Have you ever sat around and wondered where you could fly on the money you have?  Better yet, do you want to narrow down the time but perhaps not down to the week, because you’re willing to be flexible in the interest of keeping your options open.

Enter Kayak Explore.  Just pop in your starting point, select the period of time you want to travel (you can even select “any time”) and there’s the entire world on a Google Map with nice little price tags on each location.

The best part for us is seeing just how expensive (or cheap) in relative terms we can fly all kinds of places, since we’re up for just about anything.

Will baggage fees ever stop going up?

Every penny – or thousands of pennies – counts.

Delta baggage fees go up. Here are three ways to avoid them. / The Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com.

Food and beverage. No one’s serving anything for free and what you can get tastes just as bad as it always has on a place, regardless of how much more attractive the packaging is now relative to the past.  Exceptions to the “no free food” rule are generally routes to or from European destinations since non-Americans traditionally have higher expectations of service – even on our domestic carriers.  Check with your airline if you’re unsure of the accomodations, or (much better still) bring along healthy non-liquid items that will be a much better caloric investment.  Remember, you’re going to be more or less dormant for several hours so light occasional healthy snacking is easily your best bet.  As for drinks, water’s still free on every flight – or at least it is at the moment.

Easy, organized access to items you plan to use on the flight. Walk through your expectations of what you’ll be doing on the flight, especially if you’ll be cramped in the metal tube for over a couple hours.  You’ll be surprised at how inaccessible simple things like headsets are when you want them.  While your at it, reconsider the security process.  Where do you intend to put your jewelry, wallet, or other important items you’d prefer not testing with the metal detector?  When I went through this process the first time I realized I didn’t own a bag that worked for my purposes and hopped online to purchase a new one.  Stranger yet, the next time I traveled my old bag was more well suited to the trip I was taking.  This is a really important step to making your trip easy and predictable.

Two pens. If you’re traveling internationally, this is a must.  You will fill out customs paperwork.  If not, it’s always a good habit to have pens on hand to document things like dings in your rental car or contact information when you meet someone new.  You’re going to thank me on this one, because someday when you take an international flight you’ll be begging one from a neighbor after the one you have stops working (or you’ll just want your flying partner to help expedite all the forms writing).

Anything that keeps children in your custody extraordinarily quiet. You’re likely used to the cacophony of family life but your nearby seatmates are often nervous at the prospect of even getting on a plane.  That tension is amplified when the simplest of actions – a bumped chair, a continual banging or clicking noise, or a crying child – interrupts an otherwise focused attempt to stay calm.  Some might be offended by what we’re saying here.  After the number of flights we’ve been on where we’ve seen ourselves and others fray at the seams, we side with them over parents who take anything less than full responsibility for their childrens’ actions.  We’re parents as well, and sadly there is such an overwhelming prevailing lack of responsibility people have often felt compelled to thank us for our child’s behavior despite it being our responsibility and not some bonus we threw in for the heck of it.

Your itinerary. If you aren’t going nonstop, and your next transportation or action plans if you are (nothing sucks more than landing and wanting to move things along with no interruptions or confusion, and a bonus would include previous trips to websites which help you know what to expect – things like sitting at Heathrow for 4 hours waiting to get through security instead of enjoying London)

Having been promised – in an online way, albeit – that the seats were once again reserved, only to find they weren’t, I wound up calling Orbitz while we were traveling to dinner. After the usual but still annoying 10 minute wait to get a customer service rep on the phone that most likely uses the exact same web interface customers use to assist, a surprisingly American (and southern sounding) woman took my call. After explaining the situation, she attempted unsuccessfully to lock in any seat changes, the said, “Hold on. I am going to try something else.”

Once she returned to the phone to inform me it didn’t work, I asked her to recall my itinerary to tell me what we had. What came next was shock and horror: not just on the other end of the line but on mine as well. “Did you just cancel your flights, sir?” I responded, “How could I? I am in the car, on the phone with you.”

A healthy pause followed, and several passive-aggresive urges hit me all at once. “I have no idea what happened, but someone has canceled your reservations. I am going to need to forward you to a supervisor.” Knowing there were no more than two or three remaining seats on all our flights to begin, and feeling pretty confident that the customer service agent and flight cancelation specialist were one in the same, I reluctantly held the line.

Quick theory: if you’re in this business and occasionally commit such a strong party foul, wouldn’t it be a good idea to make sure there are “holy crap” supervisors just waiting by the red phone to take the call? Here we are, hours from our flight, and I am flopping over mountains with a mobile phone that has a 50/50 shot at even surviving the call. Wait time to talk to the supervisor with zero flights: 10 minutes.

Claudia (Employee ID MAU – by the way, how do you get a three letter code for an employee ID? Can you imagine Bob Segar singing the song “Feel Like A Bunch of Letters”?) was our supervisor agent, and in the customary practice of companies everywhere, apologized for the situation without taking any responsible on behalf of Orbitz for the relative terror thrown our way. Reminds me of Eliot Spitzer resigning… sorry you’ve been let down, now I am going to resign and return to private life for doing nothing that I plan to discuss outside my apartment.

After Claudia told us she was going to handle the situation with literally no specifics, I asked for her name and ID one last time, thinking I could trust that there was an understanding between us regarding the severity of having no tickets the night before a major vacation. As far as her commitment goes, I am convinced there was, but I’m not so sure there’s an understanding regarding the time expectation for representatives in this situation. When someone has lost seats for a flight that begins in 12 hours, they’re thinking 20 minutes is a rough estimate for their remaining non-communicated sanity.

When 40 minutes went by, I called Orbitz back thinking I’d be able transfer right to agent MAU. No such luck, and no way to do that. Wow. Now I’m really blown away. Supervisors handle escalated issues and represent the embodiment of the solution for customers with challenges, and this huge operation doesn’t even get that. This expectation is not excessive: this is how we did it in every customer service environment I’ve been around, whether based on in-person, phone, email, or IM contact.

I did get another supervisor – one that was connected to me via a highly latent tin can / string communications system that sounded like it terminated somewhere in Malaysia. It always makes me chuckle when comms systems are so bad that the callers find themselves waiting 5 seconds to hear the other participant respond. After some on and off chatting with this supervisor, she determined that Claudia was still working the issue and would call me within an hour. I’m sure she was able to figure that out because the sum total of supervisory manpower at Orbitz amounted to three frustrated women sharing a desk and two rotary phones in a cabbage patch somewhere (not intended to offend, rather to point out the ridiculous nature of phonebound customer service here now – of course our sagging dollar will at least give these goofballs a chance to ring their call centers back to America, particularly to Detroit based on newly available workforce).

We finally returned home and I got the call. Though I could barely hear her, Claudia seemed to essentially say that everything Orbitz had lost and I had spent the last three hours attempting to retrieve had in fact been re-reserved. Good thing: when I tried to check alternatives on Kayak, I found one flight out a day and a half later with a 12 hour layover through the night at LAX – grouch material for sure.

Thankfully, in this case we were way ahead of the game. Willy likes to get to the airport 12 hours before CONUS itineraries and 24 hours for all others. Just kidding – I guess it only seems that way. Personally I like a good adrenaline pump, so I figure out a time that will get me there 100% of the time under ideal circumstances and 85% of the time otherwise, so if something goes wrong I can still feel my pulse working nicely without the workout I am always too lazy to knock out the day of a flight.

Great thing lately at Dulles has been the ease by which a normal, everyday bloke and his family can make it through security. Since we were flying Dulles’s ‘bastard stepchild’, American Airlines, we had a feeling ticketing would be fairly quick and it was. With both of these behind us within 20 minutes and a 5 minute ride on our favorite 1960s Jetsons artifact, the “mobile lounge” (which most would call the giant, tall bus with a tail wing), we dropped in to one of the many HMS-run dogfooderies: Moe’s. (Honestly, it was kinda uncool for me to say that because the food was surprisingly good.)

Jaime was very nice and gave us what we needed but didn’t crowd us, and the food – a ham and cheddar omelet for me and a breakfast combo for the Willy/Syd biumverate – was hot and fresh when it arrived. I finished quickly and went to grab some cash, then headed to the gate.

Still way ahead of the agent, we sat around and chatted in anticipation of what whacky seating arrangement might be thrown our way. To American’s great credit, they seemed to pick up on the fact that we had a 12 year old in our group and just might want to be sat together. When I arrived at the counter with my seatless tickets, three tickets with seats in the bulkhead awaited and were already sitting on the surface next to the agent. Quick exchange, first ones on the plane (always awesome), and stowing our goods, the FA intercommed to let us know the flight would be full and we shouldn’t get to frisky with neighboring seats or too slow in our commitment to getting our butts belted in seats.

This began to seem odd to us, because no one else was getting on. First inclination was to believe something was going on in the airport, and that perhaps someone had committed a security breach and no one was allowed on to any plane that had not already been dispatched. With a three hour layover we weren’t too concerned, only fascinated. The pilot, who made his way into the breezeway with a few highly kind acknowledgments to the waiting crowd, was now on the mic to entertain the troops and shared the news. Apparently, some “recalcitrant goofball” had breached security as suspected, but shortly we’d start to see the remaining passengers working their way down the aisles.

Finally, everyone was belted, the obligatory notices were shared, and we were first in line for takeoff. Screaming down the runway, all of a very abrupt sudden… “RRRRRRRRRRRRRT.” Brakes screaming and engines shut down, we very suddenly stopped close the end of the runway. The immediate reaction of the passengers was panic, but my thoughts were that whatever might have happened was essentially averted, so while the fearful cries were working their way out of others’ mouths, I could only chuckle a bit. To me it felt like that ride at Disney’s Animal Kingdom that climbs the snowy mountain and then suddenly stops and reverses course. Of course that ride killed one more person than this flight, so no worries (of course we’re in mid-flight as I write this).

After a rapid episode of telephone from routed from passenger to passenger, the pilot took the intercom once again. “Ladies and gentlemen, it seems we had a large contingent of birds on the runway and rather than have one or more of them knock out an engine requiring us to return to Dulles we’ve decided to give this another shot. They were the first ones here, but we’re bigger so we plan to turn back momentarily for takeoff. Once the airport trucks took a swipe at the runway to ward off the northbound aviary air force, a plane departed just before us to assure the runway composition would consist solely of intended elements.

I wanted to get my barf bag autographed by the pilot as we deplaned – after all, it was empty despite our rapid deceleration from 250 to 0 MPH and he did a heck of a job scaring the crap out of the birds while keeping us from one or more fether-filled, dead engines. It wasn’t going to happen, however, because he and the co-pilot were busy filing reports.

We knew we had plenty of time after getting off, and we also learned we’d be moving from terminal 4 to terminal 3 to reach Alaska’s hub. The lack of signage detailing how to accomplish this task was what surprised us. Anyone changing terminals at LAX needs to know it isn’t necessarily going to be trivial. For us it meant finding a shuttle to the American Eagle departure building and walking to another bus from there that would reach terminal 3. If someone had an hour to transfer and found themselves a little behind schedule chances are good that a terminal transfer would do them in.

Once we made it to terminal 3 we did pick up on some LAX themes:

1. The terminals we were in desperately need an opportunity to make it out of the 1960s

2. Inter-terminal transportation that many folks take for granted at their home airport is in dogged supply

3. Anything you might get at a typical airport in the way of food and drink will likely cost you up to twice as much, and the choices probably won’t be very enticing either

How does LAX get by with what seems to be a second tier facility, despite the heavy movement of international traffic through the airport? Despite having the means to (reasonably) easily get from terminal to terminal at Dulles via mobile lounges which would make early Austin Powers jealous, DC travelers have been all over the WMATA for years about adding an underground train system – which, incidentally will be completed soon.  And international transfers are very simple, with final destination passengers even being split from the continuing ones, assuring they won’t get shuffled out to the curb as we did at LAX before starting all over again.

Once we grabbed an icky $35 meal from California Pizza Kitchen’s “ASAP” (wait – does that stand for “as sucky as possible”?!?) we headed back to the bus, er plane, terminal to settle in until an agent appeared at our gate. I gave the ground personnel my now familiar story regarding all three of us being scattered to the four winds of the airplane seating chart, and despite a packed house received another round of changes which allowed Willy, Syd, and I to sit together.

Takeoff was a good hour behind schedule due to a late plane and a ground delay on the Cabos side, but the much-friendlier-than-American’s-norm staff made a fairly no frills, modern cabin fairly comfortable (honestly, how comfortable can you get in a sealed metal tube?).

These international flights are always kinda funny, in that you see waves of activity through the cabin which are always unique. It’s amusing to me watching hundreds of people navigating bags underseat and overhead, hunting for the passport and pen they knew doggone well they were going to need for the last six months or more. Add to that rolling beverage carts and the occasional duty free and snack box sale, then through in the reasonably frequent 2+ culture mesh already in the mix and you have one of the better prescriptions for ad hoc team dork dancing.

The plane was completely full, and the seats in coach pretty tight. The lady sitting next to me had no sense of personal space and elbowed me several times, shifting all over the place. The plus is that each seat had it’s own TV on the back of the seat in front of you. There are pillows and blankets in each seat, and they give you headphones and a ‘personal care’ kit complete with toothbrush/toothpaste combo. I attempted to sleep, it’s hard to do on a plane when the seat doesn’t go back very far and your head bobs around. The flight was about 7 hours, and we were a bit late getting to the gate at Heathrow. The walk to Immigration and Customs was quite long, then we had to stand in line there for about an hour. The agents asked a lot of questions, but are at least nice about it. All of our luggage made it, which was an unexpected bonus these days. It was fairly easy to navigate out to the taxi stand, and no lines to get one. Probably because we are the only idiots not taking the Tube. The taxis are totally adorable though, clean and quite large. The fare to our hotel was outrageous, around $100. We are staying at the Marriott County Hall, which is right on the Thames River and in front of the London Eye. This is a place we would no way be able to afford, we used up all our Marriott points just to get this one night here. The location is great, but our particular room has a really crappy view of the trash courtyard. The hotel doesn’t seem busy so not sure why we got stuck in this room. But it’s quite large, and clean, and has tons of room for all of us. The staff are very nice, typical for a Marriott…except not that timely on getting our luggage to us. They were supposed to bring it up right away, and half hour later we still didn’t have it. I called down to request it again, and another 45 minutes went by. I was really irritated as it was now almost 4:30pm and we didn’t want to waste anymore time waiting for our bags. Our time here is really limited and we had purchased tickets for the Big Bus Tour in advance. Now I was getting nervous we wouldn’t have enough time to do this, it’s about a two hour round-trip tour, and we were supposed to meet Kirstin and James for dinner at 8pm by the Eye. I finally had to go down and show up in person to get them to bring up the bags.

We left for the bus tour, there was supposed to be a stop just in front of the hotel, but they were having a problem finding our reservation, so we were delayed another 20 minutes or so. Not much was going our way in terms of timing so far. Next time in London I need to remember to allow most of a day for travel transfers. Syd really wanted to go to Harrod’s, and the bus tour makes a stop right in front, but at this point there was no time. We sat on top (no cover) and had a great view of all the sights. The live commentator was great, full of good stories.

We didn’t make it back to the hotel until 7:15pm, which didn’t leave us much time to get ready for dinner, and we were pretty wind-blown by then. We met up with Kirstin and James (our first time meeting him!), and headed over to an adorable place called Giraffe for dinner, which was quite popular based on the crowds there. The weather was gorgeous so we decided to eat outside on the patio. And no rain so far! The menu is really diverse, and I decided to get the Grilled “Tandoori Murghi” burger, which was grilled chicken marinated in yogurt sauce, topped with mango chutney, onion, lettuce and tomato. SQ ordered the Chicken Schnitzel BLT, and Syd had a beef teriyaki stir fry. The food tasted as good as it smelled, really yummy. Kirstin and I shared a bottle of Pinot Noir, while James and SQ slugged Red Stripe most of the evening. Around 12:20am we realized we were the only customers left. I think this was the first time I’ve ‘closed a restaurant down’ for the night. We could have sat and talked with them all night, it’s too bad we aren’t spending more time in London.

Overall first impressions of London: The town is quite lovely, incredibly old, and it feels comfortable and accessible. Kind of reminds me of Washington, DC in a lot of ways, but much larger. The buildings are all not very tall so it feels very open. The neighborhoods are beautiful and it was great fun to people-watch from the top of the bus as it moved through different parts of the city.

We are going to attempt to wake up early enough tomorrow morning to take Syd to Harrod’s before catching the train to Edinburgh. We’ll see how that works out…

We are flying into London first for an overnight to see my dear friend Kirsten and her boyfriend, James. Kirsten and I met on a flight from Boston back to Dulles about 3 years ago. She, of course, was traveling on back to London. I had decided on a whim to upgrade my seat to Business Class at the last minute while checking in. There were several seats available, the one I happened to choose put me in the row with Kirsten. Our plane was very late taking off from Boston, we started talking and didn’t stop all the way back to Dulles. We traded e-mail addresses and have been friends ever since. She has come out of her way to meet up with us twice here in VA over the past couple of years, it’s our turn to reciprocate.

After London, we’re off on a train ride up to Edinburgh. Having never been to London, Scotland, OR on a train this should be an interesting adventure….

Now, if I can just get Syd to remember that the Blarney Stone is NOT in Scotland, but in fact over in Ireland. It’s totally adorable the ideas she has about time, costs, and foreign countries at this age. She thinks we can just ‘zip over’ to Ireland for a quick look ’since it’s so close.’ She also still firmly believes that the Queen will be there to greet her personally as she gets off the plane in London (yes, she thinks she’s royalty as well), and that Scotland is completely overrun with Westies and Scotties. Perhaps I should just let her form her own opinion about the Loch Ness Monster??

The world’s definitely getting closer every day and we’re looking forward to contributing a tiny piece of that sea change right here. Stop by and see where we go as we get there!

We were still way early at this point, but after melting in the Caribbean sun we decided to head for the air-conditioned airport. The rental car return experience with Lesley Bruce of Kenny’s Car Rentals once again couldn’t have been easier. We were early so we had to call him to meet us, and he was at the airport within ten minutes. We checked in (my bag was overweight, but they didn’t charge me!) and made it through security very quickly. The airport has a decent selection of shops so we snagged some adorable bottles of Ma Dhoudhou (flavor-infused rum) for ourselves, my parents and our best friends back home. I also somehow ended up with candy and a T-shirt for Syd, and a very overpriced zip-front sweat shirt hoodie for myself – with ‘St. Barth’s’ stitched across the front. Not that I’ve been to St. Barth’s…yet. SQ gave me a hard time, but as soon as I whipped it out to put on (cold in the airport), he was now jealous of my ‘cute sweatshirt’ and had to have something for himself.

One last BBC at the airport tiki bar and we boarded the plane. After all the great food I’ve had all week I’m now left with a $5 snack box on the US Airways flight back to Charlotte. If we didn’t miss Syd so much we might not have come home at all. SQ even jokingly suggested trying to jump on the wrong plane, an Air France non-stop headed back to Paris. Maybe next time…