Tips for a Floating Vacation

Cruise ship docked in Cartagena, Colombia

Note:  While my first few posts have been trip reports or travel suggestions, I intend for this blog to be a "general interest" blog, where I'll post not only my own personal adventures, but also general travel-related discussions that you (hopefully) will find interesting.

We're embarking on another cruise shortly, so I thought I'd now would be as good a time as any to write a post providing tips if you're considering going on a cruise.  I will say, when my dad first suggested the idea of a family cruise back in 1997, I was skeptical.  Like most folks, I had the stereotype of a floating retirement community in my head.  Lo and behold, I tried it, and ended up really enjoying cruising, have done 3 more since then.

Day Trips from Dallas - Turner Falls, Oklahoma

I'll kick off this blog with a series about day trips that can be done from Dallas.  Here's the first installment, and my most recent trip, over the Memorial Day weekend - Turner Falls, Oklahoma.

You don't exactly expect to see mountains. much less mountains with a waterfall, in southern Oklahoma, but then again, that's what makes travel interesting.  My wife and I went to Turner Falls Park mainly to see the namesake falls and to hike, but the park also offers tubing and swimming in Honey Creek, as well as camping.  The park also claims to have several "caves", but these were really just some old, abandoned buildings.  

I Want to Go to India! Any Advice????? Part 4 - Five Must-Visit Places

Finally, the last installment in my series about traveling to India.  If you haven't read the first three parts in this series, you can find them here:

Part 1 - Getting to India
Part 2 - Getting around India
Part 3 - General things to keep in mind

First, I must emphasize that these are just the five places I'd put at the top of the list if you visit India.  This is NOT meant to be all-inclusive.  There are honestly far too many places to visit to fit in to one vacation, unless you have a month or more.  I'd suggest making your India vacation a minimum of 10-14 days, and these five places can be fit in to a vacation of that length.  Just go in with the knowledge that you can't do everything on one trip, and if you have a good time, well, you'll just have to plan another trip to see more!  Also, these descriptions are significantly abbreviated, just to give you a taste of why I think you should go.  I'll put up full reports of these places, and more, in future posts.

I Want to Go to India! Any Advice????? Part 3 - General Things to Keep in Mind

I had originally planned for this to be the final installment in this series, but it turned out to be so long that I thought it better to break it up into two parts.  If you haven't read the first two, I recommend reading those first before continuing:

Part 1 - Getting To India
Part 2 - Getting Around India

This post will be some general things to keep in mind

I Want to Go to India! Any Advice????? Part 2 - Getting Around

Traffic on a typical street in India

This is part 2 in my series about travel advice if you're planning to go to India.   If you're new to this blog, I'd recommend reading Part 1 first, which discusses how to pick the right flight to get to India in the first place.  You can read it by clicking here.

I Want to Go to India! Any Advice????? Part 1 - Getting There

Jaipur, Rajasthan

When people want to go to India, I get a lot of questions for advice, because...well, I'm Indian, and I guess that goes with the territory.  If you've been thinking of a trip to India, I'm putting together a series of posts on how to plan a vacation there.  And if you haven't considered visiting India, you should go, at least once.  It's at once fascinating and mystical, yet at times frustrating and tragic - a living paradox that you won't find anywhere else.  I'll start off with a seemingly easy task, but one that can actually be quite the headache - how to get there.

Torrey Pines State Park and Beach - San Diego, CA

We go to Southern California quite a bit to visit Prita's parents.  Usually we fly in to one of the LA-area airports, but this time, fares were ridiculously cheap from DFW to San Diego, so we decided to fly there instead and drive in the rest of the way.  On the way back, our flight wasn't until after 4, so we decided to stop at Torrey Pines State Park and Beach for a quick hike before heading back to the airport.  Unfortunately, due to user error, I lost all my photos, so you'll have to make do with a description.

Cheap Summer/Fall Getaways

Heads up - if you're looking for a cheap place to head to for a summer/fall vacation, San Diego might be the place for you.  While checking fares to Southern California for a possible fall visit to the in-laws the other day, lots of fares showed up in the $275-300 range on both American and Southwest, and as low as $198 on Spirit (assuming you're willing to put up with Spirit).  If you do end up going to San Diego, check out my next post for some ideas of what to do.

Hello and Welcome

There's at least 10,000 travel blogs out there already, and I don't mean for this one to be particularly special compared to all the others.  I've had the fortune of traveling a lot over the years, and I've always wanted to share what I've seen with others - and hopefully give you some ideas on what you'd like to see, and maybe steer you away from others that really aren't that great.  My goal is to try and post at least once a week, depending on how much work I have to do.  Most of this blog is going to center around things I've actually done, though I may occasionally link to or editorialize about stories I see on other travel blogs.  I hope you enjoy what you see, and thanks for reading!