No Foreign Lands: Talking About Travel

Travel Snapshot: Toronto

2009-01-30T14:19:00.000-08:00

Location: Southern Ontario, Canada. Approx. 1 hour 40 minutes flight from New York City; 6.5 hours from London.
Currency: Canadian dollars.
Best time to visit: Summer and fall.

Toronto is a “World Class City” with lots of activities to keep you entertained- from festivals and fine dining, to museums and shopping- there is something for everyone in Toronto.
Worth a visit any time of the year, summer and fall are when Toronto really shows its stuff. You can find a festival or special event any day of the week. During the summer months, Toronto staple Summerlicious has both locals and tourists alike queuing for prix fixe meals at some of the city’s hottest restaurants. (The beat the winter blahs, Winterlicious is the equivalent in January and February). You can dine on 3 course lunch or dinner set menus for a fraction of the price- usually between $15 and $35 plus beverages, tax and tip per person.
Other culinary events in the city include Taste of the Danforth in August which sees Toronto’s Greek Town transformed into a pedestrian walkway with concerts, wine tastings, and some of the most delicious Greek food this side of Athens. When you’ve had your fill of souvlaki, the Toronto Festival of Beer hits historic Fort York is on the same weekend as Taste of the Danforth, but be cautioned that tickets sell out weeks in advance to this major event for beer-lovers.
Mega-watt parties Pride Week and Caribana come to town on select dates in June and July/August. Parades takeover the downtown streets and the city becomes a playground for partiers no matter your sexuality, gender, or nationality. Both feature many free events and activities ranging from performances, live music, arts and crafts, and other attractions.
Luminato and Buskerfest celebrate the arts in Toronto, as well the city is home to some top-notch theatre, and museums such as the Frank Gehry-designed Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the Hockey Hall of Fame. Nuit Blanche in the fall is a free all-night art festival which lasts from sundown to sunrise at various locations around the downtown core.
The Canadian National Exhibition (or simply The Ex) comes to town for the last two weeks in August and boasts an impressive midway, game booths, horse shows, food, and exhibitors featuring everything from plants to handicrafts from around the world.
The biggest festival to hit Toronto is the Toronto International Film Festival. One of the most accessible festivals, you can easily get tickets for movies in advance or on the day-of the screening. If you can score a ticket to the first showing at the festival, you may just find yourself sitting next to a big Hollywood star as the cast and director of the films sit among the regular ticket-holders.
The city boasts a Chinatown, a Koreatown, Little Italy, Portugal, and India, as well as bars and clubs for Goths and Hipsters and everyone in between. Lots of shopping to be had in boutiques, malls, and high-end stores, and for the anti-consumer, there are many outdoor recreational areas and parks around the city that are worth a day trip like the Toronto Zoo or Toronto Island which is a short ferry ride from downtown.

A welcoming and safe city, Toronto can be a great trip any time of the year.

Plan Your Trip:
Toronto.com

Festivals:
Pride Week
Toronto International Film Festival
Toronto Festival of Beer
Taste of the Danforth
Summerlicious
Luminato
Besterfest
Caribana

Attractions:
Toronto Zoo
Hockey Hall of Fame
Art Gallery of Ontario
Royal Ontario Museum

Sparing No Expense: How to Travel During a Recession (or when you're broke)

2009-01-28T15:36:00.000-08:00

For some of us, a yearly vacation to look forward to is all that gets us through the day-to-day. But what to do when we’re smack dab in the middle of a recession? For those of us who can’t live without travel, there are ways to still squeeze out a manageable vacation.

Assess Your Savings
The majority of us have to cut back in one way or another during tough economic times. With money not flowing like it used to, you must first take a good look at what you can really afford to spend on a trip. The cash you have to spend will determine the type of trip you can afford to take. You can still have a great vacation for as little as $500 a person.

Modify Your Travel Style
If you usually travel in style and stay at 5 star luxury hotels for two weeks at a time, try cutting back and opting for a more moderate 3 star hotel or go for just one week instead. Great deals can be found when you go from a 4 star hotel to a 3 star hotel and there is usually little difference in the comfort level of the hotel. Afterall, you’re just in the room to sleep.
If you are a budget traveler, try staying at hostels or budget hotels. Many budget hotels have comparable prices to hostels. If you’re adamant on having your own bathroom and private bedroom, the great majority of hostels have the perfect room for you for less than a 2 star hotel, and often much more comfortable.
Whatever your style, don’t stay anywhere that makes you uncomfortable or unsafe. Just because it’s cheap, doesn’t mean it’s the right place for you.

Scan for Deals
There are several websites geared towards providing you with the cheapest deals out there. Try looking for deals on travelzoo.ca or travelalerts.ca (they have US and foreign equivalents). You never know when a good deal that’s right for you will come up. That’s how I saved over $700 on a 2 week trip to Egypt.
Deals aren’t just limited to discount websites- often times hotels and airlines will have their own limited promotions such as free stay in an airport hotel when flying on a particular airline, 40% of if you stay 4 nights, or getting your 3rd night free and so on. When the tourism industry is hit hard during financial downturns, many places will slash prices in order to keep business flowing.

Be Flexible
When planning in advance, it pays (or in this case, saves) if you play around with a variety of dates. Flying mid-week may be cheaper than flying out on a Saturday if you can swing it. Traveling in an off-season can also save you big bucks. I’ve saved more than $100 by choosing a different departure date for my trip to Iceland. Alternately, last minute trips can make the expensive affordable. Just adopt the attitude of "I'll go anywhere," choose the date that works for you and jump on that last minute offer that is perfect for you.

Go Somewhere with a Favourable Excahnge Rate
You want to get the most for your money so go somewhere where your money can get you more. The Chinese Yuan and Icelandic Kroner have fantastic exchange rates from the dollar and euro. With Iceland being hit hard by the economic crisis, the kroner is less than half of it’s former worth. While it’s bad news for Iceland, it’s good for travelers. Take advantage of vacations that would have previously cost more than double of today’s prices. By traveling to hard-hit countries, you can support local businesses and the tourism trade by shopping and using their services.

Watch What You Eat
There is nothing I love more than eating on vacation and trying all kinds of local delicacies, but purchasing three meals a day quickly adds up. Your first step is to look for a hotel that includes a free breakfast. Whether it’s a full breakfast, buffet, or simply a continental breakfast, take advantage of the free food and eat until you are full. If you eat enough in the morning, you can often get through lunch with just a few snacks.
If your hotel doesn’t offer breakfast, consider booking apartment-style lodging with it’s own kitchen to prepare some of your own meals. Take a trip to the local grocery store or market to stock up on snacks- they’re prefect to curb midday hunger and tide you over on longer trips.
Look for the daily specials at restaurants to save. If all else fails, do as the locals do and try some street food. You just might find something fantastic on the street, like pancakes in Beijing, souvlaki in Greece, or melon-flavoured buns in Japan.

Stick Close to Home
Instead of traveling overseas or to some exotic destination, try a vacation close to home. A road trip can be a fun way to explore that city you’ve always wanted to visit, or can be a good way to make it a multi-stop trip. Take a look at event schedules for near-by cities and combine your trip with a festival or celebration that’s happening, take in some theatre, experience the arts, or indulge in a spa getaway. Domestic airfare is often cheaper than flying to another country and getaway vacations are great if you have to work within time constraints.

Blogging and Journaling About Travel

2009-01-25T17:56:00.000-08:00

I’ve been on many adventures over the years and have always kept a travel diary with me. In preparation for 6 months abroad working/visiting a friend in Japan, I turned to the world of travel blogging.

Whether you’re keeping private notes and thoughts of your travels in a traditional written journal or blogging about it online, keeping a record of your trip is a great way to reflect, remember, and share with others. A journal can be something as simple as a point form entry: On this date, I went here, here, and here. Things cost this much. The weather is nice. Pint form, short notes jotted down, or it can be much more in depth and include thoughts and impressions of the land. Or turn your journal into a scrap book with those sightseeing ticket stubs, receipts, and business cards you’ve collected along the way. Whatever is easier for you to reminisce and look back years from your trip. At the end of a long day of sightseeing, you may only be able to muster the strength for a few notes.

Travel blogging has opened a whole new world for recording memories and sharing with others- it can also be a life saver. If you are away for an extended period of time, blogging about your trip is a great way to keep in touch with those back home and a lot more fun than sending out that mass email to your parents, friends, family, and coworkers. People you know can drop in and check out what you are up to at any time.
Not only is it a great way to actually show people what you are seeing by uploading your photos and videos, it can also give you security that your multimedia memories will be safe.

I’ve had that absolutely crushing experience- returning from a trip abroad, the CD I burned my beloved travel pictures on had been corrupted due to heat. All my photos were gone. Absolutely beside myself with grief for having lost my photos, I quickly changed my tune when I remembered my travel blog. Since I had posted my best shots, I was able to download them again from my travel blog. And by posting a limitless number of my top shots, I was able to rescue ¾ of my photos…and in the end, that’s better than having nothing to show for my adventures.

There are lots of free blog sites to keep a blog on. Blogs that are specifically tailored to travel writing (and therefore usually allow you to upload more pictures of higher quality) are:

Travelblog.org
Travelpod.com
Travellerspoint.com
Mytripjournal.com

My personal favourite is travelblog.org where I house my own personal travel records.

Travel blogs are also a great resource for planning your next trip or gaining insight into the destination in which you are headed. Want to know what an average day in Rio during Carnival might look like? Search for blogs on Rio. How close will you get to an elephant on a safari? Lots of travelers document their Big Game adventures.

Not quite a blog but another endlessly handy travel tool is Tripadvisor.com. Their forums can be a lifesaver when it comes to those tips that only an insider would know. You can ask detailed questions to the friendly community and someone is almost always more than willing to help and in a matter of hours, you can have your answer.

The web is a great resource to planning your trip and documenting your experiences. Whatever way you choose to remember, a record of your trip should be high on your packing list.

For the Love of Travel

2009-01-20T15:26:00.000-08:00

Why do I do it? As soon as I have returned from a far off adventure, I am already looking ahead for my next trip- big or small. It starts at the airport. I scan the other airline counters and see where other flights are taking my fellow travelers. “Oh Caracas…that would be nice…” I say to myself. “I really would like to see Eastern Europe,” I say to my boyfriend/mom/best friend or whomever I happen to be travelling with.

Boarding the plane gets my brain working again. I’ve spent many hours scanning the in-flight magazine for up and coming travel destinations, cheap trips, weekend getaways, and that ever-fascinating map of the world where I can see flight routes and destinations at my fingertips.

One more stamp in the passport. I hold it like a badge of honour, often discussing it with other people in lines. “Why yes, that is a Japanese visa…” I’ve exchanged stories with many people, all over the world, about their hometowns, favourite vacations, and exotic getaways. I’ve met and made new friends across the globe, sharing tips and insight that can’t be found in a guidebook. I’ve given hints on where to eat in Seoul, and received valuable information on the best Peking Duck in Beijing (and yes, it really did melt in my mouth).

It doesn’t matter the destination, the fun is in getting there and returning home with the pictures and stories to last a lifetime. Planning and thinking about the next trip is almost as exciting as going there. Perhaps I missed my calling as a travel agent. There will always be somewhere new to go, a new culture to immerse myself in, or an old favourite to revisit.
This is why I travel.