Friday, December 18, 2009

Standing Stones - Scotland



Scotland.










England, Ireland and Scotland all have these remarkable stones. About one third is above ground and that 1/3 is massive.
Religious? Perhaps, it is not known.
Truly a sight to behold.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

How to pick the best seat on the airplane

One of the things we are going to do here at Travels with Passport is to highlight worthy websites. Some of the sites will be very main stream. Some may be obscure. But, we believe that they are each worthy of your time and can be helpful in one way or another.


The first one up is a main stream site that you may have heard of: Seatguru.com.


SeatGuru is an amazing site. It is a very simple idea executed perfectly. As you know not every seat on any airplane is the same. Some have different leg room or are too close to the bathroom. Some don’t recline. Etc, Etc. SeatGuru tells you which are the better seats and which to stay away from.


All you need is the name of your airline and the plane’s model number. SeatGuru gives you a delightful color coded diagram of the cabin.


It tells you everything you need to know to better pick your seat. Well, not everything. It won’t tell you where the crying baby is sitting.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

An Ugly Tourist Story

Some twenty five or so years ago, the family took a delightful vacation to Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela. A town on the east coast of Venezuela right on the Caribbean. The US Dollar went very far there and we had a wonderful time. For some reason it was an undiscovered gem as far as Americans go. Most of the tourists were from elsewhere, which gave it an additional international flavor.


But I’m not here to reminisce about my memories of that trip. This is an ugly tourist tale. We’ve all seen them: The Ugly Tourists. We all have our stories. Here is one of mine:


While sitting in the lobby, a middle aged woman was seen at the far end of the room engaging a hotel employee. As she waved her arms and made angry faces, it was clear that something was - to her - amiss. Although she was too far away to hear what was being said, it was also clear that the poor hotel employee was not saying anything close to what this woman wanted to hear.


After more than a few minutes and more than a few huffs of disgust, the woman left the poor employee and made her way back to her husband who, as luck would have it, sat close by. As she approached her husband, she told him (after a very heavy sigh), “You’d think that if they want us to come to their country, the least they could do is to learn our language!”


After all this time, I still tell that story. We can only hope that that woman (and those who share her world view) confine their travel to watching travelogues on TV.


What about you? Got an Ugly Tourist story? Want to share?