First, it was Christmas then the New Year. In less than a month’s time, it’s the season to shop for valentines day gifts. This is the time where retail shops will be decorated with Valentines day gift ideas and for those who can afford, a getaway vacation is the way to go to celebrate this romantic occasion. Maybe the newly couples or unmarried ones may opt for a vacation to spend this day but for some, it is just another ordinary day - nothing special.

What about you? Will you travel to celebrate Valentine’s Day?

Traveling is both exciting and exhilarating. It appeals to the majority of us for various reasons. It all seems to stem from somewhere deep within our human make-up. We are social and curious beings. Our earlier nomadic traditions and heritage, urge us to explore and conquer our world, both known and unknown. It has always been a quest and inspiration to go somewhere we have not been before and see places unseen until now. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have been working too hard for too long and just need to get away and play some golf, you will want to check out golf holidays package vacations from your travel agent. These travel arrangements are often referred to as “stay and play” plans because you stay at a certain hotel and receive rights to play at a certain golf course while you are there. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, most people spend a considerable amount of time online. There is also more and more people spending time traveling then in decades past. Some reasons include more people traveling for business, and also the cost of travel is more affordable, with more options available for booking reservations for various aspects of travel including flights, hotels, and cars. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the best travel tips I can offer to anyone is to read reviews of other real travelers before you plan your itinerary or make any accommodation or travel bookings. There are many travel review sites contributed by ‘been there, done that’ travelers who not only share their travel experiences but recommend activities, adventures, travel secrets and travel tips with other fellow travelers. These opinions and suggestions are sometimes more reliable than travel books and brochures.

My favourites are Trip Advisor (tripadvisor.com) and RealTravel.com. For those who are thinking about an Alaska cruise, Royal Carribean cruise or find out more about discount cruises, check out CruiseReviews.com. This is one of the better and more complete site that offers information on cruises, cruise lines, port reviews, cruise reviews and the cruise forum here is one of the best places to get help and suggestions!

The internet has provided so much travel resources for travelers and tourists, whether it’s information on hotel accommodation, flights, destinations, cruises, rental cars, activities, tips, ideas, forums… anything. It has made traveling so exciting and fun!

It’s been a busy week and that explains why I’m been a bit irregular in updating this blog. I’ve been researching on our Hawaii accommodation and Hawaii cruise. It’s disappointing that after writing to few travel sites, no one but one has responded. Even then, that company who responded only replied once - what’s going on? Don’t they care about customer service? That explains why I prefer to book with sites like Expedia.com or HotelClub where I get my confirmation instantly. Don’t need to go through all the ‘human’ interaction.

My research continues…

Do you keep a travel diary? I do. I bought a Moleskine notebook to record our vacation notes and stories in our first New Zealand trip 2 years ago. Being a minimalist, I couldn’t resist the stylish, black handy notebook. There is something about this simple looking notebook. To me, it is artistic and unique. It has been my travel companion in the last 2 years! I just found a website called Sky Cow Books that offers low prices on these quality Moleskine notebooks.  Well, it doesn’t quite matter what you use to record your memories and travel tales as long as you record it! Keep all the hotel and flight information and details especially if you are traveling on a free and easy vacation. This will save you time from digging through those scraps of paper you have scribbled on

Last weekend, I’ve been busy scouting for nice Hawaii cruises and it looks like I’ve only one cruise line to consider, that is, the Norwegian Cruise Line. Since we are thinking of departing from Honolulu and can only afford 7 nights, the Pride of America seems the only option. With prices ranging from $699 to more than $3,000, the 7 days island hopping Hawaii cruise sounds like a nice thing to do for the family. As usual, I did my research via Google and didn’t find too many raving reviews. While I like to read unbiased ones, I would like to believe that there are better ones in the Net. I submitted a couple of requests to several online travel agents but none has replied - I would expect a better service than this Well, this goes to show that some travel sites do not live up to its reputation of offering superior customer service.

My research on Norwegian Cruise Line continues…

Alex and myself are both adrenalin seekers to some extent. He loves the wild water adventures and me, anything in the air! Alex booked himself with ‘Serious Fun River Surfing’. According to Alex (his exact words), this 4-hour activity at the Kawarau River is for the brave-hearted ones who want to experience the ‘unknown’ of the fast rapids!

Well, it’s definitely not for me! I opt for hang-gliding with ‘Skytrek’, the only company that is licensed to hang glide at The Remarkables. That was an amazing and awesome experience. The views were incredibly beautiful. The best part of it was the ability to control and fly the kite (with supervision of course!) at some point.

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One of the things I notice when I do my usual blog walking is the interesting and fun widgets on the sidebar on a blog. Somehow, blog interface is becoming like an artist’s palette, individual blogger tends to personalize blog with popular widgets including RSS reader, technorati, myBlogLog, flickr, plus other social community widgets that the blogger belongs to.

I haven’t come across many who use a weather widget and I think it may be a nice idea, to inform share with your visitors what’s the weather like for your city today. For some, it may be a good way to draw more visitors, in other words, increase the traffic to the site. For others, it can be just a fun widget to include. The widgets can be personalized to the theme of your choice, plus up to 3 million international locations, in English or Spanish. Adding the widget to your blog is easy. Just select the size, theme, location, language and that’s it, your customized weather widget is ready to be placed on your blog!