GETTING AROUND

In Europe, just like at home, public transportation is your best bet – beginning with your arrival.  A cab from Heathrow into London would have cost a hundred bucks!  Instead, we took the underground, which turned out to be a pleasant ride that was actually above-ground for most of the way.  It brought us a few blocks from our destination.  We’ve also taken the train from Kastrup airport in Copenhagen to my sister-in-law’s house in the suburbs.

One of my worst travel experiences was spending three days in Paris with a car.  The traffic and parking were unpleasant, time-consuming, and costly.  We would have been a lot better off on the Metro.

Sometimes being frugal can backfire: we decided not to spend the extra money on a GPS system on our rental car and boy, did we regret it!  We were headed towards an agriturismo that was located about an hour south of Milan.  Benni was the driver, and I was the navigator.  I learned something on that trip: I learned that I cannot read maps.  We left Milan and, after three confusing hours getting nowhere, we realized that we were going north, not south.  The give-away was the line of uniformed guards as we approached the Swiss border.  Not a happy day.

PACK RAT

I am an obsessive packer, and I hate myself for it.  I start around two weeks before taking off, and I’m still at it until the last minute – even if we’re just going away for the weekend.  It takes me a day to sort out and organize toiletries and cosmetics, and half-a-day to pick the right socks.  I wish I could be one of those people who just throws things into a bag at the last minute.  Not gonna happen.  I cannot bear the idea of not having what I need when I need it.

•    What if it rains and I don’t have an umbrella?
•    What if we get romantic and I don’t have sexy lingerie?
•    What if I chip my nail and I don’t have polish?

Besides the inconvenience of missing something essential, the main reason for my compulsion is my frugalism.  I simply cannot bear the idea of going out and paying full price in an expensive foreign shop for something I have a dozen of at home – for which I paid fifty-cents each.  That’s exactly what happened when I neglected to pack a warm sweater for Venice.

I used to collect expensive, high-quality Hartmann luggage, which I picked up cheaply at yard sales.  I’ve since switched to ordinary non-descript suitcases, because fancy bags are much more vulnerable to thievery.  Now my bags blend in so well with everyone else’s that I have trouble recognizing them; I keep pulling someone else’s luggage off the carousel.  Next time we travel, I’m going to paste bright red stickers all over my suitcases.  

AIRBORNE

The most expensive (and least enjoyable) part of travel is getting there.  The internet is full of sites that will lead you to cheap tickets.  Here are a few other money-saving suggestions.

Travel Tuesdays or Wednesdays.  These are the slow days for the airlines: I always try to avoid Sundays, which are the busiest.  If we’re traveling Coach, we reserve the aisle and window, hoping that no one will want the middle seat.  I’ve sometimes thought of showing up in surgical masks to discourage anyone from sitting next to us, but I don’t have the guts.

Travel in the off-season.  Not only are flights cheaper, but so are hotels.  September and October are my favorite vacation times.  The weather is pleasant, the tour-buses are gone, and the grapes are being harvested.

Look for unexpected airline routes: Air India’s non-stop flight to Hamburg from Los Angeles is $400 cheaper than Lufthansa on certain days.  (This would be a good deal for some people. I, however, would expect someone to pay me to go Hamburg.)

Consult a travel agent.  They often have inside information not available to the general public.

There’s a famous “Seinfeld” episode where Elaine is stuck in coach next to an obnoxious gum-chewing lady.  I played that lady, and I know just how Elaine felt. Coach is hell, and I try to avoid it at all cost.  I find cheap flights, then use my mileage for upgrades.  This is easier said than done.  We were trying to get from L. A. to Rome on my American Airlines mileage.  The best they could offer was for us to fly coach to Chicago, wait four hours to connect to an upgraded flight, and then return home by way of Istanbul.  I don’t think so.

DOWN ON THE FARM

My favorite bargain lodgings are the agriturismos of Italy.  These are beautifully located working farms and vineyards that rent a few rooms to tourists.  Some offer only breakfast, others include sumptuous dinners.  All the ingredients, including the wine and the olive oil, are usually organic and produced on the property.  If there is a heaven, it’s gotta be a lot like an Italian agriturismo.

One farm we discovered in our wanderings was La Riserva Montebello. It consists of some ancient stone buildings overlooking the medieval lake town of Bolsena – a 2½ hour drive north of Rome.

When we arrived, there were two bottles of the house wine – one red, one white – welcoming us to a room furnished with charming antiques. Rustic decals were painted on the walls, and just outside the door was a small terrace overlooking spectacular Lake Bolsena: an auspicious beginning.

Nothing is perfect, however: the bath towels were as thin as dish cloths.  Since then, I’ve learned to pack my own terry bath sheet – no big deal.

There were two spring-fed swimming pools (Spring-fed means FREEZING, but fresh and invigorating.  Italians don’t heat their pools, just as the English don’t heat their homes.)

We enjoyed archery, ping-pong, and beautiful strolls along the farm paths, with visits to the barnyard animals.  One day we were walking in the woods and came across the owner’s girl friend filling up a basket with mushrooms.  That evening, the first course at dinner was wild mushrooms sautéed with olive oil and garlic: a splendid testimony to the local food movement!  

We could drive ten minutes to medieval Bolsena, or twenty minutes to the splendid city of Orvieto.  For serious sight-seeing, the clean, punctual train from Orvieto to Rome takes an hour and ten minutes.  

All these activities were a pleasant way of killing time between the really important events of the day: the meals.  The breakfast buffet consisted of

•    Home-made yogurt
•    Home-grown fruit
•    A variety of breads and cakes
•    Local cheeses
•    Various cereals, jams, and honey
•    Eggs boiled to order
•    Ham, salami and prosciutto home-cured from the farm’s own pigs.  This gave me a half-a-moment’s pause because we had enjoyed our contact with the animals, but at least they had lived a good, natural life.  

Dinner began with an aperitif on the terrace – either a glass of Prosecco or the house red mixed with a little fruit juice: a post-modern sangria.  Olives, salami, cheese, and nuts were also offered, which we munched on while gazing at the sun setting over the lake.

The meal was served in a romantic candle-lit dining room.  This was a leisurely, two-hour affair with at least four or five courses.  The menu changed every day.  Here’s a typical dinner.

•    Mixed bruschetta  
•    Gnocchi with meat sauce
•    Salad
•    Grilled lake fish with parsley/lemon sauce) and mashed potatoes
•    Tiramisu
•    Fruit and Cheese

The feast was enhanced by several wines, and after-dinner liqueurs.  

Since there are only a dozen guest rooms, the intimate atmosphere allowed for friendly contact.  There was the Norwegian wedding party – which we mistook for a funeral because everyone was so quiet and somber.  And the Republican lawyers from San Diego who had never heard of Jon Stuart, but who offered to lend us some fleece vests on a chilly evening.  And the Dutch minister who was on his way to Israel to study Hebrew.  

We got friendly with Marco, the gentleman farmer who owns the property.  He invited us for a ride in his vintage Lotus convertible and promised to show us his modern art collection on our next visit.  When we checked out, Marco insisted on giving us four bottles of wine to take home.  

The daily charge for all this bliss bliss bliss – including food and wine – was a little over two hundred dollars for two people.  The only thing cheaper would have been camping, and that’s not this baby’s idea of a good time.  VIVA L’ITALIA!

CHEAP LODGINGS

I prefer Bed & Breakfasts to conventional hotels.  They’re a lot cheaper, a lot cozier, and you make a lot more contact with the natives – which is one of the great pleasures of traveling.  (When you stay at a Four Seasons, there’s not much chance of hanging out with the owners.)

At a B & B in Auckland, our hosts invited us to join them and their friends at the local pub.  We had a little trouble with the New Zealand slang, which all sounds like baby-talk: “brolly” for umbrella, “Chrissy” for Christmas, etc.  But we still had a fun, authentic experience that could never have happened at a Hilton– or a “Hilly” as I guess the Kiwis would say.

In Japan, we stayed at a traditional country inn, where we survived a monsoon in a building with paper walls.  I won’t say it was enjoyable, but it sure as hell was authentic.

We are about to visit Oslo, where hotel rooms are between two and four hundred dollars.  Instead, we found a charming private residence in a desirable location where we are getting a room with a separate entrance, bath, kitchenette and terrace for a hundred bucks.  Plus, the owners run an art gallery, so it sounds like they might be pleasant company.

• www.COUCHSURFING.com links travelers to private homes all over the world. You might get a bedroom, a sofa, or just a patch of floor, but your host will give you genuine insights into local culture – and the price is incredibly FREE. One American student got along with her Lisbon host so well that she stayed for three months!

• Our friends George and Alice go hiking in New Zealand every year. They are out in the wilderness all day, and then just take a brief shower before going out to dinner, so they have no need for all the bells and whistles of a fancy hotel.  Instead, they stay at a hostel, and pay extra for a private room with bath.  This costs a whopping forty-five dollars a night!  It sounds like a fabulous vacation – except for the hiking part.  I think I’d prefer the hostel in Barcelona, which has an indoor swimming pool.

As vacation time approaches, I start to dream of trips to faraway places, so the next few blogs will be about low-cost travel. Some people think of travel as a luxury; I say it’s a necessity. There are actually dreamless people who happily choose to live every day of their lives in the place they were born.

When we had a country house, I asked our elderly neighbor when he had last visited New York. “Never been out of the county,” he said proudly. Now we’re talking about a two hour drive to the greatest city in the world and this bozo didn’t have the teensiest iota of curiosity about it. Am I being too much of a big-city snob when I call that a limited world view?

Travel costs money, but I’ve always found ways to budgetize my trips. For starters, I never take tours. Too expensive, plus I don’t like being told where to eat, which museum to visit, and what time to get up in the morning. I’m a control freak who needs to be in charge of my own plans – just ask Benni. Also, I’m horrified at the thought of being thrown together with a busload of random yahoos. I like to choose my own yahoos, thank you very much.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

Planning a trip is half the fun, but it has its challenges: when you come to a foreign/language website and hit “Translate This Page,” the results can be bewildering.

“The atmosphere to Heaven is a comfortable and refined farm with suggestive apartments furnished and equipped with all comfort. Immersed in panoramic swimming pool with salt water can regenerate prejudice to admire one of the territories most characteristic and beautiful in the world.”

I’m intrigued by the idea of a “suggestive apartment” - not sure I want to “regenerate prejudice,” though.

I also consult guide books – written in real English – I pick up on the cheap at library sales and I might order something essential from Amazon, like Frommer’s Tuscany & Umbria‘s Best-Loved Driving Tours. I found a used copy for eighty-four cents, plus shipping.

On a family visit to the ancient port village of Rome, Ostia Antica, we decided to splurge and hire a guide, but there were none available. So our son, who’s a history buff, whipped out his map and guide book, and gave us an instructional tour for the excellent price of zero.