I just did a trip to Vegas for $250. I didn’t go to any time share meetings and didn’t stay with anyone’s family. I didn’t drive there and I didn’t sleep under a bridge. I flew there, watched two great shows and stayed in an amazing hotel. Let me tell you how I did it. I’m a travel addict. I somehow have managed to squeeze in trips in whenever there’s a lull in my...
Part 1- Getting on a Plane I travel a lot. I sometimes feel like I’ve been on more planes than Edward Norton in Fight Club. After so many departure lounges and security checks, I started realizing that I had started evolving into a different kind of traveler. I was doing things different than most of the other passengers. They looked crazed and panicky; I was...
Every year around September I start seeing the deals. The kids are back in school, the traveling hordes of Americans slows to a crawl and Europe goes on sale. The cruise ships don’t stick around for long. As soon as it gets a little chilly, they start “repositioning” and heading for warmer waters. Hotels that were turning away tourists in July...
It was a warm night in the town of Luang Prabang. My traveling companions and I had just polished off some amazing Laotian barbecue and thought we’d have a little fun at one of the night clubs down the street from our hotel.I had forgotten my phone at the hotel and told Jeff and Kerry I’d meet them at the club in a few minutes. It was a good 10...
Are you a tourist or a traveler? Many of my friends think of these words as synonyms but I explain that they can be vastly different. You don’t have to be an etymologist to realize that a tourist takes tours and a traveler travels. Can you do both? Yes. I like to think of travelers as being the ” eco-friendly” version of a tourist;...
There’s an often overlooked strip of land below the United States called Central America. Although it’s only a short flight from the US, it’s been ignored for years in favor of the tropical islands in the Caribbean. While Costa Rica has been on travel itineraries for decades with it’s stable economy and peaceful reputation, names like...
I travel to a different country almost every month. The places I choose are not usually on any of my friends’ top ten lists because they don’t really know anyone else who has been there or sometimes whether it’s even a real place . I might as well tell them that I’m going to Atlantis or Camelot, or Asgard… . The hard truth is most...
I was drinking a beer at a local bar the other night and as some of the regular patrons started chatting with me about things they would never remember later, we somehow started talking about Belgium. Let me rephrase that. There was Belgian ale on tap. They served it in a Bud light glass and that’s how it all got started. There are infinite segues that will get...
If you ask anyone in Texas where they go on vacation, Cancun always comes up in the conversation. Cancun is like the Las Vegas of Mexico. It’s easy to get there, easy to get to your hotel, easy to stay in your hotel and if you dare to leave, there’s a zillion excursions from zip lining to pirate dinner cruises. You don’t have to speak...
It was starting to get dark and I was in the middle of nowhere. Australia is a big country and there’s a whole lot of nothing in the middle or in Western Australia where I was headed. It was my first big backpack trip and I was on a budget of almost nothing. I had never hitchhiked in my life but after about 3 weeks of it, I was getting pretty well...