Taking off Travel blog

Just because business travelers are always on the road doesn’t mean that they have to lose sight of their fitness routine. Regular business travel can pile on the pounds unless you pay attention to your health. Here are some ways for business travelers to keep active even when on the road.

In-flight

Whenever you fly take the chance to walk around in the airplane. Even though there are often service carts cluttering up the aisles this is one way to get some exercise in flight. Walk the length of the plane every couple of hours to stop the blood from getting sluggish, reduce the risk of deep vein thrombosis and keep your spine supple instead of achy. Along with that, if you have to sit down rotate your wrists and ankles and do the other seated exercises recommended in your airline magazine. Top this off by drinking lots of water to maintain hydration levels.

At your hotel

Many hotels have gym facilities. While these may not be as well-equipped as your local gym back home they are likely to have a treadmill, bike and weights at the very least. There is no excuse for missing out on your fitness routine when these facilities are on tap. Sure, you may have to get up a bit earlier or miss a round of drinks with your colleagues but it’s worth it for the increased energy you will feel after exercising. (It’s pretty good for boosting brainpower for those important meetings, too.) Read more »

What are your favourite travel food memories? You know the ones I mean. Sometimes you have a gastronomic experience that is so great that you can still almost taste it 10 or 20 years later. Sometimes it’s not about the food but about the context while at other times it is very much about the food. Here are some of my best loved food travel experiences.

Iced Tea, Venezuela

It’s been more than 20 years but I can still remember the first time I tasted iced tea. These days, everyone’s drinking it but it was much more of a rarity in the 80s — and I’ve never found anywhere that can make iced tea in the way I first had it. This was during my trip to Venezuela when I was still a student. Around the corner, say about 10 minutes walk from where we were staying in Sabana Grande, was an Arab eatery that served the falafel with iced tea. This tea did not taste like tea at all — it had a heavenly scent of lemons and exotic spices. It didn’t taste like lemonade either — more like Pimms without the alcohol — but it was pure ambrosia. Read more »

Are you blogging and writing about travel? Want to make some money and gain the recognition of your peers and others? Check out these travel writing and blogging contests.

Telegraph Travel Writing Competition

Called Just Back, the weekly competition offers writers the chance to win £200 in the currency of their choice. Just submit an entry of up to 500 words to justback@telegraph.co.uk (UK residents; see full T&C)

Solas Awards

An annual competition for which submissions are open all year round, the Solas Awards have a submission length of 750 words. Entry fees apply. (US residents; see full T&C). Closing date for this year’s competition is September 21, 2010.

52 Perfect Days Travel Writing Contest

Submit up to 1,000 words on an experience in a National Monument, National Seashore or Historic Parks in the United State or Canada. The prize for the 52 Perfect Days Travel Writing Contest is a trip to Hawaii. (US, Canada, Mexico residents; see full T&C). Closing date: October 31, 2010.

Read more »

Today I wanted to share with you some of the new places where Park Ride Fly USA will be hanging out online from now on. They’re not really that new but we are new to using them, at least in this incarnation. You already know how to find us on Twitter (big shout out to all our followers) which is where we’re most active at the moment.

But if you prefer to spend your online time on other sites there are a few new places where you can also connect with us. (By the way, I’m not using the ‘royal we’ — other people from the company may make an input from time to time.) On most sites you can find us as either Sharon at PRF (that’s me), parkrideflyusa or parkridefly.

One new place where we are happy to be is on Facebook where we have a brand new page. On our Park Ride Fly USA Facebook page we are sharing a few of the articles, posts and resources we find useful. I am happy to say that it’s not just going to be a rehash of our Twitter stream — our Facebook page will include items that we don’t share anywhere else. And once we’ve built up a community we hope to use that page to have more in-depth discussions about travel related issues.

Read more »

Something a bit different this week – some more inspirational travel quotes. Hope you enjoy them, and feel free to share yours in the comments.

1. Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends. – Maya Angelou
2. We must travel in the direction of our fear. – John Berryman
3. It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the end. – Ursula Le Guin
4. The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.  – St. Augustine
5. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. – Marcel Proust
6. To fly as fast as thought, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived. – Richard Bach
7. The only journey is the one within. – Rainer Maria Rilke
8. You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. – Rabindranath Tagore
9. Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars. – Les Brown
10. Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia. – Peanuts Read more »