One of my absolute favorite websites of all time is www.tripadvisor.com. If you travel at all, you will want to be familiar with this site. Whenever we are planning a trip, we visit this site religiously to check up on reviews and forum posts.
I can't even begin to list all the things you can do on this site, but one of the things we use it for most is to read reviews, more specifically hotel reviews. When you are travelling to a place you have never been before, especially to a foreign country, you want to be sure that you are staying somewhere that not only looks nice in the pictures on the website, but that also meets your standards in reality. If you have ever stayed in a sub-par hotel, you know exactly what I mean!
Perhaps the easiest way to find reviews of hotels is to sort them the way it makes the most sense to you. You can choose a category (All Hotels, Best Value, Family, Luxury, Business, and Romantic) and then click the drop-down menu to sort the hotels by ranking or price. You can also select various options for your search, such as type of accommodation (hotel, B&Bs, specialty lodging, etc.), specific price range, or neighborhood (if you know what area you would like to stay in). The list that comes up should tell you what the accommodations' rankings are (for example: #24 out of #462 hotels in Nashville, etc.). You can view your options in list view or opt for a larger map that you can click on to view information about hotels in specific areas of the city you are researching. Of course, if you already know which hotel or accommodation you are considering, you can always simply search for that hotel by name and it should come up.
In popular and widely travelled cities, you will come across many reviews, so you will probably not have the time or patience to read them all. I typically try to read the most recent reviews, as these give more accurate and up-to-date information about the accommodation. However, be careful to look at when the reviewer actually stayed at the hotel and not just the date the review was written, as people sometimes wait a few weeks to a few months after returning home to review the accommodation they used. Sometimes reviewers also upload pictures of the room they stayed in so that you can compare these with the pictures used on the hotel website.
Another thing to keep in mind is that everyone has different standards for what an accommodation should offer. Also, some people just like to complain about anything and everything they can think of! We ran across this quite a bit when researching for our European trips. If you have ever been to Europe, then you would know that hotel rooms tend to be a lot smaller by American standards. This is just the way it is there unless you are staying in an American chain hotel (which we typically do not do). If the only reason a reviewer gave a hotel a low ranking was because of the room size, we took that into consideration, as that is just a given in Europe. We have also read complaints about things like what is offered at breakfast. If you are staying in budget hotels, it is always good to keep in mind that, on some level, you do get what you pay for. We typically stay in B&B's or smaller "mom and pop" hotels in Europe. These kind of accommodations are not usually "luxurious" but do offer a lot of other perks, such as friendly hotel staff with lots of great sightseeing advice that you would not normally get at a larger, more luxurious hotel. We would never expect to stay in a small B&B and be pampered like royalty, have a large room, or be able to order room service at all hours of the night, simply because small B&B's are just not that type of accommodation. However, there are people in the world who do have higher and very unrealistic expectations at times. That being said, there are certain things we take very seriously when we read reviews, such as bug problems, safety issues, and interactions with hotel staff, especially if we happen to see several reviews that mention some of these same issues.
Overall, reading reviews can be helpful but you have to learn to read between the lines to find the information you are looking for. We have used this website for just about every trip we have taken since beginning our travels and have mostly been very happy with the places we have chosen.
Feel free to comment with any other tips or websites that you find helpful!
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Monday, February 11, 2013
Why Travel?
There are numerous reasons why any one person would travel, and the reasons one might take one trip might be different from why one would take a completely different trip. Then, there are those who choose not to travel or feel it is a waste of time or money. These are the top 5 reasons why I travel:
1. To get away from my life. This may sound dramatic, but I believe that everyone needs some time away from the realities of everyday living. This might mean a 16 day-jaunt through Europe, a week's vacation on the beach doing absolutely nothing, an extended weekend to a location just a few hours away, or simply a day trip with the family. Taking a break from our regular schedules allows us to return from a trip renewed and feeling good about going back to our lives.
2. To enjoy time with my family. I know a lot of people like to vacation with friends and extended family. While I don't necessarily think this is a bad idea, I tend to view travel as a great time to spend quality time with my immediate family. While at home, it is easy to get caught up in drama in almost every area of life, whether it concerns work, family, or friends, and this affects interactions within our immediate family. Getting away from all of that allows us to spend time doing things we enjoy without having to worry about any of that. For example, one of my favorite things about going to another country is that we are not very easily reachable by phone. Of course, we are sure to contact family frequently so no one worries, but there is something nice about being able to turn off our phones for a week or two to focus on our own interests without any interruptions.
3. To learn about the history and culture of another part of the world or country. One of the things I like best about travelling is imagining what my life would be like if I lived in another place. This is especially evident when we travel to Europe or to the Caribbean where life is really different from where we live in the US. However, there is still evidence of differences in living even in other parts of the US. I was never all that interested in history or social studies class when I was in school, but getting to actually see things in person makes all the difference.
4. To appreciate our lives a little more. While it is nice to fantasize about living somewhere on an island in the Caribbean or moving to a flat in London, ultimately, travelling helps me to appreciate what we have here at home. Of course, there are always people who have more, but there are also people who have considerably less than we do. For example, there are some great things about Jamaica (the worry-free attitude, the warm weather, sandy beaches, etc.), but a life there would be very different from the life we live here. Of course, this is not to say that there is nothing to be learned from the lifestyle and attitude of the people living there. Ideally, one would be able to take back the carefree attitude of the people and apply it appropriately to one's life at home. It kind of puts things in perspective to see how other people can be perfectly happy living in a completely different way.
5. To learn more about myself. There is something about travel that is almost like soul-searching in a way. One can learn more about how she deals with unexpected turns of events or how she deals with being in a new place where there may or may not be different social norms. I know that when we travel out of the country, specifically to Europe, it gives us great pride to be able to navigate our way around an unknown city, especially in a country where we do not speak the language. I usually return home feeling good about our problem-solving skills and how we dealt with things that came up.
There are a million other reasons why one would choose to travel. Feel free to comment with any other reasons you can think of.
1. To get away from my life. This may sound dramatic, but I believe that everyone needs some time away from the realities of everyday living. This might mean a 16 day-jaunt through Europe, a week's vacation on the beach doing absolutely nothing, an extended weekend to a location just a few hours away, or simply a day trip with the family. Taking a break from our regular schedules allows us to return from a trip renewed and feeling good about going back to our lives.
2. To enjoy time with my family. I know a lot of people like to vacation with friends and extended family. While I don't necessarily think this is a bad idea, I tend to view travel as a great time to spend quality time with my immediate family. While at home, it is easy to get caught up in drama in almost every area of life, whether it concerns work, family, or friends, and this affects interactions within our immediate family. Getting away from all of that allows us to spend time doing things we enjoy without having to worry about any of that. For example, one of my favorite things about going to another country is that we are not very easily reachable by phone. Of course, we are sure to contact family frequently so no one worries, but there is something nice about being able to turn off our phones for a week or two to focus on our own interests without any interruptions.
3. To learn about the history and culture of another part of the world or country. One of the things I like best about travelling is imagining what my life would be like if I lived in another place. This is especially evident when we travel to Europe or to the Caribbean where life is really different from where we live in the US. However, there is still evidence of differences in living even in other parts of the US. I was never all that interested in history or social studies class when I was in school, but getting to actually see things in person makes all the difference.
4. To appreciate our lives a little more. While it is nice to fantasize about living somewhere on an island in the Caribbean or moving to a flat in London, ultimately, travelling helps me to appreciate what we have here at home. Of course, there are always people who have more, but there are also people who have considerably less than we do. For example, there are some great things about Jamaica (the worry-free attitude, the warm weather, sandy beaches, etc.), but a life there would be very different from the life we live here. Of course, this is not to say that there is nothing to be learned from the lifestyle and attitude of the people living there. Ideally, one would be able to take back the carefree attitude of the people and apply it appropriately to one's life at home. It kind of puts things in perspective to see how other people can be perfectly happy living in a completely different way.
5. To learn more about myself. There is something about travel that is almost like soul-searching in a way. One can learn more about how she deals with unexpected turns of events or how she deals with being in a new place where there may or may not be different social norms. I know that when we travel out of the country, specifically to Europe, it gives us great pride to be able to navigate our way around an unknown city, especially in a country where we do not speak the language. I usually return home feeling good about our problem-solving skills and how we dealt with things that came up.
There are a million other reasons why one would choose to travel. Feel free to comment with any other reasons you can think of.
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