Seat Selection on US Air

I am flying coach on US Air in about 24 hours. We are using the companion pass that came with the Barclaycard to fly 3 of us to Miami, two of the tickets were only $99 plus taxes. US Air emailed me 24 hours before check in and invited me to check in. This gave me the opportunity to change my seats once again and luckily I now had some new options since the exit rows had just opened up.

The first flight is to CLT on a 737-400. Seat Guru tells me the best row is row 12, so I grabbed 12 ABC. There are 2 first class upgrades available for $110, but the flight is short from EWR-CLT. If it was a direct flight I might have taken them.

On the Airbus 321, I got 23AB&F since row 10 doesn't recline.

Checking in 24 hours out has its advantages.

Targeted US Airways Bonus Miles

Everyone should have the US Airways Barclay's card. If you do, check your inbox, you might have gotten this targeted offer:

Restaurants are also a Q2 Chase Freedom category, but I am sure I can hit both goals :)

I love targeted bonus offers. Citi sent me some 5x offer last week, but only for 2500 points max, which is $500 in spend. I might hit it, depends if I can find that card that I never use (I think it is in safe deposit at Chase).

EWR Transport

Normally the best way from EWR to NYC is to take the air train to the EWR Rail Station and take the train to Penn. I just found out this won't be true in May, June, or July. The Airtrain is shutting down; How annoying! North Jersey is becoming a transportation nightmare in 2014, with construction on 78, the Pulaski Skyway shutting down, PATH to WTC shutdown on weekends, and other construction projects.


Scott from hackmytrip broke this story here.

Best alternative is probably the bus to midtown available here: http://www.coachusa.com/olympia/ss.newarkairport.asp

However, if the traffic nightmare everyone is predicting comes true, it might make more sense to take a bus or cab to the Newark Path.

Free $10 from Liftopia

Liftopia, a site with discount advance purchase lift tickets, just sent me a survey invitation for a $10 credit. This is great, as they already have some great deals. The survey took about two minutes, which is way better than the usual sweepstakes entry or a really long survey.

This is the link in the email http://app.bronto.com/public/?q=ulink&fn=Link&ssid=13755&id=541ejku7sc39jkyhclaci9rmz9zx0&id2=hlhbwxj5shbkufg5k06vdqo3ciwg3&subscriber_id=altnngtrsfqxhyrffxvzujijrhbbbej&delivery_id=boebxyjvtksjulvvmmnlnixirbvubnp&tid=3.Nbs.CeJ2uQ.CsQq.5VIn..AVoEOQ.s.SJk.l.DZFB.b.U0Ry5g.U0Ry5g.2OLgXA

1 cent miles

US Air Miles are worth at least 1.5 cents. They are currently being sold at 1.13 cents if you use the Share miles 100% bonus.

2 NJ Day Trips

This weekend Christine and I took two New Jersey day trips.

Saturday we started out just driving south on the turnpike. We got restless by the time we got to Trenton and stopped for lunch at a pretty cool bar in downtown called the Trenton Social. They seemed to have a lot of live music and some neat artwork. The food was okay and we got a vibe for what the Trenton hipster scene was like. Next we drove through historic Trenton but didn't stop, as we made our way to the antique mall / flea market near Lambertville called the Golden Nugget. This is worth checking out, especially if you are into that sort of thing. Next we crossed over the Delaware into New Hope, a neat little boutique town, but we couldn't find parking near the downtown area so we went to a winery, Unionville. Unionville had some great wine, but some of it was rather expensive, with a Chardonnay topping $50. We got an Albarino and some white blend called Eureka. We also got a red blend I forgot the name of at $22. Since we were on a winery kick, we next went to Old York Winery, Terhune Orchard winery in Princeton, and also Hopewell winery. Hopewell was my favorite of the day, I especially liked their spumante secco. Most of their wine is in an Italian style and they also serve brick oven pizza. The coolest thing of the day was then going back to Trenton to find Rat's Restaurant in the middle of Garden of Sculpture. This is probably the best restaurant in New Jersey, set in a really cool sculpture garden. I had smoked duck and Christine had scallops. We also had a lobster crepe and a bottle of wine. Everything was priced reasonably.

Rat's in Trenton

Sunday we wanted to go hiking with the dog, so we went to the other Great Falls National Park, in Paterson NJ. This was a lot of fun, but a bust in some ways too. We tried to head towards a hiking trail that only ended up going half a mile, so then we went downtown. We then looked for a bridge and went through a shady area to get to the back of the falls. This was really cool and we broke into a closed part of the park with about six or seven other people who were standing on the part of the chain link fence they had knocked down to let us over. We took some cool pictures from the park, and then we were pretty exhausted, after walking three or four miles, so we went back to the car. Paterson is well known for their Arab food, we went to get some Kebabs on Main St after that.

Great Falls in Paterson

Kebab spot in Paterson

CVS

The party at CVS is over. VR / Serve / etc. Hello One Vanilla and now I sure wish I lived closer to a Walmart.

Airline Employee Secrets

Be nice to airline employees. They can always exact revenge
 
http://elliott.org/the-travel-critic/revenge-of-the-ticket-agents-4-secret-ways-airline-employees-even-the-score/ 




Maybe they'll even give you some cool tips, (don't drink the water is on this list like 4x). Here is a longer list: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1or6ow/people_who_work_for_airlines_what_are_secrets/