Rent-a-cars amaze me. The concept that I can turn up in all sorts of weird places, someone will hand me the keys to a car and I can drive off continues to delight me. But if there’s one thing worse than airlines loading on extra charges – see my recent Ryanair blog – it’s rent-a-car companies. Particularly in the US.

I need a car for three days in New England, picking it up from Boston airport. A quick zip around the websites and I decide to go for Thrifty – I have absolutely no allegiance to rent-a-car companies, my Hertz No 1 card or my Avis Wizard card don’t seem to make any difference when it comes to renting a car.

No, this is not a Ford Fusion, it's a Dodge Charger

The daily rental for my Ford Fusion is US$53.19. Now I know there’s going to be Loss Damage Waiver (‘this is not insurance’ says the Thrifty website, but that’s just lawyer-speak), but nowhere on the website does it say what LDW is going to cost! Something like US$22 to 28 a day I reckon, in fact it’s US$23.99 a day.

click here for more on rent-a-car charges and something really ugly, the axle-of-evil

With a few days to spare before speaking at Hostelling International USA’s 75th birthday bash in Boston I set off on a quick circuit of northern New England. Some photos from my travels through Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont:

Marblehead started life as a fishing port, today it’s a classy Boston marina but many old houses survive from the town’s early days.  Signs document their construction date and early occupants – lots of fishermen, mariners and, later on, cordwainers – shoemakers.

I’ve always liked naive art and Marblehead’s JOJ Frost took up painting after his wife died in 1919. He was already in his 70s and spent the last six years of his life producing colourful paintings that provide a snapshot of life in the port at that time.

click here for more New England photos

I finally got around to flying Ryanair. I’ve flown on assorted LCCs – Low Cost Carriers – but never had a reason to get on the European airline which generates all the bad publicity. Michael O’Leary, the airline’s outspoken boss, specialises in being controversial. OK they’re not really going to charge fat people more, add a fee for using the toilets or offer standing room tickets, but hey, it’s all good publicity.

I had to fly from London to Trieste in Italy and Ryanair were offering seats for £14.99, it was a no brainer. The flight left on time, I got a window seat, my carry-on bag fitted their strict limits, I’d brought along my lunch from Stansted Airport’s Pret à Manger outlet (cheaper than the sandwiches they flogged on board). I’d printed out my boarding card beforehand  (Ryanair doesn’t offer airport check in, except for a premium additional charge). In the air I resisted buying a Ryanair €2 scratch card (to help you get rid of loose change of course) and I ignored the subway-style adverts plastered along the overhead bins.

So what was not to like? Well my only real complaint was the £5 charge for paying for my ticket! Quite a few airlines these days load on charges for credit cards, while not giving you much option to pay by another method – Ryanair don’t charge if you use the rare Visa Electron card. Furthermore the charge – a 33% loading on my ticket – is per passenger, not per credit card transaction.


‘We’re still cheapest,’ is the Ryanair response, which is often (but not always) true. There’s no romance in air travel anymore is the mantra, cheap is what it’s always about. Not true, I can still get a kick of the view out the window, even a Ryanair window. And coming back to London, not with Ryanair, I flew out of the airport at Ljubljana in Slovenia. It’s a small airport which not only has free wifi throughout the terminal it also has some romance, in the form of a small collection of Slovenian-built aircraft hanging over the check in desks.

Friday 20 November - from 1.15 pm - Hostelling International are celebrating their 100th anniversary worldwide and their 75th in the USA. They're putting on a forum on Backpack Diplomacy - Youth Travel as a Force for Change and I'll be taking part in the dicussions at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.





 

Last October I did some travelling in Newfoundland, Canada’s eastern island province. More recently I’ve been kicking around Alaska for a forthcoming TV program in the Lonely Planet/National Geographic Roads Less Travelled series. Two novels helped to develop my picture of these places:

You couldn’t ask for a better introduction to the confusion and problems of modern Alaska than Seth Kantner’s Ordinary Wolves. Like the author Cutuk grew up in a sod igloo, leading a life more closely aligned to wild Alaska than the Eskimo population of the nearest settlement. Despite his Iñupiaq name he’s torn between two lives, unable to be at home with either. There’s an interlude in Anchorage, where he doesn’t fit in either, and at the end you’re left lamenting the wilderness purity, the land of ordinary wolves, which may be gone forever. It’s a magic book.

Newfoundland didn’t join Canada until after WW II, prior to that time it was a not terribly successful colony and then a not terribly successful ‘semi-autonomous’ country. In 1934 things got so bad that Britain had to step forward and recolonise it, ie pay the bills and take over the government. After WW II Joe Smallwood led the campaign to join Canada, rather than head back to independence or let Britain go on running the place. Wayne Johnston’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams is the fictionalised story of Joe Smallwood’s troubled life.

Overlooking Bogota, Colombia in April 2008

When Maureen and I arrived in Sydney the day after Christmas 1972, after a six month Asia overland trip from Europe, we had 27 cents left between us. In late 1973 we started Lonely Planet Publications ... read more