Travel Archives - Page 4 of 4

Getaways in the United States, Nursing, Travel, Travel Nursing

How I Find Great Restaurants in New Cities

July 30, 2022 1 Comment

As a travel nurse and someone who adores leisurely travel, eating amazing food has become a high priority for me. Being away on travel contracts in unfamiliar cities can get lonely and finding great restaurants to enjoy with my new friends fills my free time with joy! My husband and I also have very different culinary tastes, so I used to struggle to find restaurants that we both would be happy with. Over the past year, I’ve discovered some great practices that help me find phenomenal restaurants with awesome vibes. Keep reading for tips to find great restaurants when you visit a new city.

picking great food at a great restaurants

Ask The Locals

If you’re traveling for leisure, ask the locals for food suggestions! Hotel concierges, lobby bartenders, or even guests you meet in the elevator could have fantastic recommendations for you! If you are already at a restaurant that you enjoy, ask the server for suggestions on future locations. The trick is to leave your schedule open; if you make reservations for every night of your trip, you won’t have any wiggle room when you hear about an amazing restaurant from a local!

If you’re a travel nurse, I’ve found that staff nurses appreciate you wanting to learn more about their city. They’re usually eager to share their favorite restaurants and recommendations on where to visit near the hospital, and they’re often curious about where you’re living. I like to piggyback onto my coworkers’ brunch plans after long nightshifts and have discovered some incredible food and mimosas in the process! (Okay, it might involve inviting myself sometimes, but you gotta do what you gotta do, right?)

Utilize The Internet! It’s your friend!

The Food Network – This site allows you to search by location and is a thorough resource if you’re headed to a big city. You can sort by barbeque, tacos, cocktail bars, best restaurants to impress a guest, and more! The Food Network’s website makes it easy to scope out new territory without sorting through endless restaurant reviews.

OpenTable – This is a go-to website when I’m planning a trip! The site uses your location to find restaurants nearby that are open, and you can see reservation openings without even clicking on the restaurant. After you find a restaurant that piques your interest, you can make a reservation without ever leaving the website. We have used OpenTable for countless reservations, but I have only recently started using it to find restaurants when I’m hungry. OpenTable is easy to navigate and has never let me down on recommendations!

TripAdvisor – Pros: Lots of reviews, details about hours/menus/addresses, and makes it easier to decide if a specific restaurant is right for you. Cons: I don’t particularly like their rating system. Restaurants at the top are affected by popularity, not always the quality of reviews. I use this resource to research a restaurant that I’ve already heard about or found!

Try Searching Social Media

Everyone has seen gorgeous photos of carefully arranged plates posted by Instagram’s food royalty. Every major city has multiple (sometimes many!) foodies with colorful Instagram recommendations. If you’re looking for somewhere picturesque or aiming for a specific vibe, Instagram may help steer you in the right direction. If you end up loving the restaurant, make sure that you leave a positive comment on the food influencer’s post to support their efforts!

Ultimately, the easiest way to find great restaurants is to get out and explore! Find the places that seem busy or have long lines. This shows their popularity and means there is something to see! You may need some extra time on your hands to wait in a long line, but these hidden gems are often worth the wait.

What incredible restaurants have you visited? Have you utilized any of the resources in this post? Are you a foodie with fabulous suggestions? Comment YOUR tips below!

To read about my tips for traveling on a budget, click here.

Boujie on a Budget, Travel

Easy Ways to Fly Like a Pro With Southwest Airlines

July 12, 2022 1 Comment

My absolute favorite way to fly is on Southwest Airlines using my flight points. Southwest has more comfortable seats than my preferred budget airline, Spirit. Both airlines have good customer service and pristine plane interiors. However, Southwest has more leg space than budget flights, and the seats even recline slightly! Each passenger also gets one carry-on and one checked bag included with their flight cost, saving you from surprise extra fees at checkout. If I’m taking a flight longer than two hours, I skip Spirit and book with Southwest. Here are a couple of my tips for flying Southwest!

CHASE Southwest Credit Card

When I started travel nursing, a friend introduced me to Chase’s Southwest Airlines credit card. No, this is not sponsored; this card is worth the hype! You can use it on any purchases in your daily life to earn 1 Southwest flight point per dollar spent. Certain purchase types, like partnered hotels, rental cars, and Southwest flight tickets, earn you double the points! I put all my monthly bills or large purchases onto this card and immediately pay them off. This practice keeps my credit usage in my ideal range, yet it wins me MANY free flight points. We usually fly for free using these points once every 3-6 months round-trip. When I first applied for the card, I got 50,000 flight points translated into two round-trip tickets just for signing up. Unlike Spirit’s point program, Southwest Rapid Rewards points never expire.

Tips for Getting Better Seats

The only aspect of flying Southwest that I don’t like is that you can’t pick your own seat. Southwest requires you to check into your flight 24 hours in advance to be sorted into groups A, B, and C. You can check in online or via the Southwest app. How high you rank depends on how fast you check in! On gate arrival, you board in order of the group and ticket number. It’s essentially an open seating policy; once it’s your turn to get on the plane, it’s a free-for-all to pick a seat! This unique boarding process can baffle infrequent fliers, and it is easy to end up in group C if you don’t know what you’re doing. Finding nearby seats for companions or small children can be difficult if you board last.

You can pay a high premium for A-list boarding as a business professional, or anyone can pay an extra $20 per ticket for automatic check-in. We have ended up scrambling for seats in group C, so we always purchase the automatic check-in! We’re usually placed in the middle of group A, giving us plenty of seat options. If you get stuck in group C, keep in mind that they will let you check your carry-on for free because space is tight by the time you finally get on the plane! We love flying Southwest when we can pick great seats without stress. I would highly recommend trying the $20 automatic check-in upgrade.

For tips on minimizing costs and traveling “cheap,” check out my article “Flying Cheap: The Hopper App and Spirit Airlines.”

Which airline do you usually fly through? Should we try Delta or American Airlines? What cost-saving tips do you have for flying? Leave a comment below!

Boujie on a Budget, Travel

Flying Cheap: The Hopper App and Spirit Airlines

July 12, 2022 2 Comments

People frequently ask me how I fly so often and how I keep it cheap. I don’t know if I could ever consider flying “cheap,” but I do use some specific tools to keep costs down! These include utilizing the Hopper app to pick my flights and booking through Spirit Airlines.

(Disclaimer: This article is not sponsored, paid, or intended to be interpreted as advertisement in any way.)

The Hopper App

My favorite tool for purchasing flights is an app called Hopper. This app allows you to input tentative flight dates into their scheduler, giving you a report of prices for each airline for those dates. Hopper’s most useful function, however, is that it predicts whether your flight might be cheaper to purchase at a later date and can tell you exactly when to buy them for the best deal.
I usually input my trip dates into the app early in the planning process, and it will give me update notifications about once per week. I always wait until I can get the best deal, especially if I’m taking a short flight and can wait until the last minute to book it.

The Hopper app also provides a color-coded calendar to show you the cheapest days of the week on average to fly. Tuesdays and Wednesdays tend to have the lowest prices, and many airlines send discounts to their email list specifically for Tuesday and Wednesday flights. Hopper provides the price calendar for flights, hotel bookings, and car rentals. Note: The app also offers to “freeze” the price that a vendor gives you even if you aren’t ready to book yet, but that comes with extra charges from Hopper. I haven’t used that service yet.

Fun fact: Hopper plants four trees with Eden Reforestation Project for every booking made through the app!

Spirit Airlines

My favorite affordable airline is Spirit. Spirit lets you “build your own flight” and pay only for exactly what you need. I have never had a Spirit flight delayed or canceled (knock on wood), and they tend to have the cheapest options if you don’t need a checked bag or carry-on. This option is perfect for short flights to visit my family out-of-state, so consider this when you know you’ll have laundry access after you arrive.

Tip: Pay the extra fee to sit in the emergency access seats! The emergency seats have much more legroom than the standard option! Passengers sitting in the emergency row must be at least 15 years old, able to read and understand English, not under the influence of alcohol or drugs (no in-flight drinks!), and be able to lift the door handle to open the emergency exit. If you meet these criteria, emergency access seats by the window are the way to go! We have tried the upgraded front-row seats that Spirit advertises but felt like they weren’t worth the money. They only offer more arm wiggle room than emergency row and standard seats; the cushions are not more comfortable, and the seats still do not lean back.

View out Spirit Airlines window — Our view out Spirit Airlines window

Southwest Airlines

Another way that I save money on flights is by using my Southwest Airlines credit card and flight points. Click here to find out, “Easy Ways to Fly Like a Pro With Southwest Airlines“!

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