Passion 1 - A Travel Blog

For the past months, I have been having an affair with the Internet and often end up reading someone’s blog. A blog is a web log – a diary of thoughts, observations and insight posted on a Web site. A recent article by Susan Scrupski gives you the rules of blogging:

1. Be sincere.
2. Write about your passion and write passionately. Be credible.
3. Participate in a community. Blogging is not a solo activity. Encourage comments.
4. (Try to) Be humble.
5. When you reference other bloggers, you should mention them by name as opposed to just linking to them. This is blogger etiquette.
6. Check your links, spelling and grammar.
7. Don’t ever edit or rewrite something you wrote in the past.
8. Never delete posts. Never delete something you’ve written.
9. Use a human voice.
10. Keep your posts regular and relatively short (less than 500 words).

So basically, what I will begin to do is talk about my passions. One of them is to create an open community that brings together many of the best advises on the topic of travel. There is a tremendous amount of great information about travel issues being generated by people who are true experts in the field, but until now there has been no place where it all comes together in the form of one large conversation. By bringing all the great writing and thinking into this Web site, I hope to build a community of concerned citizens from the hotel, airline and travel (travel counselors, agents, representatives, managers, owners, and travelers themselves) industries that will have a real impact on this activity.

I was recently asked on how to lower a Northwest airfare for the following itinerary: Manila – Washington DC – Portland, Oregon – Washington DC – New York – Manila

After advising to buy a Portland-Washington ticket on the Internet (approx US$ 250) and taking the bus from Washington to New York (US$25), we got the price down by over US$500. Now that’s a lot of savings.

On European motor coach tours, I was asked what it meant when the article said “Venice area”. The low cost tours have hotel accommodation in the provinces, far from the city center. To get to the city, you need to take alternative transport (the train, bus or taxi). Higher costing tours with the same itineraries provide hotel accommodations right smack in the city center. Now, it’s your choice where to put your money’s worth.

The other topic I will write about is on being a boomer. But this will be for a later posting.