I hope you had a very nice Thanksgiving. I went over to Central Park and watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from inside the park. It’s a tradition that I love doing. Plus, the weather yesterday (and even today) was incredible! I missed Hello Kitty, but I got to see one of my favorite floats – Snoopy and Woodstock!
In lieu of the traditional turkey dinner, I went out to an Indian Restaurant downtown last night. I love this place – it’s a hoot, has good inexpensive food, and it’s BYOB! Dinner was delicious!
As I sit here at work (yes, I am at work today), the emails flashing “black friday” are coming at me fast and furious. It is making me nervous, like I need something to calm down. I love shopping and I love sales, but …. this is lunacy. I need a valium. Are you shopping today? Have you visited the stores (and, if so, did you survive?) or shopping online? Are you seeing any fabulous deals? What am I missing? Oh, feel free to share please – I get vicarious pleasure from your bargains. Are those deals in the manufactured spend arena, travel arena, or just “I want it and I don’t care” arena? Are there any travel deals? Remember the mistake fare from last Christmas day?
Here’s all I bought today. A Glossybox deal from Gilt. When I logged on, I found out I had a $25 credit from a prior MastercardPass deal, and there was 25% off code on top of that (Blackout25). On top of that I had a $50 egift card I’d bought months ago on Ebay for $40. That brought the price down to something silly.
I also bought some kind of juice cleanse from Urban Daddy. There was also a Black Friday deal, so the $99 deal came down to something like $75 and I had a bunch of credits. I’ve never done a juice cleanse but have always been curious to try it. I’ll give you warning when I do this.
Lastly, there was a 40% off promotion from Desigual a Spanish apparel company I like. There was free shipping for only 3 hours, which I just missed. I phoned the customer service line and was told they will have the same special on Monday with free shipping, so I should wait. This is a good point to remember – today is not the only day of sales. There will be more, and many better sales in the days to come. Incidentally, TopCashback is offerering 10.6% cash back for Desigual. Not bad.
If you don’t have a TopCashBack account, it’s my favorite of the cashback portals. You may sign up with my referral link.
I would like to buy a camera, but I haven’t seen the one I’m looking at on sale yet.
That’s about it for me. I need to catch up on my blogging — I still need to write about South Africa, TBEX Fort Lauderdale and Ecuador. Soon, soon, soon.
In the meantime, I’m trying to finish up work early so I can get away for the weekend with Won’t Run.
A New York frequent flyer who elegantly combines her passions for worldwide travel, running a gazillion marathons all over the globe and staying fit ... without sacrificing her fancy for good wine and food.
Actually, you factor a bit into what I bought on Black Friday!
As you know from comments I posted on your blog post about your experience on Jet Airways, I have an upcoming itinerary involving 4 long legs on Jet. Back in April 2015, I saw some breaking-news, do-it-now tweets about a $607 r/t fare JFK >> JNB. Excited by the low fare and the idea of actually going to southern Africa, I did no due diligence on Jet Airways. I figured a partner of Etihad couldn’t be that bad. Having flown from the west coast to Israel many, many times in coach, I figured I’d survive. And I feared that if I delayed too much to check it out, the fare would disappear. So I bought tickets for myself and my husband, the catalyst to start planning a long wished for trip to southern Africa. If not for that deal, I seriously doubt we would be going to Africa in Feb.
But I soon began to hear “horror stories” about flying Jet Airways in coach, your experience included. The drawbacks of our outgoing itinerary of JFK >> AUH >> JNB, with a 14 hour overnight layover in AUH, which I’d brushed off back in April, got more problematic as the trip got closer. Was it worth clearing customs and getting a hotel, only to have to clear security a few hours later? Alternatively, how miserable would we be spending the night in the airport? Neither option seemed all that good, nor did a super expensive night at an airport hotel within security. I began to consider looking for award tickets, but procrastinated, knowing how hard and frustrating it can often be to book award flights.
Today, when I saw that SAA was offering $643 nonstop r/t JFK >> JNB tickets, I decided to go for that. We were able to add 3 days to our trip since we’ll have less time in the air and we also used the opportunity to add a few days more at the end. The prospect of nonstop JFK >> JNB >> JFK on SAA in both directions is significantly more appealing than what we have on Jet, even if it still is coach.
So now I need to cancel the nonrefundable Jet tickets. I did buy trip cancellation insurance back in April, so we won’t be out for the full price, but I will deliberately procrastinate now, hoping for a schedule change serious enough for us to be able to cancel for a full refund.
Other than that, I tend to avoid Black Friday. We did do a couple of separate orders from Amazon yesterday, stacking a promo code with an Amex Offer and also taking advantage of the current 10% Chase Freedom CB offer. But I’ve never been one for brick-and-mortar door busters, and I didn’t change that yesterday!
Happy Thanksgiving, and enjoy the rest of the weekend!