Category Archives: Travel

Ticket hell.

According to Wikipedia, 50287 seats are available for any given baseball game at Yankee Stadium. I have just purchased two tickets for an upcoming game while we’re in NYC. Bloody hell, they don’t make it easy.

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OK, I’ll admit that as a non-baseball person I was at at personal disadvantage entering into this little adventure. But nothing could have prepared me for:

1. Multiple *official* ticket vendors, plus countless scalpers and private sellers
2. Dozens and dozens of ticket categories (and prices ranging from USD19 to USD1050)
3. Variation in prices within same section and same row of up to +/- 15%!
4. Large tack-on charges. USD260 worth of tickets at GoTickets quickly became USD359.80 after being slugged with USD59.80 ‘Service Fee’ and USD40.00 ‘Ticket Shipping Fee’.

Anyway, such is life. I have never been to a baseball game, so really looking forward to it. Of course, if our tickets in row 9, section 214A turn out to be crappy I’m going to be more than just a little pissed. Winking smile

Finally, a sincere thank you to Nathan at OzMLBPlayers for all of his advice in terms of where I should park my arse for my first ballgame.

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The Bridge. Closed.

Not a good day to be commuting in or out of Sydney CBD.

Arsehat protestor has climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge to hang a couple of banners from the bridge’s apex. As a result, NSW Police and the RTA have closed traffic to the bridge in both directions.

End game: protestor abseils down to police. Gridlock on Sydney’s arterial roads for the remainder of the morning peak.

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Our pad in New York City.

We were looking down the barrel at USD350/night for a basic hotel room in Manhattan (Lower East Side/SoHo/NoHo). But USD2800 for eight nights of bedding did not appeal to my inner cheapskate, so I asked about for suggestions.

The ace people I follow on Twitter put me onto Airbnb as an alternative. It’s an incredibly simple system and, for North America, there are HEAPS of listings including NYC.

We’ve just had confirmation that our application for a gorgeous fully-decked-out 1br apartment in NoLita has been accepted by the owner. We get three times the space of a hotel plus full kitchen, laundry and mod-cons for less than half the cost, including Airbnb fees, cleaning fee etc. Best of all, we get to live like a local and not like tourists in the more tourists-centric areas.

Gotta be happy with that.

The images here show the location (via Nokia Ovi Maps 3D) and the apartment complex itself (via Google Streetview).

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Getting cashed-up.

Though our USA-Canada trip is still some time away, I got inspired to buy some US currency today when the AUD hit yet another record high against the USD.

Shortly after I got to work, I made the decision to bite the bullet and start my travel currency shopping. At that time, the CommBank daily retail carded rate was $1.0299. However, with the current volatility of markets, it had jumped to $1.0334 by the time I finally got to the branch at lunchtime. Win! Open-mouthed smile

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