Ultimate Vacation Spots

posted by Travel Cat on Mar 24

Here’s a little story of what I did with my 7 hours stopover in Atlanta, Georgia.

Basically, I was flying from South America with a group of 6 people - on route to the UK - and the flight went via Atlanta where we had to wait some time before our connecting flight. Why waste the transit time sitting in the airport we thought - lets go investigate.

As we were transit passengers, we just checked our hold luggage straight back in after collecting it from reclaim, and headed outside. It took us about 30 minutes in total to get off the plane and out into

the street as we had had to get on a local tube for a handful of stops.

We had a mini meeting and worked out that we had to be back to check in one hour before the flight, so we had 5 and a half hours to fill here - we headed for the nearest mall grabbing a coffee on the way!

Luckily it was quite early, so the mall was reasonably quiet as we entered and tried to find our way around. The couple from our group said they would spend the time alone, so we were down to 4 - then we saw the sign for the movie theatre…….

There was only the new Texas ChainSaw Massacre film showing in the next few minutes, so that was the one we watched! Bearing in mind this was around 11am it wasn’t our preferred choice - but time was against us and it was an easy way to pass the time.

So, shocked out of our skins 2 hours later, we emerged from the movies a bit paler than we went in! There was almost a hush across the group as we hit the sunlight again, before we remembered where we were: 2hours 15minutes remaining.

The only man amongst us said that he fancied a new pair of trainers while he was here and one of the girls said she wanted to look at some scents (?) so we split up - arranging to meet at the big restaurant we had seen at the entrance to the mall in just under 2 hours.

I had started to get a bit of a cold by now (great!) so I was on the look out for a drugstore. I made the mistake of walking into the entrance lobby of a department store and was imediately doused in scent spray from the over-zealous sales assistants and promptly started sneezing continually until I was well away from there! Great sales technique ladies - scare people away from the entrance to your store!!!

So with shrunken watering eyes I kept looking until I finally located a drug store tucked away in a corner and started reading labels. We had a long flight ahead of us and if I had a cold, I wanted something to send me to sleep - I needed ‘drowsy’ in big letters on the packet!

Failing to find one, I asked the assistant for ‘drowsy’ and she told me in no uncertain terms that ‘NOTHING’ she sold would make me drowsy - ‘why would I want that?’ Obviously she thinks everyone wants to stay wide awake when they are ill???

I brought something non-drowsey anyway - and plenty of tissues, then headed to the restaurant a bit early. I sat myself down at a table for 4 much to the annoyance of the staff and ordered a lovely chicken fillet with curly fries and BBQ sauce to cheer myself up.

The others all arrived one at a time with bags of new products and ordered something themselves and we chatted away about anything really while we ate.

Then, time was up and we had to head back to the airport.

Looking back it would have been great to have researched it more thoroughly, and since I have another long stop-over coming up with my family this time, I found an Internet sight showing trusted tours and attractions for Atlanta and other US cities to help us make more use of the time while we are there.

So if you want family vacation ideas for your next stopover or longer vacation - like theme parks or a Metropolitan Museum of Art, why don’t you check out their site, and sign up for their newsletter like I did - so they do the hard work of finding places for you…….

posted by Travel Cat on Mar 22

I was recently visiting a friend who is hoping to buy a holiday property in the south of France, somewhere in the Midi-Pyrenees or Languedoc region - mainly due to her love of Cathar myth and legend she told me!

By a wonderful twist of fate it turned out that at around the same time France Property Shop requested a paid review of their site here on this blog.

She had looked at a couple of sites that were a bit cluttered and showed bit’s and pieces all over them, but then I showed her a winner in terms of ease of viewing and website usability:

Straight away we loved the great layout with it clear sections and easy-to-use map of France divided into the main regions. It was a major help for me as I don’t know a lot about locations in France, but just move over the large map and they are all clearly highlighted along with the number of properties currently available in that region. So we were off to a great start!

We easily completed the main search fields although the price fields are shown in euros so we had to view our first property then use the built in currency converter (which neatly opens in small new window) to find out our financial limits!

Like Google, it shows the featured properties first, the moves onto the main search results - cheapest first. As expected, each property clicked opens onto the main property details page with standard range of photos and information, but it also has 2 further tabs with an interactive location map on one and local area information on the other - both very useful to the beginner!

It also has a feature where you can find properties close to your preferred port or airport and it shows all the properties (regardless of region or price) within 50 miles of each. A very useful tool for those looking to reduce their commute between locations without wading through properties in different regions.

We also came across a great section on ‘moving tips’ and ‘buyers guides to moving’, etc, all available to read for free - and all of which are very detailed and very informative! Definitely useful enough for my friend to ‘favourite’ some on her pc.

Needless to say, I would recommend this as the best website to start with if you are considering buying a property abroad, or actually moving there permanently. It covers all the basics in a really simple yet attractive format.

My friend certainly recommends it, and in-fact didn’t go to another site after this one. I think she found something she liked…..

posted by Travel Cat on Mar 18

Have you ever heard of PayPerPost.com?

I hadn’t until last week.

After starting my first serious blog a few months ago, I was chatting to a friend who has been blogging  for years, and he recommended them.  Basically, they allow you to work with other Internet users and help to advertise their site or services.

I liked the simplicity of the principle - Somebody wants an honest review of their website from a complete stranger.  They advertise their needs on payperpost.com, where bloggers like myself can filter through dozens of requests, then simply pick the ones we want to be involved with - theres no pressure here, you aren’t forced to do things you don’t want to.  We then write a post about their services or whatever on our blogs which appear on the Internet, containing a link back to their own site. 

Simple.

And it gets better.  They actually pay you to do it!  I was hooked. 

It was easy to sign up and the only requirement was that I had posted more than 10 articles to my own site in the past month.  Well, that was easy, I’ve had so many things to talk about on this blog, that I haven’t stopped - I’ve already got another 10 written, and another 50 or so ideas on paper waiting for a chance to get posted! 

I’m also quite interested in writing about things other people are passionate about instead of just chatting about all my great trips, tours and adventures.  It could introduce me to all sorts of Internet sites that I may not have gone to on my own, or ever found in the first place!

Can’t wait to get started - you can’t do too many at a time though, so I’ll have to pace myself!  Watch this space……. 

What am I going to do with all the money - well, go on another vacation of course!!!! 

If you are interested in learning more yourself as either a blogger or an advertiser, use the following link to go straight there: make money