I’d been thinking that 2015 was not the greatest year for me, travel and otherwise.
I didn’t get to do a long weekend trip to Montreal in 2015, as I was hoping to.
My husband and kids went on vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina without me, because I was crazy busy at work during the April school break.
Continue reading Looking back at 2015 and forward to 2016
As our family gets ready for the annual holiday of Thanksgiving, probably the most important holiday in the U.S. because it’s celebrated by people of all faiths, I think back to a November more than twenty years ago, when my husband and I, married just three months prior, got stuck on I-89 in Vermont when our car broke down.
We had just visited my husbands’ parents in Vermont, and with a huge turkey they gave us slowly thawing in the trunk of our old station wagon, we were heading back to our apartment in Boston, to celebrate our first Thanksgiving together.
Our car broke down about half an hour after we got on the highway.
And it was raining.
That was before everyone had cell phones, and in those days if you broke down along a stretch of a highway far from the nearest emergency call box in cold November rain … Well… it wasn’t fun.
Continue reading Thanks to a stranger… Stories of Strangers’ Kindness around the World
If you’ve been part of the travel blogging scene for a while you have undoubtedly seen several mentions of the “Liebster Award” and the “Sisterhood of the World Bloggers” award. Heck, you might have already been nominated for either or both awards yourself.
For those who haven’t heard of the Liebster and the Sisterhood yet – it’s basically a way to recognize your fellow travel bloggers, and get to know them a bit better by asking them questions that they are expected to answer as they, in turn, write a post about the award.
Technically the Liebster award is supposed to be given to new blogs, with very small following, and I have first received the Liebster nomination from BEATRAVELING way back in October 2014, when I was just a new kid on the block. (You can read about that in “Liebster Awards, or as I’ve been calling it #blogspotlight.“)
The Sisterhood of the World Bloggers on another hand is supposed to showcase female bloggers, because, as Kate of Adventurous Kate pointed out during her keynote at WITS15 (Women in Travel Summit held in 2015), female bloggers deserve more attention than they are given by the media.
(I don’t think there’s a video recording of that speech but you can at least look at the slides of Kate’s presentation “Gender Inequality in the Travel Blogging Industry.”)
“[P]eople get more retrospective enjoyment and satisfaction from their experiential purchases than from their material purchases”
I completely agree.
Yes, it would be nice to see every day an updated and gleaming bathroom or kitchen, but even though I hate the wallpaper in our kitchen, and our bathroom could use updating as well, I get much more enjoyment from reminiscing our recent trips, to the Alhambra, London, or Portugal.
I love traveling back in my mind to places I’ve been to, especially when I look at the pictures. Keeping the memories alive is one of the reasons I blog about our trips – it lets me relive that moment I smiled when I saw the Trafalgar Square, or the time we had leisurely breakfasts on the balcony of one of the places we stayed at.
Even when I look at old photos, going back to when I was five, I still remember bits and pieces of those vacations.
Continue reading Memorable Travel Experiences: A Collaborative Post
Are you on Twitter, but not sure whom to follow, and how to get anyone to follow you back?
One of the best ways to meet fellow travelers on Twitter are Twitter chats.
I admit, I’m a social media junkie, and I love Twitter chats.
If you take time to read the discussion during or after the chat, you’ll notice that some people post answer similar to what you said = they are probably a lot like you.
I tend to follow those folks, and sometimes they follow me back.
In fact, after every chat I participate in, I get new followers. Sometimes there’s just one or two, sometimes there are more.
But it’s not about numbers, it’s about growing your community of fellow travelers, who think and feel like you. That’s the most important part.
Continue reading Get Chatty! Tips on getting the most out of Twitter chats
I’ve been following various travel blogs for a few months now, and realized that while we travel with our kids, ours is not really a family travel blog. Is it?
First of all, our name is wrong.
It looks like most “family blogs” include the word “kid,” “mom,” or “family” somewhere in the title.
We’re simply “Casual Travelers.”
Also, most family travel blogs (though not all) tend to post articles about planning beach vacations, best ways to entertain kids on the airplane, or list most kid-friendly restaurants in a given city.
In other words, most family travel blogs are, in general, very kid-centric.
We don’t do that either.
Continue reading We’re not really a “Family” Travel Blog, are we?
