One of the beauties of travel is that it gives you something to talk about – and I don’t just mean with other travelers. Last Saturday morning I skipped out of the travel bloggers conference and went to have breakfast at the Counter Café.
The counter was packed with customers. After a few minutes I was seated at a communal table with an attractive young couple, Air Force pilots who had come to Austin for a fun weekend. After breakfast they were going rock climbing.
Unversed in rocks, or planes, I asked where they were from originally. The young man had been born in Duluth but then moved to Salt Lake City as a child. I told him of my interview, in the Minnesota State Capitol, with Governor Jesse Ventura (hoping he would know the name) and then of my visit to Utah before the Winter Olympics. He said he had been one of the children recruited to ice skate during the opening ceremonies.
The woman was from Colorado Springs, and I told of my tour of the Air Force Academy, her alma mater. Her background was Greek, she said, her family from an island I probably never heard of.
“What’s the name?” I asked her.
“Kalymnos,” she said.
“I’ve been there. It’s the island of sponge divers.”
“Yes. Some of my family moved to Tarpon Springs, Florida.”
“I’ve written about Tarpon Springs.”
“You probably know my family.”
I missed a few days here last week because I was attending a travel bloggers conference in Austin. On the ride from the airport into downtown we passed a cemetery that contained a tombstone in the shape of Texas.
That evening I ate at a restaurant called Lonesome Dove. My one big trip to the state, 15 years earlier, had been to write about Larry McMurtry’s hometown of Archer City. No Texan I met this time had ever heard of it; many had trouble placing the name McMurtry.
Deer antlers decorated the top of the bar, lit in such a way that they gave it a tony, Western feel. The barmaid introduced herself as Kayla, then she reached out her hand and asked my name. I ordered the rabbit-rattlesnake sausage with rosti and the grilled okra, corn, cucumber and tomato salad. The sausage, Kayla said, was 60% rabbit and 40% rattlesnake, “from Ft. Worth.”
It arrived speared on a toothpick with the frittered tater. “You doin’ all right there, Tom?” Kayla asked a few minutes later as she mixed a cocktail.
A couple sitting a few seats down asked where I was from. The man was from Laredo; the woman from St. Louis, though both had been living in Austin for a number of years. The man gave me his card (he worked in real estate), and the woman tips on places to go, including the bar in the parking garage next door. It seemed an excellent start to my weekend.
The website of one of the major car rental companies is posting rates of $125 a day for its cars at Dulles Airport Thanksgiving week. At first this struck me as cruelly un-American – price gouging people on the biggest travel weekend of the year – but then I realized that the company is in perfect line with our great capitalist tradition of greed.
Am I the only person who sits down with dread to book a flight, longing for the days when there were travel agents to shield us from the vagaries of airlines?
Yesterday I went to my favorite travel fare aggregator for a trip north over Thanksgiving. (See? Now I have a favorite travel fare aggregator.) I watched in anticipation as the fares on my screen did their jumbled dance down to the lowest one. When everything stopped, I looked eagerly at the details and saw that it was for a flight leaving at 6:44 in the morning.
There were some other attractive fares, but they were for flights with one stop. I finally booked a nonstop flight at 9:30 am for $50 more than the early bird special. (That came to $100 of course for our two tickets, about half the cost of the other flight.)
A few minutes later I received a confirmation from the aggregator; an hour later I received an email from the airline, informing me of the nature of my “basic economy fare.” I was barely aware that I had chosen a “basic economy fare,” but soon I was keenly aware of its idiosyncracies. I would not be able to “choose a complimentary seat, or change or upgrade seats.” I would not be able to sit with my “group or family.” I would not be able to bring a “full-sized carry-on bag.” I was not allowed to change my flight, or use it to boost my miles with the airline.
This information was given in a table with two columns: one for “basic economy” and one for “standard economy.” The first carried a thin tower of red X’s, the second a thin tower of black checkmarks. I might have considered switching to the darling “standard economy” ticket, but of course I was not allowed to change my flight.
Here’s what I will change: The airline next time I fly.
“I’m looking for a woman named Grazyna,” I said to the receptionist of our motel in the north of Florida.
“Is she the one with the fantastic accent?” the young receptionist asked, before quickly adding: “They all have fantastic accents.”
A short while later Grazyna and Hania and I sat talking on the front terrace.
“Where y’all from?” a guest exiting the office asked.
“Poland,” Hania said.
“So how come you’re the only county over there doin' things right? France and Germany are just allowing the Muslin invasion to continue.”
Hania and Grazyna sat mostly silent while the man ranted, in part because they disagreed with his assessment and in part because they were in shock that a bigoted Southerner knew about their country and its nationalistic government.
"Are you a member?" the cashier at the Tropic Cinema asked me.
"No," I said, "we're just visiting. Is there a senior discount?"
"Just a member discount," she replied. "Everybody in Key West is a senior."