uhoh_busted

My daughter just called for one of her friends, who got on the phone. This young woman (25) is leaving tomorrow for London and Paris on business. She has a budget of $9000. She's staying in very nice hotels. She wanted me to recommend some restaurants, so she wouldn't seem like a bumpkin. Which I did. But of course, she hasn't even read a guide book. ARGHHHHHHH!!!!!! I was really good and not judgemental. But please, please, please travel gods....remember that I was good to this lucky little girl and grant me some kind of extra good travel karma for our next trip!

Rick_Steevs

Don't feel too envious, this is a business trip. The $9000 budget should be for biz class airfare, business suitable hotels i.e. nothing charming in the Quartier Latin and meals, not for souvenirs, sightseeing or evening entertainment (unless clients are to be entertained). If this lady is lucky, she'll only have a day in each city for leisure and her itinerary will not be changed on a whim as business dictates. The first international business trip is exciting for anyone, but then it becomes dreaded. Hopefully she'll have enough free time to enjoy the sights and cultures of both cities but often times a biz trip is just that.<BR>Happy Travels<BR>Rick<BR>

Flyboy

&quot;Even a blind squirrel finds a few nuts.&quot;

Scarlett

<BR>uhoh busted!<BR> I do wish you luck with those travel gods! If not the travel gods, there will be something good coming to you for just being nice<BR>What a lucky girl, even on business, there is time to enjoy the pleasures of being in London and Paris with lots of money to spend!

Rich

<BR><BR>First time I went to London I did not read a guide book either . . not sure I even knew there were guide books (and frankly there may not have been then.<BR><BR>I relied on business associates to take care of me and they did right well! <BR><BR>Business trips are quite different from personal travel. (I was there five or six times before I saw a changing of the Guard) Only late in the carreer did I learn to stop and smell the roses . . or whatever smells were in the air. <BR><BR>You were good to her, don't forget . . no good deed ever goes unpunished!<BR><BR>Rich

uhoh_busted

Oh, I can't complain...My business travel is only on this side of the Atlantic, but I just got back from 3 days in Palm Springs. Still, what an introduction to Europe this kid is going to have. A week in London and one in Paris. BTW, her airfare is already covered. The $9K is for hotels and food. I don't think she'll be staying at any of Rick's picks. <BR><BR>

Tango

Keep this in mind...<BR>Business travel sounds glamorous and it can be very fun, but a conference room in Paris is the same as one in Des Moines! Add in jet lag, traveling without your honey and lugging a laptop, and it loses its glamour fast!

Rick_Steevs

Wow! 9000 smacks for hotel and food! Well then, there'll be no charming inexpensive bistros or comfy B&amp;Bs for this lucky woman. I guess it's too late to recommend hotels (Milestone-London, Hotel Trocodero Dokhan-Paris) for that budget but if it's not too late to suggest an eatery in London, I would choose Sketch, located on Conduit St near Oxford Circus, and the Ivy (which once refused J-Lo). A week in each city should afford some time to sightsee and if this is her first trip overseas, it will serve as a wonderful springboard to future leisure trips. <BR>Happy Travels<BR>Rick

Marilyn

uhoh busted, what company does she work for? I want to be sure I don't own any of their stock.

PamSF

I made the wrong career choice not once but twice. Two jobs in public service with no travel budget in either.

Maira

I traveled quite a bit for work and although it can be fun (sometimes), it is a very, very different type of travel. I have accompanied my husband to Europe for business in a number of ocassions and often he doesn't even gets to do any sightseeing at all. We have often gone back on our own so he can say he was there.

goldwynn

Oh! The lucky devil. Imagine having $9000 for what I assume is for a week or so. When I went to Europe in 1967 for six months, I had $1000.<BR><BR>uhoh busted, you will surely reap a reward for being so kind to young travellers.

BTilke

I disagree strongly that a business trip in Paris is no different from a biz trip in Des Moines. I travel all over Europe for business and I always manage to squeeze in some free time for sightseeing or relaxing. For example, last month I had an afternoon meeting in Milan. I got into town at 9 am, so I had time to enjoy a couple of cappuccinos in the Galleria, walked through the Cathedral, strolled through a park, did some window shopping at Prada, then caught a cab out for the 2 pm meeting--and by using my travel budget to take a train rather than fly (the client pays for biz class flights), I gave myself two days in Switzerland--one day in Lugano, one day in Basel--and the scenic train ride between the two cities. In two weeks, I'm going to Copenhagen and will have most of a day to myself. Will I get to know the city well? No, of course not, but I'll still get to see the city, and I'll also be dining one night in a top restaurants (with someone else picking up the tab). In March, I'll be going to Vienna for a week and I'll have time to myself before and after the conference, plus time to walk around in evening or early in the morning. There are company sponsored parties at the Sacher Hotel, a private Vienna Boys Choir concert, and two private concerts by top Vienna orchestras. I couldn't do that in Des Moines!<BR>Sure, business trips can be demanding. But if you plan carefully, you can manage to fit several opportunities to see and do quite a bit.

kanoneli

Half the fun of travel is doing the research, don't you think? And finding all of those charming inexpensive hidden treasures filled with down to earth people and real slices of life! Not that she won't enjoy herself, of course but still, so much of the pleasure is in the research, n'est-ce pas?

rex

Two comments about previous posts:<BR><BR>Author: Marilyn<BR>Date: 02/09/2003, 12:35 am<BR><BR>Message: uhoh busted, what company does she work for? I want to be sure I don't own any of their stock.<BR><BR>==============<BR><BR>Marilyn, this could be a family-owned or privately held company, and if the employee is performing high value work, then this could be a reasonable &quot;perq&quot; for the work being performed. Many a lo(er) wage employee receives health insurance from their employer that costs at least $9000 a year, because government or unions mandate it. If this is an appropriate business decision for this employer, I don't consider it out of line without knowing more about it.<BR><BR>==========================<BR> <BR>Author: PamSF<BR>Date: 02/09/2003, 04:31 am<BR><BR>Message: I made the wrong career choice not once but twice. Two jobs in public service with no travel budget in either. <BR><BR>=====================<BR><BR>Never too late to change. And you could start and run your own company. Then you can set whatever travel budget your ability to make a profit can justify!<BR><BR>It's a great country, America, and a great system, capitalism.<BR><BR>Best wishes,<BR><BR>Rex<BR>[email protected]<BR> <BR>

PamSF

Rex..thanks but one of my &quot;public sevice&quot; jobs involves running my own business. Health care is not profitable<BR>when you try to do it well.

rex

If it satisfies you, that is important. There is always the opportunity to start some business in some field and have your own company. It's almost always just a matter of what price any of us is willing to pay.<BR><BR>Been there, done that. Thinking, at times, to do it again.<BR><BR>Getting rich is rarely easy. Staying rich can be just as difficult as well.<BR><BR>Sorry, this has digressed from travel quite a bit, hasn't it?<BR><BR>Oh well, let's hope that the friend of uhoh's daughter is successful in her trip. And yes, the travel gods ought to grant uhoh some smile, if not something better.<BR>

uhoh_busted

Thank you all for the travel god karma wishes. I could have done better for her if she'd given me more time, but then I remember what it was like to be 24. A bit of background - she works in the fashion industry and designs pre-teen clothing...it's a dream job for a bright girl with a textiles major from NC State. She's had this job for about a year.

ddd

As a veteran of a lot of business travel, I'd like to make 2 comments:<BR><BR>1) I've been on a lot of business trips to exotic locales (Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires,etc) that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Go straight from the airport to an office, No free time, no chance to have a decent meal, and a headache all the time because you don't have time to adjust to the time zone. Then, you fly back home and go straight back to work. It's not very glamourous. Don't be surprised if your daughter's friend doesn't have a chance to go any of the places you recommend<BR><BR>2) The reason business travel costs are so high is because they are subsidizing the leisure traveler. If the airlines weren't gouging businesses, we'd all pay paying double to go on vacation<BR><BR>

Marilyn

Rex, of course the company might not be publicly traded -- it was a joke of sorts. But I used to own a privately held company and did a fair amount of business travel to Europe and Asia.<BR><BR>Even as the owner and with the power to spend whatever I wanted, I would NEVER have spent $9000 on hotel and food for 2 weeks, even if I took someone with me, even if I was entertaining key customers or distributors. That's almost $650 per day, and I believe uhoh said it did not include airfare. <BR><BR>My point was that it seems like an extravagant amount of money to spend for a young person (whose experience is necessarily limited by her age) on a business trip. I would not want to own stock in a company that was so poorly run.