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...

Introduction

By way of introduction, allow me first to tell you my twin dreams:  someday in the future, I want to spend two years doing nothing but traveling.  One year would be spent solely in the United States.  In the second year, I would travel around the world.  These may, in the end, turn out to be nothing more than pie in the sky, but as the saying goes, failing to plan is planning to fail.  On the one hand, there's no doubt that doing either would be incredibly expensive.  I haven't actually worked out the costs yet, but maybe I will in a coming post.  But until the day actually comes for me to hit the road, my intention is to use this blog as a catalog of the travels I have made, the places that grab me, and anything else travel related that strikes my fancy.  I expect this means a little bit of bumpiness until I find my "voice", as they say.

A little about myself:  I consider myself to be reasonably well traveled.  I've only visited two continents (Europe and North America), but I've visited around a dozen different countries.  My travel style tends to be "closer to the ground" if you will - I don't have funds to stay in high end hotels, and I've done most of my traveling with children, which tends to prohibit such extravagances.  I enjoy a variety of things when traveling, but shopping is not really one of them.  I don't tend to like shopping when I'm at home, so spending time shopping away from home doesn't hold that much appeal for me.  I do enjoy sightseeing, although I'm beginning to appreciate more and more the "anti-sightseeing" approach to travel (maybe more on that later).  I tend to seek out experiences rather than souvenirs.  The more I travel, the more that I find this to be true.

I feed my travel bug with small trips locally when I can, and bigger trips once every few years.  I also read multiple travel magazines, as well as various travel books.  I tend to start dreaming about the next trip not too long after the last one is over, and find myself searching out travel guides to help me plan.  If nothing else, I tend to be a meticulous planner.  I imagine that in former days, I could have made an excellent travel agent, if for no other reason than I love the aspect of planning and writing about travel.  Eventually, who knows, maybe I can draft a few articles for the magazines that I currently read.  At one point, I thought about trying to make a go of it in travel writing, but from what I can tell, you have to have the money to travel before you write, and the writing doesn't actually earn you enough to pay for the travel.  Maybe I'm wrong on this, but let's just say I'm not about to quit my day job to give it a try.

I had several thoughts about how best to start (and still do).  I had thought about going through books such as 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, and making notes about whether or not I had been there, whether I wanted to go there, etc., but honestly, I'm not sure whether that's allowable, given that the book is copyrighted, and I'm also not sure if it's the best way to feed travel lust.  I had also thought about simply starting by cataloging my past travels, which might give me some time to build up some other ideas and thoughts.  There's travel app reviews, travel guide ideas, the list goes on.

In the end, I think I am going to start with recaps of past travels, as much to give me time, as well as to capture some of the things that seem to be the most appealing to me when I travel. I won't catalog every trip, but at least major ones.  If you're reading, please be patient.