Travels with Passport

How to Help Animal Shelters Save Pets!

2011-11-30T17:27:00.001-05:00

Travels loves animals. Almost all of our dogs over the years have been from animal shelters and humane societies. These folks do a wonderful job saving our furry friends.
But they always need help!
ShelterDoggies.com is a site that can help make a difference with no cost to you!

If you ever buy anything on the internet, go there first and link to your favorite internet store by way of ShelterDoggies' link. You will go directly to your favorite store AND ShelterDoggies will get a small commission that will enable them to write checks to animal shelters to help them do their wonderful work.
Your price on whatever you may buy will not be affected.
Everyone wins.

If you buy anything from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or any other internet retailer, you should do so through ShelterDoggies.com.

We're All the Same, But Different

2010-12-21T17:48:00.000-05:00

Mrs Travels recently hosted a group of German business men and women at a business meeting in New York City.
At lunch time they all ordered food to be delivered. Mrs Travels thought that it would be delightful to order sandwiches from one of the over-the-top delis that NYC was once famous for. Overstuffed sandwiches for all!
When the lunch arrived, the Germans looked at the mile high sandwiches with shock. So much meat! (Anyone who has traveled in Europe will smile at the differences between the amount of meat in a sandwich.)
"Is there a problem", she asked? She was focused on the mile high pile of meat on each sandwich, of course.
The reply: "How will we taste the bread?"

To all travelers

2010-11-03T20:27:00.002-04:00

Travels wishes he could take credit for this one, but - alas - he saw it somewhere on the internet.
Nevertheless it is a great quote and a true one:

No one with a thick passport can have a narrow mind.

Think on this and get on with your travels.

Does the New York DMV have a sense of humor or any sense at all?

2010-08-26T16:53:00.000-04:00

Travels had to renew his driver license as we all need to do from time to time. A great piece of ID in today's world and ever so helpful when renting a car.

Now the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles may or may not be better or worse than where you live, but they are rather sub-par in service. Good advice is to always bring a book or magazine as well as enough coin to feed the parking meters. (Trust me they patrol those meters more often then many others. A ticket would just add hurt to all the time spent/wasted at the DMV.)

But I had great amusement while waiting for Godot to process me. There behind the counter, just to the right of the eye test chart was a poster warning of the dangers of DUI. DUI is a real danger on today's roads and reducing that danger is clearly a good thing. And, I am told, that posters can help get a message out to the public.

But, really, does anyone really think that Stevie Wonder is the right star to be featured on such a poster? I love the guy's music. However, I will state for the record that no mater if Mr Wonder is drunk or sober, I'm not getting into a car if he is behind the wheel.

One has to wonder about the brain trust behind the New York DMV.

Walt Disney World African Kingdom park in Orlando, Florida

2010-08-04T17:25:00.000-04:00

Well, after a long time away from this blog, Travels is back.
In July Mrs Travels and I went to Walt Disney World in Florida. The Animal Kingdom park knocked us out. It is so much more than a zoo. The safari ride was surprisingly close to our actual South African safari experiences. Sure, it was Disney and all. But they really did a great job during the 13 minutes of safari in the park. (tip: try to sit on the left hand side of the car. I think the picture opportunities were better on that side.)
For the bird lovers among you, there are walk thru areas with amazing creatures! This one caught my eye, but I failed to write down what it is. Beautiful, nonetheless!

Enjoy!

Pet Peeves in great hotels

2010-05-10T19:11:00.000-04:00

Travels had a function just outside of beautiful Boston. Because we had a bunch of Starwoods points, we stayed at the Westin - Waltham. It is just outside of Boston. It is a very nice hotel.

However, The Westin hit a couple of Travels’ hot buttons for things hotels should not do.

The in-room lighting. We were upgraded to a mini-suite, again thanks to those wonderful Starwoods points!. The room was lovely. A wonderful bedroom with a very nice sitting room near the door. Each had it’s own flatscreen TV. Sweet, since Mrs Travels tends to watch late night TV while I get my beauty sleep. (If only it worked!)

But the lights provided made it very hard to read. In the day time, the sitting room area - with all the lights on - was still dark. Saving power expense is important to any hotel, but come on! Put a large enough bulb in the lamp so that we can, at least, read a newspaper. Travels turned on every lamp available and still needed more light to read.

Internet. It was not included. The fee was something like $11 for dial-up access and $14 for broadband per day. Travels has only one question about this: why do lesser properties include internet for free while the “better” properties (hotels) charge these awful rates? Lord knows, what I pay per month at home is nowhere close to these fees.

Travels just returned from Mainz, Germany where we stayed at the Hyatt. Again, a wonderful hotel...but internet was charged at 50 cents per minute (Euro cents) up to a maximum of Euro 18 per day! (note that E18 is about $24 PER DAY!)

And do not get us started about phone rates when one calls from the room!

*sigh* such is the lot of the traveler these days. I suggest that you speak up at the front desk. Who knows? Every once in a while, you can beat these fees.

2010-01-03T18:04:00.001-05:00

The wrong music at JetBlue JFK

2010-01-02T19:35:00.000-05:00

So many things are just so wrong for a number of reasons.

Travels arrived at the JFK JetBlue terminal around 9am on 1/2/10. It was busy; a whirl of people doing things. As we walked to the bagage claim, we heard the sound system.

Now, Travels loves music. We bring our own often. But when you are a business and pumping music into your customer’s faces, I would suggest a wee bit more attention.

To my point: Air travel is rather safe. However, many are still scared of air travel. Take the simplest fear of flying combine that with bad guys who want to blow up the plane add a bit of bad weather, birds flying into the props and pilots who are looking at Facebook and you have a real fear of flying. Lot’s of people have this fear.

So! To my point! What the Heck was JetBlue thinking when it pumped into the general area one of rock’s great songs?

Don’t Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult.

Not my choice of music for the venue. Great song, tho. I smiled all the way to the baggage claim.

Standing Stones - Scotland

2009-12-18T20:47:00.001-05:00

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.

How to pick the best seat on the airplane

2009-12-17T09:46:00.000-05:00

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.

An Ugly Tourist Story

2009-12-13T11:42:00.000-05:00

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?