If you have never stayed in an American hotel room then this video is for you. I intended this video to be a tour of a fairly typical business class hotel (this hotel was the Intercontinental in Boston, MA) for people who have yet to visit the U.S. As I show you around the room I talk about how this hotel room is like most other rooms and how it is different.

Surprisingly what you would find in a budget hotel room (Motel 6 or Travelodge) is not as different as you might think from what you would find in a business class hotel (Marriott, Hyatt, or Hilton). The difference will often be the quality not the specific items. For instance, a low priced hotel / motel will have thin towels. An expensive hotel will have plush towels (and often a bathrobe). The hangers in a motel are more likely to be attached to the closet than those of an expensive hotel. The ice bucket might be plastic or stainless steal. The glasses might be glass or plastic.

The kinds of things you would expect to find in a typical American hotel room more often than not:

• two double beds (or one larger queen or king size bed)
• color TV with cable channels
• remote control
• free shampoo and soap
• 4 bath towels, 4 hand towels, 4 wash cloths (half that for a room with a king size bed)
• the list prices on the back of the door (and if you paid this much you are doing it wrong)
• emergency instructions also on the back of the door
• shower / bathtub combination
• telephone
• guide to the hotel services
• iron and ironing board
• internet connection
• desk
• do not disturb sign
• deadbolt or some other extra lock on the door
• hangers
• glasses or plastic drinking cups
• ice bucket
• clock radio
• a bible placed there by the Gideons (not the hotel)

Things that you may or may not find in the hotel room:

• room service menu
• small refrigerator
• stocked mini-bar for those really desperate for food (it’s expensive)
• wi-fi internet connection
• free internet (the more expensive the hotel the less likely the internet will be free… go figure)
• bathrobe
• coffeemaker
• hairdryer
• bag for laundry service
• shower cap
• hotel stationery

What did I miss?

Kosher food
Originally uploaded by Verbal Jam

I have always enjoyed travel and have always enjoyed outdoor activities. I have traveled in the US, have traveled to and lived in Israel, and I have been to Poland, South Africa, Puerto Rico, Ukraine and Germany. Traveling as a Jewish person who abides by the laws of kosher food can be difficult at times, but if you plan correctly it can easily be done. First, a primer on observing the laws of kosher (keeping kosher) is in order. Keeping kosher means that you observe certain biblical and rabbinic laws regarding the foods you can eat and how that food is prepared. Basically any food not in its natural form needs to follow the guidelines of being kosher. This basically means anything besides fresh fruits and vegetables.

The Bible lists the basic categories of food items which are not kosher. These include certain animals, birds/fowl and fish (such as pork and rabbit, eagle and owl, catfish and sturgeon), and any shellfish, insect or reptile. In addition, kosher species of meat and fowl must be slaughtered in a specific way, and meat and dairy products may not be manufactured or eaten together. Something being certified kosher doesn’t mean that a rabbi has blessed the food. It means that a rabbi has investigated and certified that the item follows all the laws of keeping kosher. Many products sold in regular supermarkets are already certified kosher and can be easily identified by symbol on the package used by rabbinic organizations to indicate they certify the item, such as the symbol and the symbol. Some items, such as meat and cheese, are often only found in stores that cater to the kosher community.

Being a kosher-observing traveler presents special challenges in addition to the regular planning for a trip. A regular traveler doesn’t usually worry about what they will eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. They assume they will find a restaurant, a bakery, a supermarket etc or find some local who is hospitable and invites them into their home. When you keep kosher you have to think about every meal and snack you are going to eat when you travel. Travel in the US is usually pretty easy. In many cities across the US, there are restaurants that are certified kosher, especially in places like NY, Boston, Miami, Chicago and LA. The same holds true for many cities across Western Europe. Some people will only plan trips to places that have kosher restaurants and an abundance of kosher food readily available.

Its also good to keep in mind that a lot of hotels will provide kosher meals for hotel guests if they are given enough notice. Sometimes its just an airline kosher meal and not anything to write home about, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by hotels going out of their way to contact a local (or sometimes not so local) kosher caterer to order fresh meals. Also, if traveling for business there a few things to keep in mind. If you are traveling to a convention or conference that provides meals to attendees you can usually get a kosher meal by requesting one in advance. More and more I am seeing convention/conference registration forms that give you the option to request special meals and often kosher is one of the options. If you find yourself in a non-kosher restaurant for a business lunch, the more upscale restaurants can provide you with a kosher meal, again if you provide them with enough notice. I was once in Philadelphia attending a lunch at the Four Seasons and I requested only a plate of fresh fruit. The waiter came back a few minutes later and said the head chef would like to know if I placed that order because I keep kosher and I told him yes. He said the chef wanted me to know that if I am ever back there to notify them in advance and they will be happy to provide me with a kosher meal.

But that doesn’t mean its impossible to travel outside the comfort zone of places with large Jewish populations and lots of kosher food. You just have to plan. You have to do research and know what, if any, kinds of kosher food are available in your destination, which will vary, and pack all of the food you will need with you. You can always buy fresh fruits and vegetables, bottled water and just about everywhere, Coca Cola. It can be very helpful to stay in hotels that have kitchenettes so you can prepare the food you bring with you. One of the biggest expenses of traveling can be eating out in restaurants every meal. If you are trying to eat healthy, eating out in restaurants can also be a challenge. So keeping kosher can help on both of those issues.

Keeping kosher doesn’t mean you can’t meet locals and accept invitations to their home. You just find them a little bit differently. I can’t remember a trip I’ve gone on that when I go to a local synagogue (if there is one) for daily or Sabbath prayer services that I haven’t gotten invited for a meal. Locals are also an invaluable resource in discovering local kosher resources.

Traveling by plane poses its own challenges. When you take short flights, most of the time the snacks given out are kosher. On longer flights that serve meals, you have to request a special kosher meal at least 48 hours in advance. But, whenever I travel, even if I have ordered a kosher meal, I always bring food with me because things can go wrong. On a recent trip to Munich, Germany I missed my connecting flight from Paris to Boston and had to be rerouted via JFK in New York City. My kosher meal flew to Boston, but I was flying to NY and didn’t have a kosher meal. I didn’t go hungry on the flight because I had some food and snacks with me.

Certain items lend themselves to travel more than others. A staple for many kosher travelers are foil packets of tuna fish. Peanut butter, either in jars or the single serve travel sizes, is also a staple for many kosher travelers. Whenever I travel I make sure to bring along many snacks, including granola bars, nuts, dried fruit and rice cakes. The rice cakes are easy to use for an impromptu peanut butter sandwich. For a long time I have always traveled with instant oatmeal. Its light and takes up little room in my suitcase, I can get hot water just about anywhere and its a perfect breakfast (or lunch or dinner).

My wife and I traveled to Puerto Rico in 2006. Because Puerto Rico is part of the US, the supermarkets carry many US brands that are kosher, especially the Pueblo market in Carolina which has many tourists. We knew this and planned around that. We stayed in a hotel that had kitchenettes in every room, and brought some food with us, like cooked chicken and meat, packaged deli meats and cheese and lots of snacks. Once we arrived we purchased items like cereal and milk, bread, rice, eggs and snacks. Of course, we also searched out the local Ben & Jerry’s ice cream store. So travel to PR was relatively easy.

I’ve traveled to Kiev, Ukraine three times in the last year on business and it was also relatively easy. In Kiev there is one kosher restaurant and I rented an apartment close to it, near Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square). The office I was working in was about 30 minutes by subway from the apartment and the restaurant so it didn’t make sense to eat lunch there, but I ate dinner there almost every night. I brought food and snacks with me to cover breakfast and lunch, but knowing I had at least one good, hot kosher meal a day was very reassuring and was one less meal I had to worry about. It also meant that if my luggage didn’t arrive and the food in my carry-on luggage ran out, I wouldn’t be totally without food. Also, by becoming friendly with some people in the Great Synagogue of Kiev, I found out that a local Jewish school had a bakery for the students’ lunches but always would be willing to sell leftovers.

Keeping kosher doesn’t mean you can’t travel where ever you want. It can always be done as long as you plan and are willing to think outside the box a little.

There are some great websites for helping to plan a kosher vacation as well as some tour operators that offer kosher-only tours that will take care of everything having to do with food.

A few websites that I use (and contribute to) are:

Yeah, that’s kosher… : Its a blog with user contributed articles about different cities. It doesn’t just focus on food, but how to enjoy a destination while also keeping kosher. I’ve written posts about Boston and San Juan, PR.

Shamash Kosher Restaurant Database : Its a searchable database of kosher restaurants worldwide kept up-to-date by user submissions.

If you have any questions about this article, please comment and I will answer all questions that I can.

Iberostar Hacienda Dominicus
Originally uploaded by Andries3

John wrote while I was on vacation with this nightmare story of customer service at a hotel in the Dominican Republic. I made some suggestions to John, but what would you suggest he do?

First, I must say how your brilliant initiative with Amateur Traveler podcasts enlighten every morning and evening transit! For people who can live vicariously through others it’s a blessing and perfect antidote to all stressful events of the working day. With every podcast one can feel how your audience grows and matures. Listening to your advices build a lot of credibility, your resourcefulness deserves the highest marks, and your podcast exposure is astounding. That is the reason why I decided to bother you with our problem. We – me, my wife, and two my children, 8, and 12 – just came back from the “vacations” in Dominican Republic. We stayed in the hotel “Hacienda Dominicus” which belongs to the Iberostar chain of the hotels. It is not a bad hotel, including locations and accommodations. But the service, respect to guests, simply conducting illegal activities – that is quite different picture!

Let me describe everything in order. On February 19, 2009 we had the reservation to the Le Colonel restaurant that is located on Hacienda premises and included into all-inclusive service that we bought. At 7:15 pm me, my wife, and my older son came to the restaurant and asked to be seated according to our reservations. The customer relations (!) representative Jusula answered that this restaurant currently is having private (!) party, and our reservation was just cancelled. Even though we are not people who like to argue, we showed our frustration with the way they handle reservation process. I took couple picture with my camera to argument my point with the customer service, and mentioned that I might mention this incident to the newspaper. Immediately Jusula pushed my camera away, when to her coworker inside the restaurant, said something in Spanish, rushed to the front desk, and called security. The following is described in the strict chronological order with some comments:

7:15pm, 2/19/2009 - We came to the restaurant, our reservation is cancelled
7:20pm - customer relations representative Jusula pushed my camera away and rushes to the front desk, mumbling “stupid American” (!!!).

7:23pm – Another customer service representative at the front desk announces that we have to leave the hotel because I pushed Jusula (!!!). Obviously she lied to the security in Spanish, but we could not understand anything. Nobody asked us anything at this point, nor any of our witnesses.

7:25pm – Me, my wife, my son are taken into the closed office without windows and kept for almost two hours. During this time there was only one person – assistant manager Marcos – who spoke to us in English. I wrote the report with my explanation of what actually happened, but the manger did not take it arguing that it is too late and there is nobody who can look at it now. At the same time our representative from Travel Impressions (the company that sold us this package) Hector was on the phone with the management of the hotel. The complete conversation is unknown to us but he clamed that he negotiated for us to stay in the hotel for that night and in the morning at 10 am we’ll meet at the front and start actually investigation of what happened. I made an attempt to call US Embassy but obviously nobody gave me the phone.

8:50pm – We were released, after my son was crying hysterically “Are they going to kill us now?” and our witnesses got in the office requesting what was going on.

9:10pm – I finally called US Embassy from our room and made the report with off-duty officer Robert Bundge. He promised to file the report and advice embassy on the situation with the American tourists at this hotel.

9:00am, 2/20/2009 – We receive the letter under the door requesting us to leave the hotel. Even though we scheduled to start investigation with our only agent Hector at 10 am. Again, nobody until this point made any effort to question us what happened as if we did not existed.

10:00am – We meet with our agent from Travel Impressions Hector, who looks shocked as we are by the action of the hotel administration. At this point the other manager of the hotel, Brita, has joined the conversation. She claims that yesterday she took Jusula to the medical office (!!!) for medical attention. At the same time we and our witnesses saw Jusula working on hotel premises all the time last night! Brita did not want to tell us what happened to Jusula (because nothing could happen!). She did not want to listen to us, and we forced her to accept our report that we wrote day before. She still did not read it. Without calling our witnesses she declared that the decision is final and we have to leave the hotel by 3 pm. Hector recommended to start looking for another hotel. I requested to talk to the waiter Mr. Basanta, who was in the restaurant at the time of the incident, but the management (another assistant manager, Mario) claimed that he is not on premises. Mario also claimed that he spoke to Mr. Basanta on the phone and Mr. Basanta did not see anything since he was not there. I checked my camera, and it contained the picture of Mr. Basanta at the restaurant at that time! Also, contrary to the Mario’s statement that Mr. Basanta was not at the hotel, I managed to take picture of him working at the bar at the same time (!!!). Mario also mentioned, that he knows Jusula and her family for 4 years and she simply cannot lie!. Basically, the management prevented me from collection any evidence and ignored all our and our witnesses’ statements. When they saw that I started collecting evidence to prove my innocence, they called to the room and requested us to leave the room by 1:00 pm otherwise they would start charging money.

1:30pm – We left the “Hacienda Dominicus” hotel for another hotel in the middle of our vacation, doing nothing wrong!

Please forgive me for this wordy description, but my frustrating sole does not know other way to describe what happened. From our victim’s prospective this is the clear case of dishonest and disgruntled employees, falsifying statements to discredit complaining guests. The promote and protect corruption in the hotel, cover up the fraud, prevent guests from collection evidence, and endanger well-being of their guests. If you, or any of your listeners have any helpful idea of how to handle this case, it would be greatly appreciated. At this time I spoke to number of lawyers, and only one took time to talk to me. He explained that the hotel is the foreign entity, Iberostar is not US Company, and it is very impractical to sue them here, even though we have a lot of evidence to support our innocence. In any case, my wife and my children must not have been kicked out of the hotel since they were not accused of anything!

Thanks in advance,

John

So what do you think? What should John do?

So you want to book a trip online. There are many sites to go to, how do you know which one is the best? That was the question that I had when I got an email from Cfares.com PR agency telling me how much better Cfares.com was than the traditional travel sites: Orbitz.com, Expedia.com and Travelocity.com. Cfares is one of a collection of new sites that searches across a number of travel sites at once to try and get the best deal. I decided to see which of the aggregator sites worked the best against a set of routes that I chose somewhat at random. I checked all of the sites at the same time in case fares might be changing.

The Big Three

First we can look at the results for these 7 destinations from Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity. All three sites did about the same although Expedia did the best of the three.

Airfare Aggregators

Then we can look at the 5 aggregator sites Kayak, Cfares, Farechase, Mobissimo and Momondo. Since the aggregator sites often search Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia you will see that at least one of the aggregator sites beat the fares of the big three. Not also that even the aggregators don’t search some low cost carriers like Southwest.

1. Some of the searches on these sites produced no results and are marked with “not found”. No doubt if I had kept trying I would have gotten a result but Cfares and Momondo seem to have some scaling problems in this test.
2. Cfares has a premium offering which costs $50 a year and one of the fares given has two results, for premium users and normal users.

Conclusion

Kayak has usually been the aggregator site that I turn to for my travel booking, but Mobissimo stands out for me in this very unscientific test as a search engine I should try more often.

One thing to keep in mind is that this search was for airfare alone. If you are traveling to a major city you can sometimes get a better deal by booking your hotel and flight together. That may be a better use for Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia.

One of the listeners of the Amateur Traveler sent me these travel tips. She has been a Peace Corp volunteer for two years and allowed me to share these tips anonymously.

1. Couchsurf whenever possible. Couch surfing, as you probably know, is a great way to travel on a budget. You can contact Couchsurfers anywhere around the globe and hopefully find a free place to sleep! For more information check out www.couchsurfing.com. There you can find the program’s philosophy and plenty of people who are also interested in traveling and hosting. Many Peace Corps Volunteers couch surf and are able to travel longer on their limited funds. If you are weary about staying at someone’s home, you can always meet up for coffee or a drink. Couch surf-ing is a great way to meet a local who can provide you with the most up-to-date information about your travel destination.

2. Find out if there are Peace Corps Volunteers, or PCVs, serving in the country you are visiting. Many times PCVs not only have a place to stay, but they also become “ex-perts” on the country in which they serve. They also get to know a lot of locals. Staying or just meeting up with a Peace Corps volunteer can certainly enrich your experience. They will probably show you their site, tell you about the best places to eat and maybe even take you to work with them. Once you meet one volunteer, you will have connections to many others around the country. I can’t speak for everyone, but generally we volunteers love having visitors and will do our best to help you learn more about our communities. You can connect with volunteers by checking out their blogs on www.peacecorpsjournals.com (blogs are arranged by country) or look for them on www.couchsurfing.com. There are currently about 7,000 PCVs serving in over 70 coun-tries, so give them a chance to share their experiences with you!

The contents of these tips are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps.