Taking off Travel blog

This is going to be a great year for travel for me. After visiting Mexico, Chicago, and Bahrain last year for business, and racking up additional travel miles on visits to Nottingham of London and Florida, I couldn’t wait to see what trips could be on the agenda for 2010. And boy am I happy. This year I will be travelling to Las Vegas, Chicago and on business. And I have no idea yet about holiday plans.

Will I see the Great Wall this year? I certainly hope so.

Of course, there’s always a fly in the ointment. All three trips between April and June, but I prefer to focus on the positive. That is, but I’m going to 3 great destinations, two of which have never seen before. Last year I had typical business trips were all I saw was the hotel. This year I will try to change that, by taking some of the guesswork out of trip planning and by doing lots of research to find out what’s close to where I’m going to be.

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When I was 20 I spent a month in Venezuela. At the time there weren’t as many people visiting the country. It was a university trip intended to help us immerse ourselves in the Spanish language. But it also introduced us to the joys and pains of travel as nothing on the trip went according to plan. Let me give you a few examples.

Finding Accommodation

We sorted out our own accommodation in a district in Caracas which was the right price for students. When we arrived the area looked lively and the hotel looked somewhat below par. We soon discovered why. When we talked to Venezuelan friends, it turned out that we had inadvertently booked into a hotel in the red light district. They were horrified. In fairness, during the day the streets were busy with vendors selling empanadas and other local pastries as well as the widest range of tropical juices I have ever seen. At night it was a little more menacing and we soon decided to move to Sabana Grande for the remainder of our stay. Read more »

Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) is a growing regional travel hub. Serving around 22 million passengers a year, on a typical day the airport has 695 commercial flights, 189 private plane flights and 62,142 passengers. Located in Dania Beach, Broward County, Florida, it’s the county’s largest employer. If you’re planning a trip to Florida or to any of the destinations it serves, then here’s what’s on offer in terms of flights, amenities and parking.

Terminals And Airlines

Fort Lauderdale Airport has four terminals and claims to put an end to “terminal boredom” with the range of facilities in each. (Terminal maps are available here.) The airport offers non-stop service to more than 55 US cities, as well as flights to the Bahamas, Canada, the Caribbean, Latin America, Mexico and South America. It’s a hub for Spirit Airlines and Gulfstream International Airlines, though many other carriers operate there. Read more »

On my recent trip to Florida, one restaurant chain stood out for both taste and value - Sweet Tomatoes (also known as Souplantation in some areas). We happened into it one afternoon after rejecting the nearby Italian restaurant we’d been considering.

Sweet Tomatoes, Dania Beach

When we walked in we were greeted by a salad bar several feet long, and this on its own would have been enough to keep us happy. Not only did it have a huge selection of fresh individual salad items (including a couple of things I’d never heard of), but it included three lettuce based salads, two pasta salads and potato salad. You could put as much on your plate as you wanted, though we discovered that if you were too full of salad you would miss out on the other items on offer. To accompany your salad you could choose from water, iced tea, lemonade, strawberry lemonade and soda. Read more »

To round out my review of Florida attractions (see parts 1 and 2), there are just a couple more to mention. On Tuesday, we returned to Boomers to try out a couple of things we’d missed the previous week. The first of these was the wooden roller coaster, the largest of its kind in Florida. As we approached, I could see the weathered planks of wood and it looked like it had been there for centuries. However, it turned out that the Dania Beach Hurricane was opened in 2000, so it’s much newer than it looks.

Riding the Dania Beach Hurricane

There were only three of us on that first roller coaster ride, so I sat at the front with my daughter as it rolled slowly out of the station. Our excitement soon turned to terror as the coaster inched up an incline then shot down the other side.  It just didn’t feel that safe. Yes, we were locked in the usual manner, but everything rattled, and there was far too much room to bounce about in our seats. In fact, it felt like we could go flying into the air at any second. There were a couple more of those twists and turns before we returned to the station. Unfortunately, the guy in charge had offered us back to back rides (because we’d had to wait a bit), so off we went again. At this point, my hubby and daughter left the coaster, and I took the third ride alone (I didn’t want to throw the offer back in his face). As I tottered out, I decided I’d had enough of roller coasters to last me quite a while, something with which we all agreed. Read more »