This will be a time-sensitive arrival so I don’t think I can risk it…but I really want to.
I would guess Spirit’s on-time performance isn’t that much worse than AA’s that it would drive the decision. (Plus, most delays are probably weather/ATC/uncontrollable situations). My fear with going Spirit/Frontier has always been the shitshow that might unfold if there was a significant delay/cancellation, and I still needed to get to my destination. How does Spirit’s big front seat price compared to AA coach? That might be a better comparison in terms of comfort.
numbeo.com is pretty good for getting a feel of COL of different places. Bigger, popular cities will be pretty well-updated but numbers for smaller areas would be less reliable.
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Very close in cost, but Spirit’s “nobody in the middle seat” price is still significantly less than American’s coach.
And yeah, I don’t think Spirit is necessarily more likely to be an hour late than American. But like you say, if things do go at all sideways you’d much rather not be on Spirit. Like a few hours late won’t screw my whole plan with my dad and relatives, but a day late would be a disaster.
These days it seems like even the legacy carriers are getting gaped with multi-day cancellations but I assume if your Spirit or Frontier flight gets disrupted you just literally die.
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I’d love to not travel to western Europe during the summer, but my gf is a teacher so we always travel at the worst possible time of year.
First step is check Airbnb.
My guess is that $1k/month will mean sacrificing quite a bit in terms of neighborhoods and apartment quality in most decent-sized cities. Mexico City? Probably not gonna happen. But in Querétaro, it would probably work.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/26/travel/nairobi-hiking.html
Article from the guy who teaches the writing workshop I’ve done the last 2 years, and am doing again in a week.
Such a cool idea to hook up with a local hiking club. He found out about it from reading the local papers years before going to Kenya, and then corresponding with the hiking club. I need to find stuff like that to do in South America that connects with real locals.
Fucking hell, we’re not doing NYT previews now?
Wherever you end up going, find a hole in the wall Saimin place. Easily my favorite of all the Hawaiian dishes.
Yup. It is a downside to being one.
The upside is the crazy amount of paid vacation.
I normally travel to Eastern Europe during the summer and leave popular destinations to offseason vacations.
Mexico City still seems doable for under 1k.
These are the available apartments (not roomshares) available for March 2025. I’m sure a lot are crappy and most will be small-ish, but there are 370 available, so can probably find a couple options that will work.
Almost anywhere in Latin America should be ok with your budget, W. Europe will be tough as bob alluded to. My budget is about $1250/month for AirBNBs and most places in Poland in Summer 2023 were right at that #. Romania was a bit cheaper (Bucharest 1k and Sibiu $750). My wife works from home on voice calls though, so we always go with small 1 bedrooms, so she can shut the door. If doing only studios, your budget will go further.
The Balkans, apart from Slovenia and Croatia would probably all be doable, even in Summer. I highly, highly recommend Istanbul, which would work also, Greece too. The popular countries like France/Spain/Italy/Germany could be tough, but there are cheaper options like Palermo.
A lot depends too on how close to the center you want to be. We usually like to be a max 30 minute walk from all the central stuff, but if you’re willing to use public transport and stay further afield, then that opens more options.
Asia is surprisingly cheap, even places like Seoul. I spent $221 for a studio fairly central in Seoul this May. AirBNB is surprisingly cheap in Seoul, Hong Kong, even Tokyo isn’t too bad. That’s if you don’t mind older studios. And of course Southeast Asia will be very cheap.
Also, not sure if you have any proficiency in other languages, but that can make the experience richer, or if you have cultural ties to an area. I always enjoy my trips to LatAm or France just a bit more b/c I can converse in the local languages. And Poland was a lot of fun b/c my last name is Polish and I even sought out a town with the same name as my last name.
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Thanks - yeah, as I randomly search locations around the globe, while $1K does seem doable in a lot of places, options seem to really open up if you go up towards $1500. Probably have similar location/centrality outlook as you, want to be walkable and not a bus/train ride away from everything, which I think would detract from the whole point of the experience.
No proficiency in languages unfortunately, and no cultural ties to any specific location. It would purely be an approach of “where looks cool to live for a month or two”. Would likely try and connect with expat groups, as @superuberbob noted.
As I start to think about it more, one of my biggest initial hang-ups is not the travel itself or associated budget, but all the stuff we own in a 2br apartment and how to either get rid of it, store it (don’t want to pay a whole bunch for storage; parents house might be an option), and then re-furnish an apartment, etc., without those aspects being an enormous transactional cost in and of itself.
I think I need to carve out some time and really think through a lot of the large gating items, which will lead to more specific questions/research.
I pray every time I leave the house that an asteroid hits it while I’m gone
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Fucking Delta. I did it again. My flight out of Salt Lake to Paris was delayed 2 hours, which means sitting in the SLC airport for 4.5 hours instead of 2.5.
So I click on the Find Alternative Flight thing. It lists a bunch of options, and there’s a SELECT button off to the right. I click select on an LAX-Paris nonstop this afternoon that looks promising. I want to see more info, like what seats are available.
Well SELECT actually selects the flight. No pop up warning, no confirmation, no nothing. Fucking hell. I did the same thing during the Crowdstrike snafu. Just trying to research, selected an alternate flight. Such a horrible horrible UI. You have to warn people.
And on top of that it doesn’t even tell you you’ve been rebooked, it just goes to the returning flight. And on top of even that, the new outbound flight just disappears from their system for 5-10 minutes, until it magically appears again. So disconcerting.
All’s well that ends well though because now I’m on a nonstop that was going to be like $2k more when I tried to book it months ago.
Except I had to cancel my Uber reservation which cost $25. Never make an Uber reservation basically. You wake up to your flight changed and now it costs $25.
tbh that sounds like a huge win
It is, but bad UI/UX like that sends me into a blind rage. It took me over and hour to fall back asleep.
On the plus side, the Air France lounge at LAX, which I can use now because the flight is direct, is so much nicer than the Delta lounge. Last time I was in a Delta lounge there was a giant line to get in, and two dudes almost came to blows in the buffet line. Like yelling fuck you at each other.
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delta’s IT department is legendarily inept
there’s a reason they got way more fucked by the crowdstrike thing than everyone else
the T3 delta lounge is nicer than the AF lounge. You’re probably comparing it to the old T2 lounge, which is pretty bad (delta inherited lounges in T2 and T3 when they moved from T5/T6, T3 has since been completely demolished and rebuilt from the ground up and the new lounge there is great, with an outdoor bar. T2 is still in the 1990s
I think Jean Robert Bellande just walked in. But maybe he’s not tall enough.
oh and if your flight is departing from TBIT, there is now an airside tunnel so you can walk from T3 to TBIT without having to take the dumb bus