The Cheapos’ 2011 New Year’s Travel Resolutions
Welcome to 2011, Cheapos. Now that the eggnog is finally gone and we’ve shoveled away the snow from the Christmas blizzard, it’s time for one of our favorite annual traditions: making New Year’s travel resolutions.
This year, everyone here at EuroCheapo HQ has made a pact to aspire to both personal and office-wide resolutions. The former is listed below and at each individual Cheapo’s discretion, while the latter is also listed below and the result of both heated debate and thumb-wrestling.
Here we go, yo!
Office-wide Resolutions
1.) Only use WiFi at any hotel if it is free
2.) Spend as little as possible on airline baggage fees (and know what the fees are in advance, natch.)
3.) Be smarter about racking up points on credit and debit cards that can be used toward future travel.
4.) Take overnight trains more often.
5.) Remember how to properly use our iPhones abroad. And we reserve the right to just leave the things at home and get over our bad tech selves.
6.) Use public transportation to get in from the airport, no matter how tired we feel or if we overindulged on the free in-flight sauce.
Personal New Year’s Resolutions
1.) Sip fruit soup in Budapest.
2.) Buy a welcome mat in Marrakesh.
3.) Find my grandmother’s roots on Mount Blanc.
4.) Step aboard a Viking ship in Bygdoy, Oslo.
5.) Listen to locals debate history along Serbian borders.
1.) Take my 1-year-old daughter on an overseas trip and try to keep my flight anxiety to a minimum.
2.) Stay at least one night on a botel.
3.) I resolve to embrace the bidet.
4.) Karaoke at a youth hostel.
5.) Get involved in the paddle boarding conversation.
1.) Read a book written or set in the destinations I visit.
2.) Attend a reenactment (and get someone to break character).
3.) Set up a travel fund.
4.) Take a class (cooking, dance, fill-in-the-blank…) in a place known for that specialty, even if for only a day.
5.) Give something back: volunteer for a day, bring supplies to a poor country, share conversation with locals…
1.) Keep a journal of my travels.
2.) Take the bus more.
3.) Go into a restaurant, forgo the menu and ask the chef to make me “whatever.”
4.) Find a baby-friendly budget hotel in Paris.
5.) Stop faking my knowledge of foreign languages.
What New Year’s travel resolutions do you have for 2011, Cheapos? Tell us in the comments below!
And to help make your resolutions a reality, consider some of these fab tips for Europe to get started.
About the author
1) Continue to travel tech-free, metro-phytic, carry-on-only, and all the rest of the “office-wide” good ideas I already do.
2) Walk the entire length of the famous Cinque Terre trail.
3) Continue to seek out eateries where Anthony Bourdain visited on his show, even though–half a block away from the spot–passing locals I ask for directions, have no idea where it is.
4) Somehow get a local to invite me for a home-cooked meal, or let me make them a meal, using their backyard stone hearth oven.
5) Keep more flexible days in the itinerary