Bucket List # 2 - Sailing the Caribbean

Call it echoes of Captain Ron, or just the simple predilection of a beach bum, being able to spend some serious time aboard a sailboat has long been a desire of mine.  Actually, restricting it to sail boating is probably a little too much - just spending time on the ocean is great by me, but the added benefit of being able to sail around and dock wherever you like has more appeal.  I'm not picky though - I'd be happy to be aboard a power yacht, if that is what it took to make it happen.

The crazy thing is, as expensive as this sounds, this is actually well within reach.  The Moorings (www.moorings.com) offers a variety of yachting experiences, ranging from "learning to sail" trips to the fully staffed yacht charters.  While I haven't exactly figured out what the appropriate level of charter would be for me and my family, my initial take was that I could get a week long powerboat yacht charter with staff for only around $5,000.  That's total, mind you, so significantly less than my first pick (the Orient Express) which ran around $4,000 per person.

Yeah, this is pretty close to what I'm imagining.

While I probably still have to do a little research on this one, it does seem surprisingly affordable, especially for a family of four, although destination and craft type may create some different pricing points.  That said, I might have to look into this as an option in the nearer future than I had originally thought.

What I would like to know is other people's experience with this sort of thing.  If anyone out there has chartered a boat or spent any time sailing (or learning to sail), I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.

Bucket List # 1 - A Ride on the Orient Express

Some time ago, I had a game that involved pretending that you traveled on the Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul.  While other details of the game have long since faded, the game left me with a lasting impression of the luxury of the Orient Express, and a lingering desire to experience it for myself.

The Paris - Istanbul route of the Orient Express is one of the longer ones - in the game, it ran from Paris to Milan, Venice, and finally Istanbul.  I'm not sure how realistic the route was, or if the Orient Express ever actually made that route.  I did a little research and found that I can replicate the majority of the route via the existing Paris-Istanbul route.  That train runs from Paris to Bucharest, Budapest, and ends at Istanbul.

I'm not entirely certain why the Orient Express has this appeal. It's certainly one of the world's iconic trains, and has an air of luxury and pampering.  I think perhaps the more appealing aspects are the promise of the nostalgia for a bygone era when travel was more than just getting to where you were going, and a sense of Old World Europe. 

The Orient Express

The Paris - Istanbul trip takes 6 days and 5 nights, and runs $9,000 per person as of this writing.  That's a pretty hefty sum.  I'd probably be willing to do shorter trips, but would want to at least experience a couple of nights on board the train.  Another option is Venice to Brussels, which is 5 days and 4 nights.  It also allows you to choose whether you want to go to Brussels via Budapest or Vienna, with only minor pricing differences, and a total cost of (at most) $3,560 per person - so a substantial discount to the Paris - Istanbul itinerary.  Venice to London and Venice to Paris are similar itineraries and similar costs, so overall, for more than an overnight trip, it's anywhere from around $3,200 to $4,000 for the 5 day/4 night itinerary.  While that's a bit of a splurge for me, I'm putting it down on my list anyway.

If you're interested in doing your own research into the Orient Express, you can find their website here:
http://www.vsoe.com/web/vsoe/venice_simplon_orient_express.jsp

The Bucket List

Recently, IrishFrog and I were having a discussion, and she brought up the fact that she had seen a bucket list somewhere.  I don't remember all the points that we discussed, but the basic requirements for the list were that it had to be 100 things.  The next question that came up was whether I could come up with a list of 100 things.

I felt reasonably assured that I could.  While bucket lists typically contain everything from spending time with family to unique experiences, I thought I would simply try to come up with a travel bucket list.  Some of these things are the things that I originally had in mind when I started this blog, and since, of late, I've felt that my posts needed a little more "umph", I think this will be a good diversion.

While the travel bucket list is, in and of itself, probably not that unusual, I also want to take the opportunity to explore and figure out exactly how much it will take to complete the list - in some cases, it's probably not that hard - in others, it's probably a significant layout of funds.  At least this way, as I complete the list, I will also be able to assess which ones I can afford to do, and when.

The next thing is that the list is not necessarily in any sort of order, other than the order that I happened to think about these things.  While that does mean that some things are probably higher on the list than others (i.e., they are the ones that I thought about first), I imagine that as I go through, I will find that many things are probably approximately equally appealing from my perspective.  I'm just going to number them in order of posting, and maybe at some later date, I'll organize.  Maybe.

So, next post - Bucket List item #1.

21 Fun Things to Do in Paris

There seems to be a growing fondness for lists - 10 hotels with the best pools, 10 best bars in New York City, 10 rooms with views to die for.  If you're any sort of regular travel reader, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.  So it wasn't particularly surprising when Lonely Planet Traveller published an article last month entitled 21 Fun Things to do in Paris.

The main difference between this list and many of the others is that it actually happens to be things that interest me.  I've been to Paris before, and I've done the typical tourist route - there will be more on this later, as we proceed through my travel history.  But, and this is something that most regular travellers know, but need to be reminded of from time to time, many times, the best moments come from unexpected and out of the way pleasures.

That makes this list a nice departure from the typical travel list.  This, at least on first read, is a good collection of possible adventures and activities that would take you off the typical tourist trail for a little while, and open your eyes to a broader Paris than that of the tour guides.  Usually, the writing you get in most magazines that goes off the beaten path is focused on food, or high-end spas, or some other type of specific activity.  This article provides a wide variety of activities across an array of interests.

I'd love to cover the article in more detail, but unfortunately, this is where all those copyright laws come in, so I'm not entirely sure what I can say.  Lonely Planet Traveller can be bought in the App Store, if you have an iPad, iPhone, or similar device.  Alternatively, they have subscriptions online.  If visiting Paris sometime soon, I encourage you to check it out.

That's a long way around to saying that although I've been before, I'm putting Paris on the 'round the world' (RTW) itinerary, and maybe I'll do a few of these things when I go. 

Online photography storage

Usually, upon returning from a trip, you will have hundreds of photos that you need to save.  You can simply store them on your computer (risking a computer crash), or you can store them, and then back them up to somewhere else.  If you want to share your pictures, an online photo storage site is definitely worth considering.  This particular post looks at a couple of the top places for photo storage, and provides a little compare and contrast.

For my purposes, I'm mainly concerned with storage capability, file size limitations, and ability to download the originals when I'm done.  Although many of the sites offer other abilities (such as the ability to edit photos, or to share with friends, etc.), I have photo editing software, and am not particularly interested in the social aspects of the sites.  That said, your preferences may differ - but I am mainly interested in whether I can store all of my photos, whether I can store the full photo (full resolution photos can easily top 5MB nowadays), and whether the site stores the original file, and if I can get it back without too much effort.

Flickr (www.flickr.com) is one of top photo sites, and with good reason - a free terabyte of storage, no limit on file sizes for uploads, and you can download your original photos at any time.  You can set your account to only be accessible to you, your friends, or everyone, and there are further privacy options available if you only want to share select photos, for example.  Flickr has mobile apps as well, so you can upload from your phone or email, and you have the ability to tag or otherwise categorize photos.  The one downside that I can see is that you can only download one photo at a time, although there may be user created programs which have a way around this.

Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com) is another popular option.  I don't like it as much as Flickr, for reasons that will become clear shortly.  It wins on the storage front, as they offer unlimited storage.  They also do not restrict file size, so that's easy, and they also offer multiple ways for uploading.  The point which concerns me most is that you can't download your original photos, you have to pay Shutterfly to burn a disc and send them to you.  You can share for free, and you have the ability to put photos into albums, but the fact that I have to pay to get my own photos back is a bit of a deal-killer, especially when compared to Flickr.  As full disclosure, they do allow you to download compressed versions which should still be suitable for printing in sizes up to 8 x 10, but at this juncture, I'm simply more concerned with the ability to restore.  You may consider it worthwhile, as the rest of the options are free.

Picasa is the Google entrant to the field, and it may very well be worth a spin.  I was initially put off by the insistence that Picasa be part of the Google+ experience, and in the end, surprisingly, it may be the lack of clarity in the interface and how exactly the whole thing works that ends up being the biggest negative. I say surprisingly, because Google, of all companies, ought to know better, but seems determined to make your photo storage a social experience.  From what I can tell, Google allows you to upload the original file at full size and download at full size, but only provides 15 GB of free storage, after which you have to pay.  In this day and age, that's peanuts.

For the time being, I'm voting for Flickr. 

Travel photography

My intention is to post here every other day, but I missed yesterday.  That's partly because I've gotten a little behind in my blog drafts, but a lot of it has to do with the chaos that was created late yesterday when we discovered that some of the pictures that we have saved on CDs were irretrievable.  So, while this post isn't exactly about travel, it is travel related.

I shouldn't say completely irretrievable, because in the end, we were able to get most of them back.  We did have a few casualties, though.  Fortunately, these were relatively limited.  However, it made me a little nervous about the rest of our photos.

Back in the day, you went around with film and camera, and took whatever shots you took, hoping desperately that your pictures would come out okay, and at the end of a trip, you took your film in to the store, paid an exorbitantly high price to get them developed, and then you could finally look through and see what you got.  That often led to interesting discoveries - reference prior Jamaica posts for an example.  Since pictures were limited based on the cost of film development, you chose your shots more carefully - our first trip to Ireland, I think we took slightly over 100 pictures in about a week. The more recent trips we've taken, we've probably taken 100 to 150 pictures a day.  (To be clear, it's IrishFrog who is the shutterbug, not me.)

With the advent of the digital camera, things changed immensely.  At first, you bought multiple storage cards to handle the increased volume of pictures that you were taking.  Now, even that isn't a necessity.  I do think that we brought two storage cards on our last visit to Europe, but that was partly because we knew we wouldn't be removing pictures from them until we got home.  So, originally you just transferred your pictures to the computer, and that was it.

Enter the failure of computer drives, and the need to find another, more reliable place to store digital photos.  I've had one computer crash on me, and although I was able to recover some files, much of what was on there was lost.  Since that time, IrishFrog has been fairly diligent in backing up the photos to CD.  We now have over a decade worth of pictures stored on CD - and as computers have come and go through our house, we've backed up, checked to make sure they work on other computers, and filed them away in a giant CD holder.

Until now.  As I mentioned, yesterday, we tried to open a couple of the disks only to find that not all of the photos were accessible.  We already have an external hard drive which I'll be using to transfer the photos to a safer place, but I'm also looking at online storage as another option.  I'll let you know what I find out next time.

Sanibel & Captiva Islands

A part of me hesitates to continue on the stories of my travels, because there are some places that I would love (selfishly) to keep to myself.  The islands of Sanibel and Captiva fall into that category.  I'm honestly not sure if they were "undiscovered" in 1996, when I first went there, but since then, Lonely Planet published a small visitors guide, and the islands have been featured in the Wall Street Journal within the last month.  The islands have even made it into 1,000 Places to See Before You Die.  And yet, the last time I visited, the years really hadn't changed the islands all that much.

There are plenty of things that appeal about the islands, enough that I've been back multiple times, although there are certainly closer beaches.  That said, I'm not certain that I can capture specific places we visited on each trip at the date of this writing, some 18 years after our first visit to the islands.  There's a few places that were there that aren't around anymore.  The main one that comes to mind is McT's Shrimp House & Tavern.  I've done a little digging around, and apparently it had taken a turn for the worse before closing, but back in 1996, it was a good choice for a meal.  I do recall eating at the Jacaranda on this trip as well, but I can't say that I recall too much about it.

The two main things that I find to be so appealing, though, are the shells, and the secluded feeling.  I'll start with the second part first.  I grew up going to the beach, and while the beach has never been deserted, beaches today are a far cry from the beaches I remember.  This is the whole point of the Wall Street Journal write-up on Sanibel and Captiva - they've maintained the "Old Florida" feel.  The islands aren't overrun with condos and high-rise hotels, and while there is shopping to be had, you won't find huge discount outlets there either.  So, if that's your idea of a week at the beach, you will be sorely disappointed by what you find.  There are several good dining options, but the islands also aren't overrun with restaurants and fast food joints.  What you will find is clean beaches, with unbelievable amounts of shells, and a small beach community feel.  Even today, there's simply not that much "to do" on the islands, which, in my eyes, makes them all the more tempting.

If you haven't been there, it is almost impossible to explain the shells you can find.  When you hear the waves crash on the shore, there is a musical tinkling sound, like someone diddling around on the high piano keys very lightly.  That diddling happens to be the sound of thousands upon thousands of shells being pushed back and forth by the waves.  Simply strolling along the beach you will find hundreds upon hundreds of perfectly shaped shells.  Stay for a week, and even if you didn't think of yourself as a "sheller", you will have caught the fever, and you will have spent at least one day stooped over, digging through the sand for your next piece of treasure.  We ended up bringing back a bucket full of shells the first time we went - after getting rid of another couple of buckets.  It seems like every time we go back, we come back home with another bucket.

I'll do some searching for photos to see if I can add a few - I'm not sure I'll be able to do the place justice.

Booking sites

There was an interesting article in Money magazine this month about the best flight booking site.  In the end, it suggested four sites.

Kayak was recommended for people for whom price was the main factor, as well as for people who were planning multi-city trips - although the deciding factor for the multi-city trip pricing was ease of use.  In my past, I've used Kayak extensively for flight searches, so I'm not terribly surprised by the pick, nor do I think that it will be new to most travelers.

The two picks that did stand out, in my reading, were Adioso, which allows you to do an incredibly flexible search based on plain language, and Vayama, for international travelers.  While I haven't had the chance to use either yet, the article points out if you have extremely flexible travel plans, Adioso can give you better prices just because of its flexibility - for example, you could do a search for "New York to Seattle in March", instead of doing the typical +/- 3 days.  I might have to do my own research on it and compare results.

The article doesn't provide a lot of detail about Vayama other than saying it was best for international travel, and I will say that my own experience with international travel booking leaves something to be desired, especially if you want to do multi-city international travels.  That's probably a post for another day.

The last site mentioned in Momondo, which searches regional airlines, a definite plus if you are traveling internationally, as my experience shows that US airlines, while good at getting you to a single destination in a foreign country, are usually not so good about getting you around within the country or continent once you're there.

I'll think about doing some testing of the sites for either an upcoming post or a future trip.

Savannah - Final recap

Final musings on Savannah, and then we will move onto something different.  I'm not entirely sure what yet, especially as it seems that I've been writing about Savannah for a long time now, but I suppose I'll go back to my original reviews of trips past, mixed with coverage of potential travel spots.

I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that I made a mistake on my first day in Savannah.  I'm writing an article on that which I hope to have published, so I can't share everything in it, but the quick down and dirty is that Savannah is not a city that you "do".  There are things to do in Savannah, but Savannah generally refuses to let you see her on your terms - and at least part of my struggle on day one was the attempt to "do" Savannah.  By running through the squares and parks, I missed out on enjoying what was there.

Savannah does show up in 1,000 Places to See Before You Die.  I don't know that I'm qualified to determine whether it is one of the thousand most impressive places in the entire world, but I certainly enjoyed my trip there and would generally rate it highly in several categories.  The antebellum homes are beautiful, as are the parks, and it makes for pleasant sightseeing.  Savannah does have several good historical tales to go with it, so learning about the city is enjoyable as well.

The food scene in Savannah is surprisingly good.  We really only had one mediocre meal the whole time we were there, and the meals were both good and inexpensive, which can frequently be challenging to find.  Quite frankly, I don't feel that we came close to exhausting our food options, and we didn't even go to the more highly touted locations.

Although I said that the sights were somewhat limited, there is no dearth of historical tours, ghost tours, pub tours, and other ways to see the city.  To boot, if you do get tired of Savannah, the beach is not that far away, and you could always go there for a quick retreat.  Our tour was fun, and I think if you come with the right attitude, most tours would be.

In my recap of Jamaica, I stated that I was thinking about coming up with a rating system for places I had been, but I'm still not sure that this would even be useful if I were able to come up with something.  So I'll summarize my thoughts with this:  My experiences put Savannah into one of the more better cities to go.  I think the city is worth two to three full days, possibly more if you want to do some visiting of other local attractions outside Savannah.  I'd give yourself a day or so just to wander historical Savannah, and plan on taking at least one of the many tours of the city - whichever one happens to best suit your interests.  Forsyth Park and Bonaventure Cemetery are my first picks for places to see, and the previous posts contain all the food recommendations, which may not be your cup of tea, since my picks are at least partially based on whether I think the kids would like it.

In the next post, we'll finally move on from Savannah.

Fodor's Travel App

After I went to the book store, I subsequently discovered that essentially all of the information in the Fodor's Savannah guide was available free in their 'City Guides' app.  While I'll specifically be talking about the Savannah part of the app, there are a total of 22 cities that you can choose from.

First, Fodor's didn't ask for my email or ask me to establish an account, which is a nice plus.  Second, the Fodor's listings are curated.  That means that there were editorial decisions made in what to include, and what to exclude, and the listings only contain those things that Fodor's found of sufficient interest to warrant telling you about.  The listings are separated into categories (sights, restaurants, shopping, performing arts, nightlife, and hotels), but there's also the "all" category, so in a bind, you can always revert back to seeing everything.  This means that you have less items listed in total than in open-source apps such as Triposo, but it also means that you don't have bad listings.

When you find something that you are interested in, you simply click the heart icon to add it to your favorites.  Once added, the favorites can be viewed on a map.  I did find that map locations were not necessarily fully accurate.  For example, I missed Bonaventure Cemetery the first time around because the map location made it look like it was somewhere else.  Listings contain the same blurb that is in the published travel guide (and once the app is downloaded, this does not require wifi access), in addition to website and contact info.

The app also allows you to make bookings at restaurants (using OpenTable), tours (using Viator), and hotels.  While I didn't use any of this functionality, I'm already familiar with both OpenTable and Viator.  I did like the ability to see community ratings and reviews within the Triposo app, so that would be something that I would consider as a point for improvement in this particular version.

The app is essentially self-contained, meaning there's no additional website for the app, although there are the external links from within the app that I've previously mentioned.  Another nice bonus is that the app contains the "Greater Savannah" area, which means that it includes listings for places in the general vicinity, and not just Savannah itself.

The app was well designed and easy to use.  It's simple enough to mark your favorites, see places on the map, or just find the nearest restaurant.

So between the Triposo app and Fodor's, Fodor's gets my vote.  Fodor's takes up less space, and is generally more intuitive.  I also think that Triposo's open sourcing leads to issues, as I mentioned in my prior post.  I prefer the curated listings, and I also like that it means that the quality of the descriptions I get for any location are reasonably consistent.  Although Triposo did add a few things to my "want to see while I'm in Savannah" list, these were not significant enough to warrant heavy use.  One final point  before I go - both apps were battery heavy when using the map function.  On longer days, this led to a few problems in the evening when my phone was essentially dead because of battery usage.

Next time  - one final Savannah summary, and we'll move on.

Triposo Travel Guides

Of the things that I consider to be a trip necessity, the iPhone has to be one of my top picks.  While you can use it for phone calls, it also comes in handy finding that place that you wanted to see, but you can't quite seem to figure out where it is.  With the right app, you can call a taxi, or book a dinner reservation.  You can post pictures of your food, rate sights and dining experiences, and be as social (or as anti-social) as you like.  With all this potential, I continue to search for an app that will deliver a well-rounded travel experience.

Going forward, as I make individual trips, I plan on "roadtesting" at least one travel app per trip.  Some travel apps are meant for specific uses, and so on some trips, I'll be able to test multiple apps.  For Savannah, I chose to test out a couple of apps which will each receive their own write-up.  The first one I'll cover is Triposo.

Triposo is essentially an opensource database of places.  The website gives an explanation of how things are pulled together, (http://www.triposo.com/about/how-we-do-it/) but here's my brief overview.  Triposo essentially scours the web for travel reviews and data, and compiles it into one big database.  The resulting listing of places is combined with picture tags and other info to tag places to maps, and voila!  That said, now let's dig into details.

Triposo starts by asking you to set up an account.  The account setup process is simple.  As part of the process, they ask for an email address.  I'm not sure whether this will end up with me receiving multiple spam emails or not, but I'm also not sure why they couldn't be content with just a user name and password.  Still, this is probably a minor inconvenience at best.

At least initially, the Triposo app is like most other travel planning apps.  It groups destinations into different categories (sightseeing, eating out, nightlife, other), and then you can scan through for things that interest you.  One benefit of the open-sourcing of information is that I was able to find a few points of interest that I found nowhere else.  Once you've found something that you are interested in, you simply save it to your list.  This can be done through the app, or, alternatively, you can go to the Triposo site, sign in, and add things via the website.  The website organization leaves something to be desired, as I can't figure out how to sort the listings (alphabetically, by general location, or by cuisine/tag, etc.).  Unfortunately, this is also where the ugly side of open sourcing comes in as well.  I find multiple restaurant listings for the same place (The Olde Pink House and Pink House Restaurant, or Moon River Brewing Company), as well as Tomo-Chi-Chi's Grave Monument included in the restaurant section.

The website gets worse after this - after the main sightseeing, eating out, and nightlife sections, the "Other" section is essentially tags that have been collected from across the web.  Clicking on one of them shows you all the places with that tag.  This results in tags such as "Chocolate Chip", "Spicy", and "Muffin".  And, of course, again, the tags are open-sourced, so the "Bank" tag has a couple of churches listed.

The app itself is somewhat better - items have more categories and you can sort the listings, so there's better opportunities to find specifically what you were looking for, however, the mislisting of items continues.  Another minor frustration - the app is for the entire state, and to get it to show your list of saved items, you have to navigate to the specific city you saved them in.  As we crossed into South Carolina, the app became worthless as soon as we crossed the South Carolina state line, which is both somewhat understandable, but also a little annoying, given that some of the places we went were only 30 minutes or so from Savannah.

If you're using the app during the planning phase, there is also the possibility of booking your hotel or tours from within the app, which potentially could be a neat feature.  I didn't try it on this trip, but maybe in the future.  Once you've added places, you can look at the list, and tell the app whether you're "planning", "traveling", "local", or "been here", but I couldn't tell any changes in the functionality or usefulness by changing the status.

The app also allows you to see places on the map, but doesn't allow you to filter by type of sight, which would be a nice feature.  If you select a particular spot, you can show it on the map, or in one neat feature, add it to a walk.  I also like that it shows aggregate Yelp reviews for a particular location, as well as pretty good descriptions.  Once you've visited a location, you can mark it "done", which prompts it to ask you whether you would recommend it, and any tips that you might want to give.  This does get a little annoying after a while, but I suppose this is also how they continue to evolve their programs.

As stated before, this is one of two apps that I used on the trip, and we'll talk about the second in the next post.  After that, I'll give my final assessment on the winner between the two.

New Orleans

Returning to the past travel recaps:  We made two major trips in 1996, the first being to Sanibel and Captiva, the second being our one year anniversary trip to New Orleans.  I had been to New Orleans previously, but only on business.  Business travel is a different world from regular travel, and even though you might go to some neat places, you rarely have time to explore.  Most of the time, your experience is limited to a few nice views, accompanied by a good meal or two.

Being young, and not having lots of funds, we ended up staying in a hotel that I believe has long since closed.  We had one of the only rooms that had an in-suite bathroom, so that probably helps you understand at least part of the cause.  As a second point, the hotel was ideally located for tours of the New Orleans cemetery, which meant that we were several blocks from Jackson Square, Bourbon Street, and most of the French Quarter in general.

I know we brought the camera, but I am going to have to hunt for the pictures.  My recollection is that we took a picture or two of us soaking our feet after all the walking we did.  I don't remember everything we did, but we did two walking tours in between all the other walking - and if you've ever been to New Orleans, you know that it is a walking city.  As I recall, both of the tours were good - one was of the New Orleans cemetery, and the other was a ghost tour.

I mainly remember eating.  New Orleans is justifiably known for its food, and we had meals in places all over the French Quarter, ranging from Maspero's Cafe to Mr. B's Bistro, to The Court of Two Sisters.  Even with the vast amount of walking we were doing, I'm still not sure that we walked off all the food.

We rode the streetcar into the Garden District, and found the home of Anne Rice, and just generally explored, ate, walked, ate, listened to music, ate, and then ate some more.

New Orleans falls solidly into the category of one of my favorite cities.  It is grungy at times, can feel more than a little edgy, but definitely a worthy city for a visit.

Savannah Wanderings, Part II

For our final day in Savannah, we skipped the free hotel breakfast and went to Goose Feathers Cafe.  When we got there, the line was out the door, but it moved along quickly enough.  If you happen to go to Savannah, brave whatever line there may be - it was well worth the relatively short wait, in my opinion.  Goose Feathers serves breakfast and lunch, and although we ate breakfast there, I would have been more than willing to eat lunch there as well.

After breakfast, we began the second day of Savannah wandering, and went to City Market, where we purchased a carriage tour.  We had a little bit of time before the tour began, so we did poke around a bit in the City Market shops.  There are a few little art galleries nearby, and the Savannah Candy Kitchen drew our attention as well for its wide variety of sweets.

Our carriage tour was fun, and over far too quickly.  My general experience with carriage tours has been the same whereever I've been, and Savannah is a city that is ideally suited for a short history lesson via carriage tour.  It's also a good way to give your feet some respite, and to entertain children, should you have any.  The tour took us through a few squares and by some other points of interest.

After the tour ended, we walked down Broughton Street, which is the main shopping thoroughfare in old Savannah, and found ourselves at Leopold's.  Leopold's originally got a vote for one of the best places to eat, but I overruled the vote, since we only ate ice cream there.  That said, Leopold's makes their own ice cream and has been around since 1918, and I can attest that they are doing something right.  Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the ice cream, and the atmosphere isn't too bad either, walls covered with posters of various films and film paraphernalia scattered throughout the shop.

Leopold's even has the cool old-timey sign.

Re-energized after the ice cream, we made our way to the Owens-Thomas house for a historical home tour.  The family pricing in this case turned out to be a bargain.  A family of four was $40, which included entrance to the Telfair Museum and the Jepson Center.  The tour was interesting, although I do get aggravated by the "no pictures" mandate that many such places have.  Still, even the kids enjoyed it, and the house had several unusual features.

The garden of the Owens-Thomas House.

Unfortunately, my wife (who will henceforth be known as "Irish Frog") fell and hurt her ankle, so after the house tour, our activities were somewhat limited.  I went back to Broughton for a few last shopping visits (our favorites on Broughton were the Paris Market, which has an interesting variety of knick knacks, books, soaps and lotions, as well as food goodies; and The Savannah Bee Company, which has honey and mead tastings, and a number of goods made with honey or beeswax.  Unique shops, and recommended if you visit the city.

We closed out the day with a trip to Desposito's, which is outside of historic Savannah on the way to Tybee Island.  Low key doesn't begin to describe the place, but the food is good.  As far as I could tell, the only way you would find it would be to know that it was there and you were looking for it.  Finishing off our trip with a round of Savannah seafood seemed to be the right thing to do, and with that we headed back to the hotel and packed for home.

Hilton Head and Hunting Island

Our third day wasn't spent so much in Savannah as on islands close to Savannah.  Getting off to a late start (as usual, although anyone who's tried to move a family of four around on anything approaching a schedule, especially on vacation, will understand the challenges associated with an early start), we made our way towards Hilton Head.  The goal of the day was to see a few lighthouses.

Hilton Head is home to a picturesque lighthouse, that, as far as I can tell, is not actually a lighthouse except in name.  I have to admit that the story isn't entirely clear, but there's now a lighthouse there apparently because someone simply decided that a lighthouse would be just the thing for Hilton Head, and what do you know?  They were right.  The lighthouse is surrounded by an upscale shopping area, which, although we didn't explore it too much, struck me as the same sort of stores you might find in any upscale beach shopping area.  The lighthouse fees here were much more reasonable than Tybee - a mere $16 for the family, so we climbed to the top of the lighthouse and looked out across the marina.

Hilton Head Lighthouse

After visiting the lighthouse, it was already time for lunch, and we headed to The Salty Dog Cafe, which got the final vote of our party for best place to eat.  The margarita was the perfect beach margarita, eminently drinkable, and the Salty Dog Amber was quite tasty.  Although we stuck with sandwiches, the sandwiches were first rate, and much better than I had expected.  The hushpuppies were different than any I have had before, with a sweetness, and texture similar to a heavy doughnut.  Once buttered, it was hard to stop eating them, although running out leaves you with few options.  I went to the shop and got one of their t-shirts, and then we struck out for the Stoney-Bayard ruins.

The ruins are literally just that, ruins, and there's not much left to what was once a plantation home and a couple of other buildings, including slave quarters, and a kitchen.  The most interesting part from my perspective was the construction, which was tabby.  Tabby is a mixture of oyster shells, sand and water to make a sort of concrete, which formed the plantation walls.  While interesting, I don't recommend going out of your way to see them, although if you're in the area, it's worth a short visit.

Hopping back into the car, we headed north towards Hunting Island.  Hunting Island struck me as the sort of place that beaches used to be probably 50 plus years ago.  There's a few restaurants, but they are really little more than shacks, and the lighthouse that we were hunting was in a state park.  Because of the drive, we didn't make it in time to see the interior of the lighthouse (full disclosure: the lighhouse also charges an additional fee over and above the fee charged by the park, which I thought a little ridiculous).  Nonetheless, we wandered the grounds, ogled the lighthouse, and then walked the beach for a bit.  The whole area seemed somewhat surreal to me, like we had inadvertently transported ourselves into a tropical forest that just happened to be located on the coast of South Carolina.  The kids joked that we were in Jurassic Park.

Yes, this is South Carolina.

The drive back to Savannah took a while, and so we opted for a little Mexican joint in the strip mall next to the hotel.  All finally concurred that it was the food lowlight of the journey, so I won't spill further ink  on it here.  With that, we headed back in to rest up for our final day in Savannah.

Spooky Savannah

As I mentioned previously, in the initial planning for Savannah, a few clear themes started to emerge.  One of them, mentioned repeatedly, were the ghost tales about Savannah.  This was the clear focus point for our second day in the city.

After waking and having breakfast, we headed to Bonaventure Cemetery.  Bonaventure is probably currently best known for the "Bird Girl" statue which graced the front of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, although there are myriad interesting statues throughout the cemetery.  The "Bird Girl" statue is now in the Telfair Museum to protect it from vandalism.  Bonaventure isn't too creepy by day, but you could see how when night starts to fall, this is not the place you'd want to be, what with the Spanish moss hanging low from the trees and the silent tombs all around.  Even if you're not the sort to frequent cemeteries, this one is worth a visit for the spooky atmosphere and the unique collection of statuary.

One of the many unusual vistas in Bonaventure

Unbelievably, by the time we got done in Bonaventure, it was time for lunch, so we continued over to Tybee Island for The Crab Shack.  The Crab Shack is highly recommended for kids, and still highly recommended even if you don't have kids.  This was the other location chosen by the kids as their favorite, although I'm not certain it was for the food.  In addition to the old-style beach shack type architecture, there's a pond out front with live alligators, a collection of cats that roam the decks, and a bird house with tropical birds rescued by the restaurant.  To boot, the food was a solid choice as well, and the views from our section of the deck were nice.  I could easily see killing a few hours here on a summer evening.

The gator pond at The Crab Shack

After lunch, we finally headed on towards the Tybee Island Lighthouse.  Although I didn't hear any ghost stories specifically about the lighthouse, I don't doubt that there are a handful out there for the intrepid explorer to find.  I did find that the lighthouse fees were overly steep - they wanted $32 for a family of four to enter.  While that includes entrance to the lighthouse and museum, since all we were really interested in was the lighthouse, we passed on paying the fees, and took pictures from outside the fence, which worked out well anyway.

The view from outside the lighthouse and museum

We spent a little time wandering the beach, which allowed the kids some time to play, before heading back to Savannah for dinner at Moon River Brewing Company.  Moon River Brewing Company was the spot of a Ghost Adventures episode back in 2009, and the waitress was kind enough to let us go into the basement, where some of the strangest parts of the episode occurred.  The beer selection was good, although I think misleading, since almost everything is called a "pale ale", when there actually seemed to be only one pale ale style in the whole collection.  The food was also good, and they serve barbecue from Angels BBQ, so I ended up getting my barbecue fix anyway.

After dinner, we headed south to the Sorrell-Weed House, site of the Ghost Hunters investigation circa 2005.  We had booked a ghost tour there, and we toured both the house and the surrounding neighborhood with our guide, who was superb.  I'll confess that the reviews I found on the web were less than stellar for the tour, but my experience was excellent.  It was a bit chintzy, to be sure, and I would have appreciated a smaller tour size, but all in all, it was an enjoyable time, and the kids had a great time exploring the dimly lit basement with their EMF detectors.

Maybe there's a ghost here or maybe there isn't.  Who's to say?

The tour ended around nine that evening, and so ended our second day in Savannah.

Savannah Wanderings

I'll start with a day by day recap of the Savannah trip, and then try to summarize.

We arrived in Savannah shortly after noon, and after checking into our hotel, went looking for somewhere to address the pressing need to eat.  The more pressing need turned out to be trying to figure out where to park, which was resolved without too much work.  The first spot we visited (Angel's BBQ) was already out of food, and so we walked to Broughton Street and stopped in Papillote.

The goat cheese pie at Papillote

Papillote turned out to be a good choice.  Between the four of us, we had two croque monsieurs, a goat cheese pie, and the daily special, which happened to be a duck burger.  Although I thought the price was a little high, the food quality was excellent.  However, if you have picky eaters, this is simply not going to work for you.  The croque monsieur is probably the most "normal" thing on the menu, and is quite tasty, but if your child's palate is desirous of chicken nuggets, then it would behoove you to try somewhere else.  When recapping the trip with my kids, one of them (who ordered the croque monsieur) voted this their favorite restaurant the entire trip.

As today was one of two "Savannah Wanderings" days per the itinerary, after lunch, we started to meander through the town.  Savannah was founded in 1733, and has a great history to tell.  Among its attractions is the Riverwalk area, which includes not only the area directly by the river, but also Bay Street and Factors Walk.  The riverwalk was intriguing for its cobblestone streets and old Cotton Exchange.  A quick jaunt along the river brought us to City Hall, where we turned south to explore some of the 22 squares that are sprinkled throughout the historical district.

It's only fair to say that in my first attempt to "do" Savannah, we blew through Oglethorpe Square, wandered quickly in and out of Colonial Park Cemetery, and shot past Lafayette Square on the way to Forsyth Park.  More later on this mistake.  Once we made it to Forsyth Park, we managed to slow down and wander and let the kids play for a bit.  I think that we made it from Papillote to the river and back down to Forsyth Park in about two hours.  Forsyth was the first place that we slowed down and enjoyed Savannah as more than just a place to see.

Because of the plans for the following day, we walked from Forsyth Park to The Pirates' House, where we settled in to rest our feet after the last few hours of beating the streets.  The Pirates' House is definitely built for tourism, but is worth a visit nonetheless.  The history isn't exactly clear, but this is one of the oldest buildings in Savannah, and has ties to Treasure Island.  The food was pretty good as well, and kids of all ages will fare well here.  After dinner, you can further explore the restaurant, including looking at a few tunnels that were reputedly used to shanghai unsuspecting patrons.  Like most of Savannah, the place has a few ghost stories to tell, but that perhaps is a tale best left for tomorrow, as that signalled the end of our first day in Savannah, and we headed back to the hotel to rest.

One of the kids at The Pirates House

Savannah - The Itinerary

In the end, I elected against giving the full list of my Savannah wants, mainly because I think it would make for boring reading.  Instead, I'll give a brief description of how I build my itinerary, and then, once I've returned from Savannah, you'll get the full scoop on everything.

First of all, as I've previously mentioned, I scour through books and various websites to find the things that interest me, and basically just make a laundry list of the stuff that sounds intriguing.  That includes scanning the restaurant and shopping listings as well, just so I start with as comprehensive of a listing as possible.  I think this is mainly driven by the fear that I might end up missing something.

I usually then start to group sights and places by area.  In Savannah, most things are pretty centrally located, so there's not too much to worry about from that standpoint.  However, I did have Tybee Island and Hilton Head as possible destinations as well, so those do get their own groupings.  Otherwise, for this trip at least, geography is really a limited challenge.  That said, I still try to identify places that are close together as I don't want to end up walking back and forth across the same area multiple times.

The next part is to try to identify themes or similarities in my list.  For Savannah, a couple of themes emerge pretty easily:  haunted Savannah, historic Savannah (houses and gardens), and coastal activities (Hilton Head/Tybee and other islands).  The question then becomes whether I'm overloading on one or another.  As an example, while I certainly would enjoy a tour of a historical home, there are multiple houses on the list.  Chances are that a couple would be enough (especially since I'm bringing the kids, and their tolerance for many more than that is going to be low).  While I don't eliminate anything at this stage, I do identify preferences, which simply means that I'm more interested in some places than others.

The final step is to take the groupings and actually put together the itinerary.  For me, this means first prioritizing the key focus items for the trip, and then creating a series of sights, proposed eating spots, and various stops which comprise a day's activity.  I start with adding a few sights, a lunch spot, afternoon activities (and usually an afternoon stop), and close with suggested dinnertime locations.  I then throw in a few other things that looked interesting that are in the area, included as options if there is time or energy.

You'll get to see the outcome over the next few posts.

Travel planning resources

Before I get into the details of how exactly I start to turn my list into an itinerary, I thought I'd share a few travel resources that I used along the way.  What is amazing to me is the breadth and depth of free information.  Only a few short years ago, getting some of this would have been difficult at best.

http://www.exploregeorgia.org

This is the state tourism website for Georgia.  Among other things, you can look at their state travel guide.  I also like that you can scan their virtual brochures for additional things to do and see - better than stopping in your hotel lobby.  Their state travel guide has a large section on Savannah, as well as some ideas for the outlying areas.

http://www.visitsavannah.com

This is the local Savannah tourism site.  At first glance, it was promising, and it did lead to a few things that I wouldn't have found otherwise, but the excitingly designed navigational tools turned out to be clunkier than they look.  I was also disappointed by the lack of information on the places they listed in their trip ideas.  In some instances, the recommendation to go to a certain place was accompanied by only a link to another website.  Nonetheless, checking out the local tourism board, if the location has one, is a good practice.  Sometimes you'll find the hidden treasure you've been looking for in these locations.

http://www.frommers.com

Now I start to be amazed.  Go to Frommer's, type in your destination, and guess what you get?  Almost the same exact material that they publish in their travel guides, complete with ratings, pricing guides, and commentary.  Maps are available (and printable), and you can find their location reviews, restaurant recommendations, and hotel directory.  You can filter by location, sort by rating and price, and it doesn't cost you a dime.

http://www.fodors.com

Everything I just said about Frommer's?  Pretty much true for Fodor's as well.  I find Frommer's to be a little easier to navigate, and Fodor's lacks the filtering and sorting abilities of the Frommer's site, but you can still get their ratings and commentary with a few clicks.

http://www.cntraveler.com

http://www.travelandleisure.com

I pay for a subscription to both of these magazines.  Amazingly, they put much of their content online.  A search for Savannah yields a handful of articles, restaurant recommendations, and hotel options on both sites.  No subscription is required to read the online articles, so even if you don't subscribe, the sites are worth a search.  They do target a certain audience, but that is a post for another time.

Next time, the actual list and itinerary planning.

Savannah Planning - Things to Do

Having resolved the question of where to stay, the next question is what to actually do in Savannah.  While I've read about a few things that appeal to me, I don't have enough to construct a full itinerary.  As I've mentioned before, I tend to get a little fanatical about the planning process, at least partly because I've been to places before and without an itinerary and not known what to do.  Then I've found that I sort of wander and meander around until something strikes my interest, and then after I've left, I find out that I missed the best parts.

My itinerary building process works something like this:  I start by gathering up reading material.  In this case, I have three separate guidebook references.  I have also started going online for the local or state tourism board.  Savannah has a tourism board and a full magazine full of Savannah sights and locales. With a full package of material to work from, I now start reading and filtering.

The first book gives a few interesting starter ideas, which I add to a quick list:  Colonial Park Cemetery, Wright Square, Mercer-Williams House Museum, Sorrel-Weed House, Bonaventure Cemetery, and Forsyth Park all get thrown into the mix as potential stops.  This particular series as a whole tends to be somewhat light on details, but the writing certainly whets one's appetite for travel.

The second book, which happens to be a guide to the entire USA, and therefore, skimps on many places in its attempt to offer the best of the best, and only adds the First African Baptist Church to the list.  It mentions a few other places, but the descriptions fail to pique my interest.

And for this stage of planning, that's basically how it goes.  I'll make a long list of stuff that looks like it might be worth a visit, pulling from the various sources, until I've come up with a gigantic list of stuff to do.  This includes a scan of restaurants as well, so while I'll spare you the details, I'll come back and post my list when we get to the second planning stage.

I will say that it is definitely worthwhile to check the local tourism board.  While travel guides are useful and good, you can find lots of things in the local listings that you won't find elsewhere, ranging from snippets of local history to hidden spots.  Of course, you also have to be ready to sift through the gamut of listings for all sorts of places trying to get a share of the tourism trade, but the local guide can frequently give you ideas for doing something that you wouldn't have thought about otherwise.

Next time, the list, and the second stage of planning.

Where to Stay

One of the first choices that has to be made in almost any trip is where to stay.  There's a fine balance to be maintained here, and many considerations.  When I started to actually think about the number of things that have to be included in the final decision, I was amazed that anybody is actually able to make the decision at all.  Unfortunately for me, my choice of places in Savannah were seriously constrained when I started, so I ended up booking with the Hampton Inn Midtown.  That said, I thought I'd go through some of the considerations and choices that have to be made, no matter where you're going.

1.  Cost:  This is often one of the most, if not the most, dominant constraints in the choice.  Quite frankly, I don't have enough cash to splash out for an expensive hotel room every night, and I realize that my price point may be above others (and is definitely below some).  The Hampton Inn fits my typical price point, and matches on a number of others, so...

2.  Room Size:  At one time, this wasn't really a consideration at all.  Now, I travel with two children, so I need a room that comfortably accomodates four.  That means at the very least, two full beds, and ideally two queens.  This may sound picky to those of you who travel without children, but for those of you who travel with kids, I'm sure you understand my insistence on this point.  I have a few stories to tell about what happened when we stayed in places that didn't meet this basic criteria, and the results are almost uniformly bad.  This is definitely a bigger point for family travelers than for single travelers or couples.  Savannah's B&B options appear to be mostly one bed options, and not wanting to pay for two rooms (see point 1) makes the traditional hotel room a better choice for me.

3.  Location:  While I haven't had the chance to do much reading on the sights of Savannah just yet, it does seem that most of the things to see/do/eat are in a single central area.  I'd prefer to be able to easily get to that area, or be in that area.  Unfortunately, by the time I got to looking, many of the standard hotels that might hit points 1 and 2 were booked.  It looks like Savannah is a surprisingly popular travel option for the end of March.  There were a few options that were available in the central area, but I'm saving almost $150 a night by staying a couple of miles away.  On my budget, that's too much of a difference to pass up.

4.  Loyalty programs:  I almost hesitate to bring this one up, but as a person who travels for both business and pleasure, I do have some interest in retaining my current status in the Hilton Honors program.  Obviously, your program may differ.

There are a myriad of other factors as well - again, having kids, breakfast is important, so while I get free breakfasts at all Hiltons, the guaranteed free breakfast at the Hampton is nice.  One of the main benefits of booking with a chain is that you are reasonably well assured that you know what you are going to get - rooms will be fairly standard, and while you may have some generally better or worse experiences, there usually won't be that much difference in the standard level of room or service.

I would have preferred a place a little closer to central Savannah, but this time, price and availability turned out to be against me.  Having secured a place to stay, we'll move on to the next stage of planning. 

Travel Planning

If all my posting seems to be somewhat haphazard at the moment, I hope you will bear with me.  I am aware of the scattershot approach that I've taken to date to writing, but I am also trying to capture all of the disparate ideas that come to me, in hopes that perhaps one will finally take root and grow into a theme.

The theme for today, however, is travel planning.  I tend to be somewhat fanatical about this, especially when going somewhere completely new.  I believe I've mentioned this before, but I will go and find multiple travel guide references, reading and flipping through each until I've almost memorized the glowing prose.  (Again, strongly tempted to go straight into a travel guide comparison at this point, but I'll refrain until a later date.)  At that point, I start to make the starting list, which eventually turns into an almost day-by-day plan for our time.  At the risk of running everyone off, you'll get to see the inner workings of my planning process over this and the next few posts, as I make plans for a visit to Savannah, Georgia.

While I don't yet have an official list of places I want to go, Savannah has popped up in discussions before.  This time, I have a few extra days off at the end of the month, and so the possibility of a trip came up.  The original idea was to go to North Carolina, but that turned out to be too much driving for the short time that we have, so a second glance at the map offered up a few different options.  The whole thing was inspired by a Lonely Planet travel guide that I think is out of print now - The Carolinas, Georgia, & the South TRIPS.  I think they've subsequently merged much of the material into other books, but if you're interested in Southern travel, I'd highly recommend a copy.  Travel material about the South is hard to come by, with a few notable exceptions.  (Everyone seems to want to spill ink about New Orleans, and there's no dearth of Florida suggestions.)

Unfortunately, although the book provides a broad spectrum of ideas and starting points, it turns out to be dreadfully scarce on deep details.  I suspect that this is the case for the TRIPS series altogether, but the fact is that although there's enough detail to pique my interest, there's simply not enough to feel like I know what we should do once we arrive.  And thus, the search for another travel guide begins.  A quick review of the USA guides from multiple publishers confirms what I already suspected - those guides simply won't do for the detail that I want for Savannah.

A visit to the book store results in a new addition to the travel guide library - this time, Fodor's gets the nod for their Savannah guide.  There may be others out there, but this was the one I could find that seemed to fit the need the best.  Now to begin reading.

Lake Natron

This morning, I got the weekly email from Roadtrippers.  It had the usual assortment of oddities, but the one that caught my attention was the headliner.  In this case, it was Lake Natron, or the lake that turns anything that drinks from it into stone.



The photo above is one of the animals that supposedly had the bad idea to drink from the lake, and was petrified.  Not surprisingly, I thought this sounded interesting.  Then I decided to do a little internet search and found out that, not surprisingly, while not exactly a hoax, the tagline and brief description on the Roadtrippers site is also not exactly true, either.  For details, see:

http://news.discovery.com/earth/photographer-rick-brandt-lake-natron-131003.htm
http://www.geekosystem.com/natron-birds/

So, while the lake is interesting, in the end I elected not to put it on my list.  What bothers me most about this is the travel sensationalism.  Travel journalism, like any other journalism, should be accurate and reliable, regardless of the platform.

1,000 Places to See Before You Die

I've mentioned the book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die a couple of times already, so I thought it would be worthwhile to stop and discuss the book briefly.

A quick internet search will reveal that the book is modestly controversial from a traveler's perspective.  From what I can tell, most of the angst is driven by a viewpoint that the book prompts people to go to places to get the checkmark on the list, rather than to have meaningful travel experiences.  That is, the book, by its nature of being a "best of" list, promotes a sort of "been there, done that" mentality, or else the desire to go there and do that, and therefore, get the check.

I'm not sure that I'm going to weigh in on that argument.  In the end, you could use the book that way, and if you managed to check off all (or even most) of the 1,000 places, you could definitely say that you were well-traveled.  I'm not sure that you could go that many places without having a meaningful travel experience of some sort.  If the whole point was to say that you are well-traveled, (and there is a breed of traveler out there that seems to collect passport stamps and exotic locales just to have the collection and be a travel superstar) then the book could facilitate that, to be sure.

I have a copy.  I don't use it that way.  I tend to use it as a reference.  If I'm going somewhere, I can look it up and see if it made the book, and if so, what is recommended.  It seems to me more like a world travel guide.  That means it skims over a lot, and picks what somebody thinks is the best things to spend your travel time on.  That does bring up the secondary argument I've seen, which is that it misses lots of great stuff.  I won't argue that point either, except to say that in any list, you have to decide what makes the cut and what doesn't, and for this list, that was the author's decision.  My list wouldn't be the same either.

I do use the book as a reference point.  When I'm going somewhere, I check to see recommended sights and activities.  When I've already been somewhere, I check my thoughts against what made it and evaluate against my own experiences.  As I compile my list of places to go around the world, I'm sure that some of the entries will prompt further research, or maybe even a resounding, "Yes!!  I have to go there!"

I've only had the book for a couple of months now, and it's not the sort of book you just sit down and read from beginning to end, so as I continue to write on here, review specific entries, etc., my opinion may change.  Initially, though, I think it is like almost any other travel guide - it caters to a specific sort of traveler in the overall recommendations, and it is a list that was put together with the best judgment of the author.

That said, as I've started to go through, I'm planning on tagging posts with locations in the book with the 1000 Places tag.  That way, as my own travel planning gets further along, I can always use the tag as a brief refresher on what I saw that may have piqued my interest.

Lessons Learned

After the Jamaica trip, there were a few take-aways  that impacted the way we traveled afterwards. Some no longer apply, thanks to technology, but here's a few quickies.

1.  At the least take some sort of notes about where you are and what you do each day while everything is fresh in your mind.  Ideally, make notes about any places you visited that day and in what order.  While this might sound a little exhausting or tedious, even with the technology today, you can get mixed up trying to figure out what place a photo is from, or what exactly the photo is.  As I mentioned previously, one of our guides told us a lot about the local trees, which, being tropical, were all exotic to us.  We indiscriminately snapped away, and came home with lots of shots of trees that we couldn't even name.  Again, somewhat different scenario than today, when everything is digital, but on the other hand, I absolutely cannot tell you what made us take this shot.

  Guesses are welcome.  I'm pretty sure it's just a shot of the ground, but I honestly don't know if we meant to take this or not.

2.  All travel guides are not equal.  I'm pretty sure I'll eventually come back to this, but I can assure you that the three we used were not at all equal in content or usefulness.  I've learned a great deal more about travel guides since that time, and have developed my own personal favorites, but I will also say that it is rare for me to travel now without having read at least two travel guides, and usually many more.  If you travel with any frequency at all, you'll likely find that one or two of the guides tend to hit your travel style.

3.  Planning time is one of the most important parts of your whole trip.  I've glanced through a few write-ups on the financial aspects of this, but there are other aspects as well - figuring out what the most important things you want from the trip is key.  That sounds self-evident, but when you're somewhere trying to figure out what you should do next, reminding yourself of the important things can help.

Jamaica - The Recap

I haven't yet worked out exactly what the denouement of a trip should be.  I had given some thought to trying to rate each place, but after some consideration, I realized that while I can probably put some sort of three or four point scale together (i.e., must see, highly recommended, recommended, meh) that would probably be the extent of it.

I really wanted to like Jamaica - and I think in the end, I did like it, but that was it.  My experience was that once off the resort, the people tended to want you to buy drugs, booze, or miscellaneous trinkets, or asked repeatedly for tips for things that were part of the job description (for example, collecting tips for the bus driver when you paid to go on a bus tour, after you've tipped the tour guide).  The repeated attempted sales of pot really got annoying after a while, and it seemed like just about everyone would ask.  On the other hand, I don't really see the value in traveling if all you're going to do is stay at the resort. Another point is that the people do seem to be repeatedly plying you with rum punch, which is fun for a while, but I also came away convinced that every place on the island had the same rum punch recipe (hint: ingredients are listed in order of most to least).

We got to explore a little bit, and there's definitely a few things we missed out on, but time is always finite, so you do what you can and move on.  That said, the sights of Jamaica are few and far between.  The main attraction (assuming you don't go for the "green") is probably the beach, sun, and possibly the music scene, or at least the music history scene.  I think there's a few decent snorkeling spots around, and a review of some of my reference books shows a couple of pages dedicated to the island, which tends to indicate at least a few spots of interest.  That said, I don't think that anything we experienced fell into the "must-do" category, nor do I feel particularly compelled to go back for the other things that I have read about.  Jamaica has multiple entries in 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, but that's another post for another day.

From a food perspective, the food overall was good.  There's plenty of tropical fruit, as would be expected, and the island jerk is pretty tasty, with the scotchbonnet pepper adding a unique flair to the food.  On the other hand, there were no true food moments that I can recall.  To be fair, since we were all-inclusive, that also meant most meals were at the resort, so there were minimal possibilities for any sort of great food experience.

So, for me at least, Jamaica hits the, "if that's your thing, go for it" category pretty solidly.  I'd be willing to go back and try it again, but it is way down the list for a retry.  Too many other places to go that I haven't been to first.

Mendenhall Glacier

As I mentioned, I subscribe to various travel magazines and newsletters as a way to feed the travel flames, and something came in through one of them this week that I thought I'd capture here for my future planned travels.  Roadtrippers probably deserves a review at some point - in addition to the weekly emails that I get, they have an app and website, plus a blog.

At any rate, the Roadtrippers email came in, and every week they pick out a few things of interest that you can read about.  Sometimes it's thematic (scary houses at Halloween, for example) and other times it's just a random collection of items.  But this little picture came in, which piqued my interest.

According to the blurb that went with it, this is the Mendenhall Glacier, not far from Juneau, Alaska.  I have to say it looks pretty cool.  Unfortunately, there's not a great deal of detail on the Roadtrippers website, but I've flagged the place anyway, just because I can always find out more later.  If anyone out there has been to Mendenhall, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.

Jamaica, Part II

When I last left off, our hotel maid had left us with two twin beds pushed together for our honeymoon suite.  My bride was on the verge of hysterics after the maid left, and so I suggested that we go for a walk on the beach, to collect our thoughts, and generally allow things to cool off for a bit.  This turned out to be both a good and bad thing, as although we got out of the room, we had only walked a short way before we were propositioned for the second time (but certainly not the last) to buy some of the local greenery.

We did, eventually, talk with the hotel, find out that we were in the wrong room, and get our new room assigned to us.  This being the first "big" trip for both of us, many of our pictures are of the hotel and the room, and the view.  We also took pictures when we went on some of the excursions - although we are now completely befuddled as to what they might be.  More later on this.

After settling into our proper room, we had a day or so to lounge before we made our first trip off the resort.  At this point in time, I no longer remember which of the trips we made first, so I'll just cover them as I think of them.

Dunn's River Falls was certainly one of the more memorable parts of the trip, if for no other reason than the visit consists largely of climbing the falls - about 500 feet or so up.  The climb itself isn't so bad, it's the fact that the water is absolutely freezing.  I'm still not convinced this isn't some sort of prank the Jamaicans play on the tourists.  There's steps for the less adventurous, but I'd have to say it was fun for the price, which the guidebook says was $3 for adults at the time.  I'd imagine prices have gone up since then.

We also went rafting down the Martha Brae, which is where we got one of our more memorable souvenirs, although, regrettably, few pictures remain of the whole experience, and the ones that do are of random trees that our raft guide pointed out as we went down the river.  To be fair, they weren't random at the time, but by the time we got home and got the pictures developed, we had no idea what sort of trees they were.  The guy poling our raft down the river carved a gourd with a nice picture for us and we still have it today - one of the few souvenirs that has stood the test of time.

  The "Evening on the River" left something to be desired, in my opinion.  Again, this is my recollection of something from nearly 20 years ago, so things may have changed immensely since, but the evening started well enough, with another boat ride across a Jamaican river, arriving at the site of the evening's entertainment.  I recall a band, a kind of contortionist act, a fire juggler, and there may have been a few other acts.  There were also several tables/booths where you could buy various trinkets and doodads.  There were also several people encouraging people to "party", and taking them out in the woods before bringing them back strangely blissed out with bloodshot eyes.  I think the thing that was the downer was the fact that after the entertainment stopped, you were expected to just hang out there for another couple of hours either drinking rum punch, or perhaps buying more from the booths, or maybe just heading out into the woods.  I'm still not entirely sure what the deal was, although we managed to find the hotel shuttle and head back.

One last set of recollections, and then I'll move on.  On one of our last days, we headed to Rose Hall Plantation, which I thought was one of the more interesting excursions of the trip.  We ended up walking from our resort to Rose Hall, and this time, a guy on a motorcycle saw us, stopped and asked if we were looking for weed.  Answering in the negative, we made it to the plantation without any further interference.  The plantation was somewhat interesting, and is made more interesting by the old stories that go with it, but was certainly insightful for the historical context.

Next time, my overall thoughts and observations on the whole trip.

Jamaica

For the first trip, we'll go back to what now seems like ancient history, certainly in the travel world.  Way back in 1995, there really wasn't much in the way of travel innovation.  Keep in mind that this was well before iPhones, and at the time, the internet was basically a bunch of people signed on to AOL.  That may not seem like that much of a big deal, but this is one of only two trips that I've ever booked through a travel agent.  In short, the information available about places to go was essentially limited to the travel agent (who may or may not have actually been to wherever you were going), and to guidebooks.  We ended up getting three for Jamaica - one was the Frommer's guidebook (I'm pretty sure it was the 2nd edition, but I recently got rid of it so I can't verify), the second was one of the Insight Guides, and the third was Fodor's pocket Jamaica.  

  While my first thoughts are to go into a comparison of the three (and believe me, not all travel guides are created equal), I'll simply try to transition by saying that, without further belaboring the point, information back in those days was not as free-flowing and as accessible as today.

Since we were honeymooners, we booked at an all-inclusive resort included in the neat brochure provided by the travel agent.  I managed to find the matchbook from the resort, and have included it below, which, in and of itself, is another sign of how the times have changed.

  I'll try to recap the actual trip as best as I can, although since I am now writing almost 20 years later, memories may not necessarily serve me as well as I would like.

The first thought that comes to mind is that all-inclusive is great, and while this is the only all-inclusive trip I've ever taken, I can say that it was wonderful to know that I didn't have to think twice about the cost of the next drink, meal, snack, or whatever else it was.  I was absolutely free to order whatever I wanted on the menus, get as many drinks as I desired from the bar, and that was an incredible feeling. I think that room service was a whopping $2, so we got room service on multiple nights as well. I'm pretty sure that SeaCastles is no longer around today, at least not in the same form - Googling SeaCastles Jamaica turns up an odd collection of links.

One of the first things I remember is simply that Jamaica was nothing like I expected it to be.  I was naive, probably overly so, and I imagined a people who were still jamming to Bob Marley or the modern equivalent, and a generally happy populace who were basically reggae loving beach bums with a predisposition to weed.  In my defense, neither my travel agent, nor the travel guides available to me told me otherwise.  That clearly turned out not to be the case.  The Jamaicans were far more into rap than Bob Marley (other than as a way to sell records to tourists), and the fact is that Jamaicans, like other people, have many responsibilities, and have little time to simply hang out at the beach.

So, although we spent a week on the resort, we did make a few excursions - one to Dunn's River Falls, rafting down the Martha Brae, visiting Rose Hall plantation, as well as going to the Evening on the Great River.  That said, the first memories I have of Jamaica are not of these excursions, as fun and enlightening as they might be.  And in fact, as I write, I realize that my ramblings are going to easily go past the limits of what ought to be a single post.  So I will relate a few first observations, and save the rest for a second post.

Initial observations:  Within moments of clearing customs, I was approached by a young Jamaican who asked me if I liked to party.  Being naive, I said "yes", not realizing that this was code language for "Would you like to smoke a joint?"  I did, however, shortly realize my mistake, and somehow made it to the hotel transportation without purchasing aforementioned good.  The landscape of Jamaica from the airport to the hotel was nothing short of shocking.  Let's not mince words - Jamaica is, in the end, a third-world country, and we rode past houses that would have fit inside our one bedroom apartment at the time.  Again, more of my naivetee, if you will.

Perhaps one of the most memorable moments occurred after we arrived and were taken to our room.  Keep in mind that this was our honeymoon.  So, we got to our room, and found that our "honeymoon suite" consisted of two twin beds separated by an expanse, that, to a newlywed's eyes, seemed almost infinite.  Sensing our shock, the lady who had taken us to our room stopped and asked if we would like a room with a king bed.  We responded with a firm "Yes", which led to the lady pushing the two beds together in the center of the room.

To be continued...