stood. When you picture Japan looking like Times Square, Osaka is one of those places. Although I admit, we were right in the heart of it. We spent an hour or two exploring this bizarre mall (or malls) attached to the train station and office buildings. There was plenty of weirdly translated English signs. For the curious, Freak’s Store sold mostly outerwear. Nothing that interesting.

The malls are built vertically, not horizontally like in America, and they love their escalators. We finally got some cheap lunch in a food market in the basement.

When we returned to the hotel, this little check-in clerk said she would go get our bags. We assumed she was going to wheel them out on one of those luggage carts. But she returned  smiling with one backpack hanging off of each forearm! Marge and I rushed to take the bags away, because how was this tiny Japanese girl carrying these bags like that! It looked like they could break her arms!

Our hotel was nice. I think this was my favorite hotel we stayed in on this trip. The room was huge, the bed was perfect, there was a desk with a faux rock holding up one side, complimentary candy in a glass case, and a ridiculous bathroom.

The one place I wanted to visit in Osaka was Dotonbori, the entertainment district. We made the mistake of waiting until 5:00 to leave, because at that point, the subway system was a madhouse. And to get to it, we walked through this insanely brightly-lit tech store, full of people buying and hawking things like cell phone plans and phone covers. It was noisy and bright and closed-in and basically my version of hell.

Dotonbori is basically one street filled with restaurants, kareoke bars and people. I wasn’t sure if I was going to love Dotonbori or hate it, but we both ended up liking it. It has the packed, chaotic feeling of Times Square, but with the ordered friendliness of Disneyworld. Everyone was happy to be there.

The main thing you do on Dotonbori is eat. There is a lot of street food to try, and we had saved our appetites. The street is most famous for its takoyaki, or fried octopus balls.

We actually had that one serving, plus another from a second cart! Then came the katsukura (fried meat on a stick) and beer, and chicken skewers. Aside from all the food you can eat, there is no shortage of advertisements to admire.

Everyone’s favorite is the Glico man. Glico is some kind of candy company, and people love this advertisement so much, they pose in front of him, doing the Glico man pose.

Personally, I was more excited to see my patron saint of Japanese pop culture, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, advertising something called An, which at some point must’ve tied into her song, “Kyary Anan.”

Then there is the famous drumming clown. Does anyone know where the clown came from? Does anybody care? The clown slowly moves his head to and fro, flicks his eyebrows up and down, and very slowly and deliberately bangs that drum. WATCH MY VIDEO AND EXPERIENCE THE HORROR.

Day 6: Nara

A little backstory: We had planned on staying in the mountain town of Takayama for 2 nights for their famous autumn festival. But our AirB&B host backed out just before we were to leave for Japan. I had to reserve this place eight months in advance because Takayama’s hotels book up so far in advance of the autumn festival, and this was one of the last places available. Apparently, the AirB&B host got in trouble with her landlord for hosting people. Such is the world of AirB&B!

So before we left America, we scrambled to find another place to visit since Takayama, and everywhere around it, was completely booked. We settled on Nara, the ancient capital of Japan. We booked a standard Japanese apartment with sliding doors, low door frames and cushions for seats. It was owned by a woman named Hana, and in classic AirB&B fashion, if any neighbors asked who we were, we were supposed to say, “I am friend of Hana!”

When we reserved the apartment, we had to laugh at some of the instructions. It contained mysterious directions like “When you open the window, please use the net, otherwise cat is coming.” I pictured myself using a big butterfly net to catch a cat trying to break into the apartment. Actually, what she meant by “net” was the screen door.

When we got to the apartment, there were further instructions about the cat…

CAT IS COMING

Despite all these ominous warnings that “cat is coming,” Marge and I never saw a cat. Maybe the cat doesn’t even exist.

Like Kyoto, Nara has many temples. But unlike Kyoto, Nara has kept a huge swath of land undeveloped so you can see these temples in their original habitat. We didn’t have time to go deep into Nara Park on Thursday, but we did have time to meet these guys…

The other interesting thing about Nara Park is the deer. The deer in Nara have been protected because they are “messengers of the gods.” So they are basically allowed to run rampant and beg food off people. So if you’ve ever wanted to pet a deer, you need to go to Nara. Just watch them, though. They’ll try to eat your map.

By the time we got to Nara on Friday, it was almost dusk. Still, we spent an hour or so cavorting with these deer. Petting them was much like petting our greyhound Maeby. They’re about the same height and size.

For supper, we headed down one of those covered alley shopping streets and stopped in at least one restaurant that was actually closed. We ended up at a ramen place called Aoniyoshi.

This was my first time having real ramen after so many bad American packaged ramen experiences. What a cheap, delicious food. Super umami.

That’s basically it for today. Tune in next time when we explore Nara and… meet more deer!

The post Japan Trip, Part 3: Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara appeared first on RidinKulous.

Ha-Ling Peak, Canmore

We haven’t paid for a flight since 2011 when we flew to Calgary and stayed in Canmore in the Rocky Mountains for a week. It shouldn’t surprise you that, even though we actually paid cash for our flight, we still didn’t pay for our hotel that week. It was a timeshare week that was gifted to us from a family member. Got to keep it frugal! Without the free accommodations, we probably wouldn’t have gone.

Andes, Peru

Just like earning miles, there is a method to the madness of spending them. You want to maximize their value. Different airlines are on different airline alliances, meaning you can use their miles on certain other airlines. So certain miles are better to redeem for some destinations than others. Airlines each have their own award charts showing how many miles it will take to fly to different regions. To make it even more complex, there are peak and off-peak awards, routing rules you can avoid or take advantage of, airlines that do or do not charge fuel surcharges depending on the points used… I won’t even start to get into it. There are entire blogs devoted just to redeeming awards. And even after so many flights, I think I’m only at an intermediate level of knowledge on all of it.

Don’t lean on the electric fance

The following flights are all for two tickets, except for the trip to Vienna and Skopje, Macedonia, which I made alone. The cash values I assign come directly from the airline’s website, so take that with a grain of salt. Probably you could find a cheaper version of the same flight if you searched around.

Flights

(RT) = Round Trip

That’s basically ten vacations without having to pay for flights. We’ve spent nearly 1 million miles on flights at this point.

Tokyo Conrad

Free Hotel Nights

To be honest, some of those hotel stays were not completely free. The ones where no points were used were “free nights” we received in exchange for paying a credit card’s annual fee, for example the Chase Hyatt card which gave us 2 free nights for the $79 annual fee in the first year, or the IHG card which gives us a free night annually for $49.

In addition to the points-only stays, most of the hotel chains offer “Points + Cash” deals which can be an even better use of hotel points than using only points.

For example, for a 3 night stay in a Long Island Holiday Inn, we could either pay $170 a night or 15,000 points per night, or the Points + Cash deal, $70 plus 5,000 points. Do the math out and the Points + Cash deal is much better. Spending the 5,000 points would save you $100. Spending the extra 10,000 points for the points-only stay would only save an additional $70.

Geneva Intercontinental

Discounted Hotel Nights

Holiday Inn, Skopje, Macedonia

Miles & Points Balance

What are those “other methods” we’ve used to earn miles? One is just normal credit card spending, then there are some weirder ones, like the times I opened up a bank account and an investment account for the bonus miles offers. Recently, there was an even weirder method for earning miles while I will be writing about on Monday.

Here’s another stat. The total Cash Value of miles and points spent above = $79,963

Using that as an average, our total balance remaining is worth $81,676 in travel! Clearly we have not been able to keep up with the amount of miles and points we’ve been earning, so we’ve got a lot of traveling left to do.

Join us… Join us… Join us in the frequent flyer mile cult!

The post How We’ve Spent Our Frequent Flyer Miles and Points appeared first on RidinKulous.

I left on a Sunday and returned on Thursday, so it was four nights. I reserved an AirB&B, only took transportation from the airport into the city and back, and cooked almost all of my meals. I’ll be using the exchange rate at the time of my trip which was $1 US = 7.78 Norwegian krone.

Total Cost: $622.28

Flights

Yes, it is

What was most appealing about this flight was that it left from a small, formerly domestic airport an hour from my house and went directly to Bergen. No stopovers, and no need to travel to a big city airport! Little Stewart airport in Newburgh, NY, suddenly started offering these cheap economy flights to Europe on Norwegian Air (while also re-branding themselves as “New York Stewart International,” to give you the impression that it’s near New York City, ha ha).

You know us. We’re usually using frequent flyer miles to fly business class internationally. But this was so much of a bargain, I was willing to endure subpar food and zero legroom. (Marge was unable take time off from work, so I took the trip solo)

Leaving from Stewart was so easy, it felt more like going to a bus station than an airport. I parked directly across from the terminal, breezed through security, and was quickly off to Norway. For someone who usually has to take several trains over several hours, and then ride a shuttle for 20 minutes before even getting to the airport, this part was refreshing.

The flight was… well, let’s just say it got me there. It was full on the way to Norway, but mostly empty on the way back.

Accommodations

I stayed in the most gosh dang adorable place in all of Bergen. It is a tiny house, formerly located on the island of Sotra, and probably built in the 1600’s. It was moved to its present location in the Skuteviken neighborhood in the 1700’s, and its owners claim it to be the smallest house in Bergen. There are some small houses around, but this one really might take the cake.

There are beds enough for four people, but I think that would be a squeeze. But it was utterly perfect for me as a single weirdo American. Everything you need was all there and within reach. It felt super cozy. A tiny living room with a tv and fireplace, tiny kitchen with just enough cooking and eating utensils, and bedrooms wedged up under the roof. There’s probably a lesson there about simple living, but I did clearly did not learn it because I’m still living in my 2,000 square foot house full of stuff.

Indeed, it did cost $83 a night, but since I had 50,000 Arrival points on my Barclay card, I was able to offset the total cost of the stay, since each Arrival point is worth a penny credit against any travel expense. That was a welcome travel hack on this expensive trip.

Transportation

The only transportation I took was from the airport to downtown, and reverse on the way home. I cleverly stopped at the Fantoft Stave Church on my way back to the airport, then got back on the train at the next stop. That way I didn’t make another trip just for the church. Other than that, I walked everywhere. That includes up a mountain that most people climb via a $12 funicular.

It might not be fair to compare Norway to the other countries we’ve visited, since I only used the Skyss round trip once, but I will anyway! Thailand was $0.11/mile, Japan was $0.33/mile, Peru was $0.79/mile, Switzerland was $1.16/mile, and Turks & Caicos was a wallet-busting $2.13 per mile. Norway actually compares pretty favorably!

I should note that the Skyss train charmingly plays a different song as you arrive at each station. And for those of you who are into the whole Norwegian Slow TV thing, here is a video of the tram going into Bergen:

Food

Seeing as how expensive this place is, I definitely tried to fill my days with groceries for eating. The only things I ate out were a reindeer sausage with lingonberry jam at Trekroneren, a snack and coffee at the airport while I waited for my AirB&B to be ready, and more airport snacks on the way back because Norwegian doesn’t feed you.

To keep culturally relevant, I was reading Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky, and basically made cod for dinner every night. I had been watching episodes of New Scandinavian Cooking and made their recipe for Bergen fish soup, which lasted a couple meals.

But other than the coffee ($5.30 for about a pound) groceries were not cheap. The cheapest dozen eggs was $7.00, and the two little containers of cubed bacon were $7.50. The fiskeboller (fish balls) were $5.00. My single potato was $1.32. And this was some of the cheapest stuff in the store.

But it was all high quality, and I got to try a lot of Norwegian foods. For example, the one steal – Leverpostei – which was $2.30 for a medium tin.  I have a feeling this will make me a laughingstock among Norwegians, but I loved this liver paste! It looks like its marketed to children, but I don’t care. Look at that sandwich with leverpostei, gorgonzola cheese and dill on spelt bread. I’m sure it’s a horrorshow to many (and to my breath) but this pushed all my flavor buttons. I also tried a bunch of candy and cookies (chocolate spread Nugatti and marzipan bar Gullbrod being favorites).

But forget about alcohol. Norway owns a monopoly selling any beverage over something like 4.3% alcohol, so you have to go into a special vinmonopolet for even pretty standard beers. I bought three bottles of beer at the vinmonopolet and spent almost $30. I’m currently brewing five gallons of hefeweizen, and the ingredients cost me the same amount.

Compared to our other trips around the world, Norway was just plain damn expensive, and I spent more on food here than anywhere else. Compare the $54.72 per day here to Thailand ($8.29), Peru ($13.67), Japan ($17.20), Switzerland($25.42), and even Turks & Caicos ($36.61) was cheaper.

Haakon’s Hall

Recreation

I filled my days with a lot of hiking, exploring neighborhoods, window-shopping, watching the Winter Olympics, and cooking while listening to Razika and Casiokids, but I did get out to some cultural attractions. I kept them limited because these were also very expensive!

The Maritime Museum is basically on the campus of the University of Bergen. It is a little light on the Viking artifacts you’d hope to find (there were a few boats), but had good exhibits on naval battles and life as a merchant marine.

Haakon’s Hall is part of the Bergenhus Fortress. It’s an enourmous medieval stone structure straight out of Game of Thrones (see above). It’s been hit by fires, but has been beautifully restored. Your tour starts in the basement, in an area renovated into a dining hall.  Bergenhus Fesningsmuseum is the free military museum. A great exhibit on the Norwegian resistance during Nazi occupation, and another displayed all of the military uniforms worn at Bergenhus over the centuries.

I also stopped off at the Fantoft Stave Church, a recreation of a church that was burned down by a Norwegian metalhead arsonist in the 90’s. It was closed so I couldn’t go in, but it was so worth it to see one of the few iconic stave churches in the country.

Look, don’t touch, and definitely don’t buy

Miscellaneous

I did an unusual amount of shopping on this trip, so… wow, this category was a killer. Normally, we don’t spend anything on gifts. This time, I felt slightly guilty enjoying Norway all on my own, so I wanted to bring home some things. I got more coffee and snacks and leverpostei at the grocery store. I got Marge a very Scandinavian design bauble. I bought myself two records at the Fretex (Salvation Army), and got some alcohol and candy at the airport duty free shop.  I always skip duty free, but seeing how cheap the aquavit and beer was there compared to the vinmonopolet got the better of me. If I had just skipped shopping all together, I would’ve brought this trip’s cost just under $500.

I visited a home furnishings store called Illums Bolighus which was stocked with the most unbelievably perfect Scandinavian design furniture, and there was absolutely nothing in there I could imagine myself buying. It was almost all preposterously overpriced for me. I could see myself maybe, maybe, buying some coasters or some fabric for curtains. But otherwise, it’s fun to go in these places and look, as if in a museum.

But can I tell you something? Despite all this absurd expense, I am dying to go back to Bergen. This might most closely resemble my ideal vacation spot. One of my favorite spots I’ve visited is Mürren in Switzerland. It’s a little mountainside village with all of the amenities, but from your doorstep, you can go on a mind-blowing hike with stunning vistas, then return to your villa for some cheap wine, pasta, and Eurovision on tv.

Bergen has way more amenities, restaurants, and cultural stuff than Mürren. But still, right from downtown, I could walk up a mountain and basically reach the peak in a half hour. You could work an office job here, then climb a mountain on your lunch break!

Although, the cheapest bottle of wine I saw in each place shows that Mürren ($2.50) has Bergen (don’t even want to think about it) beat hands down in the price department. But Bergen is also the gateway to the fjords, so there is much more exploring and eating of fish I need to do outside of the city, so I’m sure I’ll be back.

Where’s your next trip?

The post How Much Did My Trip To Bergen, Norway Cost? appeared first on RidinKulous.

Okay, maybe that won’t be the name of this series, but it made me laugh. Because, you know, that attitude is kind of implied whenever somebody writes about their vacation on a blog.  Showing your vacation photos in person is bad enough, but posting pictures and writing all about it online is like Brag City.

Do you have a good title for a series of travel posts with cost breakdowns? Let me know, because I’m at a loss.

Aaaanyway…

Starfish, possessor of the shells

Last winter was so terribly cold here in upstate New York, I made it my plan to get somewhere warm for just a few days this winter.  Luckily, with my hobby of churning credit cards, this is easy. Free domestic flights are pretty easy to come by using Southwest Rapid Rewards points, and most cities where Southwest flies are going to have hotels where you can use points to stay. That’s an easy, free weekend trip.

So here’s how we did it:

Transportation

Clam Pass Beach

Southwest Flight – We flew from Albany to Fort Myers, Florida early on Saturday and planned on coming back late Monday night. We used 42,456 Southwest Rapid Reward points for the two round-trip tickets. Most of these came from a credit card bonus of 50,000 miles. Some frequent flyer bloggers will claim that their flights and hotels are completely free. This is not true if you paid an annual fee to get the credit card. To calculate my actual cost, I include a pro-rated part of the annual fee on the card which was $69. Plus, they still charge you about $11 for each ticket in fees and taxes. All in, the two round-trip flights cost $77.67.

To be fair, we incurred some other fees for parking at the airport in Albany, $30. I looked into rental cars in Fort Myers, but they were well over $100 for the weekend, unless you looked off-site from the airport. Getting off-site and renting a car takes a lot of time out of an already short trip, so we used Uber instead. To get to our hotel in Naples and back, it cost about $95.

Ibis butts

Two nights at the Hilton Naples – We are swimming in Hilton points since they have so many credit cards you can apply for, without any annual fees. We used 60,000 Hilton points for two nights here, and it didn’t cost a red cent. It was a nice hotel. Not five stars, but a really good Hilton. The reasons I decided to stay here was the location (near the beach) and the amenities. They have bicycles to borrow!

There is only so much beach reading you can do, so we took a great recommendation from Mrs. Pop at Planting Our Pennies and rode some bicycles down Crayton Road and Gulf Shore Blvd! I was surprised at how many people were riding bicycles on the roads. The bike lanes were actually respected by drivers, and though it was a pretty busy area, it was no problem riding alongside cars. We rode all the way down into one of the richest neighborhoods I’ve ever seen. I felt self-concious taking pictures of people’s houses, so you’l have to do with a picture of the street. Of course, you could just Google Streetview it and pretend you’re taking the same ride. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and stupid northerners that we are, our minds are not on sunscreen in January, and we were burned to a crisp.

I see rich people

Bike riding around a quiet neighborhood makes for cheap entertainment, especially when the houses are that extravagant. (You should’ve seen the front lawn fountains!) And so is beach-reading. The Hilton is about a mile away from the beach, down a boardwalk through a county park. I’m not sure whether our hotel offered beach towels to borrow, so we participated in that time-honored tradition of taking your white hotel bathroom towels to the beach. If you see someone at the beach with a white towel, you know they took it from their room so they wouldn’t have to “rent” a beach towel.

Another perk of staying at this Hilton: Tons of free food! I don’t keep track of my status at hotels, so I never know what to expect when we check-in. Water bottles and free wi-fi, at least. And yeah, they treat those water bottles like a special treat only for those with elite status. But when we checked in here, they gave us breakfast vouchers for both days. And this wasn’t some breakfast buffet either, but Shula’s, the Hilton restaurant. Anything you want on the menu, you could order. Nice!

And that’s not all! They upgraded us to the Executive Level, for some reason, on the fourth floor. And on the fourth floor, they’ve got a special room that they stock at breakfast and dinner with all kinds of more free food. If you wanted to make dinner out of it, you could, although it would be a weird dinner. They had what looked like miniature Philly cheesesteaks and taquitos, along with cheese and crackers, and veggies. You can see what we went for. Look at all those cookies!

Then Sunday night, it all fell apart…

We get an email from Southwest saying our planned Monday night flight home was cancelled due to impending winter storm Juno. I’ll leave aside the fact that we weren’t flying into any of the cities predicted to be hardest hit, and the fact that it didn’t snow on Monday, and the fact that our fair city got about 3 inches of snow. No, let’s just leave all those facts aside. Let’s forget those mistakes that Southwest made. Those flights were cancelled, and we had to re-schedule.

So how about Tuesday morning? I had no idea what the storm was predicted to do, so I re-booked for Tuesday, but needless to say, those flights were cancelled, too. Then panic set in as it looked like our Monday night flight was going to turn into a Wednesday or Thursday flight which means missing work, cancelling appointments, rabbits left alone at home because we weren’t supposed to be gone for more than a few days!

Fun fact: This is probably the last SkyMall to ever be published. I swiped it.

If we wanted to pay in the high three figures, we could try another airline. But that would be dumb, so we did our best re-booking for free with Southwest. Marge managed to get on a Wednesday flight, while I was stuck until Thursday morning. (She got the last Wednesday ticket!)

So suddenly, I had to find three more hotel nights somewhere. Our nice Hilton near the beach was already booked up, so we were going to have to move. In fact, a lot of hotels were booked. But my credit card hobby came to the rescue, and I managed to find two Hilton Garden Inns that met our needs (airport shuttle) for a reasonable number of points.

Monday afternoon we were delighted to meet up with NAME REDACTED, also known as Mrs. POP, the mind behind Planting Our Pennies for lunch at a deliciously vegan restaurant. Bloggers are real people! Wow! We heartily thank Mrs. POP for alerting us to her presence in the area when I fleetingly mentioned we were going to Naples on this blog. To my dismay, Mrs. POP insisted on paying at the restaurant. We’ll get you next time, Mrs. P, mark my words!

After the subsequent stranding, here’s how our hotel costs stacked up in the end:

Hotels

We still managed to spend no money on our stay! But I have to say, moving from the Hilton in Naples to the Hilton Garden Inns in Fort Myers was no picnic. With so few choices, we ended up at a hotel in the middle of office parks, condos and strip malls. And like I said, we had no car. So we were pretty much trapped in the most boring place on earth for a few days, waiting for our flights. Late Monday, we got pizza at the only remotely walkable takeout food place.

Tuesday, Marge tried to work while a good part of my day was spent figuring out how to get food without eating in the overpriced hotel restaurant with weird hours. There weren’t even any restaurants nearby, this hotel was so in the middle of nowhere. I found a frugal traveler’s friend, the supermarket, within 20 minutes walking distance and made my way down there.

I’m going to do another entry on saving money on food while traveling. But the food in the picture covered us for a good day and a half.  Yeah, I bought plastic forks for 95 cents. What are you gonna do, sue me? You try to find a fork in a place like that. Am I supposed to eat my lentil salad with my hands like an animal?

All in, here’s the total cost of our trip:

And if you’re interested, our total food bill:

The view from my not very exciting final hotel in Fort Myers

One thing I can say about staying in the office park wasteland, followed by the hotel in the weird location above (that is a mall in the background that purports to be the “town center”) is that the lack of pedestrians allows for a lot of silent walking-around-and-thinking time. After Marge’s flight left on Wednesday, I had all the time in the world to just walk around listening to music (Ariel Pink’s excellent new album Pom Pom, if you must know).  There were no responsibilities. Other people were racing around, but I didn’t have to be anywhere. I used to do a lot of this in high school and college. Not so much anymore. Seems like there is always an office that needs to be occupied, work that needs to be done, food that needs to be cooked.  So I got to thinking if this whole early retirement plan might be like walking around an empty nighttime office park. I could walk around all day with my headphones on, enjoying the scenery and having deep thoughts about the way Ariel Pink says the word “elevators.”  There’s nothing better than no responsibilities, if you ask me. Maybe early retirement will more like high school in that way. Sounds good to me.

Stay tuned for more braggy photos and cost comparisons on the next edition of I Went On Vacation And You Didn’t!

The post I Went On Vacation And You Didn’t!: Naples appeared first on RidinKulous.

Day 1: New York
Day 2: Flight to Peru, Overnight in Lima
Day 3: Lima, Flight to Cusco, Cusco at Night
Day 4: Sites Around Cusco
Day 5: Chinchero Market and Saqsaywaman
Day 6: Traveling to Aguas Caliente
Day 7: Machu Picchu
Day 8: Ollantaytambo
Day 9: Flight back to Lima
Day 10: Lima, Miraflores
Day 11: More of Lima and the Flight Back Home

I found Peru to generally be a pretty affordable country to visit. We split our time between the capital, Lima, and the Sacred Valley. If you stay at only the most touristy places, you might end up paying American-level prices for things. But if you venture off the beaten path just a tiny bit, you can save a lot. We found the Sacred Valley to be cheaper than Lima, although the town of Aguas Caliente puts every other town to shame, as you’ll see.

Throughout this breakdown, I’ll be using US Dollars instead of soles to make this easier on you. I’ll be converting any prices paid in Peruvian soles using today’s currency exchange rate of 3.14 soles to the dollar.

Total Cost: $1,711.66

Flights

Yes, that is the true cost of our two round trip business class tickets to Lima, and round trip from Lima to Cusco. The $167.46 is the cost of the various fees and taxes on our flights. We used 140,000 United miles, which we earned through credit card sign-on bonuses for United Airline cards and Chase Ink and Freedom cards, all of which have the annual fee waived for the first year, so we spent nothing for the miles themselves. The $5,238 retail price of the tickets was shown on United’s website.

Flying business class is so great, for so many reasons. We actually look forward to the flight! No, we don’t dread it. We anticipate it as any other fun part of the trip! You get to go to the airport lounge and get free food. You get to board before everyone else. You get the best meal on the airplane and “nannies” who attend to your every need. And, more often than not on international flights, your chair turns into a bed! This isn’t a frequent flyer blog. I’m just saying, if you want to do this, do your research and it won’t be much effort.

Transportation

I thought it would be fun to see how far we traveled on the ground, and the average cost per mile so I can eventually compare different countries.

Hmmm… Do any of those numbers seem out of place? Do you see what I mean when I said Machu Picchu is a huge moneymaker for Peru? Two round trip tickets from Ollantaytambo to the town near Machu Picchu were $228 by train, and those were about the cheapest tickets possible! And since there’s no roads to Aguas Caliente, the train is your only choice unless you want to hike it.

But, elsewhere in Peru, collectivos will get you around for almost nothing. The cost of a collectivo ride from Cusco to Ollantaytambo for two people is just 16 cents per mile. Compare that to the price of PeruRail or bus up Machu Picchu, which top the list at $4.56 and $4.80 per mile respectively! If you can find a more expensive bus, I’d like to see it.

Read more about our experience with Peru’s favorite cheap transit option, collectivos, on our Day 5 travel log.

Accommodations

We actually used a discount at the AirB&B in Cusco. I think it was a $25 off discount code. So there’s that. But actually, none of our accommodations were very expensive, averaging out at $64.85 a night. We didn’t even use any hotel points or free nights!

And they were still really nice. We even stayed in one of the greatest hotels ever, Samanapaq, seen here. If I had to pick one hotel to live in Alan Partridge-style, it might be this one. The breakfast was amazing. The laundry smelled wonderful.

Food

I was hoping to find excellent food on the cheap. It turns out, for most of the really great food, you still have to pay a good amount. There is very good cheap food, but if you start pushing it and try to be too cheap, at least for me, you start risking getting sick. During our first two nights in Cusco, we heard two different people vomiting in the inn’s bathroom. I did not want to become one of them.

So we stayed away from street food and generally picked places that our hosts recommended. That said, eating out lunch and dinner almost every day, getting snacks and dessert here and there, and drinking only bottled water still only yielded a cost of $13.67 per person per day. Considering how much delicious food was consumed, I am very happy with that number. And a lot of it is thanks to the omnipresent free hotel breakfast!

Recreation

Saqsaywaman

Once again, Machu Picchu is the category-buster. Of course, we paid probably an extra $15 total to hike up Montana, but simply entering Machu Picchu is a steep price. There are myriad ways to purchase tickets to Machu Picchu. I bought ours through the buggy official website before we left the States, but there are other websites where you can buy them, or you can them through your tour group, or buy them in Cusco, all of which methods are probably more expensive than through the buggy website.

The other big expense is that Boleto Turistico ticket, but that covers access to many sites and museums around Cusco. We used ours on three separate days to get into Tambomachay, Qenko, Puca Pukara, Saqsaywaman, Chinchero and Ollantaytambo. The Boleto Turistico is the only ticket that gets you into these sites, so if you intend on visiting many Incan ruins, not only is it a good deal, it’s actually completely necessary.

Other

One area I wasn’t hoping to save money in, because I didn’t want to use it at all, was medicine. Though neither of us got terribly sick, over the course of the trip I had to use ibuprofen, Immodium, sinus medicine, anti-gas pills, and an inhaler. Plus we got sunburned. We anticipated needing some of the meds so we brought some, but I had to buy a few things. Gaseovet is like the Latin American version of Gas-X, if you must know.

View from Miraflores hotel balcony

There was something about Lima on our last night that activated my wheezing. Usually only cat dander causes my ass-mar, but very rarely it can be triggered by something else in the environment. Maybe it was too humid or maybe the pollution got to me. It happens so rarely, I haven’t bothered to get an inhaler in the States for years. But luckily, you can get one in Peru without a prescription for very cheap. Thank you, socialized medicine!! I picked up a Salburex inhaler no questions asked for six bucks. I brought it home, so now I’m probably all set for inhaler for a few years.

One other thing we spent money on in Peru was laundry service at our hotel in Ollantaytambo. It was terribly beneficial to carry all our clothes in in backpacks. But we had to recycle clothes to last all ten days, and after all that hiking and being in smelly Cusco, paying to have laundry done was worth it. Marge also bought two scarves at Chinchero market. One for her mom, and one for herself. The scarf is the one souvenir we bought.

Textiles at Chinchero

Summary

I calculated the total cost of our trip to be $1,712.  Considering that some of that is food cost, which we would be incurring anyway, you could realistically subtract some of those. If we’ve been paying $300 on average for groceries lately, ten days is worth about $100 of groceries, meaning our trip actually cost $1,612 over what we would be spending in a normal ten days. You could even subtract our normal everyday transportation and heating costs we would’ve incurred had we been at home, but I don’t feel like calculating that, let’s just leave it there.

Peru would be an extraordinarily cheap place to visit, if you do two things: Use airline miles to pay for your flights, and don’t visit Machu Picchu. Our Machu Picchu visit cost $366 in total. There are ways around the expensive train and bus, but if you visit Machu Picchu, you’re at least in for the steep ticket price. There are other great Incan sites around Peru, but unfortunately, only one of them is a Wonder of the World.

Is $1,712 more or less than you expected? How much would you pay for a ten day vacation?

The post How Much Did Our Trip to Peru Cost? appeared first on RidinKulous.

But sometimes this travel hacking scheme takes a little work. Gone are the days when people would do “mileage runs,” basically paying for and taking cheap flights strictly because of a bonus mileage offer. Gone are the days of the US Mint dollar coin deposit trick. But there are new schemes all the time. All it takes is someone like Barry Egan to figure out that each individual pudding cup is worth 250 frequent flyer miles.

Barry Egan stockpiling miles

So it was with the recent IHG Priceless Moments promotion. IHG is the group that owns the Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, Intercontinental, Staybridge Suites and other hotel brands. The Priceless Moments promotion is supposed to work like this: For every stay at one of their hotels, you get an entry to an online contest. And with each entry, you can win anything from 500 IHG points to 1 million points to a private helicopter ride over NYC.

The loophole is that, for some legal reason, there is “no purchase necessary.” And so buried deep in the contest’s terms and conditions is the rule that, instead of staying at a hotel, you can also enter the contest by sending them a 3×5 piece of paper in the mail with all of your IHG member information on it. And since the contest ran for 3 months, there were 94 nights you could possibly be staying in their hotels. So to make things even, you are allowed to enter by mail 94 times.

Someone also figured out the ratio of hotel point prizes and calculated that the average person will get about 47,000 IHG points. Sounds worth it to me!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what 188 envelopes looks like:

Many thanks to the intrepid soul who figured this one out, because we benefited from their discovery. But not without some work.  See, each entry had to be filled out by hand with 8 different bits of information (Name, member number, date of birth, daytime phone number, etc.) Filling out 94 notecards with all of that takes some time! I did it while watching a movie or two. Luckily, the envelopes could be addressed with pre-printed labels!

There was also the matter of sealing the envelopes. Does anyone really wan to do that much licking? So Marge invented the method seen below. She remembers using an old ceramic stamp moistener at an prior job to seal envelopes, and put together the wet paper towel and bowl method seen below.

What’s the price of all of this? 94 first class stamps are $46.06. I got 100 notecards for $1, and 100 envelopes for $3, so about $50 total.  A week after I sent in my entries, I started getting contest entry emails. You had to click a link in each email to see what you won.

More often than not, you get this screen:

But sometimes you get 1,000, 2,000 or 5,000 points. After everything was done, I had won 57,000 IHG points. At $50 spent, that comes out to .09 cents paid out of pocket for each point. That’s great, because I’ve gotten about 0.8 cents of value from each IHG point from my redemptions so far. That also means the 57,000 points is worth $456 of stays at IHG hotels.

You might have noticed I didn’t mention what Marge won.  She also filled out 94 cards, and we spent $50 on notecards, envelopes and postage. But in the end, she didn’t receive any entries. It took me a while to figure out why. I knew the cards were filled out correctly and I had sent them at the same time. The problem was I forgot to register her on the website for the promotion! Always remember the cross your T’s and dot your I’s, kids!

So in the end, we actually paid .18 cents per point. Still good, but not great. Mostly I’m annoyed that we potentially missed out on another 57,000 points!

What schemes have you been running?

The post The things we do for frequent flyer miles appeared first on RidinKulous.

But by a normal human’s standards, 450,000 is hella points! If you had a credit card offering a generous 2x on all purchases, you would still have to spend $225,000 to earn that many points. What I mean to say is, bonuses are where it’s at when it comes to accumulating frequent flyer miles and hotel points. We churn credit cards because it takes little effort and it enables us to take insanely extravagant and frequent vacations we would never be able to take otherwise.

We’ve ended up with so many cancelled credit cards over the years, I’ve started to find creative uses for them. Don’t spend money on a dough scraper. A cancelled credit card works just as well! Here I am dividing up dough for chocolate babkas yesterday.

If you’re wondering how credit card churning works, today I’m going to line out for you exactly which cards we’ve applied for over the years and when. It’s a method that can seem daunting to beginners: Apply in batches on one day called an “app-o-rama”, and make those batches no sooner than three months apart. You should only apply for one card per bank at a time (although in some circumstances, you can do more than one per bank), and make sure you can meet the minimum spending requirement to get the bonus! Then after 11 months, cancel the card unless the benefits outweigh the annual fee.

So if you’re curious about how we schedule all of these applications, this is how we do it:

Norm’s Credit Cards

Marge’s Credit Cards

Add those up and we’ve been approved for 68 cards for 2,995,000 in bonus miles and points! 

(Let’s just say 3 million for short.)

How much regular spending would you have to do to earn that many miles? Let’s just say, many many more dollars than you and I will ever see. Behold the power of the sign-on bonus!

That doesn’t even count the free hotel nights (8). And yes, we have spent $2,596 in annual fees over the past five years to get those miles. But think of how far $2,596 will get you on a normal vacation. I could see a family of four dropping that much on a single trip to Disney World. Three million points will get you much, much farther.

How much farther? Well, you know we’ve been to Japan, Switzerland, Peru and yes, even Florida, using miles, but on Wednesday I’ll be publishing our complete list of award redemptions and you’ll see just how many of those miles we’ve spent. Here’s a preview: We’re earning them faster than we can spend them.

Do you play the miles and points game? What’s your favorite scheme for getting something for nothing?

The post How We Churn Credit Cards for Frequent Flyer Miles & Points appeared first on RidinKulous.

We stayed for seven nights in Switzerland, and got one bonus layover night in Dusseldorf which I won’t be counting. That’s a different country after all! All of these costs were converted from Swiss francs to US dollars using the prevailing rate in May 2014 of $1.10 CHF to $1.00 USD.

Total Cost: $1,821.32

Appetizer, dinner and cheese on Air Berlin

Flights

We very shrewdly booked our flight as two one-way tickets using American Airline miles and United miles. One weird trick, as they say, and I don’t think this is even available anymore, was that our flight to Europe started in October 2013 in Vancouver! At the time, you could use American miles to book a stopover of 11 months within your home country, meaning you could add a completely free flight! So basically, at the end of our Vancouver trip in 2013, we flew back to NYC, had a “stopover” of eight months, and then continued on to Europe, all for just the 50,000 miles each it would normally cost for the North America to Europe flight. That’s what you call a free one-way.

We flew on Air Berlin going to Europe, and Lufthansa coming back, both in business class, meaning we had fully lie-flat seats in both directions and great food. You can see the Air Berlin spread above. Warsteiner beer, a beef appetizer and salad, a lamb tagine, white wine, cheese and fruit… Everyone should fly business class at least once in their life.

So yeah, that’s two round trip tickets in flying beds with more food than you can handle for just the taxes and fees of $170.00 each. Thanks, frequent flyer miles! As one even more added bonus, instead of going directly to Switzerland, we planned a layover in Dusseldorf of 23 hours, meaning we had a full day in Germany as well, a country neither of us had been to! That cost nothing extra. In Dusseldorf, we saw churches, browsed a book fair, ate sausages and pretzels, watched weird German game shows, and since I’m an electronic music dork, I got to visit the original location of Kraftwerk’s Kling Klang studio on Minitropstrasse.

After that, we flew into Zurich, spent two nights there, three nights in the Alpine village of Mürren, and two nights in Geneva.

Ignore the car routing. We took trains!

Transportation

Again, does one of these numbers not look like the others? $136 for two people to travel two miles? Like our trip to Peru, there was one super expensive mode of transportation we took that was built just to get tourists where they all want to go. In Peru it was the $114 train to Macchu Picchu. In Switzerland it was the $68 cable car that brought us to the top of the Schilthorn, where there is a James Bond museum and revolving restaurant. In warmer months, I would’ve hiked up Schilthorn, but it was still deep in snow, so that wasn’t possible.

View from the Schilthorn cable car

You have to take two cable cars just to get up to the village of Mürren, but that wasn’t nearly as expensive as the cable car to Schilthorn. Probably this was to bilk the Schilthorn daytrippers for as much as they could, while if you’re just going as far as Mürren, you’re probably staying and spending money in town.

We got around completely on public transportation. Switzerland has an incredibly extensive railway network, reaching every small town you can think of.

Typical boring view from a Swiss train

At $1.16 per person per mile, it comes out higher than the 79 cents per mile we got in Peru, but not so much higher.  This is probably because of the lack of trains in Peru and the ubiquity of taxi cabs helping to keep our costs higher there. That said, for that extra price you also get non-stop breathtaking sights in Switzerland. The railroads traverse on top of mountains or sometimes blast right through them in tunnels. The views from the trains were so spectacular, not only did I take a hundred photos, but I ran out my camera’s memory card by taking videos!

When researching train trips through Switzerland, you might hear about special tickets called The Golden Pass or the Alpine Dreamer or things like that. Those are marketing terms trying to get you to spend more money. Basically, it will take you down an especially scenic route on a somewhat nicer train. But you can ride on that same route on a normal Swiss train, which is still 100 times better than any American train, and save a ton of money. You just have to know how to ask to get the exact routing you want.

We bought our tickets at the train station each time. We first rode from Zurich to Mürren and I distinctly asked the station agent to go “via Lucerne” so that we would route by Lake Luzerne. If you don’t ask, you will get a route through Berne, which is a tiny bit faster, but less scenic. Similarly, to get from Mürren to Geneva, I bought tickets in Lauterbrunnen and asked to route via Zweisimmen and Montreaux, I think. THAT is the Golden Pass Route. It’s gorgeous, but it’s also, like, 6 hours long. Just FYI.

And though we used the trams and buses in Geneva, we didn’t incur any cost, because if you’re staying in a hotel, it’s all free! You get a little tram pass with your room. This was really handy because our hotel was across from the United Nations but miles from downtown. Plus we could use our free pass on the last day when we had to sadly head to Geneva airport and fly home.

Park Hyatt Zurich

Accommodations

Through the strategic accumulation of hotel points and free nights, we spent nothing for four out of our eight nights in Switzerland and Germany, except for the credit card fees paid to get the free nights (reflected in Our Cost). One night in Geneva was $70 plus 25,000 IHG points.

We used two free nights from Hyatt credit cards at the Park Hyatt Zurich, the most expensive hotel we have ever stayed at by far. This place had a woman with a cart who came around in the middle of the day to refresh the fruit in your room! It was a very high level of service type of hotel, which made me very embarrassed to walk in there unwashed and wearing a backpack. I’m sure they could smell a couple of hotel point cheapskate Americans a mile away.

Intercontinental Geneva

The Intercontinental in Geneva was not as ritzy, but it felt more comfortable. Plus it had a couch, which was ideal because we hosted some family to watch the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 finale in our room! Did I mention that, as of 2014, I’m also a Eurovision nerd?

The only lodging we paid cash for was in Mürren, the Alpine village that I basically fell in love with. We basically paid $100 a night for an apartment with a full kitchen. Big shout out to Chalet Böb’s. I’d spend a month there if I could. Because we had a kitchen, we could eat all of our meals in for big frugal money-saving time.

Empty streets

The village of Mürren itself was basically vacant while we were there. You see, whenever the train into town is scheduled for repairs, everyone who lives in Mürren leaves for their own vacation and the village is basically shuttered, so we had the place to ourselves… WHICH WAS AMAZING. Our inn was one of only two or three open in the whole town. So with almost all of the restaurants closed and the grocery store only open for four hours a day, not only was the apartment frugal for meal cooking, it was actually very necessary. We had no idea the village would be empty, so it was pretty thrilling.

Food

Yowzer! That’s a lot of money spent. It’s no joke, food is expensive in Switzerland. Compare that average cost to Peru where we ate for $13.67 per person each day, and that was entirely in restaurants! In Switzerland, apparently we only ate out at five restaurants total, and the rest was grocery shopping. This backs up my notion that the smart gourmand goes to South America, not Europe, to chow down.

Bauschanzli

Out of those few restaurants, I’d recommend most of them. Bauschanzli is a waterfront cafeteria setup on Lake Zurich. Reasonably priced, but the food wasn’t that good. Well, at least the Schwarzer Kristall beer was great. Chez Ma Cousin is a small chain in Geneva that basically serves roasted chicken. And that’s it. But it’s really good, and at $15 for a half-chicken, incredibly Swiss cheap. Nordsee is some kind of fast food seafood place where we got fried fish and a seafood salad at the train station. Sounds strange, but it was actually perfect.

I probably wouldn’t recommend Stagerstubli, where we ate in Mürren. When we arrived, everything was closed except for two restaurants, so basically we had to eat at one of them because we had no food with us. The $52.78 was basically the cost of two rostis with eggs. Yeah, a rosti is basically a potato pancake, so, uh… not a good value.

But, good news for Switzerland travelers. It’s not all expensive! I found wine and chocolate to be extraordinarily cheap. And the grocery stores are more expensive than in the US, but still not too bad. What I was shocked by was that the grocery store in Mürren, a village on the side of a mountain accessible only by cable car, was no more expensive than the grocery stores in Geneva or Zurich! I’m not sure how they pull that off transportation-wise.  So in Mürren we got some pasta, cheese, mushrooms, tomatoes, sauerkraut, bottles of Swiss wine, a sausage called a “knoblauchwurst” and a crunchy chocolate spread called Ovalmaltine. Now that’s livin’!

Recreation

Pretty incredibly, we only spent money on one recreation item. We spent about $20 each for the combo ticket in Geneva to see the Museum of the Reformation, St. Pierre Cathedral and the Archaeological Site underneath the cathedral. The Museum of the Reformation was a little, ahem… dry. It was very educational, but not so much more than you could get just reading up on it. But St. Pierre’s Cathedral and the Archaeological Site underneath it are definitely worth visiting. It turns out the site of St. Pierre’s has been home to religious worship for thousands of years, and you get to dig down through the literal layers of history built up under it.

We actually wanted to go to a museum in Zurich, the Swiss National Museum, but we stupidly went there on the one day of the week they’re closed (Monday). Ah well. There are more than enough churches that are free to enter to occupy your time.  You can even go to an old convent at Grossmunster church filled with disgusting art (see left). The Prostestants’ churches might lack decoration, but that shouldn’t indicate a lack of imagination, because some of the art is horrifying.

Can you spot our footprints?

In Mürren, of course, for two days it was all about the hiking, which is free and plentiful. I can’t overstate how ideal the hiking is around Mürren. In the northeast, we are used to hiking to one spot for the view and then hiking back. Pick any hike in Mürren and there is always something new to look at. We were constantly tromping through farmland, meeting cows, passing by homes and barns, finding waterfalls and mountain huts, and seeing the remaining unmelted snow paint painted randomly across the landscape. And I’m telling you, seriously, there was no one else there. Even the barns with animals were weirdly abandoned.

We made an ill-advised hike up to flower garden Allmendhubel, which was about a foot deep in snow. At some point, all of the other footsteps disappeared and we were clearly the first people that spring to hike up that far. And to think, most people just take the funicular to get there, even in the warm months! Pussies!

No one here but us cows

Misty morning in Gimmelwald

We even went down in the farming village of Gimmelwald, a Rick Steves favorite, and again, there was no one there except us, a few farmers, and a bunch of animals.

So, all told, Switzerland wasn’t cheap, but we did pretty good in one of the most expensive countries in the world. If we had paid cash for our flights and hotels, it would’ve been much worse. Now, whenever I retirement fantasize, Mürren and the $100 a night apartment plays a part, as I try to calculate how much I would need in the bank to stay there for a month or two every year. It’s not that far-fetched.

What’s your favorite Eurovision song? Where’s the best place you’ve ever gone hiking?

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