Category Archives: Trip Reports

Sandemans Free Walking Tours in NYC, Europe, and the Middle East

 

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Sandemans Free Walking Tours in NYC, Europe, and the Middle East

Greetings from Barcelona!  Yesterday, I went on a free walking tour of the city and wanted to share my thoughts on Sandemans Free Walking Tours.  You may remember, I went on Sandemans tours in Hamburg, Germany and Copenhagen, Denmark in April (post).

Here is how Sandemans tours work:

  • All tours are led by locals in English who also speak the local language (most guides are from English speaking countries who are now living in the local city).
  • Tours last 2.5 to 3 hours with a small 15 minute break in the middle.
  • You probably walk 3-4 miles total, so bring good tennis shoes or comfortable sandals.
  • Average age of tourists are 22-30 years old, with some children, and some older adults.
  • The guides know the streets and the history of the city like they grew up there.
  • All tours are free, the tour guides rely on tips at the end of the tour.  For my tour, there were probably 25-30 people and the average person tipped 2-3 Euros at the end of the tour, which results in 50-90 Euros for 3 hours of “work” for the tour guide.
  • The tours promote their other paid tours and we decided to go on a Gaudi tour of Barcelona and a tapas tour of some of Barcelona’s best tapas restaurants.

Based on Trip Advisor reviews, Sandeman Tours are very popular:

Sandemans Hamburg

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Crazy Weekend: UCLA Graduation, San Diego Wedding, LAX Flight, and My Credit Card App-O-Rama Updates

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Crazy Weekend: UCLA Graduation, San Diego Wedding, LAX Flight, and My Credit Card App-O-Rama Updates

TGI Friday everyone!  This might be my last post for a few days, but I will still be able to answer comments with the WordPress iPhone app.  Here is my schedule this weekend:

  1. Friday Night – My younger brother’s UCLA graduation
  2. Saturday Afternoon – My older brother’s wedding in San Diego
  3. Sunday Night – Family vacation from LAX to Spain/France for 2 weeks

My dad scored 4 award seats 11 months ago for LAX-DUS-BCN on Air Berlin (economy baby, woo hoo!) returning on 4 separate awards seats from MAD-FRA-LAX on Lufthansa (economy again!)  We are doing a big road trip from Barcelona up to Carcassonne, France west to San Sebastián, and down to Madrid.  I imagine some epic World Cup viewing parties in my future.

Spain Road Trip

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Minor Blog Update: Reorganized Pages into New Subheaders

TWG Celebration

Minor Blog Update: Reorganized Pages into New Subheaders

I just wanted to let you guys know that I updated some of the links tonight to reflect my new blog subheaders.  I hope the new headers make it easier to find the pages you are looking for.  I use a redirect plugin which should automatically convert the old links to the new links, so if everything works as it is supposed to, you *shouldn’t* have any problems.  Without further ado, here is what the new subheader arrangement will be (scroll to the top of the page to see for yourself):

TWG New Subheaders

Please let me know if If you do find links that do not redirect properly and I will fix them as soon as possible.

For those blog readers who are relatively new to my site, you might want to take a look around at some of the subheaders for some really good information.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.   Continue reading →

Bluebird and Serve Daily/Monthly Limits Reset at 9PM PST

BB to Bills

Bluebird and Serve Daily/Monthly Limits Reset at 9PM PST

This has been known for a while, but I thought I would share again.  All daily and monthly limits for Bluebird and Serve reset at 9PM PST or 12AM EST.  Here are my latest transactions from 10 minutes ago.

Serve Loads and Bill Payments

As of right now, it is technically June 1 in Bluebird’s and Serve’s database, so go wild.

Here are my Sunday errands, so please keep me on track:

  1. Create a blog posts for my San Diego Meet Up next Saturday night.  I need to put together a list to determine how many people are coming so I can make a dinner reservation.
  2. This shouldn’t take too long, but I want to reorganize some of my pages, specifically the pages under the How To Guides and Credit Card tabs.  I want to spread out the pages across these 4 tabs: How To Guides: Miles/Points, How To Guides: Cash Back, How To Guides: Everything, and Credit Cards.  I need to set up redirects so old URLs redirect to new URLs addresses.
  3. Lastly and probably the most overdue/major headache for me is to start catching up on my trip reports.  I am proposing that I do one week straight of nothing besides trip reports.  I made myself a deal that I would post at least 1 trip report per day before I mention any other travel-related news.  This is going to be tough.

That’s it for me.  Have a great Saturday night or a sleepy Sunday morning.