Taking off Travel blog

Night view of the Guggenheim Bilbao

I’ve taken lots of different types of trips in my life and although some aspects of travel aren’t as much fun as they used to be I still love it. As I mentioned before it is not so much the planning as the being there. Wherever I go and however short a trip I still try to have an experience that makes it worthwhile. Let me give you some examples of how you can get something from a trip of any length.

Same day business travel

One of the shortest trips I ever took was a one-day trip to attend a conference in Saint Lucia. It was a case of leaving the plane, grabbing a cab and heading to the conference centre then doing it all in reverse at the end of the day. To get something out of the trip, I used the cab driver as a tour guide and got him to explain the sights I could see on the journey. I have still got to go back there but at least I learned a little bit about the country.

Short business trip

On another trip I visited northern Spain where a lot of the metals industry was based. I took  cabs to the offices I needed to visit. Again my cab driver was able to tell me about the locations I was seeing — it helped that I spoke relatively fluent Spanish — and I found out a lot about the area. On one of the trips I needed to grab a bite to eat and the cab driver took me to a roadside cafe where I had a delicious Basque fish and vegetable dish. I was also able to walk around downtown Bilbao and have a look at the Guggenheim. Read more »