Category Archives: travel

July 29, 2011

Surprise!

By simply three cents

I absolutely love surprises. But I’m never usually the surprisee. More often than not, I am the surpriser.

Surprise success yet again! I made it to Florida and was able to surprise my grandma for the weekend. I never tell her when I am coming and I’ve done these surprise trips for what seems like a billion times. I am pretty sure she has caught on by now – especially when I show up near her birthday or a few times for Mother’s Day – but the surprise is just so.much.fun.

I do realize that surprising an 80-year-old woman is probably not the best idea but she is usually sitting down when I surprise her. She is going to be 81 on Sunday and aren’t birthdays about celebrating with the ones you love?

Leave a comment   |  tags: | posted in just silly, things that make me smile, travel

July 23, 2011

What gets you excited about travel?

By simply three cents

I’m not offering $50 like Wandering Earl…but I am curious.

Wandering Earl had asked his readers (I’m one of many!) last week what gets you excited about travel?

Here was my answer. Tell me yours! Or tell Earl (his contest is over, but there are some great answers out there)!

My ‘moment’ is as soon as I press purchase for airline tickets. Since I’m always researching and planning and dreaming, the ‘purchase’ button seals the deal. When I booked the flights for my recent trip to Argentina, it was nearly midnight, I had work the next day and all I could do was jump up and down on the bed in excitement. And I should add, I’m in my thirties.

Leave a comment | posted in things that make me smile, travel, wanderlust

July 15, 2011

On the Way to Cape May!

By simply three cents

Tonight I will be heading to Cape May, a beach town along the Jersey Shore, with two dear girlfriends. This is our yearly girlfriend getaway, and I trust we will continue to make these yearly trips until we are old and gray.

The three of us started our annual trip a few years ago. We started in Chicago (when one of us was living there) in December 2008 and then we did Boston (it was quite chilly) in October 2009. Then we decided enough with these cold weather trips, and we went to St. Lucia in April 2010 (where they had weeks of no rain before we arrived, but for us, it rained every day except the day we came in, and left). This year we are headed closer to home to a small Jersey Shore* town called Cape May, in  the middle of July 2011.

Fingers crossed we get good weather. Even if we don’t, we honed our card playing skills in St. Lucia. Rummy, War, what have you. It could be time for a rematch. But Mother Nature, if you’re listening, we’d really, really like the sun to shine while we are beach bound.

For you loyal readers, who know I post once a day, or schedule posts so it looks like I post once a day, I won’t be posting while I am away. I want to unplug! But I will come back to the days I was gone and post daily trip reports / stories when I return. So keep an eye out.

And now, to entertain you with a popular song with the locals…On the Way to Cape May.

* For those of you only familiar with the Jersey Shore thanks to the TV show of the same name, this is not one of those kinds of towns. Most of the shore is not like that either. But where we are headed, we shouldn’t have any Snooki sightings. Or anyone like her either.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , | posted in things that make me smile, travel, travelogues

July 11, 2011

Souvenirs

By simply three cents

What to buy? My criteria are that it is small, simple and easy to get in any place and really easy to bring home. Sometimes I fail with some of my purchases but my absolute must are magnets!

I try to make sure the magnet has some kind of reference to the trip if possible. And I will make sure to get one from each place. So an eleven-day trip to Argentina resulted in a total of nine magnets and a ten-day trip to Croatia raised me seven magnets.

I hate getting magnets as gifts because according to my ‘rules’ I must have been there! The magnets I get as gifts are for the fridge. The magnets I acquire on my travels are on these big magnetic boards reserved solely for magnets collected on my travels. Weird maybe, but it’s my ‘thing!’

For example:

  • Atlanta, Georgia, it was hot, so my magnet has a thermometer on it
  • Cancun, I was there for spring break, so it was a bottle opener (serving two purposes – souvenir and opening those bottles!
  • Scotland, magnet with bagpipes that play when you push the button
  • Breckenridge, a snowboard (though this is ironic because my friend and I did anything but participate in snow sports on that trip!)
  • Boston, a leaf, it was a fall trip
  • Dewey Beach, Delaware, a crab that was a bottle opener
  • Niagara Falls, Canada, the boat that goes under the falls
  • San Juan Islands, Washington state, whales
  • Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, bats
  • San Gimignano, Italy, a magnet in the shape of the skyline. they call it the Medieval Manhattan because of its medieval architecture, which look like tall buildings, but I must clarify, they are tall for Tuscany 😉
  • Brussels, a magnet in the shape of the Mannekin Pis
  • Ushuaia, Argentina, a penguin since we walked with them!
  • Hvar, Croatia, a ship, not exactly the boats we took to and from and around the island, but we did spend a lot of time on the water
  • Texas, a magnet in the shape of the state. Now, I have covered a lot of ground in the great state of Texas, with two road trips and various business trips, but for my first trip through and within Texas, I thought a map would be best suited for road trip number one.
  • Austin, Texas, a magnet shaped like a guitar, since on that first road trip we spent a lot of time listening to live music, as one does in Austin, Texas.
  • El Calafate, Argentina (where we hiked a glacier), the magnet is shaped like hiking boots with crampons
  • Vegas, a casino chip magnet
  • Keuka Lake, Finger Lakes, New York state and Nantucket, QKA, FLX and ACK, respectively (those stickers on the backs of cars – these are magnets like that)
  • Seville, Spain, a magnet in the shape of a typical Andalusian home
  • Grand Canyon, Arizona, a magnet with typical native sketching

Some places get more than one magnet.

  • Argentina, we visited three towns, and did lots of activities in those towns, so where there’s a gift shop there I am (see above for some of the magnets collected on the trip!). I also got a magnet showing off a main street – Av. Corrientes – in Buenos Aires, which is where my great-grandma was born. Since we traveled within the country, I couldn’t leave without a magnet of the physical shape of the country. Argentina’s flag is blue and white, and the flag was proudly displayed everywhere we went, I found a magnet with the country in blue and white, how apropos!
  • Costa Rica, several, including a photo magnet of the boyfriend and I ziplining in the rainforest, but also one of this flower native to the region that I fell in love with
  • Paris, France, two: one of the Eiffel Tower and one of the Notre Dame – which was our view in our second round of accommodation
  • Annapolis, Maryland, a sailboat AND the goat with the Navy flag
  • Croatia and Bosnia, again visited several places within the two countries – Dubrovnik, Split (where this big statue was a main draw – so of course that’s my chosen magnet) and Plitvicka Jereza, the national park, so I collected accordingly!

And sometimes an event gets its own magnet, with another for the state it happened in…

  • Kentucky, a magnet from the 133rd running of the Derby I went to and another of a horse, after all, a friend and I did spend time driving through Kentucky and the lush green fields to get there…
  • Which is why my magnet of Ohio, is also a shape of the state

One magnet I regretfully did not get was in Korcula, Croatia. They say it’s the birthplace of Marco Polo and I could not find the ‘perfect’ magnet. And now I don’t have one. The island was so small that other islands did not carry any magnets from that island. In my heart I will know I was there.

Is there something specific that you collect on your travels?

Leave a comment | posted in in and around the world, things that make me smile, travel

July 9, 2011

If I knew then what I know now

By simply three cents

A friend and I were new to the travel scene. We had only arrived in London a few weeks prior. She would live there for three months, and me for six. A few weekends in, we had decided that we wanted to go to Paris! Cue Bonjour Paris from Funny Face.

Oh Paris. We couldn’t wait to get there. Everything romantic about Paris that one would think of, we had in our heads. Romance! Fashion! Shopping! Sophistication! Food!

Yes, that Paris probably exists. But since we were recent college grads and not really rolling in the dough, that Paris would have to wait. Our fine French cuisine was perfectly fine. Fine dining it was not. We had perfectly fine crepes from street carts, and assorted cheeses and omelets and wine. Oh the wine. We drank it like water that weekend. Hey, it was cheaper than a soda, and we were trying to stay on some semblance of a budget for our weekend getaway!

We had arrived by train late at night and we had booked a small hotel. We didn’t want to stay at <gasp> hostels (soon after this trip I realized hotels would be my new best friend during my travels). This was a small, cheap place.

If TripAdvisor was around back then, we didn’t know. And if it was, from my memory of the place, it would not be highly rated.

I remember was that the blankets were like potato sacks, the lock to our door was broken and the climb to our room was at least 6 flights of rounded staircase.

Did I mention we packed high heel boots? We had no business doing that because fancy dinners and fashion nights out were not in our future. We also packed skirts and cute tank tops. Did I mention this was the middle of November and Paris weather is not warm that time of year.  We didn’t realize this of course, thinking, it was Paris! Ooh la la!

The plus I remember about the place we stayed, was that we had one of those romantic balconies you think of when thinking of Parisian architecture. Granted it was not very deep so we basically stood with our back to the building clutching the wrought iron balcony directly in front of us.

What my friend did not tell me was that our terrace, connected to every other terrace, oh, and that terrace door, did not lock.

This place was so far out of the center of Paris, we couldn’t even see the Eiffel Tower. This would not be a big deal since we didn’t know if you could see the Eiffel Tower from everywhere in the city, except we found out later that night that we were nearly thirty minutes outside of Paris. Maybe even further.

So what are you to do when arriving late into a strange city displeased with your chosen accommodation? Get drunk at the local bistro of course!

And get drunk we did. I believe we ate cheese omelets (only thing we could read on the menu) and drank more than enough red wine. Somehow the two of us started speaking French via my Spanish skills and met a few locals. I remember that we decided to get drunk in order to tolerate the accommodations. I do not recommend this.

Needless to say we got back to our place, laid down our heads and woke up very hungover. This is why I don’t recommend this. We were hungover in gross digs, that we were already repulsed by. It was slow-moving but we were ready and willing to find new digs for our remaining two nights in Paris!

The place we found overlooked the Notre Dame, in a great neighborhood, and to this day I have no idea how much we spent. I can tell you that when I started backpacking like a proper backpacker, never again did I stay in a place that had an elevator AND en suite televisions! Not only did this place have an elevator, it was one of those old school cargo elevators where you could see out as you went up. And the televisions, had English-speaking stations with French subtitles.*

While this place wasn’t the Four Seasons, for two clueless backpackers…we were sitting pretty for two nights. I laugh now because we had so much to learn.

* Having televisions with English channels in a country whose native language is not English actually annoys me now. I love not really knowing what’s on the news but trying to figure it out. You are totally taken out of your comfort zone and it turns into very basic language learning. I find it fun.

2 Comments   |  tags: | posted in packing, things that make me smile, train travel, travel, travelogues

July 8, 2011

Airport Insecurity

By simply three cents

Ah so.

Setting: International Departures. Near gate for JFK flight at San Jose airport in Costa Rica. June 2008. [For one to be at this point, one had to go through airport security already.]

Main Character: A man (we’ll call him shopper man) shops at duty-free before boarding his flight (incidentally, it’s also my flight). He buys a huge bottle of Jack Daniels.

Act 1; Scene 1: Boarding starts. But before passengers get to the actual gate to get on the plane, travelers must go through a second round of security. Tables, wands, security is at the ready to search bags again. 

I didn’t see shopper man purchase the bottle of JD, but I am nosy, and right behind him, and he told security that he bought it at duty-free…he even showed his receipt noting the purchase just a few minutes prior! But security takes away his HUGE bottle of JD. The duty-free shop was probably less than fifty feet (I’m bad at math but the boyfriend said that’s a good guess) from the gate. In fact our gate was next to duty-free. It was RIGHT.OVER.THERE.

Both of our mouths, as observers, drop in shock. Shopper man’s mouth did a little more than drop with some key phrases and emotions. He was given the option to check the bottle in his luggage. We moved through and left the poor guy at one of the tables not knowing what he would do.

Act 1; Scene 2: Shopper man boarded sans bottle.

He was seated near us and the boyfriend asked what happened after we went through. Shopper guy told us he was given the option to check it (which we knew) but what we didn’t know was that the process to ‘check it’ required him to go back to the main terminal so they could try to retrieve his bag. Then he could put the bottle in and check it. 

Because of the time and uncertainty involved, the likelihood that he and his bag would both make the flight was not worth it to him. With the departure time closing in, shopper guy declined and basically donated the bottle to the security team at that gate at the SJO airport for their after work party I am sure. Cheers.

***

 There was no way to know. And there was no way to argue. If he had chosen to check it at that point, who knows if it would have made it on the flight since we were already well into the boarding process. I’m pretty sure he dropped a nice sum on that bottle thinking it would be okay to bring home. Alas, it wasn’t. It was an expensive lesson for him, and a good one for us.

We also experienced the unexpected during a layover in Frankfurt. After flying from Newark to Frankfurt, we had to go through security before we could make our way to the gate for the Frankfurt to Dubrovnik leg. At Frankfurt’s security we were scrutinized for having carry-on approved (via US standards) liquids in our carry-ons. Mind you, this passed muster on the flight from Newark. So major screening ensued.

More recently, we had some extra pesos to spend before boarding a flight baack to the States from Buenos Aires (EZE). Like shopper guy in Costa Rica, we were drawn to the Malbecs at duty-free. We had quite a bit of money to spend (failing miserably at my mission to spend all funny money before arriving at any foreign airport) so we loaded up on boxes of famous Argentine cookies, and one bottle of wine. We both had the Costa Rica incident on the brain and we were only willing to gamble with our funds to potentially lose one bottle. Lucky for us, we didn’t lose it. At EZE they package the bottle in a sealed bag that once broken, you’re safe. That seal must not be tampered with and remain as is until you pass through US Customs to avoid confiscation.

Security screening is not consistent within the US. Don’t expect it to be elsewhere around the world. I’ve seen it first hand and I know that you’ve got to take it in stride. Because the rules are inconsistent across the board, and the world, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Traveling is all about expecting the unexpected and sometimes you are simply at the mercy of what that particular airports rules are that day, at that time. It’s all for our safety anyway, isn’t it?

What have YOU seen in airports that makes you go hmmm?

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , | posted in travel

June 25, 2011

Pulling the Trigger (no not a gun) – Booking Airfare

By simply three cents

For someone who loves to fly and visit her family, she sure is afraid to pull the airline booking trigger. And because of that, she got screwed. Royally screwed. Knew it was going to be a last-minute fare, and saw the price at $275 over a week ago, but hesitated. Then $346…and was about to book but had to leave for work, so didn’t book it. Then for days the price hovered in the mid 400’s…and she wished it to go back to $346. The mid 400 price turned out to be an upper 400 if you added all the booking fees, seat fees and gas fees. Which eventually turned into a low 500 fare, and now with stops.

While she thinks it would be worth every penny, everyone in her family told her she was nuts to give that kind of money to the fickle and greedy airlines, especially if she were to book now to go in just a few more weeks, the airfare searches come up for half the price.

So she didn’t book.

But she still continued the fruitless search with enough time to leave for the airport to get the last flight of the night. And with that, came the best. idea. ever.

For those people who can travel at a moments notice, literally, there should be a way to negotiate with the airlines for a fare. I mean, there’s probably only a small segment of the population that would be intrigued by this anyway, and it’s a chance for the airlines to get a few more dollars for empty seats they probably wouldn’t have been able to fill otherwise.

Most people book weeks, if not months, in advance. Getting those last few seats filled could prove profitable. This gal does hate the middle seat but for this last chance opportunity, she’d jump at the chance to get away, right. this. second.

As one of those people who can be ready to leave with a moments notice, thanks to an already packed toiletries bag, and clean clothes in the closet, there’s no reason not to go. Especially when ‘the price is right for that last-minute flight.’ And, you, yes, you, the first airline to bring this idea to fruition, I even provided you with a spot-on tagline.

The idea is genius, right?

Leave a comment | posted in travel

June 20, 2011

Vacation All I Ever Wanted, Vacation Had to Get Away

By simply three cents

Tomorrow is the first official day of summer, and with it comes a few months of peak traveling season.

I’m still sorting out my summer. Some long weekends in my near future include a trip to Florida, Cape May, New Jersey and Washington DC.

For August, Iceland is still a front-runner. 20 hours of sunlight sounds pretty cool to me.

Where are you headed?

Leave a comment | posted in holidays, travel, wanderlust

June 13, 2011

Bear with Me

By simply three cents

Good thing we had this rental car!

At Plitvice Lakes, (click the link to see a collection of Google Images – the place was seriously amazing), the boyfriend and I were staying at a small lodge. We had arrived a little on the late side and hadn’t eaten since lunch so we were starving.

We were told the nearest restaurant was about half a mile away. We were told it was walkable, and after being in the car for several hours, we had decided that it would be nice to walk.

What we didn’t realize that there weren’t any sidewalks and we had to walk on the side of the road all the way to the restaurant. This wouldn’t have been bad on its own but because this was a bit in the middle of nowhere, okay, it WAS the middle of nowhere, there were very few street lights (read: one or two for the duration of our walk) and we were certain that oncoming traffic would have a problem seeing us. There were lots of tall trees, making every little noise or animal movement that much more amplified.

What we didn’t anticipate was hearing the locals at dinner tell us about the prevalence of black bears in the area. We were in the land of mountains, forest, waterfalls and lakes, so it made sense.

At some point during dinner I had decided that there was no way I was walking back to the lodge. After going back and forth with conversation that was along the lines of … him: I’ll handle the bear, you just run and me: are you crazy?, the boyfriend told me that he would walk back alone, get the car and come back to pick me up.

When he left, what I didn’t anticipate was how nervous those few minutes would be. What if he got attacked by a bear? How long do I wait before I get worried? What the heck am I supposed to do? Then, more practical questions like , will they speak English at the hospital? What will our families say? How would I return the car?

Thankfully he made it back with the car in a reasonable amount of time, picked my scared ass up and we headed back to the lodge together, without a bear sighting.

3 Comments   |  tags: | posted in just silly, things that make me smile, travel, travelogues

June 12, 2011

Cruze-ing in Croatia

By simply three cents

One of the great things about traveling overseas is discovering things before they come big in the States. Or, seeing something in the States that later gets introduced overseas.

This post is about the former.

While traveling throughout Croatia in September 2010, the boyfriend and I found ourselves in Split (ok, I had planned it that way). We had started our journey in Dubrovnik and were working our way north to fly home through Zagreb. Prior to arriving in Split we had already traveled on the Adriatic Sea on…

a Jadrolinija ferry (seen in the distance in this photo) that was like a no-frills cruise ship.

 

a Krilo Jet catamaran – seen here…

 

and various city buses, mini vans, car taxis, water taxis and our feet, thus far.

Now that we were heading inland, the boyfriend and I wanted to rent a car to get from Split to Zagreb. The Split-Zagreb leg could have been done by bus or train but we wanted to stop at Plitvice Lakes in the mountains where public transportation was spotty at best.

In fact, we were told that if at all possible, to avoid taking buses around that part of the country because service was unreliable, and missing one bus could leave you stranded for a day or two. If we did get stranded, there would be no car rental agencies in the Plitvice Lakes area so hitchhiking to Zagreb would be the only option. That option was immediately nixed by my boyfriend, so a rental car it would be.

We had arrived in Split (via the Krilo Jet catamaran) from the island of Hvar around 8am. We ate breakfast and before setting out to explore Split, we had to secure a car for later that afternoon. Mind you:

1 – we hadn’t made any reservations and this was only the start of shoulder season
2 – we would need to return it in Zagreb, making this a one-way rental – more difficult to secure at this time of year we were told
3 – we wanted to leave town around 4pm.

Either way, the world wasn’t going to end if we weren’t able to rent a car. We could have spent the night in Split to wait for a car, or rerouted ourselves for the last few days of our vacation. If it was that big of a deal, we would have made a reservation. This is why it’s called traveling on the fly! It’s fun, and it allows room for spontaneity. You just need to realize your ‘ideal’ plan may not come to fruition. But if it does (and this time for us it did), it feels like quite an accomplishment. Sometimes you have absolutely no control over the situation and you really just need to go with it.

Anyway, we wanted to try to see if we would be able to secure a car, so off we went. We showed up, unannounced, at a rental agency, expecting that this would be easy. After all it was the off-season, and we didn’t need it until later that afternoon. Um. Not so easy.

Our fifth, and final, stop happened to be the only rental car agency that had an available car, later that day, that could be used as a one-way rental. We signed the paperwork and said we’d be back in a few hours to pick up our wheels.

Fast forward. We return to the rental agency and the guy told us that he had a few cars from various carmakers on his lot, but thought it would be amusing to give his only American car, to the Americans.

I was slightly saddened that we wouldn’t get a European car. I had grandiose dreams of speeding down Croatian highways in a Fiat convertible because when in Rome, but whatever. We were lucky to even have a car at this point.

So we settled into our Chevy Cruze, which neither of us had ever heard of before, waved back to the guy who got us a car, and headed out on the highways of Croatia.

Months later, we see prominent billboard advertising for the Chevy Cruze in Times Square, and elsewhere.

We had enjoyed our ride, and clearly others, here in the States do too – as the Cruze was the best-selling compact car in the US in April 2011.

And we tried it first.

1 Comment   |  tags: | posted in travel, travelogues