This Offbeat Life
New Economy Cooking
Backpacking by Bus

Travelers' Tales Guides - Paris. This should be read before you dig into the other guide books. Full of the best writing ever.

Tout Paris - a guide to decorative arts, dealers of design items, and eveything else tasteful you might want to hunt down in Paris. In a tasteful hardback volume with a tasteful ribbon marker. Fun book to fuel one's decorative fantasies.

In Praise of Four Day Expeditions:
Leslie and Marcia Discover Priceline

Story and pictures by Leslie Strom

Break out your Maalox, even if you're normally not a user. You're about to go hunting for airfare bargins and you're not exactly gainfully employed or independently wealthy. In fact, you're stupid and impetuous. But you can blame it all on Greg Metzger while you're sitting in a Paris cafe drinking condiments.

DUMB-ASS TRIPS BEGIN WITH HARE-BRAINED IDEAS

First, Marcia Tapp comes over and we start ruminating over how much fun it would be to take a Greg Metzger-style trip. Greg's travel philosophy is that three four-day trips a year are better than a single two week trip a year. You can just take a long weekend, fly to Paris or London, do what you want nonstop for three days solid, then come home to catch up on sleep at your desk. Four days isn't long enough for jet lag to catch up with you, or to get jaded with sight-seeing. You could just get on the plane with a change of clothes and a toothbrush for that matter. It's plenty long to see stuff and enjoy the same hotel for three nights. It's short enough to be not too expensive if you sight-see locally. For the average person, you simply have to give up on the idea of extensive day trips, and you have to bite the bullet on airfare more often. With low airfares, however, it's not so bad.

With the British Airways "where IS everybody?" commercial playing in our heads (the answer being they're all in London thanks to their dirt-cheap weekender tickets), we start searching the internet for good airfares.

EXPEDIA FOR RESEARCH, NOT A BARGAIN

First we start at MSN.com. A word about the Microsoft Network's portal: They'll stop at nothing to suck you in. A few months ago I'd been cruising for cheap airfares and saw on MSN a two-for-one winter airfare deal through Lufthansa, which turned out to be more expensive and restrictive than two unrestricted tickets with United or British Airways, bought through a travel agent. So go right to the link that says air tickets. You'll wind up at Expedia.com. Go to Flight Wizard's Fare Compare and check to see what's cheap.

We key in Seattle to Paris and the current lowest fares (as of 2/27/2000) are $466 and $502. A day ago they were $398 and $420, so rates are mercurial. These prices don't include taxes, which for international flights can be a substantial $85 per ticket. I don't know what kind of price point most people have, but both Marcia and I decided that we'd drop everything for a $300 trip to Paris.

PRICELINE FOR A DEAL TAKES SOME PERSISTENCE

We go to Priceline and start bidding at $250. It takes an hour to get a reply to our bid. Meanwhile, Dave McBee comes over and we feed him chocolate and he marvels at our impetuosity and our internet worldliness. "Want to come to Paris with us?" we ask. "What for?" he says with an almost Gallic snip. Oh, how perfect he'd be in Paris with such delivery. "Because tickets are cheap!" we squeak. Also, because we needed to check out the Arago markers on the Paris Meridian.

Keep in mind that Priceline's tickets are from a bucket shop, with restrictions so draconian that you must be very sure of when you are going, and you can't give the tickets to someone else after you bid on them

I check email, and our first bid is rejected. Then Marcia and Dave go home and I keep at the auction, like a terrier with a rat. I try $280 and get a rejection, then $320 which gets me an invitation to call them for their best offer. An over-eager operator offers me the tickets at $398 including the undisclosed airport tax. I say no.

EXPEDIA - IT'S LIKE PRICELINE WITHOUT THE BARGAINS

I go back to Expedia and try these same figures on their new auction-like service called Flight Price Matcher. I get a response to my initial bid of $300 in about 5 minutes. They can't sell me a ticket for $300 says the chipper message, but for $740 they could. And so there I am, aggravated that I wasted yet more time with the standard MSN bait and switch.

PRICELINE FINALLY LISTENS TO REASON, BUT NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT

Next morning I try Priceline again at $350. I actually don't expect success with this figure, since I thought Priceline's telephone agents were trying to cut to the chase with their best deal the night before. But Lo! in an hour I get an email with my itinerary and how much they charged my VISA card. The additional tax, finally revealed, which is applied to all international flights is a shocker - $70 per ticket, so each ticket is $420. Still a good deal for round trip tickets to Paris in May, saving $150 each ticket over the best price we could find elsewhere.

I am reeling with nausea that I'd just charged two plane tickets to Paris with the same abandon I buy books at Amazon.com. It was more than my personal "price point," which puts it in the "another one of Leslie's mad impetuous stunts" category. Non-refundable. Non-transferable. I guess we're going to Paris in May. Yikes! Now, who else can we convince to come along...? Stay tuned.

Leslie Strom now owes her soul to the company store, and wishes that the company store were in Paris for easier shopping.