Spendthrift Shoestring

JetBlue: Barbados, Kingston, St. Lucia

Want to fly from JFK to the Caribbean in October or November for under $198 round trip, excluding taxes? JetBlue is adding three more Caribbean destinations in October: JFK-Barbados (October 1); JFK-St. Lucia (October 26) and JFK-Kingston (October 30). Taxes inflate fares a bit, but your lowest round trip fare to St. Lucia, for example, will come in under $285. (See screen grab below). I'm happily surprised by this expansion. It will be interesting to see how these routes do, how low fares remain, and the degree to which Jet Blue's further saturation of the region will affect fare pricing on other carriers between New York and the Caribbean.

Experiment Completed

I returned on Wednesday night from my first ever experience as a guest at a super high-end Caribbean resort. (The only other resorty hotel I've frequented in the Caribbean is Curaçao's Kura Hulanda, which is a different sort of place altogether.)

This resort was exquisite in many ways. While my experience there hasn't dislodged me from my shoestring values, I have a new and different appreciation for top-tier resorts. I'll keep the lid on this one until publication. For the time being, here are two views—one at sunrise and the other at sunset.

Daybreak. I woke up with a start and grabbed my camera.

A dreamy sunset, even with clouds on the horizon.

Luxury Experiment In Progress

I'm en route again in this, my craziest travel period ever. I'm on an unusual assignment through Wednesday, dipping my toes into luxury travel writing for the first time. (I suppose those city profiles I wrote years ago for Genre rubbed up against luxury travel writing, but this assignment is more explicitly high-end.) I'll link to the results of this experiment in due time.

I remain simultaneously shoestring and spendthrift to the core, however, so there's no need to remove me from your bookmarks or unsubscribe from this blog's feed. (Um, please do neither?)

Feb Budget Travel: Mixed Bag

I returned last night from Jordan to the February issue of Budget Travel in my mailbox. I'm growing accustomed to reacting schizophrenically to each issue of the magazine. This one has an absolutely fantastic feature on boutique hostels. Included are Mama Shelter in Paris (with rooms beginning at €79), Stay in Los Angeles (rooms beginning at $65), and Lub d in Bangkok (rooms with shared bathroom beginning at $30). All of the properties are beautiful and aesthetically interesting.

Less pleasing is the "Where Next" feature on various Caribbean destinations. The hotel rate range begins at $150 and proceeds up to $270 per night. I've just booked a room for $50 a night in an old sugar mill in the middle of high season on Nevis—a property surrounded by several acres of fruit trees just feet from a lovely pool, no less. In March Matt and I will spend a few nights on Terre-de-Haut off Guadeloupe, where our room at an exquisite little hotel will run, somewhat splurgily for me, €82. Perhaps, if I hadn't just made these reservations, I wouldn't find the inclusion of the above properties so annoying. But I have, and I am prompted to wonder, yet again, just how hotels at $270 per night belong in a budget travel magazine.

Rio Guesthouse: Best Caribbean Budget Guesthouse Web Site

It's almost the end of the year, traditionally the time when best-of lists get published. If I were to give an award for good hotel Web sites, Rio Guesthouse would be in the upper rankings. The Barbados nine-room guesthouse's site is appealingly retro, with a mesh of antiquated and contemporary fonts, faded and distressed images, and funny audio accompaniments. The site includes a link to its Web designer as well. 

Best of all for us budget hunters, high season doubles at Rio's Guesthouse begin at US$51 per night, including tax and service.

True Shoestringer in the Caribbean

Just back from Santo Domingo, I'm thinking nonstop about returning to the Caribbean. So it's either a good or a bad thing, depending on perspective, that I chanced upon the Prodigal Son's Travel Pod blog, which covers a multi-year adventure through the Americas. Entries from November 2006 through June 2008 are more or less devoted to the Caribbean; following that, Mr. P. Son carries on throughout Central America and down into South America. (Still, there's lots of zigging and zagging and some good Caribbean briefs through August, including this video reaction at an Ocho Rios Burger King to Jamaica's men's relay world record 4x100m win at the Olympics.)

And there's this great list of cheap Caribbean accommodations, a true resource. I'm itching.

Weekend: Iceland, More Cartagena, Cheap Caribbean, London Embassies, Alesha Dixon

Sarah Lyall's piece on Iceland in the New York Times yesterday documents the fall-out from Iceland's spectacular financial crash. It quotes an Icelandic woman named Hronn Helgadottir who points out that she can no longer afford to travel. She describes a recent trip to Amsterdam, purchased before the krona's collapse, during which she and her husband kept a very tight budget. From the article:

They ate as cheaply as they could and bought nothing. “It was strange to stand in a store and look at a bag or a pair of shoes and see that they cost 100,000 kronur, when last year they cost only 40,000,” she said.

What's remarkable about this description is how it matches my own experience as a visitor to Ms. Helgadottir's Iceland. On both of my visits (in 2001 and again in 2004) the general cost index was terrifying. I ate enormous hotel breakfasts in order to stave off hunger until the afternoon and kept to an extremely parsimonious budget. Hot dogs and supermarket items saved me. I harbor no Schadenfreude in sharing this—it's ironic, in other words, but not funny.

Elsewhere in the Times: a feature on dining in Cartagena by Danielle Pergament—there's that increased attention to Colombia again!—and a round-up of Caribbean hotels and venues by Austin Considine. The latter is weak on affordable hotels, though two shine through: Sea Cliff Cottages in Dominica (from $90 in high season) and Virgin Islands Campground on Water Island in the U.S. Virgin Islands (from $75 in high season).

The FT online carried an interesting piece by Rob Blackburn on Friday on the ambassadors at small embassies in London. It profiles the missions of Andorra, Eritrea, Fiji, Malawi, and Montenegro. The most surprising revelation within is that Andorrans apparently need visas to study and work in the UK.

Lastly, I'm happy to see that a song by Alesha Dixon, one of my favorite gossip column fixtures from this past summer in London, has entered the UK top ten. "The Boy Does Nothing" is at Number Eight this week. Bubblegum fun.

Weekend over and out.