The Geeky Joy of Planning

For me, much of the pleasure of travel comes from planning the next trip. The wealth of information available online just enhances that anticipatory pleasure. These days, in addition to getting the nuts-and-bolts info that was formerly available via Fodor’s and other travel books, I can use TripAdvisor to easily compare consumer reviews of restaurants, hotels, and tourist attractions. I can incorporate suggestions from viaMichelin.com to devise the perfect road trip through France. And I can use Google Maps and Google Earth to see actual images of places I’ll be visiting.

As I’ve been researching our destinations in Peru, I’ve come across yet another online resource that just knocks me out: Google has partnered with Panoramio.com to provide an enormous amount of user-provided photo content to their maps. Individuals can upload landscape photos of everything from the Eiffel Tower to their own backyard, and can quickly associate those photos with the specific spot from which they were taken. I’ve uploaded pictures of street scenes and tied them to the precise spot where I was standing when I took the photo. That content then becomes visible to anyone else who uses Google Street View to look at that location.

The concept becomes really fascinating when multiple users contribute similar photos. As you can imagine, we weren’t the first people to snap a photo of the pyramid in front of the Louvre. And as more and more users upload their pics of that same location, some sort of magic happens behind the scenes at Google Maps that overlaps those photos, creating a sort of montage through which you can navigate from one shot to another. It’s an incredibly cool effect: you virtually pan through a scene, and seasons change, night follows day, all sorts of transient factors happen while the primary subject of the scene remains unchanged.



Click on the screen shot above and you'll see what I mean: each of the arrow icons on the borders of the photo are links to other related pics. The round bubble-looking icons inside the body of the photo are also links that "zoom" to a similar photo taken closer to the subject. The large carat icons on the bottom of the photo move you forward and backward in the indicated directions. Finally, the big transparent trapezoid represents a the rectangular frame of another photo taken from a slightly different perspective. And to bring context to this whole wacky thing, in the lower right hand corner, a small map displays where you're standing and what direction you're looking. Initially confusing, this whole concept is quickly mastered, and allows you to virtually walk down the streets of Paris (not to mention a whole host of other locations).

Anyway, the point here is that there are all sorts of emerging technologies that enhance the whole experience of travel. We’ve arranged lodging in the tiny village of Ollantaytambo, Peru and reserved seats on the train to Machu Picchu, all without lifting a finger off our keyboard. Pretty amazing, and pretty darn fun.

France (and un soupçon more), 2009

Last year we waited too long and got snookered out of using airline miles to get to Europe in the summer. That story had a happy ending, since we went instead to Argentina and had a wonderful trip. But we really wanted to do a trip to France, since Melissa hasn't been there yet. So this year we prepared early and were able to cobble together a "free" trip for both of us: it's an ugly routing on the way home (Paris-Toronto-Vancouver-Portland), but it is, after all, free.

Once our flights were in place, we set about putting together an itinerary. We wanted to visit some of the famous wine regions in France, as well as spending a few days in Paris. After significant (and most enjoyable) research, we came up with the following plan. One of the great things about travel these days is the ease with which we are able to research options for lodging, dining, and tourism. There's a wealth of awesome information out there, and we made the most of it. We're pretty excited about our trip, which includes the following:

15-Jul Wednesday
Depart Portland at 1:15PM on Lufthansa 469 to Frankfurt, then Lufthansa 4214 to Paris

16-Jul Thursday
Arrive at Paris De Gaulle, pick up rental car and drive to Champagne, about 2 hours north and east of Paris. Our hotel is in the famous town of Reims. We're staying at the Hotel Azur (Tel: +33 (0) 3 26 47 43 39)

17-Jul Friday
Tour the Champagne region.

18-Jul Saturday
Drive south and east through Chablis to Burgundy. We're staying in Beaune at the Jardin de Lois (Tel: +33 (0) 3 80 22 41 97).

19-Jul Sunday
Tour the Burgundy region

20-Jul Monday
Drive south through the Beaujolais region to Lyon, then further south into the Northern Rhone valley. We're staying in a small village called Cliousclat at the Hotel la Treille Muscate (Tel: +33 (0) 4 75 63 13 10)

21-Jul Tuesday
Tour the Rhone region - we have several appointments to visit wineries in the area.

22-Jul Wednesday
Our longest driving day. We will drive through the French Alps, visiting the Parc National de Vanois and passing into the Aosta region of Italy. We're spending the night in the scenic town of Saint-Vincent at the Hotel Bijou (Tel. +39 (0) 1 66 51 00 67)

23-Jul Thursday
Should be a beautiful day of driving. We will drive north through the Great Saint Bernard Pass into Switzerland. We'll drive to the town of Tasch, which is the last stop before reaching the car-free village of Zermatt, at the foot of the Matterhorn. Interestingly, Zermatt is less than 25 miles as the crow flies from Saint-Vincent, but we'll be driving well over 125 miles to get there. In Zermatt, we're staying at Le Petit Hotel (Tel: +41 (0) 2 79 67 59 00).

24-Jul Friday
We'll drive through Switzerland and cross back into the Alsace region of France, with Strasbourg as our destination. Staying at the Hotel Cathedrale (Tel: +33 (0) 3 88 22 12 12).

25-Jul Saturday
Last day of our road trip - returning our car at the airport and taking the train into the 5th Arrondissement of Paris. We're staying at the Hotel Pantheon (Tel: +33 1 43 54 32 95)

26-Jul Sunday
Paris

27-Jul Monday
Paris

28-Jul Tuesday
Paris

29-Jul Wednesday
Depart Paris on Air Canada 881 to Toronto at 10:30AM. Next connection is Air Canada 115 to Vancouver, then Air Canada 8129 to PDX, which is scheduled to arrive at 9:45PM.

Butterflies

I've been following a couple of online forums and there's a discouraging recurrent theme: Buenos Aires seems to be suffering from a plague of various sorts of crime. At its most threatening, it manifests as muggings and armed robbery on the street - no area of town seems to be immune to this problem. Lesser threats include all sorts of taxi scams, bogus currency, short change artists, and pickpockets. Add to this the very real possibility of public demonstrations against the government, and it all sums up to a volatile and slightly threatening environment.

I'm not averse to going - in fact, I'm still very much looking forward to the trip. But it will be interesting to see just how vigilant we need to be, and how much that vigilance detracts from our overall enjoyment of this vacation.

Best laid plans

We've made progress these past few weeks, but one of our most important decisions just fell apart yesterday.  We intended to spend our time at Casa Bolivar, but they just notified us that the building will be undergoing repairs, so they cancelled our reservation.  We scrambled around to find an alternative and have made new reservations at a highly-rated B&B, Casa Palermitano, for all but our first night.

So we're getting close.

A plan (of sorts) emerges

Despite some disappointment at not being able to fit Iguazu into our Argentina plans, I think we're settling on a very feasible and very fun intinerary.

We will drive (con los ninos) to LA on Saturday and Sunday, June 28/29. We'll drop them off with their dad and stay somewhere nearby, in preparation for our departure on Monday the 30th. Our LAN Chile flight departs LAX at 1:10 PM. After an overnight flight to Santiago, Chile, and a connection from Santiago, we arrive in Buenos Aires the following day (Tuesday, July 1) at 10:30 AM. We've arranged for a car from the hotel to pick us up, so we'll have no particular challenges getting to our hotel and base of operations. After that, I'm guessing we will want to nap for a few hours, which will work out well, given the Argentine predilection for eating dinner after 10 PM.

We'll plan to spend our first few days in Buenos Aires just familiarizing ourselves with the city and its various neighborhoods. After a few days we may be ready to take an overnight trip to Colonia, Uruguay, or a day trip on the train to the town of Tigre, to the north of BsAs proper.

Our Argentina trip will end on Sunday, July 13, when our flight back to LA leaves BsAs at 8:35 PM. Again, we fly overnight, arriving in LA on Monday the 14th at 7:40 in the morning. To cap off a fun day of travel, we'll pile the kiddos into the car and head up the 5 to Sacramento before stopping for the night. Tuesday we'll drive the rest of the way home and on Wednesday I'll go back to work.

Action-packed, no?

(Steve, 15 April 2008)

So where are we going to visit?

Okay, so we've managed to throw a few options off the table, what's left on it?

Well, there's Buenos Aires itself, of course, and we're actively looking into day trips we can make.  One place that sounds interesting is Colonia del Sacramento, located in Uruguay, just across the Rio de la Plata from Buenos Aires.  Another is Tigre, located on the delta islands at the mouth of the Plata.

First and foremost, however, we gots to find ourselves a place to stay in BsAs!  We've done some searching and have discovered that there's a lively market in apartments for short-term rent in the city.  Some of these are beautiful, modern places with high-end amenities - however, in that space, the per-night charge approaches what a decent hotel costs... so what to do?

We ultimately decided against going the apartment route.  I think it's a great alternative for 1) longer-term stays of a month or more, and/or 2) a lower-cost option.  However, our budget can accommodate $100/night or so, and we've found a wonderful hotel in San Telmo that will end up well under that number.

I've gone online at the TripAdvisor website to learn more about the Casa Bolivar and its surrounding environs.  Sounds like a great, hospitable place with enormous, cool rooms (we're staying in the "Baroque" loft, which is a "... spacious apartment decorated with an original painted ceiling, chandeliers with pendants, and window of red cedar.  46 sq meter loft with a mezzanine and 4 balconies..."  Four balconies?  Whatever - the photos look fantastic.

The San Telmo neighborhood is the bohemian heart of BsAs - funkier than the more tourist-oriented barrios of Recoleta and Palermo.  San Telmo sounds like the place every tourist wants to visit before retreating back to the more internationally-oriented neighborhoods where most hotels are located.  I think we'll enjoy staying here - it's kind of akin to our last Amsterdam visit, where our hotel was well outside the normal tourist circuit, but within easy walking distance to everything we wanted to see.  Walking may be a little less practical in Buenos Aires, particularly at night, but taxis are cheap.  We'll do our walking during the day, whether directly outside our hotel doorway or in some other quarter of the city.

-Steve

Now comes the fun part

Now that we've settled on a destination, we can start making a few plans.  To begin with, maybe it would be helpful to learn a little something about Buenos Aires and Argentina in general.  We bought a Frommer's guide to Argentina and quickly discovered that not only is Argentina a hell of a long ways away, once you get there, it's big - way too big to do more than scratch the surface in an initial two week visit.  So that's what we'll do - try to scratch the surface.

Patagonia pretty quickly gets thrown off the list, dammit.  It will be winter there, not to mention the fact that it's a couple of thousand miles from our destination in Buenos Aires.  The wine-growing region around Mendoza lasts longer as a candidate, but eventually falls for similar reasons: it's an expensive, two-hour plane ride from BsAs and it will be cold in the Andean foothills.

Iguazu Falls, in the extreme northeast of Argentina at the juncture of Brazil and Paraguay, is a tantalizing destination: one of the great natural wonders of the world, it's a shorter (45 minute) plane trip, but still will cost us upwards of $650 USD just to get there.  Unfortunately, the costs just keep climbing - a Brazilian visa costs over $100 per person and everyone says you just gotta see the Brazilian side of the falls.  Lodging is at least as expensive as in BsAs, so there's another $100+ per night.  The final straw was when we read that there's been an outbreak of yellow fever in the area - yellow fever immunizations are painful, have nasty side effects, and cost about $300 for the two of us.  We're easily over $1000 for a freakin' day trip... cooler financial heads prevail and we reluctantly back off on the idea of seeing Iguazu.

-Steve

It begins with a few false starts

Melissa learned that we both have Alaska Airlines flier miles that are set to expire - in TWO DAYS.  We have between us a pantload of miles - over 50,000 each, or enough for two round-trip tickets almost anywhere!  Despite the fact that we've been to Europe already this year, we immediately began scheming on a time and place to take another trip.  

First timeslot option: the first two weeks of July, when The Littles will be in LA with their father.

First destination: Manila, Philippines, to visit our friend Noel.  Unfortunately, neither Alaska nor any of its codeshare partners fly to Manila.  Back to the drawing board.

Second destination: a circuit of Venice, Ljubljana, and Vienna, trying desperately to find an itinerary that won't completely bankrupt us in these days of devalued dollars.

After spending hours on the phone with the airlines, it becomes evident that a mid-summer Europe trip on frequent flier miles just isn't going to happen - there are too few seats, especially at this late date.  Melissa suggests Tokyo, but geez... who knows anything about Tokyo?  Then, in an inspired moment of, um, inspiration, Melissa suggests Buenos Aires.  A great option, and perfectly in keeping with our contrarian vacation strategy of visiting popular destinations in the off-season.

More phone calls, marginally better results.  First thing we discover is that Buenos Aires is a helluva long ways away.  The ugly frequent flier connections offered make it look like getting there will be a three-day ordeal.  We pause to reconsider options.  Melissa calls back, gets a new travel agent, and is able to score two perfect connections for us: LAX - Santiago - Buenos Aires, leaving on June 30 and returning on July 13.

I don't want to make this sound easy - we did a lot of scrambling, did a lot of on-the-fly plan-changing, but at the end of it all, we're getting two free tickets worth a couple of thousand dollars, easily... and we're going to Buenos Aires (admittedly, in the dead of winter)!

Should be fun.

-Steve