Boxing Day

Posted Boxing Day: A Day for Selling Vacations. When I was growing up in England, the day after Christmas was a day for relaxing and eating leftovers. Television advertising, finally freed from promoting the excesses of Christmas consumption, switched to hawking packaged vacations.

A Day for Selling Vacations

When I was growing up in England, the day after Christmas was a day for relaxing and eating leftovers. Television advertising, finally freed from promoting the excesses of Christmas consumption, switched to hawking packaged vacations.

Thames Path Walk

Next September we’ll walk with two friends along the Thames Path from Oxford ① to its source ⑥ over five days. Today I booked our hotels. Some are quite small (one has just four rooms) and few and far between. One was already booked up, so we had to juggle with dates.

Free Money

Rebooked a Delta itinerary online because the fare had dropped by about 25%. Received a full refund of the fare difference, almost 29K Delta SkyMiles (about $400) and there was no service fee. It costs nothing to check if fares have gone down, so you can claw back some or all of the fare difference.

Decluttering Our Travel Tech

Emptied out our bulging travel tech box, Marie Kondo-style. Discarded half the contents, including earphones dating back to Continental Airlines and a GPS from 2001. Thanked the GPS for its service, but it was time to let it go. Retained the phone as a backup for solo travel.

MSP-LHR

Bulkhead seats, 2-across, in steerage. Life’s good. MSP–LHR (London).

Changing of the Guard

Cycled to REI Co-op to pick up ponchos that also cover our backpacks. The coating on our old ones was disintegrating, and I couldn’t find a good way to remove the old coating then apply a new coating. I thanked the ponchos for their long service then launched them down the chute.

Trip to Patagonia

Our hiking jackets were getting a bit ratty, so we decided to head over to Patagonia in St. Paul. Naturally, we both ended up choosing the same style. We’ll be modeling the jackets in a couple weeks when we go hiking through England’s border (with Scotland) country.