Flightster

Travel

Flight Attendant Layover: Las Vegas

Close your eyes. Now, imagine you’re a flight attendant who wakes up on the morning that you start a trip and you realize that at the end of the day you’re going to layover in Las Vegas, with free accommodations! Now, imagine having to work flights from Los Angeles to Seattle, then Seattle back to Los Angeles, from Los Angeles, up to San Francisco, and then finally San Francisco over to Las Vegas all before laying over with your free accommodations. Not looking so glamorous right? Oh, did I forget to mention that your layover is only 9 hours and 55 minutes? Uh huh. Yup.

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5 Random Nostalgic Things I Miss From That Crazy Country Called China

I never thought I’d say this… but lately I’ve been finding myself missing China. Ah yes… the mainland… home of men and women alike that hawk loogies, being shoved into subway car by the subway pushers, delicious dumplings and noodles, air pollution, and a whole lot more of both wonderful and not so wonderful.

After a year in China I was ready to leave. I won’t lie to you when I say I became a little jaded and calloused after living there. Beijing is a great city and it was one of the best years of my life, but it is not an easy place to live. China will test you. It’ll piss you off. It’ll make you scream in frustration. But it’ll also teach you things, and help you grow, and give you a thicker skin. It’s an amazing place I think that everybody should at the very least visit.

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Home as a Vacation Destination

Home Again and Again

When you’re on the road – whether as a lifestyle or just for a few days – all of your senses are on high-alert.

Your ears perk up at every foreign sound, your eyes track all of the unfamiliar colors and faces and styles of hat, and your brain stores it in neat little neuron-boxes, ready for quick-and-accurate retrieval. You know why? Because this – THIS – is important. This is travel. This is another country or city or planet (soon enough). You’re going to want to remember this.

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8 Essential Items that Long Term Travelers Should Look for When They Rent an Apartment

If you are a longer traveler or minimalist digital nomad, there’s a good chance you’re traveling on a budget and trying to keep things as simple as possible.  It’s no secret that renting an apartment and staying at a destination longer is a more cost effective way to do things.  But, before you throw down your hard earned cash for your  pad in paradise, there a few essential items that you should make sure the apartment has. I’m speaking based on the experience of living in an apartment that was lacking most of these things.

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The Traveler’s Fear: COMPLACENCY! AAH!

Does the thought of staying in one place indefinitely scare the crap out of you? Well it sure as hell scares me! In the past 2 years I’ve lived in 2 countries, traveled throughout  12 countries and countless cities, went on a 18 day road trip through the US West Coast, lived in a city and lived by the beach, and the list goes on. I love to be moving, seeing new things every day, trying out new ways of life, and basically living as a traveler day to day.

The moment I feel like I’m sitting still is the moment the fear of complacency kicks in.

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Screw Being A Tourist – Become a Local at your Vacation Spot!

Oftentimes the places that we’d love to move to only become the places we vacation to for a week at a time once a year. It’s either that or we dream of moving abroad full time yet we only give ourselves the taste of 10 days with an itinerary so jam packed we don’t even really get a sense of what it’d be like to live there.

I know there are jobs and commitments and houses and all other kinds of responsibilities waiting for us wherever we may be stationed right now, but just imagine if you could move all of them over to that one place you can’t seem to go a year without visiting? Just imagine making everyday of your life feel like a vacation.

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7 Signs That You’re Truly an Expat

After 4 months of being on the road in one country, I’ve realized I’m not really a tourist or traveler any more, but  I’m an expat.  While there are moments that I think I’ve lost my mind and wish for all the things we take for granted in the USA, I know that living any other way would make me feel like I’m missing out on all that life has to offer. There’s just far too to much of the world to see to spend the majority of my life in one country. But in no particular order here are  my own personal signs that you’ve become an expat:

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Travel as a Project

No matter where you go or why, travel can be a lot of fun.

You’re putting yourself in a new context, and that allows you to remove yourself from established habits and routines. You also will usually find more novelty to take in, as the place you’re visiting is not your day-to-day environment, and there’s so much more that’s unfamiliar.

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Can Travel Get Played Out?: Avoiding Traveler’s Burnout

For many of us, travel is the be all end all of what makes us feel most alive and kickin’. However, that doesn’t mean that after due time spent in the trenches of travel one can’t eventually get burnt out on travel and all of its glory.

In a way it’s like the new favorite song that you keep listening to over and over again be it in your car, getting ready for work, getting pumped to go out, etc. You can’t get enough of it. But eventually you reach a point where you click skip when it comes on your custom Pandora station because when all is said and done, you’re ready for a change.

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Orlando…or No?

It amazes me how many times during boarding passengers ask me if the plane is safe, the pilots are rested or if there was anything they should know about that particular flight that would inhibit them from getting to point B from A safely. If there was a problem that would prevent that, I assure you I wouldn’t have come to work.

Though, there is one variable that changes constantly which does affect all phases of flight, the weather. It’s predictable to an extent, but what happens when it changes quicker than the forecasters or the airplanes radar can follow?

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