My Road to Rio: The Olympic Events

In Rio last month, I was fortunate enough to have scored tickets to the placing, semi-final, and final matches of the Rugby Sevens and the Round of 16 in beach volleyball. And once my brother and I arrived in Rio and decided we wanted to see another Olympic match, we ended up getting tickets to see Bandminton. The cheapest tickets for any event was roughly $22. This was about the same price as the tickets that I scored during the London Olympics as well. Really, if you can commit to going and find a decent flight deal and decently priced accommodations, attending the Olympic Games can be quite affordable! And I want to share my experience attending these events and exploring Rio here with you. So this is Part 2 of my Olympic post, my spectator experience in Rio.

Getting Around

Once my brother and I were in Rio, we  took the metro/train to Deodoro Stadium to watch Rubgy! We landed early in the morning, took a taxi to our hostel to check in and store our things in a locker, then hopped on the metro. It was a little over $1 each way to get there, but it did take quite a while to get there as well. They closed off the 2 closest metro stations to the stadium for safety reasons, so we had to walk for about 45 minutes and waited through multiple security lines. And I'm sure it didn't help that I accidentally got us on the local train line instead of the express train line that we needed to take when we transferred at the Central Station. Whoops!

For beach volleyball, our hostel was within a few blocks of the arena, so we didn't need to go far on our second day. On our third day in Rio, we needed to go west near the Olympic Village in Tijuca which was a journey. And we could not get there without purchasing these "Olympic travel cards" for R25, which was a total and complete ripoff when it's only R3-4 to get anywhere in the city via transit. This made me extremely frustrated, especially since in London, transit was free if you had tickets to an event for that day. Anyway, to get there, we took the Line 1 train to the end of the line, then transferred onto the brand new Line 4 which was only available to people with Olympic tickets. At the end of that line, we had to take BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) to get to the Olympic venues. And once we were let off, we had to walk about 20 minutes to get to the Riocentro pavilion. This was more of a chore than getting to the Deodoro stadiums. It took over 2 hours, and we were there early. When we were leaving, there was a loooong line to get through security and into the venue. We got lucky to get there when we did. We stayed for only an hour since we had reservations for the tram up to the Cristo Redentor statue in Corcovado, and left an hour before that since google said it was only 40 minutes away when I checked the day before; however, when we finally got a taxi (there was no time to call an Uber), the GPS noted a TON of traffic. We passed a motorcyclist who was hit in the dedicated Olympic fast lanes, sprawled across the two lanes of pavement, on top of just a lot of cars being on the road. It ended up taking an hour and 40 minutes to get to Corcovado, but it still saved us over an hour compared to how long it would have taken on public transit. Plus, it was R100 which amounted to under $30 for that long of a drive. There is nowhere in the Western world that a taxi ride like that would have been so relatively cheap. 

Rugby Sevens

Team USA vs. Spain in the 9th place match

Rugby was on the north side of Rio in the Deodoro Stadium. It was surprisingly empty in the endzone and since there was General Admission seating, we were able to move to the middle section quite easily. For our first ticket, we saw 6 placing matches, including the USA vs. Spain match. It was exciting! In the end we won, of course! And to top it off, we ended up randomly sitting next to the family of one of the US players. He showed up after the match to watch the remaining games with us. I sat next to his dad who was originally from England and got to chat with him through the event. It was a neat experience to be a part of that.

I have never seen a Rugby Sevens match before this. I didn't realize that each half would only be 7 minutes long, with a 2 minute halftime. Basically, rugby is a mix of American football and soccer. The biggest difference from football is that when the person with the ball is tackled, the clock doesn't stop and they have to pass the ball to another team member instead of starting the play over again.

Team GB vs. Fiji in the Gold medal match

I was fortunate enough to snag tickets to the finals in Rugby as well, and there was nothing like watching Fiji beat Great Britain in the Gold medal match. I was rooting for Team GB, but seriously no one was a match for the sheer brute strength behind the Fijian team. Holy cow! At one point, a GB player attempted to tackle a Fijian player but the dude kept running with the GB guy clinging to his leg! And after a few steps, he stopped to kind of kick the poor dude off before running a little further. It was amazing to watch! Plus it was the first Olympic medal for Fiji ever. So cool!

Beach Volleyball

Brazil vs. China

Being from Hawaii, of course we had to watch beach volleyball! What a spectacular venue! This pop-up stadium was built right on Copacabana Beach itself. There were berms along the outside to keep the water from eroding the beach under the stadium and getting into the arena area. I was fortunate to have also watched beach volleyball at the London Olympics in 2012 at the Horse Guards Parade smack dab in the middle of the city, and that was my favorite venue then as it was in Rio this time around. I mean, look at that view! From our seats, we could see the Atlantic Ocean on the left, the classic Copa skyline on the right, and then the game right there in the middle. We also got lucky enough to watch Brazil compete in this match. It's always super fun when you have a chance to watch the host country play. Each ticket allows you to watch one men's match and one women's match. We got to see Qatar vs. Russia in the men's match, which was exciting because there was a guy from Rio on the Qatar team. And for the women's match, we saw Brazil vs. China. The stadium remained relatively empty until halfway through the last set. All of a sudden, all these Brazilians showed up to root for their team. It was a blast! The music and cheers between rallies were mostly local and everyone would sing and cheer and dance along. It was quite an experience!

Badminton

At the last minute, my brother and I decided to stand in the long line at the ticket office just outside of the beach volleyball arena to see if we could see any other events on our third and final day in Rio. We ended up with cheap tickets to watch Badminton. What an interesting Olympic sport! I had never watched competitive badminton before, but it seemed like it could be fun! Our tickets were for matches between 8am and 2pm. We decided to go for a little over an hour in the morning so we could still fit in a visit to the Christ Redeemer statue as well. It was quite a trek to get to the Olympic park where the event was held, but I'm glad we went. It was not what I expected at all. Badminton was held in a convention center! They put up temporary bleacher seating in a convention hall and made 3 courts side by side in the middle. You wouldn't be able to tell from watching it on tv, but they always have 3 games going at the same time. When one match ends, they throw the next team on, regardless of whether it was singles, doubles, men's or women's or mixed. You can see in the picture above that there is a doubles match going on to the right, a singles match in the middle, and another doubles on the left. And the crowd was SO into it! I didn't know badminton could get so intense! We were lucky enough to watch the beginning of a Team USA vs. Germany doubles match as well. Good thing we were wearing our Team USA gear!

Inside the Riocentro convention center

Cristo Redentor


It wouldn't be a trip to Rio without a visit to either the Christ Redeemer statue (Cristo Redentor) or Sugarloaf Mountain. Both sites have great views of the city, but I opted to take my brother to the statue since it was a more recognizable icon of Rio and I wasn't sure if he'd ever make the trip to South America ever again. Of course there were crazy crowds at the top, but I was able to book our entry and tram tickets in advance. When we arrived an hour late for our reservation due to traffic even after taking a taxi ride there, the man in the ticket office just put us on the next tram up, which was nice. The tram ride up to the statue in Corcovado is really neat since it's so steep and you have such amazing views along the way. The wait was a bit longer trying to come down the mountain, but we got lucky again and ended up waiting in line with the entire USA Wrestling team. We chatted some with one of the coaches who noticed our Team USA attire, and we ended up getting free Team USA Olympic Wresting pins!

VIP Lounges and Houses

Another highlight of the Olympics is always the free lounges. Since I went to the London Olympics, I was on the lookout for any fun houses and free events to attend. In London, I went to the Chase Visa VIP Lounge and was able to score free pins, free food and drinks, and even dinner cooked for me by Iron Chef Morimoto. Twice! This time around, Chase did a condensed version of their lounge which only lasted through the first weekend and was only open to Chase MileagePlus card holders, not just Chase Visa card holders like the last time. Luckily our parents have the card and have added us as authorized users, so we got in! And again, there were free pins, free keychains, free hats, free food and drinks (I drank probably 2 liters worth of Schwepps Cirtus!), and free WiFi! We pretty much spent the entire night there that Saturday meeting some new people and watching the US compete in swimming and athletics (track & field) on the big screens they had throughout the lounge.

One of the main features of the lounge was the meet and greet with various Olympians, so I got to meet Summer Sanders who became famous for swimming in the Barcelona Olympics for Team USA. It turns out that she lives in Utah as well and we had a great conversation! Plus she really liked my name! :)

Another highlight was running into my friend, Nick, at the lounge! He flew down for the weekend like I did (see, I'm not the only crazy one!) to watch his cousin compete for Team USA in rowing. It was a pleasant surprise to see a familiar face at the Olympics! It's funny because I became friends with Nick and his friend, Sam, when they were both on my flight to and from Abu Dhabi last May. That trip was also a weekender, which not a lot of people would do. It's always fun to meet like-minded people in the travel world. 

Next Stop Tokyo!

When I got home from Rio, I thought that maybe I was done with the Olympics. I had seen most of what i wanted to see, and unless I could get tickets to watch swimming, I didn't think I was going to go to Toyko. But that all changed when I watched the amazing presentation for Tokyo 2020 at the closing ceremony. I was so excited to see the cute, fun, and high-tech elements in their presentation including watching PM Shinzo Abe as Mario! With Super Mario, Hello Kitty, Pokemon, and Totoro, I just cannot wait to see what Japan does in 2020, especially with their people and their government so on board! So now I can definitely say that I do intend to go to Tokyo in 2020. And I'll be sure to keep you updated on my journey to Tokyo here as well. Who knows...maybe I'll see you there!

My Road to Rio: Getting There

About three weeks before the Olympics began this year, I discovered that all remaining unsold Olympic event tickets had been opened to the public. When I could not obtain any Rugby Sevens tickets through CoSport, the only official authorized ticket reseller for Olympic tickets in the US (read: the only way to get tickets with a US address), I was *finally* able to score tickets to the men's rugby placing matches, including the semi-finals and finals through the Rio 2016 website. This was the main event I wanted to see, and years ago I told myself that if I could get tickets to see the first time Rugby (Sevens) was played in the Olympics, I would go to Rio. So then I had a choice to make. I hadn't been planning to attend the Olympics this time around. I already went to London in 2012, and I really just wanted to see rugby. And now, it was actually possible!

Flights

My brother in the GIG Rio Airport
right after we landed

So with the idea that maybe this could work, I went online to look at flights. There is absolutely no way I would ever have been able to afford a monetary ticket to Rio during the Olympics. Flights were pricing in the thousands! However, the mileage flights were not bad. Of course, this close to the event, there were no saver level redemptions available, but I was able to find an "anytime" economy fare for 55,000 miles each way. And thinking that I didn't want to go to Rio alone again, and not knowing many others who also collect miles like I do, I called my family in Hawaii to invite them to come with me since it was exactly the same price in miles to fly to Rio from Honolulu as it was for me to fly there from Salt Lake City. In the end, after a little convincing, my little brother decided to come with me. He had not been to South America before, and aside from visiting family in Thailand, he had not traveled outside of the US. It definitely depleted my mileage stores, but it was so worth it to use my miles on my family! This was the first time I would be traveling internationally (minus Thailand) with someone from my family, and it was so exciting!

Little bro and I at Copacabana Beach

Events

Once I had a few flights on hold, I was SO excited to pore over the remaining available tickets and see what other Olympic events I could take my brother to see. We ended up with tickets to two rugby events (which amounted to 10 matches!), one beach volleyball event (with one men's and one women's match), and one badminton event. I'll summarize the events in my next blog post since there was SO much to take in there! Aside from the Olympic events, we spent the rest of our time eating delicious Brazilian BBQ, walking around Copacabana Beach, and sitting in traffic getting to and from Corcovado to visit the Cristo Redentor statue (the Christ Redeemer statue) for some of the best views of the city. I was sad that we weren't able to hang glide over the city, something I have wanted to do for a while now, because they closed the air space over the city during the Olympics. Which is probably for the best.

Accommodation 
After putting the flights on hold and picking out which sporting events we wanted to see, the next obstacle was finding affordable accommodation. In London, there was an official Olympic "Camp in London" site, mostly for volunteers, where you could pay 10 pounds a night to set up a tent one Tube station away from the main Olympic park. There was nothing this affordable in Rio this time around, and unfortunately booking so close to the event made finding affordable housing difficult. Even my friends who live in and around Rio were not going to be there during the Olympics. So I turned to my favorite hostel booking website, Hostelworld, to find hostels in convenient locations knowing that prices were 3-4 times their normal price. We ended up booking a stay at the CabanaCopa Hostel located around the corner from the Cardeal Arcoverde Metro Station, the closest metro station to the Beach Volleyball Arena on Copacabana Beach. Normally, a night at this hostel will set you back around $10 per person. We paid over $40 per person for each night during the Olympics, but it was still much cheaper than any other hotel or airbnb I could find so last minute in the right locations with decent reviews. I believe everyone should stay in a hostel at least once, for better or for worse, before they're 30, just to have that experience. And it was my brother's first hostel experience, so I was excited for that. It ended up not being so great since the crowd it drew for the Olympics was much different than the typical hostel crowd in South America that I'm used to. But there we didn't spend much time there anyway, and there was a decent free breakfast! Plus, we got to see monkeys on the property!

Having the flights, accommodation, and events worked out, I pulled the trigger and decided to go to Rio for a weekend of fun Olympic shenanigans! Stay tuned to hear about my spectator experience in my next post!

The view as we left the Beach Volleyball Arena (to the right) with the Cristo Redentor
statue appearing (on the left) over the Copacabana Beach skyline.

My Heart is with Istanbul

I am extremely saddened by the news of yet another bombing in a place I have visited and loved. Istanbul is one of my favorite cities, even though I only had a few short hours to explore the city.

I have always been a history buff, and one of the first places I had ever put on my travel bucket list was the Hagia Sophia. Both the city and the mosque are significant as the crossroads of Christianity and Islam, of Asia and Europe, a pinnacle of architecture from the Byzantine era until today. I was so excited to finally see the mosaic of the emperor, Justinian, in person. I cannot explain how happy I was to wander the streets and see ancient roman ruins just sitting there, a part of the urban fabric, to see the beautiful mixture of past and present built into the city's form.

As a City Planner, I also absolutely loved the transit system of light rail and streetcars that was so easy to navigate throughout the city. Attaturk International Airport, the subject of today's attacks, actually has a rail line that takes you from the airport directly to the City Center, near the Grand Bazaar. I have raved about this feature to everyone who ever mentioned of Istanbul within my earshot. And now, within the past year alone, there have been attacks on rail lines, in the plaza between the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque (where I am standing in the photo below), and the airport.

I wish things like this could stop. I wish evil people - or rather, people who wish to hurt others - didn't exist in this world. I wish we could live and let live in a world so diverse and so full of different beautiful cultures and religions and lifestyles. But this kind of danger is a risk we have to take if we want to see the world. And frankly, it's a risk we take each time we step outside our front door, even within the U.S. as the Orlando shootings have reminded us.

I am not sure that I would go to Istanbul if my trip were happening this year instead of in 2014, especially since I went alone. But the idea that this fear of terrorist activities is stunting national economies, preventing people from traveling, and leaving magnificent historic places destitute of people just breaks my heart. That is what terrorists want. They want to use that fear to further their agendas. I know we can't let them win, but I don't know how to balance resilience with the desire to stay safe. I just don't know how to do my part to make things better, as much as I wish I could. But for now, my heart is with Istanbul on this tragic day.

Changing the World

Travel has such a power to inspire and motivate you to be better and to do something bigger with your life. It's really difficult to explain since it's not a tangible feeling. When you travel, it becomes easier to see how big and diverse the world is. For me, it just makes me want to do something more with my life. And visiting places like Australia where there are tons of expatriates on working holiday visas for a year or two at a time really makes me want to live abroad.

I want to change the world. I'm not exactly sure how I can attempt to accomplish that just yet, but I do know that I am not going to do it by living in Utah and sitting in an office all week long. I think traveling as much as I possibly can has given me many ideas and taught me a lot about both myself and my place in this world, although I think I need to eventually take things a step further and take greater action one day soon.

There are many renditions of the quote, "Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher" (Oprah). I believe a lot of people who are driven, the movers and shakers in the world, are travelers and live in bigger cities. I want to be where they are so I can be inspired. I have traveled to find adventure. I have traveled to attend conferences and further my learning and networking experiences. I have traveled to be where history has and will be happening. And because of these things, I have rubbed shoulders with some of the greatest people in the world from successful lawyers and doctors to world renown business owners like Miki Agrawal, founder of Thinx underwear. I am meeting and exchanging ideas and words with these amazing people, and I need to find a way to do something more about it.

It's easy enough to say that I have a wonderful job I enjoy that is enough to support my lifestyle and pay the bills and affords me the work schedule (Fridays off!) and time off to travel a good deal, so why would I want to leave? But I also don't want to get comfortable and complacent in this easy, simple life so that I forget to do more and to be better. Recently, I was able to travel to Phoenix for the National Planning Conference and ended up getting involved in the International Division of the American Planning Association. Being able to participate in the division in the small role of acting secretary has gotten me SO excited about international planning. I mean, the United Nations is hosting Habitat 3 in Quito, Ecuador this fall and is deciding on the New Urban Agenda. My experience and passion for travel has led to this opportunity and has gotten me so excited about things like Habitat 3, things that actually will change the world. And for me, travel is the key to finding people and opportunities to accomplish something more with my life.

Sunrises and Sunsets

Mather Point, Grand Canyon sunrise - April 1, 2016

The sun is indiscriminate. For every moment it is rising for some people, for some place in this world, and it is setting for some people, for some place in this world. It does not care if we see it or not. It does not care where we are or who we are. It does not care if clouds or mountains obstruct it's view. It continues on, consistent, exact, never changing in a lifetime or ten.

The sun does not change. It is indifferent to the lives (or lack thereof) of the people it sustains. The sun is always there, no matter what. If we want to change our relationship to the sun, we have to be the ones to change it. It is our duty to position ourselves, to travel to receive the light. And even then, mother nature is also indiscriminate. She might not cooperate. But the least we can do is decide where we we'll experience the sun. If I want to change my relationship to the sun, I can travel to India, I can visit to the Grand Canyon and be inspired by a new view of it.

A new experience of the same things we've known our entire lives have the most potential to inspire and spark something within us. And what is more consistent in our lives than the sun? Even the air we breathe changes from day to day. But not the sun. You could be fifty yards from a specific place in this world and your view of the sun, the experience you have with it can change in that fifty yards. Isn't that potential exiting? Potential for something constant, consistent, so much the same in our lives to appear different and to feel different to us. That's all it takes to make or break a life, at least for a moment.

2016 Spring Travel Update

I started keeping track of my mileage for the year, and so far I have traveled roughly 47,856 miles! I also calculated that I have spent close to 103 hours on planes and 55 hours in airports this year. I can't wait to update this with my trips to Australia, Puerto Rico, and Brazil in the next several weeks!

By the end of May, I will have visited 5 continents, 5 countries, and 11 states plus 1 territory. I plan on visiting a handful of additional states this summer, and I have trips booked to South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Qatar, Hungary, New Zealand, and Thailand at the end of the year. I also intend to make it to Canada at some point, and it would be nice if I could fit in Cuba and Mexico as well. I didn't think 2016 would live up to my travel experiences last year, but so far 2016 is giving 2015 a run for its money!

Dreaming of Sushi

Timing is such a HUGE part of travel that can make or break your trip. I am currently planning a short getaway to Tokyo for the first time, and I am lucky to have figured out that a lot of the amazing things to do in Japan need to be planned out in advance. After years of solo international travel, I have figured out my preferred plan to unplanned ratio, and I am finding that a lot of the things I want to do have to be planned way in advance.

I knew I wanted to eat good sushi in Japan, but I had no idea that for all the best multi-Michelin starred restaurants in Tokyo, reservations must be made within the first few days of the month before you want to dine there. My trip is in April, and as fate would have it, I was watching an excellent drool-inducing documentary called Jiro Dreams of Sushi on DocClub (a sort of Netflix for documentaries) on March 1st. It got me thinking that I should see if I can get a reservation there or at a similar place. I was getting so excited!

After doing some research, I also learned that you cannot book a reservation as a foreigner. You need a local to do it for you. I didn't have my hotel or hostel booked at that point in time, so recommendations to use the hotel concierge were lost on me. But then I remembered that Chase and Visa are amazing companies to work with if you have products with them, and so I was able to contact the Visa Signature Concierge since I do hold a Visa Signature branded credit card. Actually I have several; any Visa card is a Signature card if you have a credit line of $5,000 or more. This is a very amazing benefit that not a lot of people know about or use. They were extremely professional and easy to work with, and within a few days, I had my reservation to Mizutani, a 2 Star Michelin sushi restaurant.

And yes, it is for a Party of 1. Whoo hoo!

Foods I Crave: Southside Seafood Market, Savannah GA

Every single time I visit Savannah, Georgia, I have to stop at the Southside Seafood Market down the road from the Savannah Mall. It is just one of those places that makes food that you crave for days and days and days!

This is really all it is! It's like the size of a large 2-car garage. So awesome!

At the Southside Seafood Market, you can buy seafood by the pound raw or you can pay a little extra and have them cook it for you. And man, do they always cook it perfectly!

My absolute favorite thing to order is the Fried Lobster Tail Platter. It's $13.99 and comes with 2 juicy lobster tails and your pick of a side. I usually get the corn, but they've got all the typical southern side dishes to choose from, including hush puppies. Man, I'm even drooling just thinking about it!

Boiled lobster tails w/garlic butter and corn on the left, Fried lobster tails w/hush puppies on the right

I went a little crazy this weekend since it has been a while since I've been to Savannah, and I ordered fried Swai (fish) as well, and it was perfectly fried and crispy and lightly salty and juicy and boy oh boy! My friend ordered a pound of shrimp boiled and it was topped with their garlic butter sauce and he got some Mahi Mahi for himself as well. It was a good day! :)

This little hole in the wall shop is not actually a restaurant since there is nowhere for you to eat nearby. If I can control myself long enough to refrain from eating in the car, I prefer to take the food to a nearby park and have a picnic if the seagulls aren't feeling too greedy. This past weekend, I went to Lake Mayer Park a few miles away and it was spectacular. It was a perfect day for a picnic, even in the middle of February!

Lake Mayer Park in Savannah, Georgia

I cannot rave about this place enough! If you are EVER in the Savannah area, you definitely cannot go wrong if you choose to stop here for a delicious meal.

The Fried Swai

I've Got the Itch

My name is Tippe and I am a travelholic.

Hanging out with Ava
on Wednesday

Yes, it's true! It seems that I will only be at "home" in Utah for two - yes, TWO! - of the next TEN weekends! As we speak, I am sitting in an airport on a layover waiting for a flight to Georgia. And last weekend I was visiting Madison/Milwaukee/Chicago. And the weekend before that I was in Paris. Thankfully I was in Utah the weekend before that one, because that was when my very first and very beautiful niece, Ava, was born! Don't worry - I will most definitely teach her my Jedi Travel techniques one day soon!

Took a laptop selfie at CLT airport just now. It's proof!

My travel agenda is mainly dictated by any deals I can find out there, and last year was a difficult year to beat in terms of deals. It is a rare thing for me to not have trips planned, but at the start of 2016, I honestly had ZERO flights booked. And all of a sudden, a barrage of deals hit the blogosphere and now here I am :) So here is a summary of what the next 10 weeks hold in store for me:

• This weekend: Savannah, GA. And Hilton Head Island, SC. Just because London didn't work out.
• Next weekend: New York City! I will be attending the Women's Travel Festival and helping to spread the word about this amazing Facebook group and travel community I'm a part of called Girls Love Travel. And mayyyybeee I'll have my website up by then! I just ordered business cards so that's exciting!
• 3rd weekend: Utah. Yes, I will be home this weekend in March. My parents are flying in to visit Ava and I have to pick them up from the airport. I also hope to watch Aida at the Utah Opera this weekend.
• 4th weekend: Orlando. My parents are also going to visit DisneyWorld and Universal Studios while they're in the mainland and I'll join them for a couple of days.
• 5th weekend. Utah again. I have to take my parents to the airport again when they fly home to Hawaii this weekend.
• 6th weekend. Phoenix. I will be attending the American Planning Association's National Planning Conference in Phoenix for work this week! Yes, occasionally I have to work on the weekends, too. I booked my trip so I get there a day early and I hope to visit Sedona and/or part of the Grand Canyon this weekend as well.
• 7th weekend. Japan! I took advantage of the dirt cheap fares to Tokyo last week. I have no idea what I'll do there yet, but I do know that I will be spending at least one night in a capsule hotel/hostel if only for the experience. I also want to find many Totoro things!
• 8th and 9th weekend. Australia! This is an actual vacation and not just a fun weekend for me. I will be taking 10 days and visiting Sydney and Melbourne. I want to come back to do the Great Barrier Reef when I get SCUBA certified, but for now I don't have enough time to do all three places, sadly. Very sadly. Why is Australia so far away??? 
• 10th weekend. Puerto Rico. Yes, I also took advantage of the $200 flight deal to San Juan from SLC. Should be a good time!

I am going to be SOOOO tired by the time I get back from all these trips in May. But it is SO worth it! And this doesn't include the trip to Rio I have booked for Memorial Day weekend at the end of May. Yeah, I'm a total travel addict! But hey, if you ever want me to come visit you wherever you are, let me know, and you can be sure I'll make it happen :)

Flying from CLE to CLT early this morning. It's definitely winter!

Travel On My Mind

It takes a lot of energy to travel all the time. I was looking at my travel plans for the next few months, and I have left very little time for me to catch up on my sleep on the weekends in the wake of a spree of fare wars and really good airfare deals to places like Puerto Rico and Tokyo. And while I am really enjoying my travel life on my nights and weekends, I really hope it doesn't catch up to me eventually.

This weekend, I took a road trip to help my old roommate move back to Wisconsin and I still have not been able to sleep at a normal hour between trying to work on my website and attempting to socialize here. I feel like everyone gets bitten by the travel bug at some point in their life, but once you realize a way to make it happen with the time, energy, and resources that you have available to you, it is SO hard to stop, even when it might not be completely good for you.  O:)

It's not about how travel is fun or leisurely. Travel is actually quite stressful and it takes work to figure out travel plans and to be on the move from one place to the next. The reward is definitely worth it, but it is not all rainbows and butterflies like a lot of people perceive travel to be. I don't feel like I am constantly on vacation. I feel like the world has become an extension of my home and when I travel, I am constantly learning and experiencing new and important things which help to build both myself and the world around me. Unless you are paying big bucks to have a travel agent and/or tour group plan all the details of a trip out for you, travel will always take work. I think I am just lucky that planning travel is something that I really enjoy and have picked up pretty easily. I am a planner by trade after all! I don't know if any of this makes sense because it is around 3am right now, but I hope someone out there understands my ramblings :)

As far as my travel plans go, while I don't mind returning to places I have visited already, like Rio de Janeiro and Paris this year, I think I need to start using my resources to see new places and new things going forward.  And that is going to take some work for me to figure out some of those new places I can realistically go to with what vacation time I have left and what miles and cash I have available. Which is not a lot now that I have a handful of trips booked for the near future. We will see if I can get creative with this. Hearing about the new flights to Cuba in the news gets me excited for my travel future. I can't wait to figure this out!

Priceless Surprises: Free IHG Points!

I jumped on the bandwagon! I have been reading posts about this IHG Priceless Surprises Promotion since November and earlier this month, I finally got started. Mostly planning to work on my submittals to this contest with Shazia, an awesome gal from the amazing Girls Love Travel facebook community I am a part of, got me to find my supplies and get started. So yay for peer pressure social media networking! :)

Okay, so this is how it works. IHG, the hotel company that runs hotels like Holiday Inn and InterContinental, is having a promotion where if you stay at certain hotels, you get entries into this promotion. For each qualifying stay, you get one entry which gives you a chance to win one of the following prizes:

 

But there is a way around spending money on hotels to enter! IHG allows anyone with an IHG Rewards Account to enter by submitting entries via snail mail! You can submit up to 94 entries and the minimum prize you will get is 500 IHG Bonus Points per entry. So if you do the maximum allowed, you will spend around $46 on stamps and supplies and earn a minimum of 47,000 IHG Points! These will get you far, especially as the IHG PointBreaks program discounts dozens and dozens of hotels within the US and abroad every several months for 5,000 points a night.

The best way to enter is to follow the instructions listed on the Deals We Like blog post here. Deals We Like is a great travel blog and resource! If you have a separate email for promotional stuff, I highly recommend signing up for their daily email newsletters! If not, you will be getting a lot of mail from them in your inbox, so I also recommend having a separate email you check regularly that you use solely for deals and promotions. It's great for giving out at stores and places that ask for your email that you know will send you a lot of ads, but you don't want to miss on the best deals, so this is the way to go!

Anyway, the instructions are in the blog post, and basically you must register for an IHG account if you don't have one, and you MUST register for the rewards promotion BEFORE you mail anything in. Then, you write the required information on a 3x5 index card or similar sized sheet of paper. I had a ton of old unused index cards laying around from grad school, so I was more than happy to put them to use. These details must be handwritten, although the address on the envelope may be printed off. The address is also listed in the Deals We Like blog post.

So far I have submitted 10 entries here and there since it does take some time to prepare the entries. And this morning, I was excited to find that they had received my first 35 entries! I mailed a handful more out last week, and I have about 25 more I am planning to send in the coming week or two, and I am considering sending an extra 2 or 3 in case they were not able to read my handwriting or something on some of them. All entries must be postmarked by February 15, 2016 and received by February 22, 2016.

Once they receive and process your entry, you will get an email that looks like this:

When you click on the "Choose your floor here" section, you are taken to a webpage of an elevator, and you have to click play over the buttons.

Then you get a chance to choose which floor you want to "go" to for your prize.

I received 30 prizes of 500 points, 1 prize of 1,000 points,3 prizes of 2,000 points, and 1 prize of 5,000 points. So I'm not even halfway through my entries and I've already amassed 27,000 points! More than likely you will get several prizes that are worth more than the minimum 500 points, and I highly recommend anyone that has the time and a bit of spare cash to enter this contest!

Le Petit Prince

I fondly remember reading Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince in 8th grade, imagining all the planets and places the prince visited. I had quite the imagination for history, geography, and exploration from a young age. So, naturally, when I had the opportunity to watch the film, Le Petit Prince, in Tangier at the Cinematheque de Tanger, Cinema RIF, I jumped at it!

The ticket office! If you look closely, you can see Le Petit Prince listed as one of the Films du Jour

Cinema RIF is a refurbished 1938 movie theatre which opened in 2006 with the goal of preserving and promoting the cinema of Morocco and the Arab world. While this cinema typically shows local Moroccan and African films, we happened to be there during European Film Week which offered us the opportunity to see The Little Prince in French. Tickets were only 25 Dirham, which translates to roughly $2.50! Who could pass up this experience? :)

Somewhere inside the medina in Tangier

The lighthouse at Cap Spartel

Before we discovered the cinematheque, I had spent the entire day exploring Tangier with Liz and Laurens, my Morocco travel buddies. We took the overnight sleeper train from Marrakech and got an early start by hiring a taxi to visit the Grottes d'Hercules (the Cave of Hercules) and the lighthouse at Cape Spartel, then walked through the medina all afternoon seeing the sights. By mid afternoon, we were sitting in the Place du 9 Avril 1947 and trying to figure out what we wanted to do that evening. Having noticed the marquee at Cinema RIF in the center of the plaza, we were interested in possibly seeing a film after dinner. We decided to check out the showtimes since Liz's guidebook even recommended the cinema as a point of interest in Tangier. We were not disappointed once we discovered that Le Petit Prince was a film that was showing in a few hours. The film wasn't even listed on the marquee, and honestly, I didn't even know what kind of film it would be. I had heard that there was a huge movie adaptation of the book coming to theatres at some point in time, but I didn't think this would be it. I mean, tickets were so cheap, and art house cinemas like this didn't exactly show mainstream movies very often. But we were excited! Especially since Liz was reading another of Saint-Exupery's books on this trip. Not to mention the fact that it was The Little Prince! The story on it's own is such a classic tale, and I knew that anything that had to do with the book would be worth consuming.

It turned out that the film we saw was indeed the Paramount Pictures stop-motion film that has yet to be released in the United States! Le Petit Prince debuted at the Cannes Film Festival last May and was released in France last year, but the U.S. release date is March 18, 2016. Even though it was all in French (not to mention the fact that my one semester of college French was not enough to completely understand what was going on at all times), it was a thrilling experience to see such an amazing, beautiful film in Morocco months ahead of time. And for only $2.50! I love attending festivals like Sundance and watching films whenever I can, so this just goes to show that it pays to follow your intuition and do what you want to do when you travel! Initially, the cinema sounded great, although it seemed a little odd to be watching a movie in Morocco when I could do the same thing in the U.S. But it was definitely not the same! And we were rewarded for taking a second to look into the cinema there. It's kind of like how I avoided drinking Fanta in Europe when I first visited, only to discover that European Fanta is FAR superior to Fanta in the US! Things are never what they appear to be when you travel. And I absolutely love it!

Inside the Cinema RIF waiting for the film to begin! :)

My Utah Bucket List

On the topic of travel goals and bucket lists, I have a small list of things that I am hoping to do while I live in Utah. Who knows how long I will actually live here. I only ever expected to be here for 2 years while I was in graduate school, and I'm going on 6 years as a Utah resident. I still cannot ever bring myself to say that I am from Utah when I travel, especially because being from Hawaii is a much better conversation starter and also because Los Angeles and California will forever be my second home. But that all is beside the point. Here are the things that I hope to do while I live in this amazingly beautiful state:

• Visit Bryce Canyon National Park, especially while I have a National Parks pass
• Visit Bear Lake on the Utah-Idaho border
• Hike to The Wave at the Utah-Arizona border
• Spend a weekend in Havasupai, Arizona (it's not too far)
• Ski at Alta (skiers only!)
• See the Grand Canyon (it's not too far, either)
• Hike to the Spanish Fork hot springs finally 

Is there anything I'm missing? :)

2016 Travel Goals

I know this is a bit late, although 2016 got off to a busy start for me with both work and travel. I have been working hard on getting my new website, www.justonemoretrip.com, up and running from scratch, and I have been making big decisions regarding my career in these first couple of weeks of the new year. So now that I am finally getting my life together a bit more, here are some of my travel goals for 2016:

• Australia. It is finally time for me to hit my 6th continent after traveling to the other populated 5 contents several times over the past three years. Don't worry, Antarctica is also on my list, but probably not for this year. I really want to visit Melbourne more than anything, although a trip to the Sydney Opera House is definitely going to happen. I still have to find the right plane tickets and dates for this trip, but this is my number one travel priority this year.
• Petra. I am not sure if I can make this happen, but I really want to finally visit Petra in Jordan this year. It is one of the last new wonders of the world that I have yet to see.
• Cuba. This trip would be a stretch, but it would be a dream to visit Havana and even the rest of Cuba before American tourists are allowed to go (currently American visitors are allowed, but only under 10 specific categories, and tourists are not one of them). I want to see Cuba and get a feel for the culture as it is now, before all the old vintage cars and things are replaced with newer imports from the U.S. The only thing stopping me from getting a visa now is that my Spanish isn't fluent, and I would have to go with someone who can speak it well enough to understand the Cuban accent. This is one place I would not go solo.
• Eastern Europe. With all the deals to Central and South America last year, I didn't end up having enough time to do a mini backpacking trip through Budapest, Vienna, Croatia, and Prague like I had wanted to, although I did get to spend one day in Prague. I still want to take at least 10 days and go some time this fall.
• Chicago. I still have not been to Chicago!!! Luckily, I have plans to drive to Wisconsin with Elvera next month under the condition that she take me to Chicago once we get there. February is not the ideal time of year to go, but I just can't wait! :)
• Montreal. And probably Quebec City. A little piece of Europe in North America. This is pretty high up on my list. I have never been disappointed by Canada.
• Victoria. I have been wanting to take the ferry over to Victoria from Seattle for a while now. I hope I can make this happen some time this year. I think I could make a fun weekend trip out of it. Victoria is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous, and I'd love to see the gardens and do some hiking out that way. Maybe I could even see some whales!
• Celine Dion in Las Vegas. I love Las Vegas, and as many times as I have been there, I have never seen Celine Dion in concert!!! My very first album was The Reason on cassette tape that I bought in Thailand, and I listened to it every night in order to fall asleep when I was a kid afraid of the Night Marchers (Hawaiian ghost stories are no joke people!). I can't wait to finally see her live!
• Havasupai. I had reservations last year, but Tianqi had to go and get married on the same weekend that I had reservations for. I will try again this year, and so far it looks like I will be able to bring quite a large group of lovely ladies from my favorite Facebook group, Girls LOVE Travel! It will be a blast! Now let's just pray I get enough reservations when I call and call and call in on February 1st.
• Travel Blog. My final and most important travel goal is to blog more regularly, even if it's a small post here and there, and to set up and maintain my new website properly. This will be a big feat for me as I just barely started my web tech/development education in 2015. Actually, that is something I am extremely proud of, even though my skills are at a bare minimum so far. I randomly found this awesome group called Girl Develop It and started going to their meetings and learning how to code and about computers and stuff. I was even in a video (watch it here) about it! Now that I've finally found the perfect blog name, I hope I can transfer those skills I have learned into real life.

2015 was an EPIC travel year for me, and I know I won't be able to travel nearly as much this year. But I hope I can make these things happen! I'm so excited!! :)

2015 in Review

2015 has been a very exciting year in travel for me. I have no idea how 2016 can possibly live up to the past year, but I'll try to make it a good one. It took me some time to calculate this out, but I want to share this infographic with you summarizing my travels in 2015:

I think I did a good job with my travel goals from last year (read about them here). I met most of my travel goals for the year. I got to visit Dubai, swim in Jellyfish Lake in Palau, see the Taj Mahal, go on a couple of safaris (in South Africa and in Dubai!), and I went home to Hawaii four times. I even ran the Honolulu Marathon. One of my goals was to backpack through Europe, and while I did not have enough time to do a proper backpacking trip, I did make it to Prague! And I visited Germany for about a week, so I'll check that one off as well. I used most of my vacation time I was saving for that trip on several amazing travel deals to Central America, so I got to visit a handful of countries there instead. Here is a map of my travels this year:

Some of the things I didn't get to do last year are see the Northern Lights, visit Chicago, hike to Havasupai, and hike to the Wave. While I didn't get to go to Chicago this year, I actually have a trip planned for February, finally! And Havauspai didn't work out last year because the weekend I made reservations for ended up being the weekend that my best friend from USC got married in Alabama, so I will try again this year. I also did have a chance to hike to the Wave this fall, but the weather prohibited us from actually going on the hike, so I will have to try for that again this year as well. And I have no idea when or where I will ever see the Northern Lights. I think that is something that may be on my revolving travel wish list.

I'm pretty proud of my 2015 travel accomplishments! I can't believe I was able to do so much! Stay tuned for my 2016 Travel Goals and see what I will try to accomplish this year.