{"id":43879,"date":"2025-03-27T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=43879"},"modified":"2025-03-24T14:10:12","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T21:10:12","slug":"splitwise-app-free-lounge-access-most-comfortable-airlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/splitwise-app-free-lounge-access-most-comfortable-airlines\/","title":{"rendered":"Splitwise App\/Free Lounge Access\/Most Comfortable Airlines"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Georgia is a Great Value<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Greetings from the Republic of Georgia, where I\u2019ve been leading a group tour that involved cultural sightseeing, days of skiing, and lots of food and wine debauchery. This was the only country in my living abroad book<\/a> that I hadn\u2019t set foot in personally, so I\u2019m glad to see it is still holding up well on the value side. One-day ski passes are $29, beer and wine are half or less what you\u2019d pay in the USA or Canada, and a subway ride is under 40 cents. My first hotel when arriving early was $32 per night and we stayed at one of the nicest ones in Tbilisi, right next to Parliament, for under $100 per night. My local expat friends Tom and Meg from Eat This! Tours<\/a> say the majority of monthly rents are currently running $400 to $1,400 so it doesn\u2019t cost much to live well here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Splitwise App for Group Travel<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Separate checks are a server\u2019s worst nightmare if they will even do it, but usually they won\u2019t for a group in countries where that is not common. I used the Splitwise app<\/a> for the first time this month as 10 of us dined and drank around Georgia together, with one person picking up the check each time then entering what other individuals owed into Splitwise. After 19 \u201cCheck please\u201d transactions, most of the expenses canceled out and I owed 3 people a small balance that added up to $49 total. Because of this app, we hardly ever needed cash (and people could take turns racking up travel points).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Cheaper Priority Pass Back Door<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you don\u2019t fly business class or have another way into specific airline lounges, Priority Pass is a great alternative in most international airports. I wanted to have it in place before a long layover in the Istanbul airport, but to get it included with a credit card now usually requires an annual fee of $400 or more, more than just buying membership outright<\/a>. I found one exception though. This Altitude Connect card<\/a> from US Bank only gets you four included lounge visits a year, but it has no annual fee, no foreign transaction fees, and you get 20K travel portal points after a $1,000 minimum spend. So yes, I got my Istanbul food and drinks gratis in the nice lounge there instead of paying some of the highest airport prices in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

World\u2019s Best Airlines<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been flying on Turkish Airlines on this trip, which was #10 overall in the full-service category of this list of the best airlines in the world<\/a>. Rankings are all about the criteria used and the criteria in this one are the factors that really matter once you\u2019re on the plane, like seat pitch, meal\/drink service, entertainment, and charging outlets. Taking the top spots were Korean Air and Qatar in the full-service category, JetBlue and Westjet in the hybrid category, and AirAsia and Jetstar in the budget category. Click the link to see a few other classifications for regional airlines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of\u00a0A Better Life for Half the Price<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0The World\u2019s Cheapest Destinations<\/em>. See\u00a0past editions here,<\/a>\u00a0where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nomadico issue #148<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13684,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[2385],"tags":[2386],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43879"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13684"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43880,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43879\/revisions\/43880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}