Our trip to Paris: the most useful apps

This isn't a travel blog officially, but in the spirit of allowing you all to live vicariously through us and learn from our experiences, I want to let you know which of the many travel apps I downloaded turned out to be most useful for us on our Christmas trip to Paris.

Let's start with the most useful:

1. CityMaps2Go Pro  This was on AppsGoneFree a few weeks ago and I'm so glad I snagged it! They also have a free version. The pro version allows for unlimited map downloads, so it is necessary if you're planning to travel more than 3 or 4 times in the near future.

The best part of this app is that it is offline! You download the maps you'll need on your trip and it is all saved on your phone's memory.

You can zoom in almost to the street level and conduct searches for points of interest. When you find what you want, you can drop a pin on the map and take notes on it. I found our Paris apartment and marked it on the map before we arrived. It made things SO much easier. It also was handy when we were wandering around and saw something that made us go "Oh! We should remember to come here for dinner!"

You can use the location arrow in the bottom left to find your exact location in the city. Also clutch for when we came out of a Metro station and asked, "Where are we?" The guidebook, the icon second from the right, uses the Ulmon guidebooks to give you more information about what you're looking at. Very useful for those moments when you turn a corner and say, "Whoa! Wonder what that building is!"


2. Metro Paris Subway by Presselite   There are lots of Paris Metro apps out there, and this one isn't the most fancy looking, but it was the most useful. It uses your location services to tell you which stop you're currently at--though that's really best used when you're above ground, it became useful after we wandered for a while and said "Is there a metro stop nearby?".

It also tells you timetables (though those weren't always reliable. I think that's more the city of Paris's fault and not the app), and you can map out your route using the route feature on the far right.

Apps that were helpful, but not as great as I think the developers mean them to be, were the following:

1. TripAdvisor City Guides   I had troubles with this app before we left Kuwait, though I'm 100% sure  the problem was due to the slow internet/data speeds in this country. It took a few days for the Paris guide to download, and partly because the app pauses the download when your phone falls asleep. Not sure if that's something the developer can change or if it's just a side effect of living in a country with internet issues.

I love that this app is offline and the "Point Me There" feature was really great when we wanted to get to a recommended site. I found the map to not be as detailed as I needed it to be and the pop up "write a review" request every. time. you. open. the. app got really annoying really fast. I understand that the website runs on user reviews and you should give back to the website that is giving you this free app. I just wish that the reminder to leave a review only popped up every 5 times or something like that.

2. French-English translator by Sky Code   I even paid $.99 for this puppy thinking maybe it'll be more accurate than the free ones out there.

NOPE.

It sounded really cool because it has the option to take a photo of the text (for example, a menu) and get it translated, but the photo recognition was not great. It never could recognize the word "sur" and kept recognizing as "km" (for those playing the home game, "km" is not a word in French. I looked it up). This was not helpful for translating sentences from English to French. To test it out I wrote "We found the library" into the app and then we asked a French speaking friend to translate the same sentence. They came up with two completely different sentences.

The app was useful for one word at a time. When I was grocery shopping and couldn't remember the word for mushrooms or just straight up didn't know the word for other ingredients, my high school French got me through the first part of the sentence and the translator helped me fill in some of the blanks.


In the totally useless category goes this app:

HopStop  This app has rave reviews on the app store, including from people who traveled outside the US, but what the reviews don't tell you is that this app runs on data. And since I could not find anywhere that had SIM cards for an iPhone 5C (I know, #firstworldproblem), I didn't have data on this trip.

I'll pull this one back down from the cloud when I'm traveling in a major US city, but for Paris, the metro app already mentioned has a "from here to there" feature that made HopStop unnecessary.


Hopefully if any of you are heading to Paris any time soon, you'll download one or two of these apps and find them as helpful as I did!

Vicariously yours,

Lessons I learned from my trip to Greece.

For Eid break this year, the Mister, a group of our friends, and I traveled to Skiathos, a teeny island in Greece. It was an amazing trip, and one filled with lots of life lessons along the way. So here, dear readers, is the list of the 4 things I learned on my trip to Greece.

1. Book early and book often. The Mister and I were spoiled with our payscale in Saudi. We lived very comfortably and were able to save a lot of money in our time there. Then we came to Kuwait and took about very large pay cut. As a result, we didn't have as much money to play with this past summer, which left us with very VERY little money to pay for our travel and lodging in Greece.

oops.

So we've learned to book all of our Eid travel stuff before we leave for the summer when our wallet is still gorged on our lump-sum summer paycheck and just scrape by for the few weeks we are back in the Land of Sand until Eid break.

2. The Doha airport is racist. Ok, that's not fair. Is the retinal scanning machines in the Doha airport that are racist. It was comical, really. We had a ridiculously long layover in Doha, Qatar because we waited so long to book our flights and all the good routes were full (see lesson #1). So we got ourselves a hotel room for the night. Americans have to get a visa upon landing and part of that process is to undergo a retinal scan. NO problem for me, our friend Charles, and our other friend Austin...but when it was time for the Mister to get scanned, the machine couldn't read his narrow eyes.

Austin and Tyler later in the trip. See? Those peepers just aren't very wide!

He has always been teased about the frequency with which he is mistaken for an Asian American. So even when he was opening his eyes as wide as he could get them, the machine still couldn't pick up a clean scan! It was hilarious! Eventually he just moved to a different visa station and it worked, but the whole ordeal took about 25 minutes and 4 immigration officers to complete!

I hope they get this issue sorted out before the world (including the Asian countries) shows up for the World Cup in 2022.

3. Don't believe everything booking.com tells you. Being who we are, we booked the cheapest hotel room we could for our 13 hour layover. The hotel wasn't far from the airport and it had a free airport shuttle, according to booking.com. Great!

Not great. We finally get through Doha immigration and find a shuttle desk for just about every hotel imaginable except for the one we'd booked. In fact, no one had even heard of the hotel, and they definitely didn't have a shuttle.

So armed with a screen shot of a Google map and the address of the hotel, we set out to find a taxi that could take us there. That proved to be harder than you would expect.

Anybody? Nobody knows where I'm sleeping tonight?

At one point I was surrounded by ALL of the taxi drivers on duty arguing back and forth in their various languages as to where they thought the hotel could possibly be. Eventually one of them had the genius idea to CALL THE HOTEL AND ASK FOR DIRECTIONS!

4. A week is not nearly enough time to see Greece. Granted, a lot of this week was spent in transit, so we weren't able to make the most of our time, but even if we'd been able to squeeze as much as possible into our trip, it still wouldn't have been enough.

We just barely got to see the Acropolis, and we didn't see all sides of the hill. We didn't go into the Acropolis Museum, and countless other sites in Athens. Then there was Skiathos.

The town was so tiny and cute, the beaches were beautiful, the people were so nice! I could have spent a week on just that island and still needed more time for exploring.

All-in-all, Greece was great! We'll book our next Eid vacation (Oktoberfest 2014, y'all!!) nice and early so we can make sure to not repeat the same lessons next year.

Vicariously yours,

The Airline Spectrum of Service

You're going to make fun of me for writing about this as the first detailed post about spring break, but we spent a lot of time in transit on this trip, which means the airlines we experienced had a close correlation to how much we enjoyed those days.

So let me say this, fellow travellers: If you get the chance to fly Bangkok Airways, DO IT! We had great service from them on our domestic flights to and from Krabi and they have perfected the art of the layover.

We got to Bangkok and had a 4 hour wait before our next flight to Krabi International, so we checked in and found out that Bangkok Airways has a free lounge for ALL their passengers, not just the hoity-toity business class ones (there's a nicer, more exclusive one for the hoity-toities, don't worry)!! The lounge had comfortable chairs, including chaise lounges for those who wanted to nap.

and nap many of us did!

There was free food, and the best part: FREE UNLIMITED WIFI!  (which you can see the Mister and Matt enjoying in the second clip of the video on the previous post)

I thought this might only be a Bangkok airport-only thing, but NO! We got the same treatment at the Koh Samui airport (which is owned and operated by Bangkok Airways).

It's the kind of airport that doesn't have jetways to the terminal. Instead you have to ride this DisneyWorld-like tram thing to the terminal where you are greeted by THIS:

That's a gate waiting area

Y'all already know how much I loves me some DisneyWorld, so the tram ride alone would have been enough to win me over. But then I walked into this cabana haven and I was really sad that we only had a 30 minute stop-over to enjoy this beautiful airport!

On the other hand, we had the pleasure (used ironically) of flying to and from Kuwait on Sri Lankan airlines. Things started off humorous enough. Their flight safety video was one of the more entertaining ones I've seen. It was littered with computer animated characters that represented the many ethnic backgrounds of Sri Lankan's typical customers.

Yes, that was a grandmotherly lady stowing her Sri Lankan drums in the space under the seat in front of her. I was disappointed there wasn't actually someone like that on our flights.

But the flight attendants were not terribly attentive, one of them even decided for me that I would eat the chicken for dinner and that the Mister would have orange juice with his meal. The in-flight entertainment was lackluster, and on one flight the entire crew seemed to have been extremely upset to have to deal with any part of their jobs. All very small issues, I know. We arrived safely each time, with very little turbulence and the takes off and landings were smooth. But after having a taste of Bangkok Airways, I was really sad to have to fly back home on Sri Lankan and their grumpy attendants.

Vicariously yours,

Anything but the royal treatment

Back in April, the Mister and I got bumped from our flight back to Saudi when we were connecting through the Amsterdam airport.

Hang on...lemme back up.

Because of the limited number of affordable flights that leave from Saudi Arabia, the Mister and I frequently fly KLM. We fly KLM so much, in fact, that it is the first airline for which we have ever joined the frequent flyer program. We really do enjoy the service of the KLM staff, and have had a pretty pleasant experience travelling with them.

Now, fast forward to April.

We were returning from our vacation in Berlin and "missed" our connection to Dammam. By "missed" I mean immigration took us a while so we were the last people in line for an extremely overcrowded flight on which we had confirmed seats. I'm guessing the kind people of KLM caved under the irate pressure that is an Arab husband and wife team being told they can't have what they want while accompanied by their screaming, rowdy brood.

Imagine my shock when the lady behind the check-in counter told us that, as compensation for our inconvenience, we could choose to get an 800 Euro travel voucher, or 1000 Euros in cash. EACH. That was a very generous offer! We knew we would be taking more trips in the future, so we opted to plan for our frugal future and went with the travel vouchers instead.

Fast forward again to the past month and a half. One of my best friends is getting married in December, so I used my travel voucher to fly myself back to the States for the blessed event. We're going to Spain to vacation with my family very soon, so we used the Mister's voucher to buy part of his very expensive ticket.

Using the vouchers was a very complicated process. We had to book the tickets over the phone, then mail the vouchers by registered mail (a procedure that, in Saudi Arabia, took us 3 days and $100 to perform), and then wait for the e-tickets to be issued within 10 business days.

We did all that. And waited. Ten days passed. No tickets. Two weeks passed. No tickets. Almost a month passed. Still. no. tickets. Finally I got an email requesting I call the reservation center.

When I called I found out that my credit card company had blocked the transactions because they were 3 large purchases from an international business. How cautious of them. I contacted the credit card company and cleared all that up, then waited for KLM to issue the tickets.

And waited.

And waited.

Our trip to Spain was quickly approaching, so I called KLM again to find out what was going on. They just hadn't gotten around to re-running my credit card, but they'll flag the transaction as "urgent" and I'll have my e-ticket in the next 24 hours.

That was 6 days ago. I've called every day for the past 5 days (even twice on a couple days) and I still don't have my e-ticket. We've gotten the Mister's, so he's good to go to Spain...

Note to self: next time, just take the cash.

Vicariously yours,

Travel hints I've picked up along the way

Our travel quota has increased exponentially since we moved to Saudi Arabia. Not only is this a great jumping off point to go to places most people couldn't afford, but we just need to get out of this country every now and then.

Being that we live in the Middle East and one of our trips has been unceremoniously upstaged by the ever-so-popular civil uprising, I've picked up a few travel tricks for a couple of globe trotters just looking to get around.

1. When traveling to or from the Middle East, book directly through the airline. We've probably ended up paying a little extra by doing this, but it's saved us in the end. We booked directly through Egypt Air for our cancelled trip to Cairo in February, and as I've previously mentioned, we were able to get a full refund because of it. It also probably didn't hurt that we were in the cheaper fare class because we weren't flying transatlantic...but let's not dwell on the details.

This weekend, I had the delight of contacting KLM to redirect our flight to Berlin in April. We booked this travel with Bahrain as our point of origin way back in January--long before any of this mess in Bahrain had started up. BUT, now that Bahrain has declared 3 months of martial law, we thought it best to look for an alternative beginning and ending point.

I called KLM, explained my situation, and was able to change our plans FREE OF CHARGE! I'm certain this was only so easy because we'd booked directly through the airline instead of through a discount website. As long as we're living in the Middle East, this will be the only way we go.

2. Use the travel sites for everything else. Thanks to my sister who is in the industry, I've found out about fantastic "members-only" travel sites like Jetsetter, Voyage Prive, and Snique Away. While these sites usually provide me with some fantastic daydreams of Kenyan safaris and rain forest get-aways, we've been able to book some really affordable travel through them now and then. Our trip to Berlin is a direct result of a killer sale on Voyage Prive.

The links above are invitations, so click away and register. They're totally free to sign up--absolutely no commitment except for the occasional email in your inbox tempting you with fabulous all-inclusive vacations.

Vicariously yours,

HOW COULD I FORGET!?

Dear readers, please forgive me. I've neglected to mention the ultimate, most heinous, by far the most annoying thing you could EVER do, especially when traveling:

Put your child on a leash.

"Oh look, he's got a monkey on his back!" "Mommy's got the monkey by the tail!" THIS IS NOT CUTE!!

There are a lot of people in my generation who are poppin' 'em out and as soon as the munchkins start toddling, they slap a leash on! I'm sure I'm going to offend a few people that I know and love by saying this: Putting your child in a leash is a form of parental neglect.

I blame Paris Hilton.

Yes. Paris Hilton

Think about it. Paris starts toting that stupid tea cup chihuahua around, and suddenly everyone needs some sort of living accessory. But the problem with having a little yippy dog is that they wander off. That makes it really hard for you to cross the street, talk on your cell phone, purchase goods, or just have a lunch date when your form of entertainment keeps wandering off!

The solution: Put it on an adorable leash. It'll be able to roam, but not too far, and then you'll be able to maintain your fabulousness AND not be considered a pet abuser.

CHILDREN ARE NOT SMALL DOGS! I cannot express to you how sad it makes me to have to type a sentence like that.

Before you start, I realize that I don't have any children of my own, so I don't really understand the challenges young parents face blah blah blah.

Gag me.

I understand that parenting is a full time job in itself. That realization is precisely why I don't have children of my own. I'm not ready to be a parent. I don't want to have to be a disciplinarian 24/7. I don't want to have to sacrifice time with my friends in favor of teaching my toddler important basic life lessons--such as when mommy tells you to stay put, you stay put.

Freud would have a heyday with this.

There are a few realities of parenthood that I do realize:

-Toddlers are curious. Yep. It's shocking, but literally every day they experience something for the first time, and it's mind blowing. They don't know why that leaf is moving across the sidewalk all by itself, so they need to chase it to find out. They've never seen that strange dog before, and they need to say hello. As a parent, you need to let them be curious. PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOUR CHILD IS DOING. Yes. That makes doing normal everyday tasks such a making a deposit at the bank more difficult. But you're a freaking parent. That's the choice you made when you got pregnant. Be a parent and teach them that when mommy finishes with her errand, we'll explore the park/sidewalk/bank lobby as much as possible. But until then, you don't go anywhere no matter how much you squirm. Don't put your kid on a leash so they can wander around in a short radius and you can switch off for a few seconds.

-Toddlers fall down a lot. That's literally why they're called toddlers. The beauty of gravity is that it causes you to fall. Toddlers are learning how to deal with that. So yeah, they might fall down some stairs, or get on some gravel and not know how to compensate. Let 'em fall. They'll get bruises, probably a few nasty cuts. BUT THAT'S OK. Pain is a part of life, and they're too young to remember those boo-boos anyway. Don't put your kid on a leash so you don't have to worry about them falling down and getting hurt.

I mean, SERIOUSLY?!

What I want to know from leash parents is if they realize how much people are staring at them and judging them. Do you realize you're treating your child like a small animal? You do realize that the message you're sending is that you can't control your kids and you can't be bothered with disciplining them, right?

I was deeply saddened by the ridiculous amount of leash kids we saw throughout our month of traveling. And thus I felt the need to share my rant with you.

Vicariously yours,

We're baaack!

The Mister and I have returned from our whirlwind month of travel. We now have a little over 3 weeks left in this country, and we plan to stay put as much as possible during that time.

I'd like to think of myself as a tolerant person. I can pretty much roll with the punches. In my old age, I'm getting less and less spontaneous, but I'm working on that. But there were a few things I noticed on our trips these past few weeks that I really just can't put up with anymore. Here are the top 5 things that should be avoided at all costs--especially when traveling.

5. T-shirts with a message. I'm not talking about the Bono-inspired "Save the Whales" kind of messages. I mean the ones that have full sentences that are meant to be snarky, but they're just annoying.

like this beaut. We saw it more times than I'd like to admit while we were traveling.

Granted, there are plenty of baby onesies that have messages like "My mom's hotter than you mom," and some of those can be annoying in their own way, but for the most part they're cute because they're on a baby.

I mean, really. Who wouldn't put this on their baby?

But if you are old enough to form complete, coherent sentences, I don't want to know whether this is your happy face or not. I'm not trying to make you get your flying monkeys, I'm just trying to enjoy my day without having to wonder whether you're really as big a tool as you look or not.

4. Ill-fitting bras. You know what I'm talking about. Mama's a DD, but she's wearing a C, so her cup is literally running over and it is NAS.TY.

you know what I'm talking about

I have seen more tank-top wearing busty ladies who seem to think the phrase "less is more" doesn't apply to the upper chestal region. I guess I can't blame them. What's sexier than the 4 boob look?

3. Inappropriate/gratuitous cell phone conversations in inappropriate places. Call me old-school, but I think that phone conversations should stay private. If you must talk in public, keep your voice down, and keep your conversation short. I don't want to hear all about how crazy drunk you were on your last night in New York as I ride a bus to Washington D.C. I don't need to know what your baby's diaper looked like while I'm buying a sandwich at Publix. There's no need for everyone to know how annoying you think her boyfriend is and how badly she needs to dump him while I'm waiting in line for an amusement park ride. All of those are conversations I was made privy to over the past month.

I'm going to catch flak about this, I just know

Before you jump down my throat, let me clarify: I understand that some people never get to see family, so cell phone conversations are the only conversations they get to have with dear ol' dad from time to time. When the opportunity arises, please answer the call. Just make sure you find yourself a corner away from other people so that we don't all have to hear about how frustrating your doorman is.

Another clarification: I'm not a creeper eavesdropper. I don't go out of my way to listen to people's conversations. All of the conversations I have mentioned were overheard while standing an acceptable distance from the person in front of me, or while being held hostage in a bus/train seat and hurtling down the highway/rails at high speeds.

2. Ignoring posted signs. I've worked with the public before, and I understand how infuriatingly annoying it is to answer a question that can be easily answered by reading the signs posted to avoid having to answer the VERY QUESTION YOU'RE ASKING!! I try to make a point of looking for signs or maps and reading them carefully before asking a question. What can I say. I aim to please.

Obviously, I'm willing to make exceptions.

I cannot tell you how annoying it is for me to have to witness someone dealing with an irate nincompoop who is blaming them for an easily avoided situation.

Lemme give you a for-instance: Universal doesn't allow you to take bags/purses on their rides, so they provide lockers in which you can store your things while you enjoy the thrills. (side note: their lockers are free, where as the lockers at Six Flags are going to cost you, every time. Well done, Universal) It's a pretty handy system. They've made it as easy as possible. There's no key to keep up with, and you can store your bag for the entire day for a fee that isn't ridiculously exorbitant. You just have to follow the directions on the touch screen.

Well apparently that was a little too hard for one fellow thrill seeker. I got to witness her meltdown as she cursed out the poor kid who was manning the door to the locker room. Despite her insistence that there wasn't a single locker available for her to use --"Not a single one, and I think it's ridiculous that you require we use your lockers, but you don't provide enough lockers for people to use!" she said -- as I watched at least 5 people who had just emptied their lockers try to squeeze by.

The very polite and patient Universal worker kindly pointed out what an idiot the woman was, and she was thoroughly embarrassed--though she never apologized for holding up the 10 people waiting in line behind her or for being so rude to the guy. She had, in fact, not followed the directions correctly and had somehow rented two lockers at the same time, so when she tried to rent a third, the system wouldn't let her. This entire episode could have been avoided if she had just READ THE FRIGGIN' SIGNS!!

1. Stopping in the middle of a walkway. I realize that plans change, and you've got to change your trajectory unexpectedly. But if you're going to have to do a 180, or you've got to stop to read a map/text message/batch of directions, MOVE TO THE SIDE and then stop. I lost count of how many people I was broadsided by because they weren't aware of their surroundings.

Oh, excuse me!

And my favorite was when THEY ran into me, I was the one who gets the angry glare! Like it was my fault! If you run into me, apologize and move along, don't give me the stink eye!

Vicariously yours,