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A recent experience in Mexico, where the waiter tried to over charge me, reminded me I wanted to write an article about it sometime ago.

When you are going to place where you clearly don't look like a local some people are tempted to take advantage of it. They know you have money for your holidays, they know that humans tend to avoid conflict especially when they want to enjoy their holidays. This create a perfect setup where they can try to extort more money at a very low cost as most of the people don't notice or dare to challenge them, especially when there is a language barrier.

Let's review some real life situations and the way to prevent them. 

The touristic menu

When you enter in a restaurant and the waiter directly offer an English menu or another langue such as French, German, Italian, be vigilant. One trick here is to overpriced the menu in English and have the regular price for locals. To avoid this I like to have a quick look at the local menu. There are always couple of thing easy to compare even if you don't speak the language: coffee, coke, beer, fries. When you notice a difference, eat your meal and wait the bill to ask the local menu to compare. This way, you already ate the food so you are in position of force to negotiate, if they are not flexible you can threat to leave without paying. This happen to me couple of time and each time they charge me the local price when I made clear I would not pay the touristic price. If this happen to you please a comment on TripAdvisor or any other rating apps. A bad rating might help them to stop this arguable methods.

No menu

In this scenario the waiter will guide you to few items and you will never see you menu. In this case the best is to ask for the menu once you are served and have a quick look at few prices. Last time this happened to me, the waiter still tried to over charge me so I asked a proper receipt pretending it was for my company. When he came back suddenly my check was 20% lower that the initial price he announced.

Cab without taximeter

In many countries, cab don't have a taximeter which mean that at the end of the trip you will pay whatever the driver will ask you. This led dishonest people a possibility to take advantage of the situation. Few year ago, in New Jersey, we have been picked up by a driver without a taximeter. When we asked him the price he said maybe $5 maybe $10. When we finally arrive at the destination, after a terrible ride, he asked for $20. We told him that was not the deal. He argued then asked for $15, as it was still not the deal we gave him a $10 bill. He was very unhappy with it, but I have no compunction for dishonest people. Another situation from last year in Macedonia, where the driver tried to charge us 2 time the price we paid on the morning for the exact same trip on the opposite way. I had the feeling that was coming and before he asked to be paid I gave him the same amount at the morning driver. He started to argue saying it was not the correct price. I made clear that I was not going to pay double for the same trip. Once again, time was in my favor, he quickly stopped to argue and asked us to leave his car on a none very friendly way.

The best way to prevent any issue in this kind of situation is to always check if there is a taximeter in the cab when you enter. When there is no taximeter, ask the driver how much will be the ride. If you think that the price is acceptable it's easy. If you think the price is way to high two options

there are many cabs around: leave the car and try to find someone more honest

there is no other cab around: bargain with the driver. Time is money for them and they will generally agree to decrease the price, drop you as soon as possible and come back for a more cooperative tourist.

As I mentioned earlier people generally don't like conflict and try to avoid it as much as possible. The thing is if you let people take advantage of you, you will have a bitter taste that might come back each time you remember this trip. By accepting to be uncomfortable for few minutes 1) you will save some money 2) you won't keep this bitter taste on the contrary you will know have a cool story to tell, next time someone ask you about this trip.

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Damage luggage

Back from a trip in US, it took me sometime to find my suite case. I forgot that I change suitcase over the course of my trip. The reason for it: the delicacy of the crew at airports while manipulating your luggage. I know that most of the people are very unhappy when this happen. They generally go back home with their broken suitcase and told their friends how terrible is a certain carrier to handle luggage. The thing that people don't always know is that generally you won't have any problem to get your luggage fix, when it is possible, or replace by the company. Since beginning of 2018 I already changed 2 time of suit case at no cost. The first time, they send me to a random place in Paris which was not aware about the deal so they didn't help me. In this case I contacted British Airway directly on Twitter. Side note, I highly recommend to contact airplane company via social media. They can not hide their mistakes, so they are way more responsive than by email. I got answer from the customer service within a couple of hours. They offered me to ship a new suitcase from there website where ever I wanted within 48h, which they actually did. The second time, at the baggage desk they directly offered me to switch my suitcase with something they had in stock. I didn't get to pick the color and the size was a bit smaller than my original suitcase but at the it took less than 15 min to Delta to fix my issue. 

From a legal point of view, you have up to 7 days from the moment you get your luggage to do a written claim to the company. Nevertheless, I encourage you to fill the claim at the airport. 

So next time your luggage get damage, and it will, no need to be super upset. Just directly at the baggage desk at the airport and I bet they will fix your issue.

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How to be a secret agent or a dumb?

Yesterday, I had a wonderful morning. I went to work, worked on different projects and went for lunch with my colleagues. Everything was great, till the moment where the green light of my cellphone started flashing. I try to avoid to jump on my phone for each notifications but this day my colleague was playing Hearthstone on his phone so I had a good excuse to take mine. I started to read the text: "Welcome on board DY7019 13. Dec Paris/Cha. - New York. Dep: 18:05 Terminal: 1 Gate: Please check the information screens Your ticket: https://www.norwegian.com/uk/start/mt?p=XXXX"

I asked casually at the table what day we are. My colleagues instantly replied 13th of December. So apparently we were the same day as the one my scheduled flight. Something was strange. I was pretty sure to have checked my calendar the previous day and it confirmed I should be flying only tomorrow. A quick double check on my email proved once again that copy/paste is still a skill pretty hard to master... Now it was confirmed that my flight is in 4 hours I had to elaborate my battle plan. Before starting to run I did a quick check on was is absolutely necessary to do this trip: credit card (always with me), passport (at home), ideally my laptop (at the office). After a quick addition of all the transportation time (Office => Home => Airport) + security things to do at the airport I came at the conclusion I had 10 min extra time to pack my bag. I used one of this minute to celebrate my brain-fart on Facebook. This generation Y ... Once I got my laptop at the office I run in direction of the subway. While in the train I started to write the checklist of everything I need to be conformable for this trip (I highly recommend Google Keep for all the To Do, checklist you want to write) : 3 T-shirt 1 Banana 1 External battery 1 Passport ...

and  More food for the cat

Less than 10 min after I opened the door of my appartement everything was in the backpack. I pet quickly the cat to apologize for the extra day he will be lock in because my mistake.

(Miaous!)

From this moment I knew that everything was fine so I started to write this article in the train going to the airport. I was so focused on it that I eventually missed my train station. Hopefully as a trained dumb traveler, I was ready for my Uber backup plan... Now let's see what allow me to not miss my flight even if I repeatedly screw-up. 1- Don't think about the consequences Thinking about the consequences of the money waste, time waste and so on is consuming a lot of energy. Once you realize you have the problem, all the energy should be focus on solving it. If you miss your flight you will have way enough time to think about the consequences while waiting 24h for your next flight. 2- Be organized I like a certain level of mess at home but the travel items are always organized and stored at specific places to facilitate my bag preparation. I have 2 drawers with everything needed for all kind of travel from my passport to my travel pillow. I have a 3rd drawer with all the metro/bus cards and the different currencies separated in zip plastic bags.

(The Accountant)

3- Create a traveling routine I like unexpected events, but to have the energy to face most of the unexpected things while travelling it's good to have certain routines that help to save energy and time. I have different routine while travelling. One of my important routine is to always used the same bag for 12 years know. I know exactly where each items has to go in the bag-pack. I know how to pack and repack after security control in the fastest way possible. Routine are so strong that when I changed something in packing habit a month ago, I forgot my suitcase at home. For once, I was not using my personal suitcase buy my girlfriend one, a new habit that my brain didn't handle really well... 

(My best travel friend)

4- Activate all the notification I think this is the great teaching of this trip is: activate all the notifications that your airline company is offering. This checkbox I clicked on while booking my flight saved me couple of hundred of dollars. It's normally easy to unable the commercial notifications and keep only the one related to your trip. 5- Have the transportation apps install on your cellphone I already talk about Citymapper in a previous article. It's an apps that help me to take the best decisions possible in terms of the means of transportation to use. You should also have at least a Uber, Lfyt, Cab apps installed and setup on your cellphone to be as reactive as possible is something wrong happen with your regular means of transport. I promise, I will try to write my next article not only because I screw-up a trip :)

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What to do in Paris?

The classics from the travel agencies

Montmartre: there are multiple ways to go there. If you use the stairs to go up, be sure to go on the left of the church to go down the hill. If not you will miss the real interest and atmosphere of this area.

Eiffel tower: it's big, uncommon and probably this most common symbol of Paris. You can go up to the second floor. 

Les Champs Elysée: Many overpriced shops. Not many cool things to see, skip it and save your time for something else.

Arch of Triumph: A big arch, in middle of one of the stupidest road intersection designed (12 avenues meeting at the same point). I won't recommend to go there, if you really want, take a coffee and spend sometime to watch the craziness of the traffic. You can go on top of the Arch but I'm sure you have better view for free at Montmartre or Galerie Lafayette canopy.

Moulin rouge: touristic attraction, over priced. There is better cultural things to do in Paris.

Le Louvre: The outside of the Louvre is pretty cool, if you don't enter you can continue to the west you can have a walk the Les Tuileries gardens, which is a pretty cool spot. I don't recommend to go inside if you are here only for couple days. There are too many things to see inside and people generally recommend 2 days if you really want to enjoy all the pieces of arts.

Notre dame:  A cathedral well known thanks to Victor Hugo's book. The outside design is great. If you want to enter as million of people do each year, you should be an early bird. The visits are starting at 7h45 and I highly recommend to be there around 7h30-40, if you come later you will probably have to wait 1 to 2 hours to be able to enter. If you are interrested to visit churches there are lots of really cool churches free and not over crowded in Paris. Just walk on the street and you will find them.

My personal recommandations

Galerie Lafayette canopy

Most of you probably know "Les Galeries Lafayette" as one of the biggest mall in Paris. It's true but I'm nota lot into shopping tourism. If I recommend to go there it's because they have a beautiful canopy and on the view of Paris, plus it's free! To go there:40 Boulevard Haussmann, 7th floor of the main building, 75009 Paris

You should do a stop around the 4th or 5th floor, it's the best stop to see the canopy, then continue to climb to the top of the building.

Coulée verte

La coulée verte is an old railway in height. It has been refitted some years ago and it's know a really cool walk to do in Paris. You will go between classic Paris building and enter more deeply in Paris. The walk is just couple of miles/kilometers. I would recommend 2-3h in front of you if you want to enjoy it quietly.There are couple of places where you can enter or exit the path. I would recommend to start at: 1 Coulée verte René-Dumont, 75012 Paris it's near by the big train station Paris Gare de Lyon

Père la Chaise cemetery 

Père la Chaise cemetery is the biggest cemetery inside Paris. It hosts some of the most famous celebrities. Lot of them are from France, but you will be able to do a stop and Jim Morrison grave, on of the famous name from US.

Walking in a cemetery might sound a bit strange but the place is really quiet, the paths are closer to a maze than regular paths. There is something special in the atmosphere that always make be thinking a lot when I'm there. At the entrance you can ask for a free map to see where your favorite actor or singer is buried.16 Rue du Repos, 75020 Paris

La butte aux cailles

La butte aux cailles is a informal district of Paris where you can have drinks or food in small places with a very good atmosphère. The neighborhood will make you feel more like in a village than in the biggest city

Bercy village and park

Bercy village is an area where an old railway has been transform in a street with many restaurants and bars on each side. I generally go at " The Frog", a bar/restaurant doing it's own beer. The park is near by Bercy village, it's a pretty vast park. I like to go there on the week-end when it's busy. I remembered that I saw a pretty good skateboard contest! You should stop at the station "cour Saint Emilion"

Le Marais

Le Marais is the gay and trendy place in Paris. There a million of small shops offering design art, clothes. I particularly like to go to Fleux' but it's really hard to resist and buy nothing there so be careful. You can also have really good ice cream. I would recommend going to Amorino or Pozzetto Gelato Caffè Salato.Once your are done with Le Marais you can exit:- to the west to George Pompidou museum, it's the museum of contemporary art. The museum is interesting if you like this kind of art, but if you stay outside just watching the building is enough to give you an idea on what is inside. If you continue further you will arrive to Le Halles, which is my personal nightmare. It's a mix of franchise shops and metro/RER station. The station is so big that I'm never able to find my way out properly. - to the east, pretty cool area with lot of bars. A good place to start to party.- to south: civic house and Notre Dame de Paris.

Les catacombes

I never been there myself but people I send there told me it was cool. The concept is to discover Paris underground. You will see a small part of the hundred of kilometers of tunnels build under your feet. To go there take metro or RER to Denfert-Rochereau, then the entrance is on the roundabout (a pretty big one by the way).

Where to eat & drink:

Dans le noir: a restaurant where you eat in a total darkness. You will be serve by blind people. You will not know what you ate till they present you the menu at the very end. They take real care of food incompatibility and vegan option are available. I definitely recommend this place if you are looking to mix great experience and french cuisine.https://paris.danslenoir.com/en/home/

Le Faitout : vegan restaurant revisiting the classic French cuisine. It's also a bar tapas where you will be able to eat vegan cheese and "charcuterie" while listening Jazz, on Thursday night.

Hank restaurant: is composed by a Hank Pizza and Hank burger, this places are vegan places in the very center of Paris. If you are around Le Marais and you want to eat good food, being serve in a timely fashion and not spend too much money for your lunch it's definitely 2 places I recommend. http://www.hankrestaurant.com/en-home

Experimental Cocktail Club: probably the best cocktail place I ever been. Be sure you correctly google map it before going. I went there couple of time and I still miss the entrance as there is not big signs. There is very few seats and you will often end-up drinking your cocktail in stand-up position, if you are ok with that enjoy. If not, this area as at least 3 other great cocktail bar, so i'm sure you will end-up in a decent place.

Where to not eat:

Avoid any restaurant around the touristic area: Tour Eiffel, Le Louvre, Notre Dame... If you want to experience what is a terrible service you can go around St Michel. I personally left the restaurant or café before the end of my meal or drink the last 3 times I have been there.

Pro tips:-

- Many many museums are free in Paris if you are a European citizen under 26.

- At CDG airport, you can not use a regular metro ticket, you need to buy a specific one, that allow you to go to the city center.

- If you are coming for multiple days, by a touristic pass at the metro station. You will save time & money 

[tipsntrips]

Best apps to travel: Citymapper

Hi everybody,

Today another article from the airport. I planned to do a series of articles about the best apps to download before starting to travel. Starting this series with an article about transportation seemed to be logical introduction, it’s why I decided to present you Citymapper: an app facilitating transportation worldwide.

Citymapper is an app doing everything that your local public transportation app is doing; but it also does it for 30 other cities in the world (I will post the list below), which means while traveling you don’t need to download an app for each city. For example, my current trip is Paris, Copenhagen, Berlin, Amsterdam and all of them are covered by Citymapper, which is super convenient.

Citymapper has also some cool features. The first one is to gather information regarding all the means of transport: train, subway, bus, bicycle, Uber, cab. Once again this limit the number of apps you need to download. For example in Paris I would need to download 1 app for the bicycle (Velib’), 1 for the metro (RATP) and 1 for the train (SNCF). The application is also able to find the best route by combining different means of transportation, for example starting your trip in Bicycle before taking a metro to cross the city or taking an Uber 5 minutes to join a more dense area of public transportation.

A feature not very useful for me but that might interested some of you is the impact calculator. Once you arrived at your final destination Citymapper calculate how much money you save, calories you spend and Co2 you didn’t produce by using public transportation.

Other small features I appreciate when I use this apps:

-          When you locate yourself on the map, the app is doing 2 circles. One showing you everything accessible with a 5 minutes’ walk and another one with a 15’ walk. It helps a lot to organize your trips in the city.

-          The app is superfast to know the direction you are looking to.

-          It suggests you the best car to take to optimize the walking time during connections or at the arrival.

 I discovered this app quite recently and I have been very quickly seduce by all the functionality. If you have doubts, you should just try in parallel of your regular apps but I’m pretty confident your will uninstall the others apps very soon.

 List of all the cities covered by Citymapper:

Barcelone

Berlin

Birmingham

Boston

Bruxelles + Belgium

Chicago

Cologne, Düsseldorf, Ruhr

Copenhague

Hambourg

Hong Kong

Istanbul

Lisbonne

Londres

Los Angeles

Lyon

Madrid

Manchester

Melbourne

Mexico

Milan

Montréal

Moscou

New York

Paris

Philadelphie

Randstad (Amsterdam)

Rome

Saint-Pétersbourg

San Francisco

Sao Paulo

Seattle

Séoul

Singapour

Stockholm

Sydney

Tokyo

Toronto

Vancouver

Ville actuelle

Washington + Baltimore

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Small details that make travelers life easier.

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What’s in my backpack (1)?

1-      HP computer. I bought it because it was tactile which makes it utiliseable in the plane even if it a large model. I has been disappointed after couple of months when the tactile part stopped to work. I almost promised myself to never buy a HP computer anymore. Now we are 3 years later, this computer already traveled 2 times the distance: Earth to Moon, and it still works very well. At the end, I will give a second chance to HP computers.

2-      Track ball, the kind of mouse of you can use on a plane, on a train, on any small tables. I originally bought it because my wrists were more and more painful because of the bad movements I had to do with a regular mouse.

3-      International electrical adaptor which cover all the countries in the world. 2 USB port on it, which all to charge a good number of devices at the same time. Buyable at Heathrow airport.

4-      A bag where I put all my electronic belongings, it helps to setup quickly when I seat in the aircraft. I don’t have to empty my full backpack to find the cable hidden on the bottom.

5-      Bose noise cancelling headphone. The most amazing creation since the beginning of the decade. Take care before testing this kind of devices, once tested buying one is almost automatic. It helps to create a calm phonic environment by removing the parasitic noises: baby screams, plane reactor, AC (the noisiest thing on a plane).  

6-      My first noise cancelling headphone: MM550X Sennheiser. Not super-efficient in terms of noise cancelling. If I carry them it because they have a Bluetooth function which all some freedom in public transportation. The Bleutooth also all you to secure your phone in a none obvious place for pickpockets. The headphone has also the advantage to help my ears to rest after an extensive use of the headphone I presented earlier.

7-      Power bank, with a small solar panel. I used the solar panel part of it only couple of time when I was in the Indian mountains in middle of nowhere, but this power bank is big enough to all couple of full charge of my cellphone. The important thing to check when you buy such devices is: the capacity, the number of USB port and the charge speed. I really encourage you to have carry a power bank around as we are more and more using our cellphones for e-tickets, Uber, maps and other very useful applications for travelers. It’s also important top know that while travelling to or though US if your device is out of battery you won’t be allow to board with it, so the power bank my help you to not trash your new cellphone :)  Two more quick things about power bank: 1) if you plan to travel to China or via China make sure the capacity is written on the power bank if not they throw it away no matter how good is argumentation 2) please recycle your batteries when they are dead. Lithium a very pollutant material and it should definitely not go through your regular trashes.

8-      Micro USB. Being able to charge via micro USB is a super important criteria for my devices as I want to limit the number of cables I’m carrying around. I always have 2 cables 1 short, 1 long to adapt to my needs and also because I want to have a back-up in case I lose one of them.

9-      Very nice pink flamingo bag to store small items.

10-   Adaptor for headphone when I’m flying with company which are still using plugs from the previous century.

11-   Battery for the mouse and hair clipper.

12-   Lucky charm from my trip to Kazakhstan. So far it prevents me to not miss any plane even when I’m doing my best to do so.

13-   A fuse for the adaptor

14-   A spike to be able to pull out my sim card in case I need to change for a local one.

15-   The cellphone I’m taking the picture with. At the moment I’m using a Samsung edge 6. The battery is not great but it charges pretty fast, except that this phone is pretty cool: small, fast, good localization function, great storage memory. I have a second phone which is a Honor phone, that I can’t use in North America as the manufacturer didn’t bother to set it for the frequencies used there.

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It’s common sense but not for everybody 😑 don’t block the baggage claim.

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No need to speak fluently Spanish to travel in Mexico city, there metro signs are super clear.

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How to save money on your  lodging (1)?

Lodging is generally a large part of the travel budget. There are couple tips to know to save so money. Some time we are only talking about couple of euro, but I’m regularly able to save 40 to 60% of the regular price by using the two following tips: 

Websites such booking.com allow you to book without charging anything. All the hotels on the platforms don’t accept this kind of reservation, but there are generally enough choices to find something in your area. The idea with this kind of reservation is to secure a room at a ok-price. Then if you have more time to come back on the website and check the evolution of the prices, eventually changing your free reservation for another even better. Even if you are going to visit family or friends, making such reservation for a hotel next to the airport, just in case your flight is severely delay.

The booking platforms such has booking.com generally offering very interesting discount the D-day. Most of the hotels know that if they are not full after 13h or 14h, they won’t be full for the night, so they try to get couple of extra customers by lowering down the price. It’s common to see sale up to 80% comparing to the original price. This kind of discounts allowed me: to visit a really nice 4 stars hotel in Kyoto for less than 60€ and to have an appartement and a private spa for 2h  for less than 50€ in total. Patience is definitely wealthy and if you follow the first advice of this article you are sure to have a room somewhere even if you don’t find any interesting discount.