Remembering How To Travel

I can’t believe that it had been over 3 years since I was on a plane or went on vacation until this recent getaway…a global pandemic can really disrupt your life. But I finally decided that it was time to get back out there in the world. But this trip came with a lot of trepidation and anxiety. I am still much more cautious regarding Covid than most people are, so a lot of care went into choosing a destination. I wanted a short flight, no connections, and somewhere that I could spend the majority of time outdoors. I considered various Caribbean and domestic destinations, and ultimately chose St. Petersburg, Florida.

This ended up being a perfect destination for what I was looking for. The flight from LaGuardia to Tampa was quick and easy, under 3 hours. I was one of very few people wearing a mask, both on the plane and in the airports. I was nervous about how mask wearing would be received in Florida, where I know it met was quite a bit of resistance from the beginning. If people thought I was crazy, nobody told me so to my face.

I chose a small hotel in downtown St. Petersburg, the Inn on Third (https://www.theinnonthird.com/). I can’t recommend this place highly enough. Centrally located, clean, and charming, it was a perfect choice for me. The hotel offers continental breakfast and happy hour with a free drink (beer, wine or soda) every evening. As a solo traveler, this was a great way to meet some of the other guests. Furthermore, the owners and staff were very helpful and friendly. The first morning I ate breakfast outside because I was determined to not be maskless indoors, but the hotel quickly became the only place I ended up taking off my mask other than when outdoors.

I spend a good part of my 4 days in St. Petersburg enjoying the sunshine and warm weather. I walked along the pier, explored street art, visited Sunken Gardens botanical garden, and went to the beach (the Sun Runner bus gets you there from downtown in about 30 minutes, and as an added bonus it’s free until April 2023). Besides those activities, I visited 3 museums: the Chihuly Collection, the Dali Museum, and the James Museum. For a small city, St. Pete has an impressive amount of cultural offerings.

And I ate! Other than breakfast at the hotel, I was able to eat all meals outdoors, which was a factor when choosing my destination. I was impressed by the variety, quality, and affordability of the restaurants within walking distance of my hotel. Memorable meals included a Cuban sandwich at Bodega, enchilladas at Red Mesa Cantina, and an omelet at 2nd and Second. If I’d had more time, there was also Vietnamese, Thai, and Portuguese restaurants all in the area.

This four day vacation in Florida felt monumental at this moment in time, yet also like baby steps compared to trips that I’ve done in the past. I was quickly reminded of how exhilarating it feels to explore someplace new. Hopefully now I will be ready for something more ambitious in 2023!

How Hard Can It Be To Buy a SIM Card?

One thing that I have realized as I’ve traveled more and more is how helpful it is to have cell phone data service. In the past I managed with wifi where I could find it–pretty consistently in hotels, but more and more in cafes, restaurants, airports, etc. But for someone as directionally challenged as me, being able to consult a map at any moment is a game changer.  I know that you can download maps.me or Google maps and use the phone’s GPS to get around, but that never seems to work for me. And I get lost ALL THE TIME so I have really come to rely on Google maps to get me where I need to be. There’s also something so nice about being able to check out a restaurant’s reviews or search for something you want to see or do at the spur of the moment.

Buying a local SIM card was a piece of cake to do in Portugal–I bought one at the airport, for I think €15 for 15 days and the guy in the shop set it up for me in 5 minutes. In London there was a store near my hotel where they helped me choose a card from various companies based which one that had the best price for what I needed. I think that one cost about £10, and the employee of the shop also got me connected in a matter of minutes so I figured it would be the same in Paris. Wrong!

In France you can either buy a SIM card at a cell phone store, like Orange, the main company there, or at a tobacco shop. The day I arrived in Paris, I tried a tobacco shop near my hotel but the girl working there didn’t speak much English and I wasn’t sure what she was trying to sell me– I understood that it would cost something like €10 for the card and €10 for the data but she also said if it didn’t work there would be no refunds. So I didn’t buy it. The official cell phone stores were all closed that first day, being a Sunday, so I had to wait until Monday. I went to an Orange store, and after waiting in line for about 20 minutes, learned that the card would cost me €40. That included international calling, which I didn’t need, but they offered no other option. Now as much as I’m addicted to the internet, I’m also cheap, and $46 to be connected for a one week vacation seemed a bit excessive. Another company had their store across the street. It was a shorter wait there but the price was the same. So I decided that if I couldn’t find something cheaper, I was going to just do this old school. I mean, we all survived before the internet, right?

Throughout that day, I stopped in at every store I passed with the “Tabac” sign outside to ask if they sold SIM cards. Some clerks didn’t speak English, some didn’t sell them and some just seemed sketchy, like the one that tried to sell me a card that was clearly used. Finally I lucked out. One shop offered a card from a company called Lebara, which I never heard of, and the SIM card plus 4 gigs of data was €15. I also wouldn’t pay for it until the card was in my phone and I had a connection. The poor guy in the shop spent probably a half an hour helping me to set it up. Thank goodness he did because I wouldn’t have had a clue how to do it, between my lack of technological skills and the fact that the instructions were only in French. But he finally did it. Good thing too, because I was convinced my hotel was in the absolute opposite direction coming out of the shop than it actually was.

Ah France, you really like to make things complicated, don’t you?

Responsible Tourism

This term probably means different things to different people but it’s something that I thought about a lot on my recent trip to Oaxaca, Mexico during the Day of the Dead celebrations. Oaxaca had been on my list of destinations for a while and when I found out that I could take that particular week off of work, it was an easy decision to head there and see first hand what it was all about.

I love visiting indigenous communities and learning about cultures that are different from my own but it can make me feel a bit uncomfortable at the same time. I am so aware that this type of tourism can appear voyeuristic. In Oaxaca Day of the Dead is a big deal. It’s an important and meaningful holiday for the locals and it’s also a big driver of tourism.

One of the main activities for Oaxacans is to visit cemeteries to visit their deceased relatives. They decorate the graves with flowers and significant objects and the family all gathers around. Each cemetery seems to have certain days where there is increased activity. Before setting off on my trip I booked a cemetery tour through the Oaxaca Lending Library (https://www.oaxlibrary.org), which seemed to be a legitimate organization that does a lot of work in support of both the local and expat community. (As an aside, I was scolded by an American living in Oaxaca for using the term expat–she prefers migrant. I could write an entire post about that.)  When I arrived in the city I was bombarded by other tour operators also offering tours to the various cemeteries on different nights. The whole thing started to make me a bit nervous. There would be busloads of tourists (3 large buses from the library alone) traipsing through the cemeteries while the locals are there to celebrate an important holiday. Is that cool? I did ask about etiquette–I was assured by one of the expats (I mean migrants) that as long I was thinking in these terms I wasn’t going to do anything offensive. And I truly appreciated that. I don’t think I personally did anything overtly offensive. I didn’t take pictures of people without asking if it was ok to do so. I was quiet and respectful. However, I still can’t help thinking about how the presence of so many outsiders impacts on the people who are there to celebrate the holiday. Having said that, nobody seemed to be angry or annoyed about us being there. The Oaxacan people seem to be deeply proud of their culture and traditions and are happy to share them with the world. And it felt like an honor to be able to observe these traditions in such an intimate way.  So I am grateful to the local people for being so welcoming and gracious to all of us tourists.

In addition to the cemetery tour, I also went on a full day tour through an organization called Fundación En Vía (https://www.envia.org) which provides education and interest-free loans to women in Oaxaca. From the organization’s website:

“Fundación En Vía is a non-profit organization that works to empower women to better support themselves and their families.  We use funds generated through responsible tourism to provide interest-free loans and educational programs to entrepreneurial women in 6 communities in the Tlacolula Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico.”

I was kind of on the fence about taking this tour because it was quite expensive, especially compared to prices of other tours and activities I had researched. (Their regular tours are $50, but during the Day of the Dead they were $80.)  However, the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to support an organization that was doing good work in the area. By the time I made up my mind to go, the tours were pretty much sold out but luckily they had a cancellation and I was able to get a spot at the last minute. The tour I went on was to Teotitlán del Valle, which is a town that is known for dyeing and weaving wool into rugs. We visited a family in their home, saw their Day of the Dead altar, drank some mezcal with them, had lunch and learned about the businesses that En Vía helps them to finance. In addition to the rugs, this family runs a cafe and makes chocolate. We saw demonstrations of both spinning and weaving the wool as well as making chocolate and talked with the women about the challenges and goals that they have. We also accompanied them to the cemetery, which felt a bit different for me than on the other tour. Maybe it was because we had made a connection with some people in the community. There also weren’t nearly as many tourists there. It was a fun day that also felt meaningful. That to me is what responsible tourism means.

Being Connected

This trip to Portugal was the first time that I have traveled outside of the country with internet service. In the past, I would keep my phone in airplane mode and connect only when I had wifi, generally in hotels, friends’ homes, and occassionally in restaurants or cafes. But now that I have an unlocked phone, I decided to buy a local data plan when I arrived (I bought a sim card at the airport when I landed, 15 days of service for 15 euros, not unlimited but enough that I didn’t run out of data). I didn’t think I would really need to be connected so I thought of this as an experiment more than anything. I was a bit hesitant about even doing this, since I do have a tendency to be somewhat addicted to checking email and Facebook, and usually international travel is an opportunity for me to disconnect somewhat.

I have to say that having access to Google Maps whenever I needed it was a game changer. I actually prefer paper maps, which I continued to use when I could. However, when you are completely lost to the point of not being able to find your location on a map, that paper map becomes pretty useless. And I am cursed with the world’s worst sense of direction. I still remember being lost in the old city of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria in 1994. I was on a tour but my friend Virginia and I had gone off to explore on our own. When it was time to go back to our hotel, we kept walking in circles but couldn’t seem to find it. We finally decided that we would take a taxi, but then somehow managed to make our way back. Similarly, I had just arrived in Seville, Spain in 2010 and set off to explore the narrow, twisting streets and alleyways in the barrio of Santa Cruz and couldn’t figure out how to get back to where I was staying. Once again, I kept walking in circles (I knew this because I kept passing the same landmarks) and got so frustrated that I was practically on the verge of tears when I somehow extricated myself from the maze I was in. Thinking back, I wonder how different these experences would have been if I had just been able to open up Google Maps and see where I was. Just the fact that I remember these moments so vividly 23 and 7 years later is kind of amazing. Of course, the flip side of being able to pinpoint your location on a digital map and get a route to your desired location is that you lose some skills of being self-reliant as well as the need to ask locals for directions, which can lead to amazing, spontaneous interactions.  But on this trip there was a comfort to knowing that even when I felt hopelessly lost, I was just a few clicks away from being slightly less lost. It was also helpful in taking buses in Lisbon, as I was able to follow the route of the bus on my phone and have an idea of where to get off.

It’s also nice to be able to quickly find out the hours a museum is open or the location of a shop. If I saw a restaurant that caught my eye, sometimes I would look it up on TripAdvisor. In the past I often would carry a guide book around with. Now that really isn’t necessary.

Another benefit to this connectivity was one that I didn’t realize I would need. My second day in Portugal I met Vanessa on a walking tour. We hit it off and ended up spending most of that day and the following one together in Lisbon. Our paths crossed again later on in Porto, and having internet service (she did as well) made it so much easier to coordinate plans to meet up. Would it have been possible to connect with her if I only had wifi service? Of course, but it would have been a bit more complicated, necessitating a more definite plan. This way we were able to be more flexible and spontaneous.

And of course, it was fun to be able to upload photos to Facebook in real time.

 

 

 

“Você fala inglês?”

“Você fala inglês?” Do you speak English? Luckily for me, the answer was usually “yes” or “a little” during my time in Portugal, since that one sentence represents a fairly large percentage of my knowledge of the Portuguese language. And even when people said “a little” they mostly spoke excellent English.

In 2010, when I was doing research on TripAdvisor for an upcoming trip to Spain I was struck by critical reviews of hotels that repeatedly stated that the staff didn’t speak English. That led to a spirited conversation among some of my friends on Facebook. Should we expect people all over the world to speak English? Isn’t that extremely arrogant? Or is English the de-facto international language of tourism? In any case, it wasn’t much of an issue for me in Spain, since I do speak enough Spanish to get by and am always happy to have the opportunity to use it. Portuguese, not so much.

But the contrast had me asking myself, why the difference? In Portugal, not only did most people working in tourism speak English (as well as French and Spanish in many cases), so did ordinary people on the street (As an aside, in Turkey, people working in tourism also tend to be fairly multilingual but once you move away from the tourist centers, it can be challenging to find English speakers.) According to a tour guide I had Portugal, it has to do with the consumption of American popular culture. TV shows and movies are presented in English with Portuguese subtitles. In Spain, they tend to dub the shows and movies. An interesting theory but can that be the answer? I also know that in Portugal kids start to study English in school at a fairly young age. Maybe it’s a result of better teaching?

If anybody has any thoughts on this I’d love to hear them. I don’t have any answers, just sharing some observations.

On Solo Travel

I recently posted this photo on Facebook with the caption “I’ve been traveling solo since 2007. Who knew I was such a trendsetter.”

That resulted in some comments from friends expressing admiration and asking how I first got interested in solo travel. So I started to reflect back and thought that my story might inspire some of you as well.

It turns out that the above date of 2007 isn’t even accurate. I had gone to Club Med by myself twice before then–once in 1997 and again I think around 2004. Club Med is a great way to test the waters if you are feeling hesitant about going somewhere alone. For me (and probably for many others as well), the hardest times when traveling alone are at mealtimes. Club Med eliminates that anxiety because the resorts have large tables of 8-10 people, so it is very easy to constantly meet new people and you never have to eat alone. Everyone there, even people who are traveling in couples or with friends, expects to meet new people at meals so it is very comfortable and easy. (Just be prepared to have the same conversation over and over: “How many Club Meds have you been to?”). For more information, check out my post “The Cult of Club Med.”(https://jilltravel.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/the-cult-of-club-med/)

In 2002 I went to Costa Rica for 2 months to study Spanish. My friend Michelle was there for part of the time, but we lived in different homestays and were in different classes at the same Spanish schools. This experience provided a significant opportunity to learn how to navigate on my own–it was kind of like going off to college, but as an adult and in a foreign country. To this day I am still friends with both my Spanish teachers from my first time there, as well as the homestay family with whom I lived for 8 weeks in San Jose.

But what I was thinking about when I wrote that Facebook post was the trip I took to Ecuador by myself in November 2007. I kind of decided to go on a whim. I had just seen a movie called “Que Tan Lejos” (How Much Further) about a young Spanish woman who is traveling by bus from Quito to Cuenca, Ecuador. It’s basically the story of her experience as she embarks on this journey. I saw that movie and decided that’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t have enough time to make it all the way to Cuenca, but I did go by bus from Quito to Baños and back. My trip wasn’t quite as dramatic as the one in the movie (among other things, the protagonist has to hitchhike because of a bus strike) but I met so many interesting people and had such a great experience that I became hooked on solo travel. I think that the biggest surprise for me on that trip was how easy it was to meet people. I still remember Antonio, an Ecuadorian-American who I met at my hotel in Quito and who ended up surprising me by showing up at my hotel in Baños. There was also Ray, an Irish guy who stopped me on the street in Quito, asked if I spoke English and then asked if I had a map. We ended up having a day long romance before we each went our separate ways. Then there was an Ecuadorian guy I chatted with on the bus on the way to Baños and went out to lunch with. In Baños, Antonio and I hung out with Manuela from New York, who was also staying in the same hotel. An Ecuadorian friend in New York had put me in contact with Diana, a friend of his who lives in Quito, and she even invited me to a dinner party at her home.

Even with all of those wonderful experiences, it did get lonely sometimes. I remember all these years later, returning to Quito from Baños on Thanksgiving Day. When I got back to the same hotel in Quito where I had been just a few days earlier, I didn’t see anybody I had previously met, and ended up going out for dinner alone on Thanksgiving. That was a bit sad and there have been other moments that I felt alone in other trips but it is all part of the experience. The good times always far outweigh the difficult moments. I have learned to always stay in hotels or hostels with free wifi so I can easily connect to friends back home when I want to. Hostels and B&Bs make it easy to meet people, as do walking tours and day tours, and eating at a restaurant bar instead of at a table. I have met so many wonderful people on my travels around the world, and the internet has made it easy to stay in touch.

In addition to traveling by myself, I also love to travel to places where my friends live. Besides it being one of the few ways to see my far-flung friends, there is nothing like having a local to show you around. Having friends all over the world definitely has made my travel experiences richer. But even when I am visiting friends, I always like to have at least a few days on my own. On my upcoming trip to Brazil, I will be with a few different friends for most of my time there. But I will be alone for 2 days in Ouro Preto, I city that I have never been to before, and I am really looking forward to it. Of course, I am the most excited to see my Brazilian friends, but I am also exhilarated by the thought of flying solo for a few days. It means that I will have to challenge myself to try and speak Portuguese instead of relying on my friends to translate, that I might meet some new people, and will give me the opportunity to discover a new destination through my own eyes. I can’t wait!

 

 

Global Friends

I’m not exactly sure how I didn’t end up blogging at all about my last 3 trips–Columbia in late November 2013, a quick getaway to Las Vegas around Christmas 2013 and a long weekend in Fort Myers, Florida in January 2014. It seems a bit overwhelming now to go back and write about all of those experiences but what comes to mind as I think about those trips is the time spent with friends and how that was what made them all so special.

Over the years, I’ve gone from traveling mostly with friends, to traveling mostly alone, and most recently to frequently traveling alone but visiting friends in the places I go. All of those ways of traveling have been wonderful and when I think back about the trips I have taken, usually what I remember most are connections that I’ve made or interactions with old and new friends. Traveling alone is the easiest way to meet new people. When I travel with friends, I get to spend quality time with them in a way that can be hard to do in the normal day to day routines of life at home. And visiting people offers an opportunity to reconnect with wonderful friends that I have made who are living all over the  world.

In Colombia, I started out in Bogota, where I stayed at a hostel but spent most of my time with Natalia, a friend that I met here in New York about 2 years ago, who then moved back to her native Colombia about a year before my visit. It was wonderful to see her, and also to have a local’s perspective as I explored the city. Then I headed to Cali, where I stayed with Magda, who I met about 7 years ago when she lived in New York for 5 months studying English.  It was so fabulous to reconnect with her, and also to meet and spend time with her mom, a a cousin and some of her friends. It is also such a fabulous experience to stay in somebody’s home and get to experience what daily life is like in other places. I went to the gym with Magda, ate home cooked meals, and went to the supermarket, in addition to doing more typically touristy activities.

Going to Las Vegas was a spontaneous decision, based on the fact that my Turkish friends Ilay and Zeren were already going there on the exact dates that I had off from work around Christmas time. When I was able to find a cheap flight at the last minute, I decided to join them. Las Vegas was never very high on my list of places that I wanted to visit, and if my friends weren’t already going, it never would have occurred to me to go. But the time spent with friends was definitely the highlight of the trip.  And we did manage to squeeze out a (very long) day trip to the Grand Canyon, which was absolutely spectacular.

In Fort Myers,  I stayed with Macaire, a friend from college. We had lost touch over time but then reconnected a few years ago. Unfortunately, I was sick for the better part of that trip, but it was still great to spend time with her, catch up on our lives, and reminisce. It was also nice to meet her husband Mark, to say nothing of their menagerie of 5 cats and large lapdog, Thunder.

Next up on the agenda are Israel and Turkey in July. While I am excited to return to Israel for the first time in 20 years and to see areas of Turkey that I haven’t been to yet, I am sure that what will stay with me more than anything else will be the experiences that I will share with good friends  in both countries. I can’t wait to have some more wonderful adventures!

 

Feeling Thankful

I guess the day before Thanksgiving is a good time to reflect and what I have been thinking about is how lucky I am to have so many wonderful friends I have all over the world and from all over the world. It also occurred to me how many of them I have met traveling. Being here in Costa Rica just made all of that so clear.

Arriving in San Jose on Tuesday I feel like I entered a different vacation from the one I had been on until then. After spending 5 days in a very calm, peaceful place, I arrived to the traffic and bustle of a capital city. But it was more than the change from rural to urban, from quiet to noisy. It was also from having days with nothing planned and nothing scheduled, to days full of appointments to meet up with friends. And that is the biggest change of all.

Even in Sarapiquí, I thought a lot about Nick and Karen, who I met there last year and who I visited in Ireland this year. Ernesto, who spent the weekend there with me, has been a good friend since he was my Spanish teacher in 2002. Today I am going to visit the family that I lived with for 2 months on that same trip in 2002. Then later in the afternoon, I am going to spend time with Jose Pablo who I met a few years ago when he was en route to China from Costa Rica at the same time as my friend Carolina, and they both stayed in my apartment in New York for a few days. Carolina is still living in China but her sister Maureen invited me to spend the day with her on Saturday. Tomorrow I will have lunch with another one of my former teachers, Anna Lucia. And on Friday, Ernesto and Alex offered to drive me to a nearby beach town for the day to visit with Nancy, a Canadian that I met last year in Nicaragua who is now living here in Jacó. Hopefully I will be able to squeeze in a few more visits with friends besides those already organized!

For me travel has always been about more than seeing pretty places or impressive sights or eating good food–although of course, all of those are part of the experience of traveling and can contribute to making a vacation special. But I believe that it is so much more about the connections that I have made and so on this day before Thanksgiving I am thankful for all of my wonderful friends, here in Costa Rica, back home in New York, and all over the world who continue to enrich my life.

Why I’m Not Volunteering With Habitat For Humanity This Summer

I need to use at least one week’s worth of vacation time this summer and was having a hard time deciding where to go. Recently a friend emailed about what a great experience she was having building a house with Habitat for Humanity in Trinidad and I thought that sounded like a great idea, so I decided to look into it.

So on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, I began exploring Habitat’s website, and while there were trips all over the world, not many met my criteria of being only a week, relatively close to New York. and during the time I needed to use my vacation. However, there was a trip available to Trinidad and Tobago, where my friend was having a positive experience, and it seemed to be a perfect fit for what I was looking for. I liked the tone set by the group leader, and what I read from her bio–she seemed to have quite a bit of experience with Habitat, and also has taught around the world. I liked that the program ran from Saturday until the following Sunday, but the work was scheduled only Monday to Friday, building in some free time. Even though I have no experience with any type of construction, the website emphasized that no experience was necessary. I checked out airfares for the dates, and there was even a reasonably priced direct flight. Very excited, I submitted my online application.

Of course, applying on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend meant that I would have to wait until at least Tuesday to hear anything from Habitat. I obsessively kept refreshing my email all day Tuesday, but nothing. On Wednesday morning, I did receive the eagerly awaited email, letting me know that I was matched with the trip to Trinidad that I had requested and that the next step would be to email the group leader to schedule a telephone interview. I did so immediately, and received a response from her the following afternoon, asking if she could call me later that day or over the weekend. I told her the times I would be free later that day, and made sure to have my phone nearby during that 2 hour window that I had specified. And..nothing. No call, no email. The next morning she sent me an email saying that she just recevied my email. That didn’t make too much sense to me…after all, she was the one who asked if she could call me Thursday evening but then she didn’t even see my email until Friday? Oh well, things happen and I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. She then said she would try to call me on Saturday, but if we didn’t talk then, we would talk the following week. The weekend came and went without a call or email from her. I even wrote to her again on Saturday, with no response. Monday evening I decided to try one more time. I asked again if we could try to find a time to talk and explained that I was  I was locked into this week for my vacation and really needed to know if this was going to work out, so I could make alternate plans if it wasn’t. Furthermore, I had found a good airfare that I didn’t want to lose so I was hoping that we could find a time to talk. Tuesday morning she wrote back, asking when I would be free that evening to talk. I immediately responded that I had one thing I needed to do after work, but I would be available after 7:30 PM. I raced home to be available at 7:30 and once again, no call and no email.

It seems to me there are 2 possible explanations for what happened. One is that she really doesn’t want me to be part of her group for whatever reason, but doesn’t want to tell me that directly. If that is the case, I have no interest in joining her group. The other is possibility is that her behavior is indicative of her leadership style, in which case, I still don’t want to be part of her group. I understand that there is going to be frustration and hard work involved in doing volunteer work in a developing country. What I didn’t expect was to experience that type of frustration with the organization itself, before I even left New York. This trip would have cost me over $2000 for room and board, a required donation to the organization and airfare. I was very willing to spend that money and give up a week of my well deserved vacation time to do something challenging yet meaningful. However, the difficulty simply in communicating with the person who would be in charge of my group made me realize that this was not the week for me to do it. For less money, I can spend a week at Club Med in Turks and Caicos in my own room to relax and recharge.  And that is exactly what I decided to do.

Travel and Social Networking

I have been thinking a lot lately about how the internet, and more specifically how social networking sites have impacted the way I travel in so many ways, from making the planning easier to enriching my experiences along the way. This was especially true with this trip to Spain.

I originally got the idea to do the VaughanTown program from an article that was published on http://www.GoNomad.com.   I “like” GoNomad on Facebook, so from time to time I see their articles on my news feed.  I read about VaughanTown and was immediately intrigued. Before applying to the program, I did some online searches and found blogs written by individuals who had done the program.  Reading about other people’s experiences convinced me that this was something that I would enjoy.  Once I chose the date for the program, applied and was accepted, I began planning the rest of my trip.  Again, I turned to Facebook, getting recommendations of which cities to visit from my network of friends all around the world.

With a tentative itinerary in place, I relied quite a bit on http://www.tripdavisor.com to help choose my hotels.  I started by looking at the reviews of the top ranked hotels until I came upon some that were in my budget. Also very helpful at this stage of the planning were http://www.venere.com and www.booking.com.  Both of these websites have direct links to make hotel reservations online.  Sometimes one was a bit cheaper than the other, and sometimes I got a better price by booking directly with the hotel itself. These sites both provided additional information, with venere.com having a helpful feature making it very easy to see what neighborhood the hotels were in, and booking.com having of reviews of the hotel in a very easy to use format, basically like bullet points,  listing pros and cons for each hotel.

The TripAdvisor forums were very useful in getting specific suggestions for restaurants, cafes, shops, etc. in Madrid and Seville. I also learned about the discounts that were available for train travel in Spain if I bought my tickets in advance from www.renfe.com, the Spanish railway’s website, as well as the problems that others had using non-Spanish or non-European credit cards on the site.  I again turned to Facebook to see if any of my friends abroad could be of assistance with this problem, which ended up not being necessary. But I was touched by the responses I got and how many of my friends were willing to try to help.  Just before I left for my trip, I again put out as call asking for recommendations from my friends on Facebook, and got some additional helpful information.

Once I was at the VaughanTown program in Valdelavilla, I was surprised to learn that very few of the Spanish participants use Facebook, but quite a few of the volunteers do.  I used Facebook to connect with a few of them after the program, and was able to arrange to meet up with some of the other volunteers in Madrid.  Without an international cell phone, the internet seems to be the best way to stay in touch with people, both new friends in the country where you are traveling and old friends back home.

This was the first time that I have traveled with a laptop, and I loved having the access to email and the internet.  Surprisingly, all of the budget hotels that I stayed in Spain provided free wireless access in the rooms. Valdelavilla only had access in the bar and reception areas, and the connection was very slow. But in the hotels in Madrid and Seville the connections were all pretty good.

While at Valdelavilla, Alan, one of the other VaughanTown volunteers, told me about a Facebook group that he is a member of called “The English Group of Seville.”  He said that they are a friendly group who are always happy to meet native English speakers and suggested that I join and post a message on the group’s Facebook page.  I did just that and in a few days I had messages from about 6 or 7 people who said they wanted to meet me. Out of all of the people who contacted me, I was only able to make plans together with 2 of them, but that wasn’t too bad, considering that I was only in Seville for 3 days and I didn’t even have access to a phone. It was another way of using social networking that was new to me, and meeting local people in Seville was a very special part of my experience there.

I’m sure that this is only the tip of the iceberg, and as I continue to travel with my netbook, I will continue to use the constantly expanding world of the internet to enrich my experiences wherever I go.