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Are you the sort of person who looks forward to a vacation every summer? Do you enjoy scooping up your family, piling into the family car or van (or RV?), and heading off to adventure each year?
I wrote earlier today on one of my other websites about fantasies my wife and I used to have of reaching a point in our lives where we could buy an RV and head off toward the sunset (or sunrise?) and enjoy traveling throughout all of our so-called golden years.
Of course, with the recession having been what it was (or still is), there likely are too many years ahead of us for the amount of gold we’ve amounted to stockpile, so there’s a lot of tarnish on those plans now.
What are your plans? Do you enjoy getting outdoors and camping or hiking? Or are you more like me and would rather enjoy one of those “all inclusive travel” type vacations, sunning on a luxurious beach at a resort — or perhaps taking a Caribbean or Mediterranean cruise of some sort?
Whatever your plans may be, I wish you a happy summer and an enjoyable vacation of some sort this year. Shut down those Internet news sites, set aside the daily paper, and relax. You’ve earned it!
Any of you favor timeshares as vacation option?
Any of you find timeshares a favorable option for your vacations? Or are you more the sort of person who grabs a tent and heads for the woods? Or takes only Disney vacations or Six Flags marathons?
And with the recession and unemployment or housing crises still rampant throughout most of our fair nation, maybe you really aren’t able to take any vacations. That’s sort of the category I find myself in. “Vacation” for my wife and I this summer may permit a 200 mile trip to not-so-far-away Kansas City to see their terrific museum.
But back to the question in the title — have you ever done anything with timeshares? I ask because I just read an online press release from a law firm in Florida which is offering a free legal consultation to Floridians who feel they were misled by timeshare sales people.
That made me remember that the only friends I’ve had who have committed to paying for a timeshare were split about evenly between those who felt it was a great decision and those who would mortgage their first born child to get out of a timeshare agreement. So obviously, as a vacation option, timeshare contracts could be good or bad.
Leave a comment and tell us your experience with timeshares, if you’d like.
Thoughts return again to joys of vacation times
My apologies if I’m wearing out the topic, but my thoughts have returned again today to that fun little mini-vacation my wife and I enjoyed over our extended weekend. What do you like to do for vacations, either mini- or longterm?
When our kids were young, “vacation” only meant one thing: We shoved most of our earthly belongings into our old jalopy and headed 1,000-1,300 miles down the road to visit grandma and grandpa. That was all right. We not only gave our kids the chance to remember their grandparents, we really had fun visiting family and friends.
Nowadays, our kids are long grown up, grandma and grandpa have passed on, and we’ve lost many of the family and friends links from those days gone by. Now wife and I are in a position to plan trips to places we’ve wanted to see — from orlando vacations ot New York City, our travel plans for the future are mostly limited to money as it becomes available.
When you take vacations, are you limited to family visits, low-budget, nearby ideas, or do you have the option to travel wherever your heart and the road/airways take you? Or perhaps you really never take a vacation? What are some of your ideas on the matter — leave a comment and let us know.
Vacations renew the spirit, sometimes really tire out the body
It had been more than two years since my wife and I had a vacation, so last week and over the weekend, we took a bit of a “mini-vacation.” Didn’t go anywhere very special, just strapped on the old Dansko shoes, threw a few clothes into an old duffel bag, and headed out of town.
Okay, we also planned in advance with hotel reservations and a rental car (our old Ford isn’t up to much of an out-of-town trip anymore), but really we didn’t plan much more about the getaway. We went to a major city in our state located about 200 miles from here and then did almost nothing but collapse in the hotel, enjoy a few meals and some “together time,” and made a short trip to my boyhood hometown one day that we were gone.
It was good. We made an effort to read and watch almost no “news” at all while we were gone. We couldn’t break the newspaper habit completely, though, and it was interesting to see a real live “hold in your hands” newspaper of major size again. Also, we brought back a copy of the tiny weekly edition of my hometown weekly just for chuckles. (It was, journalistically speaking, at least as well done as our local “mid-sized city” daily rag here in Springfield.)
Go ahead. Get out of the house, get out of town, just get out there somehow somewhere before winter weather sets in, and enjoy a little renewal of the spirit yourself. And if you’re in no better physical shape than I am right now — you, too, might find what renews the spirit definitely tires out the body!
Speaking of travel: Do you have any tales of lost luggage?
Speaking of travel (my most recent post): Do you have any tales of lost luggage you’d care to share with us?
I just read a story on another blog about an angry Yale student who’s threatening an airline with a $1 million lawsuit for losing the Xbox 360 which he sent through in his checked luggage. (The author of the blog post wondered, as did I, why the guy chose to check an Xbox or other electronics device rather than take it carry-on. Duh.) Wow. A million bucks for an Xbox and emotional distress — that seems perhaps a tiny bit over the edge to me, but, hey, I don’t even own an Xbox.
I remember a flight my wife and I took some years ago where our luggage took a day to catch up with us. We went through some serious “emotional distress,” as the bags contained most of our everyday wardrobe(s). Heck, everything arrived the next day and the airline delivered it to our in-laws where we were staying and everything was fine. I suppose if they hadn’t found and delivered the goods we could’ve thought about a lawsuit, but probably not.
I’ve heard travel horror stories about lost luggage. Got any unusual tales like that you’d care to share with us in a comment? Go ahead.
Is foreign travel becoming more or less risky for Americans?
Is foreign travel becoming more risky for Americans?
For a number of years during the George W. Bush Administration, I heard people constantly talking about how Americans were very unpopular throughout the world. We’ve all heard various “horror stories” about Americans being threatened and even famous cases of them being held hostage in some parts of the world. But does all that really mean anything to me or any other “John Q. Average American” getting ready to travel outside the U.S.? Should I be afraid to travel to some parts of the world?
Should I be seeking a good travel insurance quote to reassure my family and friends before making a trip to Mexico or Canada, or Brazil, or Sweden, or any other foreign land?
I would plead ignorant on most of these issues. It has been literally decades since the few day trips my wife and I made to Canada. I’ve never been to Mexico — though I have a couple of friends who travel in and out of Mexico annually and have never had a single issue with their trips.
How about it? Is it more or less safe to travel as an American today than in the past? Those of you who travel outside the U.S. weigh in and leave a comment about your experience(s).
Are you willing to show off your body parts to airport security personnel?
Are you willing to show off your body parts to airport security personnel??
Okay, I’ll admit I used “show off” mostly to get your attention. But surely you’ve heard by now that new body scanning machines are being installed — at a cost of $170,000 per machine, I read — in U.S. airports. One article I read explained that “electromagnetic waves to create pictures of energy reflected off people. The metallic-looking images show outlines of private body parts and blur passengers’ faces.”
Good to know they blur faces, but I think I’d be much more comfortable showing my FACE rather than, uh, well you get it.
That same article says they detect hidden objects on a person as small as a button. Certainly that is more effective than going through a metal detector or whatever and trying to catch everything from a nail clipper to a box cutter. In fact, according to that USA Today article, these scanners will eventually replace the 35-year-old metal detector system currently in place.
Still, and even though only a handful of people have so far objected to the new scanners, I’m not sure I’m personally comfortable with someone in the TSA seeing that much of me. What do you think?
Hard times hitting Big Apple tourism, hotel industry
Hard times are hitting the Big Apple tourism and hotel industry for 2009, reflecting in one more way the impact of the current worldwide Recession we are living through.
This is where I come off as the “small town rube” I really am, I suppose. I was looking at a story just now about the New York City hotel industry and NYC tourism in general. The article made the point that tourism in 2009 was expected to fall from 47 million visitors in 2008 to 44.5 million visitors in 2009.
Heck, that seems like a pretty enormous number to me, coming from a small village in southeast Nebraska and living for the last 30+ years in a metro area of about 200,000-250,000 in southwest Missouri. See? Told you I was a rube.
One industry official says that NYC hotel revenues-to-available-rooms ratios will be the lowest since September 11, 2001. The same executive, however, says the NYC hotel industry will finish the year financially stronger than in any other major U.S. city. So I guess even the hard times aren’t going to be quite as hard in New York as they might be in the rest of the country.
How about your personal hard times? Are you cutting back on travel plans this year? Or will you be able to take any sort of vacation at all? Leave a comment and let us know how you’re faring.
Holidays mean more travel — which may mean more luggage fees
Have you flown much lately? Are you planning any flights for Thanksgiving weekend travel, or perhaps a bit further ahead for Christmas and New Year’s?
I haven’t flow in awhile, but I would be very interested to know any recent experiences and your reaction to all the extra bucks most airlines are now charging for checking your luggage. When I first heard several months ago that most major airlines were charging $15, even $25 to check a second piece of luggage, I was appalled. Then when it reached the point that some were charging that much for ANY piece of checked luggage, I was stunned.
Why on earth don’t they simply charge more upfront on the ticket pricing? Do they really think most people travel without checking ANY luggage and so would feel angry about over-all ticket price increases? I, personally, would feel less like I’d been somehow “scammed” if they simply charged me more for the ticket and allowed me to check two or even three pieces of luggage without extra fees.
How about any of you reading this who fly frequently? How has the extra costs of checking luggage affected you? Or has it? Leave a comment and sound off about it here!
Do you trust the stock market? How about with your vacation?
No, I don’t mean you should put your vacation plans and vacation money into the stock market. Although, with stock prices so low, if you have some extra bucks this would be a good time to carefully buy up some stock bargains. (My son tells me that; he’s the only stock trader in our immediate family. I’m broke.)
No, I don’t mean your average Las Vegas hotels are offering stock shares to their guests.
What I’ve heard about is this: According to a report this morning on the “Today Show,” there’s a resort somewhere in upstate New York which is offering a room rate based on the closing Dow Jones Industrial number on Fridays. In other words, if the Dow closes at, say, 9000 on a Friday, the rooms at this resort will go for $90 a night the next week.
Go to the “Today Show” website for more details, or you can probably Google it and find out specifics. But it looks like an interesting idea if you’re planning a winter family vacation. If I had any money for a winter family vacation, I know I’d check into it!
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