Category Archives: Travel Tips

Attractions, Canada, Guidebooks, Historic Sites, Museums, Québec, Science, Tours, Travel Tips, UNESCO

How much can you see in three-and-a-half days in Quebec City?

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Mind you, just so we’re clear on that – three-and-a-half days is NOT enough to see everything worth seeing in Québec City and the area.

From its centuries-old stone buildings that look like they were transported straight from France, to its many museums, this charming city of about half a million has a lot to offer to visitors.

Unfortunately, we only had a long weekend for this visit, but if you have more time, do yourself a favor and spend a few more days in this capital of the Canadian province of Québec.

It’s an about six-hour drive from Boston, another old city worth seeing, but it’s very different than any American cities you will see, including the also-French New Orleans.

We saw the following attractions in Québec City. You can decide whether you want to put them on your to-see list as well.

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Attractions, Blogging, Travel Tips

Memorable Travel Experiences: A Collaborative Post

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It’s better to spend money on “experiences such as travel over material goods” Cornell University’s researchers tell us.

“[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.

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Airports, JFK Airport, Travel Tips, USA

Flying from JetBlue Terminal 5 at the JFK Airport in NYC

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What a difference a terminal makes! A few months ago, in December 2012, we traveled to Europe from terminal 1 at the JFK Airport. At that time, our tween son hunted far and wide for an available outlet to plug his electronics in, so that he wouldn’t waste the battery.

At JetBlue’s terminal 5, there are outlets galore in the section with long tables especially designed for plugging in.

The terminal also has free Wi-Fi – which was very welcome by my “plugged in” family.

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London, Public Transportation, Travel Tips, United Kingdom

Sightseeing in London? Use public transportation

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If you’re visiting London on a budget, skip the expensive hop-on hop-off tours and just buy yourself a London Travelcard which you can use not only on the Underground but also on the famous London double-decker buses, and you can see quite a bit of the city that way, especially if you manage to get seats right in front on the upper level.

London seems to have two options to buy tickets for public transportation – Oyster Cards and Travelcards, and the very well-designed London Transport site has a very handy page explaining the differences between the Oyster cards and the Travelcard.

London Tube map

Since the fee to buy an Oyster card is £3.00, we thought getting Travelcards on the couple of days we were sightseeing would a better option for the four of us, since we’d have to pay £12.00 just for the cards.

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