Category: Resources (Page 5 of 7)

information that is helpful and resourceful in setting up your travel

Czech Beer

May 8, 2015 / David / 0 Comments

Every Friday we take a break from our regular blogging schedule to allow the authors an opportunity to feature a certain topic they are passionate about. In the past you’ve read about art, studying abroad, and experiencing culture through food. Through this and other future posts we hope you’ll enjoy reading, we hope to share with you our personalities, passions, and interests on a more personal level.

Have you ever taken a pay cut to stay close to your local brewery?

After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, national borders opened and opportunities for better jobs and higher pay enticed many Eastern European residents to leave their homelands and move west. However many Czechs, motivated by their love of local brews, decided not to relocate for these new opportunities. Now that is devotion!

Before journeying to the Czech Republic, I found an article ranking the Czech Republic as drinking the most beer per capita of any country. On average, every Czech resident consumes 156.9 liters of beer per year. For comparisons, the Czech Republic leads second place Ireland by almost 26 liters. That is some serious drinking!

Most of the pubs Rebekah and I encountered during our time in the Czech Republic only served one brand of beer. Canopies and large patio umbrellas proudly proclaimed which beer their restaurant served. Some bars only served the flagship beer of the brewery, while other pubs offered up to three beers from their sponsored brewery. The beer was almost always served in the brewery’s pint glass.

Pilsner Urquell at the Golden Tiger Pub

In general, the most popular beer is Pilsner Urquell, with Staropramen coming in second place.

Rebekah and I accidentally enjoyed a double round of Pilsner Urquell at a great local bar, The Golden Tiger Pub. At the Prague Airport, our last beer in the Czech Republic was Pilsner Urquell’s black lager, Kozel Černý.

Staropramen Taps at Hotel Hastal’s Pub

Even our hotel had a bar, noted for some of the cheapest pints of beer in Prague. Unfortunately, we did not get a chance to partake in their three Staropramen taps. However, we did enjoy a Staropramen Černý (Dark) at a delicious pizzeria in the Old Town Square.

If you venture outside of Prague to the surrounding country, you will find a variety of regional beers. Even in Prague, you can find more options than the national brands. For example, we enjoyed a delicious lager, Lobkowicz Knízeci Pivovar. While normally found only in the lands once ruled by the Lobkowicz family, we enjoyed this tasty beer on draft at the Lobkowicz Palace Café at Prague Castle. This was possibly my favorite beer in the Czech Republic!

Lobkowicz Knízeci Pivovar at the Lobkowicz Palace Café

Wanting to experience more of the Czech Republic, we ventured from Prague to the amazing town of Český Krumlov. The local brewery, Eggenberg, produced a delicious Czech Pilsner Světlý Ležák. For a change in style, we tried the dark Schwarzbier, Tmavy Lezák. While dark in color, the black beer still tastes light and actually has less alcohol content than the pilsner. This seems to be very common for dark beers in the Czech Republic.

With our time in the Czech Republic coming to a close, I wanted to try one more Czech beer before flying to Paris, land of wine. On the train ride to Český Krumlov, we discovered that drinking on the train is socially acceptable. With this in mind, I purchased a large bottle of beer from a local grocery store for only 13 Crowns, or $0.62. It would have been even cheaper if I had been able to return the bottle for my deposit!

Budweiser Budvar Original

The beer I grabbed in my haste was Budweiser Budvar Original. As in, the original Budweiser. Brewed in the Czech town of České Budějovice, there have been endless trademark battles between the Czech brewery and the American beer giant, Anheuser-Busch. To save you all the drama, Anheuser-Busch lost multiple cases in the European Union court system. As a result, in most of Europe Anheuser-Busch’s Budweiser is marketed simply as Bud. In most of North America, Budweiser Budvar Original is marketed as Czechvar.

Half way through our four hour trip, I popped the top of the room temperature beer. After all the lawsuits, I realized that Anheuser-Busch perfectly copied the Czech version, as both tasted equally subpar to me. What a waste! This was the only disappointing beer I had in the Czech Republic.

Let me leave you with a few tips. First, beer in Czech is pivo (pronounced PEE-voh). Light beer is světlé pivo (SVYEHT-leh) and dark beer is tmavé pivo (TMAH-veh). Also, you will notice degree signs associated with Czech beers, as seen in the above picture of the right Staropramen tap. This symbol does not equal percent alcohol. It is a measurement of densities of the beer’s ingredients. In general, the low densities (10°) are pilsners with about 3.5% ABV, and higher densities (11° to 15°) are darker beers with higher alcohol contents. For example, a 12° beer is about 4.2% ABV.

By the end of writing this article, I am reminded how much I wish to return to the Czech Republic and sample more Czech beers! This part of the local culture was such a great part of our trip.

April State of the Blog Report

May 7, 2015 / Rachel / 4 Comments

We’re back for our second installment of what we’re calling our State of the Blog Report. This month we’ll share our hard numbers and the topic we are going to address today is using social media.

Numbers

This month we’re showing a slightly different graphic for the overall traffic report. It shows the same information as the traffic report from last month, but also presented in a graph form and with a nifty little pie chart to show blog visitors. Check our first State of the Blog Report for the glossary of terms and to compare our numbers from last month. Generally, most numbers are down, which we are slightly disappointed by, but we also had (what we think was) a strong launch; all that to say we are still establishing a baseline. Hopefully we will continue to grow in readership for those who are actually interested in continuing to follow us as a travel blog.

Since the graph and pie charts are new, I want to explain them briefly. For the graph, the x axis is the date, the y axis is the number of sessions (in royal blue) vs. the number of pageviews (in light blue). The graph shows us especially what days we saw a lot of hits on the blog. It also has helped us clue into some trends that we can compare to the WordPress stats to see what days we might be seeing more traffic. The pie chart is a nice little graphic to represent the percentage of new visitors vs. returning. It’s encouraging for us to see that we have a good mix of new and returning as we try to grow a foundation of returners while also hopefully start building new readership.

For this month, Facebook and directly typing in the From Texas to Beyond URL were the most popular ways our blog was found. It is encouraging to see that Google also came up as a referrer.

If you’ll remember from last month, WordPress counts the stats differently, which is why the numbers don’t line up exactly with Google. The details provided through WordPress are really helpful as they reflect that typically we see a decline in traffic over the weekends (when we don’t typically post anything) and see a generous bounce up on Mondays.

What Worked…and What Didn’t

Obviously we’re still new to the blogging scene, but we’re also new to managing various social media outlets as bloggers. We are learning that social media is a great tool to be able to interact with readers while learning how to strike a balance between using the blog posts as a platform for interaction vs. social media.

We are currently active on several social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Flickr. We’ve seen growing “Follows”, “Likes”, “Repins”, etc. from each of the various outlets, but aren’t exactly sure how to gauge what would be considered “successful”. (Shameless plug, consider connecting with us on the links above or on the sidebar!) Since we started them at the same time as the blog, we don’t know what is a good measure for growth, how quickly we should see the growth, etc. This has definitely been a learning opportunity for us as we consider our current statistics and research what others have to say on this topic while also strategize ideas for additional growth.

It seems that the most responsive interaction we’ve received has been on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We manage those on a daily basis and try to respond as soon as we can to various people. That being said that also leaves us to wonder if we still should be engaging on Pinterest and Flickr. For now, we are hopeful to continue using all of these social media tools not only to engage with returning visitors but also to expand our visibility. As we gather more stats to see exactly what readers are looking for and how they connect, we’ll consider what we might need to eliminate (or add!).

For those who blog, do you also manage social media? What strategies would you share with us for managing those efficiently and effectively?

View of the Castle Quarter from the Charles Bridge

Prague City Overview

April 30, 2015 / David / 13 Comments

Rebekah and I have always wanted to explore Eastern Europe, and Prague was the top city on our list. Prague, the City of a Hundred Spires. When we found a cheap flight to Prague using frequent flyer miles, we didn’t think twice about booking the flight!

After much planning, we decided to spend four of our ten day European trip exploring the Czech Republic. We also wanted to see the Czech Republic beyond Prague, so we limited our time in Prague so we could travel 4 hours south by train to the picturesque Czech town of Český Krumlov. This decision left us with two full days in Prague. Looking back, two days is theoretically enough time to catch the Prague highlights, but we moved quickly to cover so much ground. You could have easily spent a week in Prague, including short day trips to see the surrounding countryside complete with small castle towns.

To make the most of our time, we researched the destination beforehand so we could spend our time on the ground enjoying. Rick Steves 2014 Prague & the Czech Republic Guidebook was a most helpful resource. I highly recommend this book for traveling in the Czech Republic.

Before we jump into what we did, let’s take a look at the city of Prague itself.

Crossing the Charles Bridge from the Little Quarter into the Old Town

An Afternoon in London – Making the Most of Our Heathrow Layover

April 28, 2015 / David / 0 Comments

It was 8:45 PM, and Rebekah and I were pulling away from the gate at DFW International Airport and heading to London. Seated next to me, Rebekah was tired from all the preparation. I was trying not to bounce off the walls with excitement. Sipping a Newcastle Brown Ale shortly after takeoff, Europe was beckoning me! Our time in London would be short. With an eight hour Heathrow layover, we would have three hours in downtown London. An hour delay at DFW Airport now meant 60 minutes less in London. You may ask, “Why does an eight hour layover turn into only three hours in central London?” In short, plan on 5 hours for Immigration/Border Control (1 hour), transportation to the city center (1 hour), and transportation from the city center back to Heathrow (1 hour), arriving approximately 2 hours prior to your flight’s departure time. We found an excellent article on Trip Advisor breaking down the times and possible sight-seeing options. If you only have a few hours, I strongly recommend focusing on one destination in London, and fully enjoy that one destination. There is no way you can see everything in London in a few hours; we chose The National Gallery. The National Gallery is free, located in a great part of town with easy connections and we love art! Plan your itinerary before leaving home, as you do not want to use your precious time looking up options once you arrive.

Step One: Immigration/Border Control. We were very fortunate here, giving up just 5 minutes instead of the scheduled hour. We were making up some time lost in the flight delay. If possible, check your bags all the way through to your final destination. Since our bags were checked to Prague, we did not have to spend time picking them up. If we had luggage, I am sure our Immigration time would have been much longer. Besides, you don’t want to carry your bags around London.

London Heathrow Train Map – Courtsey of HeathrowAirport.com

Rebekah and I on the Piccadilly Line

Step Two: Transportation to downtown London. Here, you have two options. The newer, faster, more expensive option is the Heathrow Express (HEX). The second option is the traditional Underground Piccadilly Line (Dark Blue Line). See the map of the Underground above for more information. We chose the latter based on what we had read in the Trip Advisor article. Following signs from Immigration, we easily found the Underground station, and purchased RETURN trip tickets from a machine for $15.00 each (£8.90). We used a credit card instead of converting dollars to pounds.

Step Three: Enjoy central London. In 45 minutes, we emerged from the Underground station in the heart of Piccadilly Circus. Piccadilly Circus is the Times Square of London. Broadway show posters plaster buildings. Pizza Hut, KFC, TGI Friday’s, Dunkin’ Donuts and other “wonderful” American contributions to Europe cuisine clamor for business. Hundreds of people mill about. Remember, any time you are around crowds, keep an extra careful eye on your belongings. Bypassing the crowds, we headed to Trafalgar Square on foot. Passing a statue of William Shakespeare in Leicester Square, we asked directions from a friendly police officer. With a few more turns, we arrived at Trafalgar Square. Staying focused on the goal at hand, we proceeded directly to The National Gallery. After all this, we had two and a half hours at the Gallery. Heading back to Heathrow, we exited the museum and were greeted with a light rain. Big Ben came into view for the first time; it will have to wait for our next London visit.

Step Four: Return transportation to Heathrow Airport. We easily found Piccadilly Circus, and boarded our train back to the airport. Before getting on the Underground, check to see from which terminal your flight departs. There are three stops for Heathrow, Terminal 1,2 and 3; Terminal 4; and Terminal 5. Not all of the trains go to all of the stations. Our connecting flight to Prague departed from Terminal 3, the first stop. Again, the return trip took 45 minutes.

Step Five: Security. The last step for a successful layover trip to London is clearing security on your way back. Following the signs from the Underground, we made our way through a very detailed security check point. Once inside the secure area, we sampled gin and tonics at the Duty Free shops, killing the remainder of our layover before making our way to the gate. At Heathrow, gates are not assigned until 60 minutes prior to departure, so spend time in the mall-like common area.

The Piccadilly Underground Line

Well, was all of that hassle worth it? Definitely! There are risks involved, but overall, we experienced an extra destination for a small amount of money and no extra time. If you plan appropriately, and leave enough time for the return trip, 3 hours in London will be much more rewarding than 8 hours in the terminal. If you have any questions, feel free to post in the comments section, and we will do our best to assist you with your upcoming plans.

Český Krumlov - View of the Old City from Krumlov Castle

A Case Study in Redeeming Frequent Flyer Miles

April 27, 2015 / David / 0 Comments

Today, we kick off a series about Rebekah and my most recent international trip. But before we dive into the stories from the trip, we wanted to take a minute to break down redeeming frequent flyer miles.

Our trip, like any good trip, started with the classic question: “Where should we go?” Rebekah and I had accumulated 120,000 miles in our American Airlines frequent flyer accounts, and the miles were burning a hole in our pockets. Where should we go?

London – Picadilly Circus

Redeeming American Airlines’ Frequent Flyer Miles: Since we were redeeming miles, we figured a good place to start was the American Airlines website. The Awards Map, a relatively new feature, helps find possible destinations based on the number of frequent flyer miles you wish to redeem. Using this option, the website shows possible destinations in a selected area (such as Asia Pacific, Europe, Central and South America, etc.) originating from a specific airport, ours being DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth) Airport. We set the miles we were willing to spend to 30,000 miles per person (one-way). Based on the dates of travel, we realized we did not have enough miles for Asia or Africa and few options for South America. Europe seemed to be the best fit. By eliminating the countries we had already visited in Europe, we only had 45 countries to choose from. Ha. Still daunting.

When booking flights using miles, we were shocked to find the additional taxes and fees to be extraordinary. Some options, such as a flight to Gibraltar, cost 30,000 miles and $760 per person one way. We quickly ruled out these locations. In general, we found flights connecting through London Heathrow were more expensive than connecting through other airports. Also, direct flights were normally the cheapest, since less airports equals less fees.

One benefit of using frequent flyer miles is that you can easily book one-way tickets for half of the miles of a round trip ticket (based on the dates). We quickly realized there was no benefit for us to book a round trip ticket, and started to view each way as an independent option. However, the Award Map became even more difficult to use for a one-way return ticket, as you have to select one city in Europe at a time, and select continental US as the return. Once you do this, you can see if DFW airport is available from the selected European city. The American Airlines Award Map can be a frustrating tool because of its limitations, but after a lot of work, it helped us narrow down our final destinations.

After much searching, we decided to fly home from Paris, mostly because it was a direct flight back to DFW with ideal departure and landing times and minimal taxes. After even more struggles, we found a great flight to Prague. We wanted to explore Eastern Europe if possible, and this was as far east as we could fly on 30,000 miles.

Prague – View of the Charles Bridge

Modifying a Frequent Flyer Ticket Itinerary: Later, we discovered another benefit of using miles: no change fees. After looking at our work schedules again, we were able to extend our trip by two days. I was not sure what fees would be associated with such a change, but thought the extra time in Europe would be worth a try. I was pleasantly surprised to find there was no fee. As long as a flight for the same number of miles is available, the only cost would be the difference in taxes. In our case, we only changed the return flight, knowing we would not find another flight to Prague. We easily found a new return flight from Paris, and the taxes for the later flight was the same as the previous flight. There was no cost to modify our itinerary.

Overall, the representatives at American Airlines were very helpful. However, if they book the tickets for you directly, there is a fee, so avoid the extra fee by letting them help you make an online booking. Once you have an online booking, they can assist you with any changes.

When all the planning was complete, we booked a 1 stop flight from DFW to Prague, with a layover in London Heathrow (a rare exception to the high taxes). The cost for each person was 30,000 miles and $96.80. The return flight was direct from Charles de Gaulle Airport to DFW for 30,000 miles and $90.90 each. For those keeping score at home, our “free” tickets cost us a total of 120,000 miles and $375.40. When it comes to airlines, “free” is not always free. This definitely made us rethink the value of frequent flyer mile programs.

Our Itinerary: After a lot of work, Rebekah and I were going to Europe. We would visit the following locations:

London during an 8 hour layover.
Prague for 2 full days.
Český Krumlov, a small town in the Czech Republic for about 24 hours.
Paris for 4 full days.

Paris – View of the Eiffel Tower from the Arc de Triomphe

In the coming weeks, we will break down each of these four destinations, sharing highlights and the most memorable experiences from each location. We look forward to sharing our experiences with you!

If you have successfully booked a flight with frequent flyer miles and have any tips, feel free to share in the comments section!

Category: Resources (Page 5 of 7)

Czech Beer

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Prague City Overview

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An Afternoon in London – Making the Most of Our Heathrow Layover

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A Case Study in Redeeming Frequent Flyer Miles

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Czech Beer

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April State of the Blog Report

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Prague City Overview

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An Afternoon in London – Making the Most of Our Heathrow Layover

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A Case Study in Redeeming Frequent Flyer Miles

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