TBB Mission: To Entertain, Educate and Inspire. Aim to at least do one well!
In case you missed it over the weekend, I had a post with my third list under “Blog Reviews” tab above. “Blogs I Ignore“.
I have never participated in Black Friday lines. I also do not remember the last time I was inside a mall. So I posted this picture I found online and it was a giant hit! Full Disclosure: I did not know Jimmy Choos were shoes until very recently! Apparently, I should be so ashamed of that but I am not! I would love to give credit or provide the link to the picture but I forgot where I first saw it (it happens…rarely!)
TRAVEL
Yomadic was “held captive for Eighty Hours at a Remote Armenian Border“. Fascinating story again…
Breathtaking collection of landscape photographs of Norway. By Bored Daddy.
12 Interesting Causeways Around the World. By THE WORLD GEOGRAPHY. Some very interesting topography here! “A causeway is a road or railway route across a broad body of water or wetland raised up on an embankment. Some causeways may only be usable at low tide and the distinction between causeways and viaducts can become blurred when flood-relief culverts are incorporated in the structure; a causeway is however primarily supported on earth or stone, whereas a bridge or viaduct is mainly supported by free-standing columns or arches.”
This is what you call “Temperature Inversion”. Did you know it? Neither did I! Here’s A Mind-Blowing Picture Of The Grand Canyon That Only Happens Once Every 10 Years
MILES/POINTS
In case you were locked up somewhere with no wifi access….You can register your Amex cards to get $25 credit when you spend $75 at Amazon. Yes, Amazon gift cards appear to count for the credit!
The Economist has a video about….fuel dumping. Actually, it does a pretty decent job explaining it. Seeing this is just weird! (HT to Mileage Update). To the few readers who asked why Airfare Watchdog is up there with Cartera…the answer is in the video!
Loyalty Traveler has a list of all Holiday Inn resorts. Some of them appear to be great values on IHG Rewards points!
ON MY MIND
This is how I roll:
I will be spending three nights in Chicago and staying at the Radisson Blue Aqua Hotel for just 50,000 Club Carlson points! First night was from an earlier promotion (expiring 12/31/13) and the two nights is the BOGO free that comes with the Club Carlson Visa. I am getting there on Megabus round trip for the grand total of $28.00.
I have a conference to attend in late January in Orlando.
Airfare:I tried to use my American Airlines $200 gift card (from the AMEX Platinum $200 airline credit) to no avail. I did not want to fly Delta or Spirit. So…Southwest it is! 5 minutes on its website, 11,879 Southwest points and $5.00 later and I had me on two direct flights on Air Tran (which will be my first and last flights on this airline!).
Hotels: I did some hotel shopping around. I was willing to pay due to such wide availability and low rates but nothing could beat the bargain I managed to book for the Four Points by Sheraton for just 14,000 Starwood points. Location is great and I had a good experience at the hotel two years ago. No Fairmont quality but who cares as I am going to be at the conference hotel all day! (Hyatt Regency at $249 conference rate per room, no thank you).
Car rental: Got me a reservation on Alamo for a “Wild Card” (compact or larger, Alamo picks it) type car for $11.22 per day plus tax. I should feed the reservation to Autoslash to save more but, really, how lower can it go? I can live with this rate and I think I may get lucky at checkin 🙂
ODDZ & ENDZ
Killing Kennedy. An absolutely stunning and awesome interactive multimedia piece on the subject by the National Geographic Channel. (thanks to reader Neil for sending this!)
Kim Jong-un Now Has A Doppelgänger. This Australian-Chinese guy who looks like Kim Uno has made an Israeli TV commercial and now charges $645 for appearances!
OMG. This is how the 80’s New Wave artists are aging…
BLOG BUZZ
The latest Friday interview at Million Mile Secrets is of a nice couple and starts with: “I started collecting miles and points in late 2011.” And I am waiting for the blogger who just discovered miles last week to be interviewed, sigh! I find it amazing they keep coming…smh
We like deals but not of this kind!
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1st again!
Primero
damn
me so sorry
I thought I had it set with Amol but you just ruined it Sky 🙂
I thought the guy in the fuel dumping article moved around just a little too much. It was a little strange.
Yeah I know. Even the interviewer was just not that sharp. Not very professionally made for a publication like Economist. Maybe they should just stick to text!
I knew I recognized Amol’s name!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpxInV9es6M
I love Airbnb by the way. Make my living from it.
I still prefer THIS video!! 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6R5cEEqXpk
This is HYSTERICAL! Talk about laughing out loud! Marvelous!
Yeah, the Amol Epic video indeed 🙂
On another topic, I was quite taken with photos of the airplane shaped, honeycombed Shenzhen airport. Most unusual! My only experience with Shenzhen was a day long shopping trip to a six story mall – we were in Hong Kong and it was not uncommon to hop over to Shenzhen to shop because things were so much cheaper there. Bought some gorgeous silk shawls as well as some pashmina too. And pearls.
Speaking of shopping, I wish the stuff I bought today on Amazon would arrive by drone.
I have a few pics of me haggling with Chinese saleswomen in Beijing from our visit some years ago. It was a six story mall too 🙂 And that Amol video is indeed a classic!
I want to go to Norway. I want to visit the trolls on the troll road.
Check my Trip report from my trip to Preikestolen earlier this year. I had no time to do any trolling as my blog is frequented by a few 🙂
Nice! I like the Radisson Blu pool :). I was going to ask if you had plans to go to Norway since you’d been showing lots of Norway photos. Now I see that you have plenty of your own Norway photos!
Looks awesome!
Should come as no surprise to anyone, but Rick’s mailed in post today was all about him. Of course it was.
No comment 🙂
Thanks Steve for supporting the blog. You have been a very loyal reader 🙂
Ingy,
Apparently AwardWallet is incorrectly attributing you, the recognized world expert on free travel, as running a blog called FrugalTravelGuy.com
I assume you’ve already had your lawyers send them a cease and desist? Or is it only not your blog when it’s convenient?
Again thanks for being such a loyal reader. I’m amazed at the time you spend admiring our work. I’ll be sure to consult you if and when I ever decide to terminate my endorsement of award wallet. For the time being, I’m just grateful that you obviously spend hours on my blog and AW provides such a valuable service to others.
Why would you have to terminate your endorsement of Award Waller?
They just made an honest mistake by referring to FrugalTravelGuy.com as your blog. As you’ve reminded us countless times, it’s not your blog
So one would think that you should either let them know of such so that they can fix it….. or stop complaining when people here refer to it as your blog
You know, something about being consistent and all
You are brilliant and as always absolutely correct. It is not my blog. It owned by Internet Brands. In your brilliance I assumed that you could comprehend that they haven’t bothered to change the text of the advertisement, but poor me forgot that in your brilliance that simple solution would just be, too simple for you.
In fact, with all your astute observations and knowledge of the business world, maybe the bloggers should hire you to run their blogs for them? Oh wait, They don’t need your expertise. They and FTG are doing just fine without you.
You are best suited right here right where you are. Being the angriest of the angry. You Steve have proven the Peter Principle to be true. Congrats on reaching your ultimate level. But please be advised when any of the blogs appear to need your wisdom, I’m sure they will come knocking at your door.
You are the most brilliant man I’ve ever read on an angries blog, well except for Harvson and most of the other Anons on here.
The DSG strikes again (Double Standard Guy) strikes again
He’s spent days on end on TBB screaming from the top of his lungs how he no longer runs FTG.com
But when a different site refers to it being his blog, it’s ok
Apparently you’re allowed to mistakenly think FTG.com is still Ingy’s site, so long as it’s in a positive light.
“Read the world renowned world’s expert on flying free” = FTG.com is Rick’s blog
“The blog stinks. The travel challenge is one of the worst features in the blogospher” = It’s not my blog, i sold it and have nothing to do with how its run
The MMS Guy lobs up a softball reader question about Chase Freedom, a question which can be answered in 1 word, and turns it into the sequel of War & Peace
Guess no readers had questions about the CSP this weekend
Check the MMS TOS from the Ignore Blogs blog posts yesterday, wow!
What’s most impressive about the TOS was that there wasn’t a single link in it!
All that writing and he couldn’t find a way to slip in any Chase or Amex links?
I am starting to wonder if MMS is setting it up for a sale? I think MMS or TPG will sell out to a corporation first…
Are you going to get a cut? I will be shaking MY head if you don’t get a piece!
“I think MMS or TPG will sell out to a corporation first”
After they cash out, expect them to pull a Rick and talk about how they want to move back to the days when it was a hobby. But only after they cash out….
I doubt they will give me a cut 🙂 If they do, I will FULLY disclose it and not bury it somewhere on my site where nobody will read it!
Rick sold at a good time when companies were spending money…Not sure they will these days. But these two sites sure have higher traffic so who knows.
Moreover the content has gone down “;lately” right TBB?.;)
Did you save $10 spending $100 at Walmart? Because I sure didn’t 🙂
I mentioned it on Twitter but repeat here cos I quite like this story but many years ago when my wife and I got married we lived in London and were struggling to find nice shoes for the big day for her. So we ended up at some up and coming place called “Jimmy Choo Couture” near Paddington (which was near where we lived) and she had her shoes handmade by Mr Jimmy Choo himself. If you read his history this is when there was a lot of family tension where he wanted to focus on his handmade shoe business but a niece had bought out the rights to the Jimmy Choo name and it is she that built the global brand (which JC himself sold out from for just $10m in 2001). They were not super cheap (I seem to think around three or four hundred pounds) but still today people will pay tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands for the same experience. Have to say he was exceptionally nice and did a fantastic job.
Nice story indeed.
I think I also told you on Twitter how for a very long time I thought Jimmy Choos was a restaurant chain…u know, like PF Changs 🙂
I am still laughing/being traumatized for posting the TOS policy of the MMS blog, wow!
And I think you scared me enough on FT that I will start keeping track of all my Reloading activity 😉
I thought you’d get a kick out of those TOS. It just goes to show how he has taken it from hobbyist to full corporation. Good for him in reality, and the fact is he still has a blog that is well suited to beginners. But definitely no longer to my taste.
The whole Jimmy Choo story is an interesting take on how money and greed can screw up a family
Area around Paddington used to have a cluster of prostitutes as well back in the day. Some have been known to lose their virginity there. Now it’s been cleaned up. So it goes.
LOL. Can’t say I lost mine there. Apparently someone lost a teddy bear there, that went on to be a cartoon and marketing legend.
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/12/florida-flight-delta-connecticut/ Delta bumps 50 passengers to accommodate Florida basketball team
Yes, I also saw that and marked for further review. This is how Delta operates…
Keeping in mind that the Q1 bonus categories were already announced and thus only Q2-4 here was breaking news, was the Chase Freedom bonuses such a huge deal that it warranted every single blogger posting about something that won’t be relevant for another 4 months?
[insert affiliate link]
yes, apparently it was.
I think you are reading my mind 🙂
The only relevance of those chase freedom categories is how disappointing they all are… Unless you have a referral link
Who has two thumbs and is earning 5% cash back on restaurants in the first quarter on his Discover card?
This guy.
The king of fruits:
http://www.nytimes.com/video/2013/12/03/travel/100000002581039/the-king-of-fruits.html?smid=pl-share
>>>>>Durian stinks so badly
At least they start out the article well lol.
I am impressed with Discover so far, everything has been flawless. Nice addition to the mix for the 5% returns.
To quote an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, I am anonymous above.
I never watched that show either 🙂
I was at the store in Amherst, Mass for a special opening for Kate Bush ‘The Red Shoes’ release. Big fan. She never liked performing publicly so no reason to maintain waif figure. Nice to grow old without public scrutiny.
I never thought of Kate as new wave. More as an indy.
I liked her too. I just thought she looked much more changed than all the others. Well, the Cure dudes too!
When I was young I had a crush on Debbie Harry 🙂