This week’s podcast is honestly just a selfish exercise for Gunnar, who uses his coworker’s expertise to plan a trip to the 2026 Olympics, get tips on flying with kids, and brag about how to make Thrifty Traveler Premium the best flight deal alert service out there. This week we welcomed Thrifty Traveler’s Product Manager, Tracey Burtch, to talk about how her time representing Team USA Figure Skating sparked a love of travel and how she now devotes her career to helping others do the same. Plus, Tracey recaps her biggest (and embarrassingly recent) travel mistake and some of her favorite deals ever.
This week’s podcast is honestly just a selfish exercise for Gunnar, who uses his coworker’s expertise to plan a trip to the 2026 Olympics, get tips on flying with kids, and brag about how to make Thrifty Traveler Premium the best flight deal alert service out there. This week we welcomed Thrifty Traveler’s Product Manager, Tracey Burtch, to talk about how her time representing Team USA Figure Skating sparked a love of travel and how she now devotes her career to helping others do the same. Plus, Tracey recaps her biggest (and embarrassingly recent) travel mistake and some of her favorite deals ever.
00:00 - Finding something out: Introducing Thrifty Traveler’s best athlete (former Team USA figure skater and our product manager, Tracey Burtch!)
02:35 - Something hot: Tracey’s favorite deals of all time
05:00 - Something cold: An embarrassingly recent travel mishap
07:00 - The Extra Mile: How to evolve your travels over time – including Tracey’s “aha” moments
11:00 - Making Thrifty Traveler better and easier for travelers to use as Product Manager of TT
14:45 - How Tracey is pulling off a trip to the 2026 Italy Olympics
23:00 - Booking TAP Air Portugal business class and where to fly to visit the Italy games
27:00 - A super selfish listener (host?) question about tips for flying with children – and the layover that “just kept giving”
30:40 - On the Spot: Choose your next trip…off the studio wall
Produced by Gunnar Olson
Edited by David Strutt
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo. Welcome to the show. I'm Gunnar Olson here with Thrifty Traveler executive editor, Kyle Potter. But our special guest today is Idaho Steelhead's hockey season ticket holder, our team's only cool travel parent, the best booker in Boise, Michigan's own, its Thrifty Traveler product manager, Tracy Burch. Tracy, welcome to the show.
Wow. That was quite the intro. I was not expecting that, but thank you. You were expecting the Steelhead's reference, though. Right?
You get it everywhere? All the time. Yeah. All the time. I'm well known in Boise for that.
But no. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Of course. We love talking Steelhead's.
Alright. So, Tracy, we have to find something out to start the show. You're by far the most accomplished athlete on the Thrifty Traveler team, by such a long shot too. Tell me about your sports career and how it launched your love of travel. Yeah.
Well, I don't know what that says about the best the rest of you. It's it says that I won the, Hockey Finder three point o beer league championship in 2015, and that was my pinnacle in sports. Wow. Well impressive. We'll hear that season story if we have time at the end of the episode, but onto the real athlete.
Well, thank you. I actually did a very unique form of figure skating. It's called synchronized figure skating. So it's the team version of the event. Did it growing up all through high school, traveled throughout the country, and was lucky enough to represent Team USA, in just outside of London and then in Prague as well.
So I feel like I've traveled quite a bit and saw a lot of ice rinks, but not much else. So it gave me just enough to, you know, kinda get that travel bug and, you know, just walking through the streets of Prague, I think, really set me off. Yeah. Yeah. That is so cool.
Even if you have to, be in a lot of ice rinks along the way, which are typically not the most beautiful buildings in every city. They are not. Ice rinks can take you to a lot of cool places, so that's that's really awesome. We're gonna dig into all of that. We're gonna talk to Tracy about all things travel, the things she's doing to help people travel more for less here at Thrifty Traveler, and then she's gonna take us through how she booked her family to Italy for the twenty six Winter Olympics.
All that and more. Welcome back to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Alright. Let's jump into something hot and something cold where we look at the good and the bad news out there for travelers. And we're gonna do something hot and cold with Tracy, and we'll start with something hot.
What's the best travel deal or maybe a few of the best travel deals you've ever booked? Yeah. So I think my favorite redemption would be probably my first ever big redemption. So my husband and I went to Japan. We flew Singapore Air business class, and did, you know, Park Hyatt Kyoto, which was just huge highlight.
You know, not an not an everyday trip. So that's really when I changed him from being hesitant to kind of the new hobby I was taking and really got him excited about being my p two on this. Yeah. There's there's the moment where we all have our own moment in points and miles, and then there's the one where we get our spouse on board, and that's maybe the most important one. It every single one of us in the company has a has some version of that story where, like, your spouse worries if they, like, have to worry about you in this weird scam you're getting into, and then all of a sudden they're in, like, a lie flat seat or going somewhere for $200 when it should cost 900 or a thousand dollars.
And, like, oh, no. Okay. This is real. Alright. This is pretty cool.
How was Singapore business class? I've never flown it. It was great. It was our first experience, and, yeah, you can't beat it. Yeah.
That's a that's a really fancy seat. That's really nice. Any other deals that jump out at you, that you've booked over the years? Yeah. So this next one is more for, I think, sentimental reasons.
Recently booked the Andas Papagayo Peninsula, came through as one of our hotel deals and was actually the first deal I booked since working here. I went against the flight first rule, but I was already gonna be down in Dallas for an event and was able to quickly and cheaply add it on. So really excited to do that, coming up here. Yeah. I can't wait to see, what kind of photos you bring back from that place because it looks really, really cool.
And you got it right before it got more expensive. Right? I think it was right before the detail. Yeah. So I booked it when it was, 30,000 points a night, and I was debating whether or not to take the trip or not.
And I told myself if they devalued it, I would take the trip, and here I am. That's a good way to do it. That's a good way. A very good reminder that none of us are above getting high on our on our own supply. Like, we are the first ones to book these deals.
It's like we get the deal out, and then we go and be immediately incredibly selfish and book it for ourselves. Yeah. Alright. That's, enough winning. Let's let's dig into something cold.
Any good big travel mishaps that you've had over the years? Oh, I have one that is embarrassingly recent. So part of our Olympic trip, we booked our family of four business class on the way home, TAP Portugal. We're gonna be flying from Zurich, to Chicago. Booked that, found out that my sister-in-law would be coming to the Olympics, and we only had a day of overlap.
So quickly got on, got excited about seeing her, canceled my flight so that I could rebook it. Then I read the fine print that there was a 100 plus dollar cancellation fee per passenger. So I quickly called up Air Canada, who we booked it through, and undid my cancellation, which I didn't know was possible. But, thankfully, my mishap, wasn't quite as bad as it could've been. Yeah.
You must've gotten a good agent because I don't know if they should've let you do that, but that's that's pretty great. Call right away. Pick up the phone. Gunner called in, they would Air Canada would've told them to pound sand. Yeah.
They're like, no, man. You did this. You did this to yourself. I've I will be honest. I have never heard of an agent being able to uncancel a flight.
That's pretty amazing. Yeah. They quickly pushed me onto a different rep. So different department, but they made it happen, and I didn't have tell my husband that I, lost his $400. He's gonna really love this podcast episode when he hears that story.
Yeah. And, hey, kudos Air Canada. That's that's really good customer service to help someone undo a cancellation. But, yeah, we're gonna talk a lot more about this Olympics trip because I'm personally pretty obsessed with it because I think I'm gonna try and make something happen myself and, follow you guys out there. You know, hold a bedroom for me, whatever Airbnb you're staying at for everybody.
Yeah. Let's do it. We're gonna dig more into this trip, but first, we're gonna take a quick break. Alright. Welcome back.
We're gonna do the extra mile topic now where we dig a little deeper into something in the world of travel. And we're gonna talk a little bit about this Olympics trip, but I wanted to get a sense of kinda your travel journey, Tracy. How'd you get into travel in the first place besides, like you said, seeing it through rinks all over the world? Yeah. I think seeing the ice rinks and kind of the walk to and from the rink, just really got me interested in some of the areas.
I saw some beautiful parts of the country, some parts of the country maybe I don't need to see again. But yeah. Name and shame, please. No. We'll not do that, but it gave me just of enough of a touch to really know that I wanted to do more of that.
So I stopped skating when I went to college, you know, graduated and met my husband. We did kind of the one to two trips a year, but really knew that I wanted more of that. And was trying to actively figure out how I could get more of that in my life. Yeah. That's awesome.
I think that's the start of most people's journey in travel and doing what we do is realizing that you want to make this a part of your life. And then it turns to, oh, crap. I don't have enough money to make this a permanent part of my life. And then that's how you eventually kind of find your way into the world of whether it's just finding cheap flights and learning how to book hotels cheaply or definitely, you know, earning credit card points and airline miles and redeeming them. Yeah.
What, so was there, like, a, like, a credit card or a sign up bonus that got you into award travel in particular? And, you know, I assume, like, most of us, you started out with, like, the cheapest cash deals, but was there something that got you into the world of points and miles? Yeah. So I think, like, a lot of people, I had the Delta Airlines credit card for years. We moved on to Hilton credit card.
You know? I thought I was doing great. And then, 2022, I was following quite a bit of travel influencers, and, the Chase Sapphire Preferred had the it was a bonus 80 at that time. So like, you know what? I'm gonna try it.
And I think within span of the first six months, I had three new credit cards and was already trying to get my husband to sign up, and I went all in, very quickly. Yeah. Wow. You took a punt. Yeah.
What was it about that or the start of that just kind of you were pretty quickly going like, no. This is this is real, and I'm gonna start doing more of this. Was there, like, like, a particular deal after getting all those points or just getting more plugged into it because you started to feel the value? Yeah. I think it was I didn't realize what transferable currencies could do, and even I think that they were out there.
So when I got the CSP offer, started looking in. We booked our Japan trip very shortly after that. And it was a, you know, a trip we could not have afforded normally. And so I think just seeing that so quickly become a reality was why I wanted to do more and more. Yeah.
We talk with everybody on the team and everybody who comes on the show about that moment where it's it's that step beyond when you decide you're gonna make travel a part of your life and you something clicks where you start to understand how other people do so much of this and that the things that we talk about aren't in fact a scam. It's it's really important for starting the process slowly and not going too far. But then all of a sudden, you start to understand the basics and understand, like you did, the value of transferable currencies and being able to transfer chase points to more than a dozen different airlines and hotel programs and figure out how to do that. I mean, that's just such a important building block of getting into this world. Yeah.
Yeah. Steep learning curve. But, yeah, once you get there, there's no going back. Yeah. And, you know, helping people up that learning curve is exactly what we're doing and what you're doing here specifically, at Thrifty Traveler.
Tell us how you got here. Yeah. So I've been following Thrifty Traveler for a while. My sister-in-law actually worked in the office right next door, so she got me kind of on board with the Thrifty Traveler team and just watching all of the deals. And, I was at a point in my career where I knew I really wanted to be doing this travel thing full time.
I didn't know exactly what it looked like, what my career would take, but I knew that full time I wanted to be working in the travel industry. And when this job came open, I was like, this is it. I am all in. This is this has gotta be it. And, thankfully, it worked out.
Yeah. That's awesome. So tell us what, what are you doing here? What's your role here? How are, you helping travelers, travel for less?
This is the part where everybody quickly realizes that Tracy is so much smarter than everybody else in this office because you are the only person who can do what you do for this company. Have talented people here. I promise. It's just not the two of us. Not on camera.
No. No. I work with a very talented team that makes it all possible. So as a product manager, I am really looking at all of our digital products. So anything the customer touches, whether it's our email alerts, our website, kind of our member portal where you can log in and see the flight and hotel deals, our text messages.
I'm kind of the liaison to make sure that all of those are working properly. My main focus is really getting customer and employee feedback, what's working well, what isn't, trying to improve our products, just make them the best they can be. But I work with amazing team of designers and engineers who really put in the work and, design the products that we need and the customers need and, go ahead and execute those. Yeah. And improve them.
You have, we had a meeting recently with the whole company where Jared showed us one of the first ever Thrifty Traveler premium deals and what it looked like to be a premium member, probably ten years ago. And it's just it's really funny to see just how far it's come and how, like, sleek and easy our product is now because of you and your team's efforts. So it's, it's really fun to see, you know, all the hard work the premium team puts together, and it just comes out so beautifully, and it's so easy to use. So What's what's one or two of the projects that you've worked on since you started here that you're most proud of? Yeah.
I think most recently, we updated our kind of premium page to really tell subscribers what we offer, doing a lot of testing and still doing a lot of testing, to see what resonates with folks and what kind of information is valuable. So that was an exciting one to get on. That's huge. I there's we talk about this all the time with Peter and John finding flight deals, but also definitely on, like, kind of the tech and engineering side of just how manual everything we do is and how many, like, how many people across the across the company have their hands in making things happen. Things that I think the everyday consumer is probably just like, oh, that's just a template from a website that, you know, this company just used, which I'm sure there are some places where that's the case.
But, I mean, yeah, the meetings that I've been in with you and your team where we're, like, going painstakingly through the volume of clicks on each item element on that page and trying to figure out how to shift things in order to optimize it. And there's there's so much there to keep track of. Yeah. And, I mean, huge shout out. All of our customers provide great read every email, every comment, and I can't even tell you in the six ish months I've been here how many of those items we were able to quickly put into play.
So always encourage that, and that's what makes our products better. Yeah. Our product, looks as good as ever because of you and your team. So thank you for all your hard work. Now, I'm gonna make this selfish, and we're gonna talk about this Olympics trip because, you know, you when the Winter Olympics were first announced to be in Northern Italy and Milan and Cortina and some other cities around Northern Italy, I was it immediately piqued my interest just because what a cool place to travel.
Like, the opportunity to pair going to a Winter Olympics, which winter sports is just everything to me, and it is to you as well. And also to be able to go to that part of the world at the same time in the middle of ski season, it's it's too good to be true, it seems like. But you were able to pull something off right away. So tell us what you've booked so far and how you did it. Yeah.
We have been looking at the Winter Olympics in Italy since, I think, the day they were announced. So my husband and I have been talking maybe eight years about this trip, and, we knew we wanna take our family. So we have two young daughters, and booking a trip like this for a family of four is not easy. So I took a look right when things opened. We booked Air France the way there.
We are flying economy, 100, points for all of us. So Wow. Not too bad. Yeah. Huge shout out to Air France.
One of the most family friendly airlines, flying blue, great program with the 25% off discount for kids. That's just our staple to Europe. It's it's easy, and relatively inexpensive. So we booked that, getting straight into Milan. We're gonna stay there for a few days, at a Courtyard Marriott.
Wanna say it was 34,000 points a night. We did need two rooms for the family, which, is certainly challenging in Europe. The joys of family travel in Europe. Right? Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I find, flights were easy. The hotels were definitely the more challenging part, especially to do so on points and do so reasonably.
So couple days there, we're gonna head down to Modena, a smaller town kinda Southeast of Milan. Husband's a huge Ferrari f one fan, so we're gonna do some of the Ferrari things, maybe take a balsamic vinegar tour, just stay at an Airbnb, kinda escape the hustle bustle for couple days, and then back to Milan we go, and then up to Zurich to finish out the trip, and then flying Zurich to Chicago, on Tap Portugal business class. Cool. That'll be really great too. So, yeah, you're you had a few days in Milan at the games.
I guess, are you seeing because one of the things about this Olympics that I wrote about, on the website on thriftytraveler.com is that it is the most they're calling it geographically diverse games in history. Like, it's just extremely spread out and a lot of the games are you know, Cortina is a solid two and a half hours away by train if you're lucky. I think some of them is closer to, like, four hours. And then if you're driving around, I'm sure there's a lot of traffic and park and rides and things like that. So have you found any of the logistics to go see the games themselves tough, or are you kinda staying closer into Milan?
Yeah. Logistics were definitely challenging. Me being past figure skater, we're both huge hockey fans. You know, we got to stick around the ice rinks, thankfully. I still don't know which ice rink we're going to be attending.
There is one right by our hotel, and there's one that looks like it's quite far away. So I found some of the in information a little challenging at this point, but we were able to book a couple ice sports and kinda stay in the area. Definitely talked about trying some skiing and some of those, but, yeah, the travel was a little tough. Yeah. Yeah.
The Alpine events, the skiing is so far away. And then the skiing itself is spread out into a few different venues as well. But I was I was looking at some of the travel around there as I was, looking to possibly book something, and it's a little bit mind bending. Luckily, there's Google Maps to kinda decode some of it for you, but it's I'm sure, you know, a lot's going to change too because all these roads that they say are open right now once the Olympic games start, I'm sure they are gonna be closed off for buses and things like that. But I think getting on it early, especially if you're gonna get some trains, you know, between Cortina and Milan or, between Venice and Cortina.
Venice is a little actually a little closer to the Cortina side. But if you're gonna if you're looking to book some trains, I would get on that right away because, I'm sure they're gonna increase some capacity there, but I'm sure those seats are also going incredibly fast already. I do wonder with this Olympics, and I wonder, Kyle, if you think this is right, because we saw what happened in Paris last year where the Olympics, the demand wasn't quite there like they expected, and flights got really cheap at the last minute, and some of the logistics did too. Even hotels started to get cheaper at the last minute. Because this is happening in February, which is definitely not peak season in Europe, I wonder if we're heading towards a little bit of that, so there might be, like, some relief at the end.
Maybe that's just selfish thinking that someone hasn't booked anything yet. This is just a message to Air France and Tapper Portugal and Swiss. Just like, please help brother out. I mean, I think it's certainly possible. What we heard, before the summer games, in Paris was that every single major US airline and their foreign partners were basically saying business travel stops around the games, not just, you know, during the games, but, you know, basically, like, a week, sometimes two weeks before and a week, two weeks after.
And so I don't think it's out of the question that the same thing is gonna happen, you know, especially for flights in and out of Milan, which other than Rome is gonna be the busiest airport in that air in all of Italy. Right? So I think it's it's definitely a possibility. That said, I mean, I don't know if you could expect the same thing on the hotel side. I think that's probably a stretch, just because I don't think that there's the same amount of, you know, just rooms there as there is in and around Paris.
So I don't think they're gonna have as much of a problem filling rooms, let alone once you get up into the mountains. Tracy, what have you seen as you started booking hotels either kind of on the cash side or trying to redeem points and either trying to find availability or trying to find, like, a reasonable rate using something like Marriott points. Well, I did not wanna hear your prediction on the hotel side because that's what I'm hoping to really adjust if I have the opportunity. We are doing a mix of hotels and Airbnbs. I found that finding a hotel is very challenging.
I actually booked a just a smaller boutique hotel, about a outside an hour outside of the city, at first, and that was before I even knew what we had tickets to, before I had my flights because I was worried that would be very challenging component. We found something closer for a couple days, so I made the switch. There was able to use some points, but it's still prices are very high, and the points spots are, almost nonexistent at this point from what I've seen. I mean, the evergreen advice we always give on this show is first, follow the flight first rule. Get your flights booked.
Start planning from there. You did that, so we're in good shape. But I think more importantly, Gunnar, you talk all the time about the booking is never done until you like, you're on the plane, on the way on your trip. And you've already done this where you booked one hotel and got something locked in for fear of things just spiral spiraling out of control, but then you keep looking until you find something that might be better, whether it's redeeming points or booking at a cheaper rate. And I don't wanna be a downer.
I'm not I don't have a crystal ball. Like, I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know what's gonna happen, like, in my backyard in February, let alone what's gonna happen in the, Milan Cortina hotel market. So even if it is unlikely that, you know, there's gonna be bargains on hotels, you still gotta set yourself up for the ability to rebook something that's better. Yeah.
Yeah. Absolutely. And reminder, I'm traveling family of four. So if you're looking for one hotel room, hopefully, there's more options out there. Oh, I thought that was a I'm traveling with a family of four.
So, like, Gunnar, you can't Yeah. Sorry. My connecting room is already closed. Yeah. Bummer.
I'll pack a hammock and string it up outside. So let's talk I wanna talk just about your flight home. You're flying tap business class, which is awesome. That should be a nice comfy ride with a connection in Lisbon, I assume. You're flying out of Zurich.
Was that just where the space was, or did you already always plan to go to Zurich? So I actually have a goal of getting to 50 countries by the time I turn 50, and I have not yet been to Switzerland. So, we're flying out of Zurich. We just have a couple days. Don't know quite where we're gonna spend the time, but we figured it was a reasonable trek from Milan, get us maybe a little out of, the Olympic chaos for couple days on the end of the trip.
Yeah. And they had good award space. There definitely were award options from Milan. I was hoping to do, you know, maybe Emirates, but with what we are looking at in the family of four, it just it didn't work out this time. But there were decent options on the flight side for sure.
Yeah. I think the Olympic games themselves said, you know, maybe consider not just flying to Milan because they do have a lot of airports that are gonna be relievers for them in this event. Like, Innsbruck is kinda right across the Alps in Austria as well. And, like I like we said before, Venice is actually very close to a lot of the events, closer than Milan in many cases. And I'm sure people are just gonna decide this is my Italy trip and fly to Rome or elsewhere and in Italy as well.
So there are just, like, a lot of options if you're, you know, just searching for a flight to Milan and it's looking crazy right now, expand that search a little. Like, the those cities are all connected very easily by train. So as long as you can get train tickets, that is, during the games. But So other than, canceling and then uncanceling your ticket, what's the biggest thing you learned in the process of planning and booking this trip? Plan early.
Yeah. Yeah. I think getting those flights, you know, getting those hotels, keeping my eye out. I'm checking probably on a weekly basis to see if things change, what opens up. But, yeah, like you said, just stay on top of things, and, we'd obviously never done an Olympics before, so navigating the buying tickets, it was kind of a lotto situation in the beginning.
Now I think they might be opening up tickets a little more. But, yeah, it was getting the tickets was easier than I expected, but there's still a lot of open logistics. Train tickets are not open yet for Olympic time. So Yep. Good point.
If people are planning trips, there's plenty of websites you can get reminders set for as soon as those tickets open. So Nice. That's our last major thing to book. Very smart. What are you most excited for the games?
It's gotta be the figure skating event. It is, you know, for a long time, I was hoping that was gonna be me on the ice there, but I will happily sit back and, yeah, cheer on. We're going to the team event, so we'll get a little taste of all of the figure skating disciplines. Very excited for that. We also have hockey tickets.
Interestingly enough, I do not know to which game. They don't tell you. Yeah. So, it'll it could be great or it could be less than great. But Latvia versus Slovenia.
Bring it on. Yeah. Actually, bringing it back to the Idaho Steelheads. One Steelhead is potentially gonna be on the Italian hockey team. They're trying out.
So Wow. I might just have to cheer for Italy if he makes it. That's so exciting. Well, hey. Bring your skates over there for the figure skating event.
You never know. It's like every, washed up athlete's dream is that someday they're gonna look into the stands and be like, hey. Can anyone in the red, white, and blue come represent The US and skate for us today? Still in my jacket too. No.
Alright. Let's move on and help out a listener. This question is from the very handsome, articulate, and humble listener, Gunner from Minneapolis. That's me. Who asked Thank you.
Traveling with a young family makes me incredibly nervous. I have my first flights with my infant coming up in a few weeks. What is something you wish you know before your first flight with your kids? Yeah. I think my biggest tips, bring way more diapers, food, whatever you need than you expect.
More is more. Yeah. For the baby, not for goner. Right? Well, you never know.
Right? Maybe both. Yeah. We did I certainly don't wanna scare you, but we did have one layover that just kept giving. And I thought I had, I thought I had more diapers than I ever needed, and I was dangerously close.
And finding diapers in an airport is harder than you would imagine. So That is the most loaded use of the word giving that I've ever heard. Did they sell diapers at, like, the CNBC store in an airport? Or We could not find any. We ended up our plane took off, I think, just in time.
I was about to ask every parent I saw in the airport for some extra diapers there. Gonna say, I think that's probably the recourse then. If you run out, then you gotta start just looking at parents and looking as tired and as desperate as you can and hoping somebody helps you out. Walk around with a sign that says, please help. I need diapers.
I honestly, you'd probably get somebody within minutes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I would think so. But yeah. So pack a little heavy. Okay. You know, feeding during takeoff is a game changer and just, you know, know that things will happen.
And you whether you're having meltdowns at home or you're having meltdowns on vacation, they're gonna happen. But, you know, I think people are pretty forgiving if you're just doing what you can. And Yeah. Honestly, since, the past ten months since I've known I was going to have a kid, I've started noticing people on planes a little bit more, and I was just extremely nervous about being a nuisance to others. And what I have noticed a lot is that parents most travelers are super gracious about this stuff, and they don't actually care.
And my paranoia about it is probably unfounded. For every one douche on a plane who is going to complain about your kid, it's, there are 200 people who will gladly help. So I think, that's something I've definitely learned, but it's good it's good to hear over and over again from parents as well. And more is more. That's a good piece of advice too.
Then you move on to that phase where you hear another kid crying, and you're just, oh, thanks. That's not me. And it's a good feeling. You'll get there. Good.
Well, thank you for the advice. Anything any other tips? Or I just have to learn them as I go. You know, every kid's different. There's, if you're flying in economy, looking for some of those bassinet options when they're available, it's always a big help for sleeping infant, but, yeah, you'll probably be doing lots of wandering up and down the aisle, so enjoy.
Bouncing in the aisle on a Delta flight near you. You've already been the guy walking up and down the aisle taking photos and video, so this is, like, way more socially acceptable Yeah. Walking up and down the aisle with a newborn. I'm already the strangest guy on most planes that I fly on. So Coulda stopped that strangest guy just so we're clear.
Alright. If you want us to answer your question, email us at podcast@thriftytraveler.com, and your question might be featured in next week's show. And we will almost always take actual listener questions, but I had Tracy here, and I needed to take the opportunity to get my question in. So alright. We're gonna move on to on the spot, and it's Kyle's turn to put, Tracy and I on the spot.
Oh, man. Alright. Get ready. Strap in. So over Gunnar's shoulder, there is a gallery wall of nine different airports.
Tokyo Haneda, London Heathrow, Istanbul, the beautiful and spacious Fargo Hector International Airport, our hometown airport Minneapolis, New York City JFK, Sydney, Singapore, and Cape Town. Pick one airport you haven't been to fly to in order to visit. What would it be? You know, Fargo is tempting. Sorry, Jared.
Yeah. Jared, cover your ears. I have to pick Sydney. My daughter is coincidentally named Sydney, not after the place because we have not yet been. But she begs me probably on a weekly basis to go there, and, the dream is just to see some koalas in Australia.
So to Sydney, I go. Keep the dream alive, Sydney. Keep hounding your mom. That is a good answer. I have been to all of these except Sydney, Cape Town, and Fargo.
And for the sake of mixing it up, I'm gonna go with Cape Town. I also just like, I can't get enough of how beautiful that place looks and the images of that city carved out of that mountain and being right on the water there, it looks really, really cool. I would love to go to Cape Town someday. Don't know what the airport's like, but it must have been nice enough for you to put it on the wall. Yeah.
It's it's great. It's more about the location than the airport. The location is yeah. It's one of the most breathtaking cities on the planet and on the, you know, the southern tip, basically, of the largest continent. It's incredible.
Yep. So Cape Town, then Sydney, then Fargo, the most attainable one. The one that's a forty five minute flight away Yeah. Versus, Sydney is at least twenty hours. Cape Town is probably more like twenty eight.
So That's true. Whatever, man. Whatever, man. Alright. That's, that's gonna be it for the show today.
This was really fun. Thank you all for listening to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Please rate us five stars on your podcast platform of choice, and like and subscribe to the show on YouTube. Send this episode to somebody you know who's been noodling an Olympics trip next year. We've got the details for them here.
If you have feedback for us, send me a note, podcast@thriftytraveler.com. We would love to hear from you. Kyle, tell us more about the team. This episode was produced by your favorite host and a guy that I am sending to Fargo for a review trip, Gunnar Olson. It was edited by David Strutt.
Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot. Thanks, guys. Thanks. See you.