Category: Things to do

Happy to present Melanie Fine of Excellent Vacations Ideas

1) Who are you?
My name is Melanie Fine; I am a wife, step mother, perpetual traveler, business partner, webmaster and a certified public accountant that really doesn’t like accounting. My main business is with my husband – Complete Systems – a local IT consulting for small and medium sized businesses. I am also the creator of 2 websites Excellent Vacations Ideas and Transform Your Money.

We live just outside of Toronto, Canada. I have always had a passion for traveling. Growing up my parents made sure we travelled every year while we were young, even if money was tight. This put the travel bug in me and I was hooked. When I married my husband I infected him with the travel bug which has led us to traveling at least 5-6 times a year together as a family or as a couple.

I myself have visited all of the world’s continents except for Antarctica (but will get there!) and always have stories to tell. That is what inspired my website and travel journal.

We spend a lot of time in Florida and Las Vegas, and at least once a year we take a longer international trip. Last year was a 4 week family trip to Australia and Hawaii. This year will be a romantic 3 weeks in Hong Kong, Thailand and Malaysia. We also enjoy cruising as we can experience a variety of places and choose which ones we would like to go back to, without packing and unpacking at each destination.

2) What do you like about what you do?
This is the easiest question to answer. I get to travel and then share my adventures on my website, twitter and blog and live it all over again. In my travels I get to learn about new cultures, destinations and adventures everyday, what could be better than that?

Through my website and online conversations I love to inspire others to live life outside their box. I try to inspire them to experience the world by getting away together. I get to inspire couples to take time away together and nurture their relationship or families to get away and enjoy each other! Our motto is a family that plays together stays together!

3) What don’t you like about what you do?
I’m sure you hear this from a lot of people but I hate that there is not enough time to do it all – I wish I could write more content everyday – but then I would need at least 4 extra hours in the day. Between the day to day activities of our computer consulting business, being a wife and step mother, and working on my websites, I find that I am always feeling like I am falling behind with something.

Sometimes it’s tough to keep up with all the information out there. I get excited about one destination or sharing one of our experiences and start to write about it, then something else comes along that is just as exciting. The secret is to prioritize and stick to it.

4) Please tell us all about your blog and your aims with it.
My goal with my blog and website is to inspire families and couples with great vacation ideas to enhance their bonding as a family or couple. I hope that by sharing our travel experiences or something that I find in my internet travels, I will inspire them to spend time exploring this amazing world together.

I find that traveling as a family really bonds us together. Not only does it create an opportunity for us to spend a lot of time together, it also shows Montana (my 13 year old step daughter) that there is more to life then the everyday. She has learned to appreciate what she has and patience, tolerance and love for other cultures and types of people.

I also want to show how travelling without the kids is just as important as travelling with the kids. It gives couple a chance to nurture and enrich their relationship. I have found that as a couple we have learned how to solve challenges together while traveling and enrich our relationship while traveling then by doing anything else together – well except for maybe hanging wallpaper together (something we have learned not to do together!)

So by sharing our experiences I hope that others will see the value in traveling together. And maybe step outside their normal “vacations” and try something new and different.

5) Your top 3 destination experiences you’ve ever stayed to date and why?
I love to travel anywhere – even somewhere close like Niagara Falls. I find it hard to think of 3 specific experiences, in fact I had to go to my “Where I have been map” for inspiration to try to figure out 3 of my top destination experiences because they are all AMAZING experiences. I always find the best in every destination.

One of my top destinations is Kenya. I was fortunate enough to travel to Kenya when I was 21. It not only changed my view of the world, taught me to appreciate the world and the absolute beauty there is in the world. The animals and safaris were incredible, and even over 15 years later I can still remember the majority of the trip as if it happened last year. We were fortunate enough to be invited to a local village for dinner just outside of Mombasa. The people that lived in the village were incredibly generous and kind and opened their homes to us even though they had very little. That experience changed the way that I thought about the world, and for the first time I really got how privileged I am to live in Canada and to have the life I live.

While in university I spent a semester in Melbourne, Australia. I then returned with my family in the summer of 2008. I love Australia for its diversity and its people. There are so many things to see and do; dining in the amazing restaurants in cosmopolitan Melbourne, watching the penguins at Philip Island, diving the Great Barrier Reef, sand tobogganing on Moreton Island, whale watching off of Brisbane, to staying in an Aboriginal village and camping out under the stars.

As we visit there often there must be a reason, so I will also include Las Vegas, in the USA. Warren and I enjoy at least 2 weekends a year in Las Vegas. We love it as we take this time to reconnect and enjoy the sun, food and resort hotels. We enjoy the service and we like to play. Warren loves Baccarat and I play poker. We find it a great way to unwind from our busy and hectic lives. We have done most activities, from taking a helicopter to the Grand Canyon, to skydiving, to seeing the shows. I find that some people don’t like Las Vegas because of the “tackiness” etc. but to be honest there is so much more to Las Vegas than the lights and over the top feeling of it.

6) Your top 3 accommodations you’ve ever stayed to date and why?
Well, before I met my husband, you would have found me in a hostel or cheaper hotel. When I traveled alone, I enjoyed meeting others in these types of environments. After I met Warren and entered my 30’s, I started to prefer what I call, luxury value. Luxury value is where you find a luxury hotel and get to experience it for a value. My top 3 are definitely not in any order.

Our first cruise experience with NCL was on the Norwegian Dawn. Through a great booking agent, and some luck, we upgraded to the Owner’s suite for a week long cruise to Bermuda from New York City. It ruined regular cabins for us forever. We were greeted by our Concierge at the dock in Manhattan and were waited on hand and foot for the rest of the week. The cabin was luxurious and huge by cruise experiences. Including two balconies (one on the front of the ship and one on the side), a living/dining room, and a guest bathroom. The Dawn was one of the best cruise experiences and accommodations we have ever had.

My husband may not agree with my second top accommodation, but I loved it. Many years ago we stayed for a few days at Journeys End Resort in Belize before a live aboard diving trip out of Belize City. My parents and I are scuba divers; my husband is not really a water person. He decided to come with us for the first few days in Belize, and then went home when we went on the live aboard.
It really was at journey’s end, as we had to fly to Belize City, take a small plane to San Pedro and then a boat to the resort. There had been a hurricane a few months before and was in the process of repairs, although we couldn’t tell other than the phones and TV were not working. We had a beautiful room/cabin right on the ocean. Our deck was over the water, and the view was amazing.
There were a lot of flies, not a lot do, and no internet (hence my husband not really being a fan). We hired a guide to take us into the jungle and to the ruins of Belize. It was an awesome day and I will never forget the feeling of peacefulness in the rainforest. There wasn’t anything spectacular about the resort as it was going through repairs; I just really loved the feel of it. It felt like we were at the end of the world, or in this case at Journeys End.

Finally, I held off submitting this to you as we were about to vacation in Las Vegas. We were invited to stay in the Skylofts at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino. We had heard that it was going to be an incredible experience and to be honest incredible can’t begin to describe it. From the moment we were picked up in one of the MGM Maybach limousines, until we were dropped off by one at the airport when we left Las Vegas, we were pampered and tended to for everything we desired. We were met at the Skylofts lobby by one of the 24 hour concierge’s, and escorted through the VIP lounge to their private elevator. 29 floors later, we were greeted at our suite by our butler.
The Skylofts had 24 hour butler and concierge service, digital controls for the sound and video system (it also controlled the drapes and lights) and was a beautiful 2 level suite. The bathroom had an infinity tub, and a steam room in the beautiful shower, and to top it all off the butler unpacked our suitcases for us! I had never seen our stuff so neat before! I asked if she would come home with me, but she couldn’t. The Skylofts were so beautiful we never wanted to leave. It will be hard to ever stay anywhere else in Las Vegas again!

7) Your top 3 most memorable food / wine experiences to date and why?
Unfortunately I am not a wine drinker. I wish I was, as I love the experience of wine. So I will have to share only my memorable food experiences.

While touring in Brisbane, Australia as a family, we took the ferry to Southbank, a dining, shopping and park area. We were hungry, but because it was winter and getting late most restaurants were closing up. Wang Dynasty Chinese Restaurant right by the water was still open. It looked like a chain type Chinese restaurant, but as we got closer and looked inside we could tell it was a lovely family run Chinese restaurant. We had one of the best Chinese food experiences ever. The food was fresh and tasty. The staff could speak little English, which made it feel more authentic. The Olympics were on the TV and it was fun watching the staff cheer on China! We loved our dinner there and we recommend it to everyone we know going to Brisbane Australia.

Another memorable food experience was this past January in Waikiki, Hawaii. We were there to attend the wedding of our very good friends. They got married at the Hilton Hawaiian Village and had their wedding dinner at the restaurant in the Rainbow Tower, Bali by the Sea. The food was amazing. The Maui Onion Soup had layers of flavor, none of which were onion. The filet mignon melted in our mouth and to top it all off, the chef made a special “Erupting Diamondhead” for dessert. It was a volcano shaped chocolate truffle structure that was spewing smoke that covered the table, as if the volcano had just erupted. It was fabulous!

While I was studying in Australia, I took an 18-35 tour through the Outback. It was a great experience including staying in Aboriginal Camps and learning how to fend for ourselves in the outback, and dreamtime stories by the fire by the head of the families.
Our cook on the trip kept promising that as we got closer to Alice Springs, we would have Witchetty Grubs, the white larvae of the Ghost Moth. She kept telling us it was a delicacy and not to be missed. So as we got closer to the Red Centre, on our last night, we were sleeping under the stars in the desert, and it was time. The cook went out to find them. She came back and prepared them on the fire in aluminum foil.
Some of the girls chickened out, so I decided to try it first. It was dark, and I couldn’t see much which was probably better anyway. I decided to throw it back and whammo, it tasted like banana, then chocolate. I was confused, and then it dawned on me. They were pulling our leg all week. So I went along with the joke. It didn’t take long and the others figured it out to. It was a great tradition to trick the foreigners! The banana and chocolate mixture was amazing! So was the joke!

8) Your 3 worst destination/ accommodation /food experiences to date and why?
We try to find the good in all experiences, so this was really tough. I will say that we aren’t fans of the food in the main dining room on cruise ships. In fact we usually try to avoid the main dining room for dinner, or go in expecting it to be ok to not so great. Once we ordered steak and had to return it 3 times.

One of the worst experiences we have had was staying in a “first class” cabin while traveling from Rome, Italy to Nice, France. When we arrived at 10 pm for our train, there seemed to be mass panic. We finally found someone that spoke a little English and were told the train staff were about to go on strike. We were a little panicked, as we had no where to stay that night, but took a deep breath and decided to see what would happen.

The people waiting for the train kept running from platform to platform, so we did the same, not realizing that we had a reserved first class cabin and they were all running for seats in the main car. Once we figured it out, we walked into a room that was the size of my closet with a sink in it and 3 bunks. We could barely turn around or do anything but sit on the bed. We were promised a snack and breakfast, turned out breakfast and the snack were the same thing, a couple of crackers and a piece of cheese. We laugh about it now.

Finally, I remember taking a road trip with a girlfriend through upstate New York. We were driving back home and were going to try to drive all the way. We didn’t make it as we were exhausted. We were students and didn’t have much money so we pulled into a motel that was offering a special for the night – $25/night. It fit our budget, but it wasn’t even worth $25. The whole place was clean but run down. The guy that checked us in was really creepy and we were both afraid to go to sleep that night. The walls were made of cinderblock and we felt like we were in jail. We ended up staying up most of the night anyway!

9) Can you offer the readers 3 destination/ food / accommodation / things to do tips about the city you are currently living in?
I live just outside of Toronto, Ontario, Canada and I love this city. I love that there are always things to do, places to eat and awesome places to visit. Toronto is a multi-cultural city and you can see it in the different neighborhoods. You can find just about any type of food as you walk through the different areas of town. So I guess my recommendations are these:

Take a walk around the Distillery District and the St. Lawrence Market area of town – especially on the weekend. The St. Lawrence market is a great place to shop for local produce and have lunch. Make sure you try the apple fritters!

On a clear day, you must take a trip up the CN Tower to see the view. It is a “typical” tourist attraction, but the view is worth it. They have a glass floor to walk on and an outside observation deck. If you are looking for a unique dining experience they have a revolving restaurant, which revolves once every hour. It’s quite amazing how you don’t’ really feel the movement and is an experience. The food is ok and a little expensive but the experience really is quite neat.

Spend the day at Centre Island. In the spring, summer and fall you can take a Toronto Harbour ferry to Centre Island. Not only do you have a spectacular view of the city’s waterfront, you also have a beautiful park on the island. The kids (or kids at heart) can enjoy Centreville, a kid’s amusement park; you can enjoy a picnic in the park, or spend the afternoon on the beach. There are many walking, biking and roller blading trails to enjoy. And if you time it right, you may even find a great festival to partake in.

I am going to add a fourth as it is more of a day trip. Take a day and drive to Niagara Falls (1 ½ – 2 hours drive from Toronto). Niagara Falls is a great town and the Falls are spectacular. Make sure that you spend some time on Clifton Hill and do the Maid of the Mist (take a boat tour to almost right under the falls).

10) Any Question(s) you’d expected me to ask that you would like to answer?
Hmmm, maybe where are you off to next? We are spending our 10th wedding anniversary with Montana in New York, and then Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia and Thailand in July. Back to Las Vegas in August, and a cruise from Barcelona to Turkey, Italy, Greece and Egypt over Christmas and New Years. Next year we have plans to take a family cruise in March, and South Africa over Christmas. So I guess stay tuned for more stories to share…..

My Observations:
Thank you very much for being my guest, Melanie. You have taken a lot of care of this interview. You also have send a couple of very nice photos. Unfortunately placing them all here was a bit too much. It was not easy to make a choice. Am I right in suspecting you are spending way more time on Twitter than on your blog lately?

Happy to present Sam Daams, a sort of millipede and co founder of Travellerspoint, whom I met for the first time in Berlin recently and whose company, humor, chatter and insight I learned to appreciate a lot there.

1) Who Are you?
I’m a Dutch/American living in Norway of all places. I grew up in the Solomon Islands and have lived in the Netherlands and Australia before settling here in Norway. Back in 2002, before social networks were all the rage, my brother Peter and me started Travellerspoint, an online travellers community.

I also own a more ‘traditional’ offline travel business with offices in Sweden and Norway focused at the youth market, specifically gap year type travels. In short, I guess you could say I work with travel all the time, yet travel shamefully little myself at the moment!

Sam at a young age in front of a plane

2) What do you like about what you do?
The continuous feeling of helping people explore the world through travelling. When you get feedback on the ‘trip of a lifetime’ and you’ve been just a small part of that, it’s very fulfilling. I also love the fact that you can create something online that others use immediately. It doesn’t have to take months or years, run with an idea, put it up and see what people think. And when people start talking about it on Twitter/their blogs, there’s a sense of achievement which is hard to explain to those that have never run their own business.

The other thing I absolutely love is experimenting with functions and ideas. Thinking back, we’ve created some pretty nifty functionality over the years that wasn’t really being done anywhere else before that. Tying in Travel Helpers with our forums, letting users generate a customized PDF version of their own travel blog, Social bookings which let you connect with other travellers staying in the same hostel as you before your trip, branded blogs for travel businesses etc. They don’t always work, and sometimes you are too far ahead of the curve, but being an innovator and first mover has a definite advantage over time. If for no other reason than that you can sleep a little easier at night knowing you aren’t just ripping off the guy next door.

3) What don’t you like about what you do?
The hours. To be honest, I don’t think work ever leaves my mind. You are always thinking of something else to do or a task that you should have done 6 months ago. I hate the feeling of never feeling finished and always feeling like you should be doing so much more. You finish one thing, and the next just slides right on in. I’ve gotten slightly better in the past years at just letting go and realizing I’m not even going to get half the stuff done I plan to do, but it still frustrates me sometimes, especially when you come up with a great idea and leave it on the shelf too long so a competitor launches it before you.

One of the other things that is annoying about working with a lot of user generated content is spam. I’m sick and tired of another tour operator coming along and thinking that posting in a travel forum is going to give them some kind of leg up on the competition. Luckily we’ve always kept a pretty tight lid on it, so we’re not as inundated with spam as some other travel communities are that have just let it happen over the years, but it’s still annoying as can be.

4) Please tell us all about your blog and your aims with it.
At the moment my blogging levels are pretty pathetic to be honest. I’ll post something to my personal blog Sam I Am once a week at most and posts to the ‘official’ Travellerspoint blog are few and far between.

However I do tweet (does that qualify as ‘micro blogging’?) a lot as Twitter aligns much better with how my mind and concentration levels work. It also sits well within how my days are usually divided. Finally, I also find it’s much more a two-way stream than blogging, so feedback is instant. And some of the feedback you get on Twitter is really quite phenomenal. I am found at @samdaams by the way.

Mind you, as much as I love Twitter, I’m still undecided on the value-add for most businesses. It can work phenomenally for some, but for example for the Norwegian/Swedish travel business I can’t think of any way it could help generate more bookings other than perhaps increasing exposure of the company towards journalists and other influencers in the travel industry. There’s certainly a value in that, but it requires a lot of time and work which might be better spent elsewhere.

5) Your top 3 destination experiences you’ve ever stayed to date and why?
* Sydney in 2000/2001 for a number of reasons. For starters it was my first real experience with working in the travel industry, rather than just travelling (it was an internship for IEP, a subsidiary of BUNAC, which turned into something a bit longer). But it was also the Olympics, and living in a fantastic city with a number of fantastic housemates. I was living like a backpacker but working like crazy. I don’t know how I managed, but I have nothing but good memories from the period.
* Lismore in 1999. Again, this was part of my studies. Lismore in itself is rather ordinary, but that’s one of the great things about travelling and living abroad; it’s who you experience things with that makes the real difference! Great people, really relaxed classes and a lot of travelling to Byron Bay and surroundings whilst ‘studying’.
* The Solomon Islands. In fairness this was more home than a travelling destination, as I spent the first 12 years of my life here. But I can’t honestly think of a much better place to grow up. Walking around barefoot, surfing after a cyclone, shooting birds with a slingshot, swimming in caves, what more do you want as a kid?!

Peter & myself in front of our house in Rennell

6) Your top 3 accommodations you’ve ever stayed to date and why?
This is a rather tough one, since naturally a 4-star place should be better than a hostel, although I’ve had tons of great experiences and stays in hostels! Let me just name 3 of the more memorable that come to mind:

* The Sands Resort in the Mauritius http://www.sands.mu/) where we spent our honeymoon. Just lazying and enjoying fantastic food.
* An apartment in New York city that I found on Travellerspoint’s accommodation section. Sadly, it’s no longer available for booking, but at around 100 USD per night, and right around the corner from Central Park, it was fantastic value for money. The apartment was very modern and quite spacious.
* Hotel Sven Vintappare in Stockholm, Sweden. I’ve stayed here twice now, that’s how much I liked the place the first time. It’s in a great location, the staff are super friendly and it’s authentic, whilst being clean and modern.

Sands Resort

7) Your top 3 most memorable food / wine experiences to date and why?

* The food at the Sands Resort named above was probably the best I’ve ever had. I ate myself silly…
* Enjoying a cold beer and a BBQ on the porch of the little place we rented on the beach at Titikaveeka on Rarotonga in the Cook Islands.
* Some half cooked pasta meal at the end of hiking a full day in pouring rain in one of the rainforests near Lismore. We were all cold and wet and couldn’t get the cooker going for ages, but when that half cooked foot finally hit our mouths it felt like the best meal ever consumed.

Sunset Cooks

8) Your 3 worst destination/ accommodation /food experiences to date and why?
I’m really not one to complain about my travelling experience, no matter how bad it gets. The stories are just all the better when things go wrong, aren’t they? 🙂 But if I had to name three things, it’d be:

* not being let into Indonesia because I didn’t have a visa. That’s kind of embarrassing for someone running a travel business! Anyway, I was deported to the always lovely Darwin, spent a few nights there whilst sorting out a visa and new flight and was let into Indonesia a few days later. Wonderful country!
* the worst accommodation I’ve ever stayed at was probably a hostel on Times Square. Luckily it was only for one night, and my wife was forgiving.
* my worst food experience was in Costa Rica and (again) entirely my own fault (one might sense a theme here…)! I was in El Arenal and we decided to have some lunch at a little wayside restaurant before getting on a bus. Looking at the menu I saw “tongue”, which for reasons I can certainly not explain today, I took to mean the same as the Dutch word “tong” (that in itself is actually correct). Now that can mean two things in Dutch, the more common of the two on Dutch menu’s being a type of fish (the other being what you’d expect). Of course, when you are smack, bang in the middle of Costa Rica, you would be wise to assume otherwise, or at the very least ask the waiter. But unfortunately my friend and me did no such thing and ended up with two large ox tongues lathered in tomato sauce on our plates. I took an honest stab at mine, but really couldn’t consume much of it, try as I might. On a positive note, that story gets more laughs than my mates’ pizzas do nowadays.

9) Can you offer the readers 3 destination/ food / accomodation / things to do tips about the city you are currently living in?

Oslo is a great little city to travel around as it’s small enough to walk a lot of places, or else use the excellent public transport, which includes the ferries to the islands or Bygd’y.

* Head to the museums at Bygd’y, to which you can either take a ferry or the 30 bus. It’s pretty much a whole day’s activity if you visit all the museums which are close together so you can walk to each of them. You’ll get Norway’s history in a nutshell if you visit them all and they are not your typical boring museums either 🙂

* The Vigeland sculpture park is Oslo’s most famous sight and a must see on any trip here. But at least equally impressive is the mausoleum of Gustav Vigeland’s brother, Emanuel. It’s only open 4 or 5 hours a week on Sundays, and it’s hidden away in the middle of a residential area, but it’s a true gem! Very impressive paintings.

* If you visit in the summer, get a ‘engangsgrill’ (BBQ for one time use), some food & drinks and take one of the ferries out to one of the islands in the fjord. This is Oslo at its best!

Kontiki

10) Any Question(s) you’d expected me to ask that you would like to answer?

Is anyone still reading? 🙂

Actually, can I add a shameless plug for something cool? We just launched the Travellerspoint Foundation which will be lending money to entrepreneurs around the world through the fantastic micro loans site Kiva,. One of the first things we’ve done there is let contributors to our Wiki Travel Guide allocate the adsense earnings from the pages they contribute to, to the foundation. That money is then lended out via Kiva. We’ll also shortly be launching another initiative within the foundation to really help boost the loans we are making through Kiva.

My Observations
Very good story and not much to add or ask, apart from the fact who is the younger one you or Peter? Thanks Sam!
If you’re in for the unofficial story of the Travellerspoint Saga, have a look at this post of Sam 🙂