10 Travel Points For Empty Nesters Greatest Hits E139

Clancy Denton (00:09)
guys, welcome back to the loud quiet. We're excited to let y'all know that we are going to be launching a newsletter soon and we would love for y'all to join us. Subscribe to that. We have a list of 10 tips. If you're a college student is coming home for the summer or even if you're have a high school senior that is transitioning to college. These tips we found helpful.

for years that Tanner and Teagan were coming home. It's just a way to get expectations set before the summer starts. So that will be on the Facebook group, the Loud Quiet Emptiness Living. Please join us there. You can click and subscribe to the list and also to our upcoming newsletter. ⁓

Rick Denton (01:01)
All of that's in the show notes. So if you didn't know those links, that's in the show notes. You don't even have to hit pause. Just scroll down, click the link, and it will open all that so that you can get on the group and join the newsletter and get your tip list as well.

Clancy Denton (01:15)
This episode may be filled with links. So there may be lots of links in the show notes.

Rick Denton (01:20)
This is a very practical episode. This is one where we're going to share with you 10 tips that are inspired by our trip to Germany that help really make that trip something amazing, efficient, easy. Pick your word there. Not only though for Germany, a lot of these will be applicable to any of your travel inspired by Germany. 10 travel tips. Tip number one, finding flights.

Clancy Denton (01:42)
Travel tips.

Rick Denton (01:49)
So assuming that you're going to go somewhere that involves a plane, that can have a lot of complexity, especially when you're dealing with international travel and especially when someone in the household has a specific set of conditions for how those flights need to take place.

Clancy Denton (02:04)
I have said it before and I will say it again, I like to fly where you can lay down. That's right. And that is typically business class. So yes. when we are going on these flights across the ocean, especially because when you get there, you want to be rested because that's the day that you have to stay up and be doing things.

Rick Denton (02:29)
Let's use that to talk about finding flights. So yes, and all joking aside, I certainly love business class as well. Stay tuned because tip two is going to show you a few things on how you actually can get access to business class. This right here is how do we go about finding flights? That can be incredibly complex when you think to yourself, I just want to go to Germany. Well, Google flights, if you aren't already using that is an incredibly helpful tool, allowing you not only to put in, Hey, I want to go to this city.

or that city, but you can actually put in, I just want to go to Germany for a 10 day trip. I want it to be in business class and it will give you some significantly wide open options, including you go into Frankfurt, you leave from Berlin, you come into Hamburg, you come out of Munich.

Clancy Denton (03:18)
Do you

put your dates in there as well or is it just?

Rick Denton (03:21)
Typically it's a month, but you would put, you might start with June and then it gives you, and you say, hey, I want this to be a 10 day trip. After the challenge of getting across the pond is just figuring out into which cities you're going or which cities you're going through. Cause most of the time you're probably not going to find a nonstop flight to where you want to go, especially when it comes to points. And this gives you, for example, our flight to Germany. We flew through Charlotte to get to Frankfurt.

on the American Airlines and on the way back, we flew a Beria Airlines from Munich through Madrid back to DFW. All of that gives you that flexibility inside of Google flights.

Clancy Denton (03:57)
Yes, I am not the flight finder in our family and the children know that because when they are trying to work the magic that their father does, they call him.

Rick Denton (04:09)
There are a lot of spreadsheets involved. think if there was one thing that I'd want, two things that I'd want people to hear, it'd be use Google flights and be flexible. Be flexible not only with where you're starting from, but where you're going through.

Clancy Denton (04:22)
And it's easier to be flexible in the emptiness. You know, sometimes you have things that children have to be back for, you know, in the earlier years. But now, yes, we had so much flexibility.

Rick Denton (04:36)
Point number two, points for flights. So while I would love to tell everyone here that we are just paying for business class and we are just throwing all those funds out, actually what has worked for our family well is using points. What I wanna talk about is how do you find flights that use points? Because that's really hard to find these days. It used to be super available and now it's not, especially if you went business class.

And the first thing is be flexible, just like you were saying there, your gateway city may be different. Your timing may be different. And here's a website for you points. Yeah. Dot com. And I use the free one. They're paid one is fantastic too, but the free one worked for us. You put in the destinations that you want to get to and from the dates that you want to do it and just put an alert there. Hey, show me when business class seats show up.

And over time, eventually I got an email that showed us that, guess what? There's business class seats available from DFW to Frankfurt. And here's how you can make it happen.

Clancy Denton (05:41)
And when you were talking about the way to earn points, you it used to be just you had to fly everywhere. Now there's credit cards, all kinds of things, incentives. And I really, the points guy is very good about breaking down how you can earn these points. He also goes into how to use them, but he does a daily newsletter about the best credit card to do and breaks it into even age groups.

And if this is your first credit card and you love to travel, get this one. He's very good. The points guide dot com.

Rick Denton (06:17)
He is actually the one that inspired me to choose the business credit card that we have chosen that allowed us to use the points on this trip. So I can say that this trip specifically was made possible by what I learned from him. So you can use points from one airline to transfer to another. And that's where I would say beyond what we're going to tell you here, go out there and learn from points guy.

As an example, using this for inspiration, it won't be available forever. They've actually gotten rid of it. We had AMEX membership rewards points. I transferred those to Hawaiian airlines. I then transferred those Hawaiian airline points to Alaska airlines. I then booked an American airlines flight using Alaska airlines points. That's a lot of steps. And those steps allowed us to use very

a much lower amount of points for business.

Clancy Denton (07:14)
And you do have to be careful when you're doing that. Make sure you read all of the refund. What can I do with these points if something happens and I can't use them? What you know, because there are a lot of stipulations around them. And also. If you don't want to take the time to do this, there are now consultants that will do these things for you. They're out there. Yeah, this has become a business of people.

Yeah, I mean, you could do it.

Rick Denton (07:46)
I

want to. I do it for us.

Clancy Denton (07:48)
If you need help, reach out to Rick. ⁓ He charges a small fee.

Rick Denton (07:51)
I'll you to a-

I'm

charging like $1,000 an hour. I don't want to do this for anyone else. I'm very self-satisfied.

Clancy Denton (07:59)
But there are different options out there if you don't want to dig in and try to learn to do all of it.

Rick Denton (08:05)
Now tip, Alaska Airlines has phenomenal redemption rates on partner airlines. That's the reason that the points were so low because Alaska and American have a partnership. It would have been more points had I booked it through American Airlines. That flexibility was there. Point number three, maximize those long layovers. We had the opportunity to, and we talked about in the last episode, that we got to meet an old friend of mine in Charlotte on a beautiful day because we had

eight hours, whatever the timing was there in Charlotte. And so we went into the city, we had a meal, we enjoyed that. I think a lot of folks don't realize you can leave the airport and it's a fine thing to do, especially if you check luggage. This is one of those times that checking luggage is in your advantage is we just had our backpacks, we rented a car and threw it in the trunk of the car.

Clancy Denton (08:55)
And I would say if you have TSA pre-check because if you would not have had TSA pre-check, I don't know that we would have. mean, the TSA pre-check line back in Charlotte was.

Rick Denton (09:06)
It was about a half hour getting through that. Be smart about it.

Clancy Denton (09:09)
Yes, don't. You have to go back through security, obviously, because you've left the airport.

Rick Denton (09:11)
If you have two-

And this only works in certain countries that are visa free for the U.S. Don't try to do this in China. Don't try to do this in a country that requires a visa. But in a country that doesn't require a visa, for example, on the way back, we have five and a half hours layover in Madrid. Well, we could sit in a lounge. It was a nice lounge. Or we could bust out and head into the city. Now to do that when you don't rent a car, keep in mind that at

most train stations in Europe and in some airports, and in this case it was the airport, they have luggage storage. So for a fee, we were able to leave our carry-on luggage there at the Madrid airport and travel into the city, wow, with a credit card in our pocket, right? It was the most mobile that I think we've been. And so maximizing those layovers, not, in fact, even maybe choosing to have that long layover, you can enjoy a city for free.

Clancy Denton (10:10)
Yeah. So now that we have our flights set and everything set, then we come to point number four, which is where I come in and that is using technology to plan your itinerary. So as soon as I knew the cities that we were flying in and out of, because we had something that drove, OK, we're flying into the city and we're flying out of the city, then I could go and say, OK, Google.

I just Googled what are the top 10 things that I need to see while in Germany. And so then from that list, I pulled the area of the country that we were going to be in. And then from the big cities that we were going to be in, I pulled what are day trips from each of these cities. And so that's how I went about building our itinerary. I also had some input from

our neighbor for one city that I am so glad that that was a good one. But that way you can kind of start with the big picture and then break it down to, look, we can do a day trip to Dresden. can spend the night in Heidelberg adding in some of the smaller cities that you may not necessarily think about.

Rick Denton (11:30)
And you get other sort of pre-built itineraries too, or Rick Steves seems to always pop up and others where this is what you would do with six days, 10 days, 15 days, two days.

Clancy Denton (11:40)
And now when you do put that into Google, the first thing at the top is always an AI generated list. I'm telling you that I did not specifically use AI, but those lists that they have given me or whoever I call them, that AI has given me. Yes. I used those lists.

Rick Denton (12:02)
the future overlords have given us.

Clancy Denton (12:08)
more and you actually used AI.

Rick Denton (12:11)
to use OpenAI chat GPT for this and what I like about it and you know shout out to Mark Ronek for the one who kind of at least introduced the idea to me through his podcast is just having a conversation with the tool.

Clancy Denton (12:25)
And I think we both, you did it through TraGPT, I just did it through Google, said we have five hours in Madrid, what should we do? And we got the same results and that's what we did and it was perfect.

Rick Denton (12:36)
It's a good double confirmation that we have the right things. I don't want to leave this point without saying about the travel agents. If you are not comfortable with that kind of travel planning, the beauty of a travel agent is they can craft something amazing for you. They'll find that boutique hotel. They'll find that interesting trip to do or city to do.

Clancy Denton (12:56)
I know my brother and sister-in-law did a trip last summer where they were going to Europe. One of them had never been, their child had never been. They wanted to hit several countries. And so yes, they had a travel agent build it because I could see how that would be just too overwhelming. So now that we have all these places to go, how we get

Rick Denton (13:14)
We have to get

Point number five, rail passes. And this is something that I did back when I was 1995, a backpacker in college, the Euro rail pass. And in, in Europe, there's also in country passes. We did this though in Japan. This is not exclusive to Europe or Germany or anything like that. We did the Jr pass there. Have a look at where you're going.

and see if a rail pass makes sense. We did one that was seven days, non-consecutive days, that helped reduce the cost. The beauty of the travel pass is the flexibility that it gives you. And when I mean flexibility, I mean literally if it's part of the pass and you've activated that day, you can ride on any of the things that are included in the pass. Couple of caveats here. We did the Germany rail pass, so we were only one country. It does not typically cover the subways inside a city.

There's a day pass that you can buy for that that's super cheap. Sometimes there's even a group pass where three of you can be on the same pass together. As far as your long distance and a lot of your regional train trips, it was included. And our trip to Austria was included in that. You would think that that is a second country. It wasn't because that town Salzburg is considered a border town. In a case like that, do pay attention to which train services are included.

there was one particular private train operator that was not included in the pass. All of that is in the documentation. Just be aware that you need to, if you're doing something that's a little quirky like leaving the country, check to make sure that that specific private train is included.

Clancy Denton (14:50)
So now that we've got how we're getting to these cities, what do do when you get to these cities?

Rick Denton (14:56)
You've

a lot of logistics, but that's not what you do.

Clancy Denton (14:59)
So point number six, walking tours. And you don't have to do walking tours. They have bike tours, they have bus tours, but we love a walking tour. We started doing these years ago in the cities that we were visiting. These walking tours, especially when you do them the first day or the next morning that you've arrived to a city, just let you get oriented to

the city itself and learn about the city, where you are, what happened there. And a lot of times the guides will give you restaurant recommendations. Hey, go check out these museums, tell you which museums are free, which a lot of museums are free.

Rick Denton (15:51)
And which day they might be fray and which day they're like, there's so much insight.

Clancy Denton (15:55)
And we did three different walking tours in the highlighted cities that we went to. All excellent. All excellent. I don't think we've ever had a bad experience except for one when the person didn't show up. but that happened in Japan. You can do private ones, which would just be your twosome or foursome. But then we like the groups usually because they don't

They're not huge.

Rick Denton (16:26)
The biggest we've had is maybe 30. Maybe. And that's on the big end. It's usually in the teens.

Clancy Denton (16:30)
Yeah,

it's usually yeah between 12 and 15 or something like that but but These were so inexpensive and I don't know if it was because of the time of year we were there I don't know but they were all full because sometimes you think am I are we gonna be the only ones on it? No, every one had they were full I think the one in Berlin which was three and a half hours. We paid $25 a person and it the amount

of things we learned and you just it also you're getting out you're walking and some of them are I mean you know we probably walked miles that day so you do have to be able to handle it so the top three that I love are Viator, Get Your Guide and TripAdvisor. I don't necessarily go to those sites I just put in I want a walking tour of ⁓

Rick Denton (17:08)
You have to have

Clancy Denton (17:28)
Berlin on this date and it will pull up and all three of those will always come up and all of these links will be in the show notes. And then it breaks down exactly your itinerary, where your meetings, you can see how to get to and from your hotel. The other type that we love to do are the food tours, which we have done in New York and New Orleans.

and they have been great. haven't done any in Europe because that was kind of a newer thing to me since we've been to Europe. And I don't think we didn't do one in

Rick Denton (18:04)
The why we don't do them overseas is a lot of times we're in a city that we haven't been to before. So the walking tour is how we kind of get the overview. Whereas New York, we've been to before, New Orleans we've been to before. And so now let's go one layer deeper. That walking tour is great for your entrance to the city.

Clancy Denton (18:19)
And

the food tours are excellent and yes, they did in Munich there was a big one that people loved but it was a beer and food tour. Well, I don't drink beer. So to me that's a waste of money for me.

Rick Denton (18:32)
I

was able to explore the beard just fine without

Clancy Denton (18:35)
And

we had no problems finding food, which we'll talk about in a minute. so, walking tours highly recommend.

Rick Denton (18:44)
Can intimacy of a walking tour that you're on the ground and slow walking allows you to, to me, allows me to retain it better so that when we've left that group, for example, in Berlin, when he had suggested a particular, you know, a list of bars, well, we knew which neighborhood that was because we'd kind of walked through it. So that when we went to the donut shop in Berlin,

We knew that that bar that was recommended was right around the corner and that kind of slow absorption of the city helps you get much more comfortable. Now I feel like I know this city.

Clancy Denton (19:19)
And we had done a different type, you know, in Italy we did a bike tour. When we got to Berlin, we did a boat tour and we had never done one of those. And that was really interesting because it gave us a very highlight highlight. So then the next morning when we did our walking tour, we were like, OK, yes, he mentioned this on the boat tour. then Quincy, our guide, went way more into detail than so there's just there's all kinds of different.

Rick Denton (19:25)
fun

Clancy Denton (19:48)
tours out there, would highly recommend.

Rick Denton (19:52)
Point number seven, apps for getting around. When you're in a city, now this is so different than when I was the backpacker, we talked about that, or when you were studying abroad, right? You'd have to look at city maps. You would go to the concierge at a hotel and they'd highlight where to walk on that map that they'd give you. I know this tip is going to sound very familiar to a lot of folks, but it's going to be new to some, and that is use Google Maps on your phone.

It shows you how to walk to the beginning of that tour. If you're at a hotel and you don't know how to get to that tour, it'll show you how to walk there.

Clancy Denton (20:28)
And let me point it gives you like if you're standing and you turn it's like no no go back to that direction it it has a compass inside of it that it knows where you're

Rick Denton (20:40)
And this time, I'm sure it's been that way, this is the first time I've noticed that if I put it in my pocket, because I kind of know what we're doing, it buzzes me if I've hit the intersection and it's time to make a turn. So you can pull your phone out and which way am I making? Because I just got buzzed.

Clancy Denton (20:53)
I

noticed that in New York when Tegan and I were there.

Rick Denton (20:56)
It also at a click allows you to then click the public transportation option. So you can see, do I want to do the 20 minute walk or do I want to do the 10 minute tram ride? And you can compare it so easily that really has simplified things for getting around that didn't used to be the case. Now I do want to stop and talk a little bit about shared rides. Uber and Lyft are common in some cities.

but not common in a lot of it. So one app specifically that I want folks to know about in Germany, I believe it's in other places as well, it's free now. You book taxis with it, but you get an Uber like experience. So it's prepaid. You don't have to worry about is this taxi driving me all over the place? No, you can get a fixed rate. Google, what are the shared ride apps in my country? Don't assume that it's Uber and Lyft because in a lot of cases it wasn't their apps.

Clancy Denton (21:48)
and also you found that if you booked your taxi it was a cheaper rate than

Rick Denton (21:56)
It was and it was also just easier to know that it was there and we had an early taxi one morning and so it was nice to know that it was pre-booked and available.

Clancy Denton (22:03)
Yeah. And they were all there on time. We didn't have any issues with transportation at all. So those of you who know us, like I've already talked about, we love food. So what I've started doing is point number eight. What food is this city known for? And that is what I type into Google. What food is

Rick Denton (22:16)
What?

Brilliant.

Clancy Denton (22:30)
Heidelberg known for it. I'm gonna use Heidelberg as our example.

Rick Denton (22:33)
I have known this. No.

Clancy Denton (22:35)
Heidelberg is known for these little, they're like ravioli. Yeah, but they're not, well, maybe they are fried, I don't know, but they're not like fried. And they're made by some monks and they stuff them and flatten them and that is what they are known for. I would have never known that. So I found that food and then I Googled where is...

Rick Denton (22:40)
Kind of fried ravioli-ish.

Pan fried or something.

Clancy Denton (23:05)
ex served and pulled up restaurants. We had a great meal. Those raviolis were excellent. I think this is really the first trip. Well, no, I've done it in other places, but, this one, I was very focused on every city that we went to. Okay. When we get to this city, we need to have this dessert because that's what it listed and we would do that. And if you like to eat, it's a great tip.

Rick Denton (23:31)
Takes Hallsburg, for example. And again, I can't remember the name of this silly dessert, right? But then finding out that not only was the dessert something kind of traditional there, the three peaks of meringue that were on top represented the three hills of the city. So it's just kind of a little special memory of that place to have this dessert that reminds you of the hills and the culture and all that. Food is so tied to culture that this idea of what is the signature food

Clancy Denton (23:58)
And what

I didn't realize is that every section of Germany has a different type of sausage. You know, you just think, I'm going to go get some brats. No, they all have a different type of sausage. And so that was also another thing. ⁓ we're in this area. We need to try the Nuremberg sausages. We're here. We need to try the white sausages. So yes, the pretzels were the same everywhere.

Rick Denton (24:21)
And I tried all of them.

I think that's related to our ninth point. Point number nine, go one block extra. And while I'm joking about how I needed to go one block extra after all the sausages and the pretzels and all of that, this is something that we've experienced kind of guided on walking tours, but also just on ourselves. If you are following the normal tourist path, you will see the normal tourist thing and that is good. That's not a bad thing.

but you're missing out and it is amazing what happens if you just go one block extra, one block off the beaten path. What you see there can be amazing. When we did it in Venice, Venice is just so crowded and there's this, you know, certain arteries that are just filled with people, but we just walked one block away from that and it was silent. And you saw things and experienced things that you wouldn't have otherwise experienced.

Clancy Denton (25:22)
And our tour guide in Salzburg actually said when we were on our tour, he said, you know, if you go one street over, that's the non shop touristy street. And so we did when we left that afternoon, we went and walked down that street. And yes, there wasn't a single store on that street and you got more of a feel of what the living situation was. And also the...

Rick Denton (25:47)
the hike that we did too. it was again, guide. So back to the walking tours folks, point number six, if you are, if you skipped ahead to this one, go back to six, listen to it. The guide pointed up and Salzburg has this huge sort of cliff and the things that are the fortresses and other elements that are on top of that cliff. And he pointed out two sides of it and said, the hike that is back there is really neat. What we did, we went up there.

man, you go uphill a lot. seems like all we did was go uphill. That hike though took us where we, in a city that is as crowded and as touristed as Salzburg is, we were very frequently the only people within sight, within hearing, and it gave phenomenal views. And had we not gone that one block extra, we wouldn't have had that experience.

Clancy Denton (26:36)
And also make sure they're okay to be on the off the beaten path.

Rick Denton (26:42)
You know, I should, and this is related to the next point, but I do want to point out that all of our tips are simply our personal experiences. Take all of these one with a grain of salt and at your own risk level, right? We're certainly not legal experts and we're not financial experts. And keep that in mind as you are considering these tips, make sure that you use your own common sense and good judgment as you're approaching them. Point number 10, ATMs.

Or maybe more generally, I'd say how best to get cash. Because in a lot of cases, and certainly we used Apple Pay, we used our credit cards all over Germany. There's a lot of cultures, Japan being one of them, where is a cash heavy culture? And there were a lot of situations even in Germany where it was cash only. And then honestly, sometimes it's just simpler. It's just simpler to pull out a bill or a coin than it is to pull out your credit card.

Clancy Denton (27:37)
Yeah, not like we live here, because I don't ever have cash.

Rick Denton (27:40)
I think it's a great book. Like this is something that is unique to travel because I have carried the same $10 bill in my wallet for probably eight months because I don't use cash. ATMs frequently are going to be your best exchange rate. However, this falls apart in a massive way when it comes to ATM fees. So if you have a bank

that rebates your ATM fees, both on your domestic side and the overseas ATM, that is your best way to pull this off. And I'm going to mention one we're not sponsored by, but it is commonly mentioned in the travel groups that I'm a part of, the Charles Schwab checking account. I'm not talking about investments, but the Charles Schwab checking account, that ATM has historically rebates all of the fees. And when I say all,

We pulled out 300 euro at a particular city. I think it was Heidelberg. It was a $13 total fee that was refunded. That $13 would have absorbed any of the exchange rate gain that we got to the ATM, but it was refunded. So you get the best rate and you get the ATM fee coming back. You're going to have to make sure that you're going to a bank ATM, not the currency exchange ATM, but it's not hard to figure out what are the major banks inside a country.

Clancy Denton (29:03)
So again, if you have questions about booking flights or pulling out money.

Rick Denton (29:08)
I

really serious there, what the heck's wrong with me? guess-

Clancy Denton (29:11)
Those

are the things that you get excited about.

Rick Denton (29:14)
I don't think excited's the right word. It just makes me feel secure knowing that we've got the best thing happening.

Clancy Denton (29:20)
Can you

give that tip to everyone we know that is traveling that yes.

Rick Denton (29:26)
You've

got to watch those international transaction fees. hey, you know what? Bonus tip, make sure your credit card that you're using does not have an international transaction fee. Many do not, many do. So make sure, because that's an automatic 3 % penalty or higher.

Clancy Denton (29:40)
Yeah, just check all your things before you. all your things.

Rick Denton (29:45)
There's the bonus tip.

Clancy Denton (29:50)
There's a lot of stuff to check and for you and me we have traveled a Lot, but there are some people our age that have never left the US and so it can be daunting So just make sure You take the time to read everything about what you're signing up for

Rick Denton (30:10)
And all joking aside, reach out to us directly. can actually, you can email us at theloudquietpod at gmail.com. If you have any travel questions, I'd be happy to help at least point you in the right direction. No, will not be your points consultant.

Clancy Denton (30:25)
So those are our 10 tips. I hope you've enjoyed hearing them and hope that maybe some of you will put them to use. If you guys have anything that you'd like to add, if you have tips about travel that we didn't highlight or any other just fun ideas or tricks that you know of, please reach out to us at the loud quiet emptiness living on our Facebook group. And we'd love to hear from you guys. Yeah.

So thanks again for joining us on another episode of The Loud Quiet.