Last week I spoke at a The Ontario Fermentors Guild AGM on the use of social media for small business. The hotel that I was staying at was around 20 minutes away from Niagara Falls and the I needed to check off another todo on my life list of things to do. Item number 54 “Ride on the Maid of the Mist”. I packed my things into the bright white PT Cruiser [That's another story of rental car roulette I'll post at a later date.] and made tracks via the GPS to the mighty Niagara falls. I did not have much time to pull this off because of my afternoon flight home out of Hamilton.

The GPS chirped “Left, right, left, right” past the cheesy motels on the outskirts of town. As I hastily made my way through the world famous honeymoon hell on this very wet and rainy day I heard the woman on the GPS announce “You have reached your destination!” I sure had. What lay before me was the mighty Niagara Falls and it was huge. Tons of mist rising up out of the canyon. It was awesome in scale and beauty and the massive casinos and hotels that wrung it’s perimeter no longer mattered. There are few places on earth that do that to a person. The Grand Canyon, the desert in Almeria Spain, and the Rocky Mountains all have left me with the same feelings upon first glance.

I parked the car and whisked down the rain swept hill past the arcades and 1970′s haunted house amusements to the entrance of the attraction. Only $14 bucks to ride into the falls. A deal I thought to myself. I paid the ticket and went down the elevator to the waiting lady of the mist.

She was a beauty of a boat and just as I had imagined her. The sharp smell of burning diesel fuel, from the Maid, washed over me and into my nostrils. Yes we were going on a boat ride into the falls and it was going to take the power and torque of the mighty engine below the decks to do it.

We pushed off and I wrapped myself in the bright blue disposable poncho that was to protect me and my camera gear from the harsh punishment of the mighty mist that was about to deluge the fair maid and myself. I was excited and giggled  as I madly snapped self portraits with my iPhone to prove that I indeed did take the ride on the river.

I am not sure why I was so tickled to be on the Maid of the Mist but I was. As we steamed past the first set of falls the rain and mist began to pound the passengers and boat. My camera gear was taking a punishing from the less than gentle mist. I cleaned the lens and snapped up shots as I could. When we finally edged the bow of the boat into the leading edge of the falls the water that was pouring over the top deck and bow had most of the tourists all in a flap. We sat there nose to nose with the falls in a strange show down. Finally as the détente eased the boat slowly began to turn as she did so many times before. The falls would win this again today and we would limp back to the waiting dock where a new set of passengers would ride to the wet edge of the river.

Yes I had ridden the Maid of the Mist and checked off another of my life’s todo’s. It was fun and now I look to the list for the next crazy adventure that waits to be crossed off.

• Apple iPhone
• Baseline DCT, Huffman coding
• TiltShift – iPhone App
• Lo-Mob – iPhone App
• Flickr for iPhone
• GPS Latitude: 49 deg 17′ 32.07″ N
• GPS Longitude: 123 deg 8′ 38.74″ W

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This was shot on the old set of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” in the Tabernas Desert, near Almeria Spain. The set has been turned into a pretty cheesy attraction but we stayed the night near by and felt compelled to pay homage to the western legend. This set and the surrounding desert was host to the plethora of spaghetti westerns produced in the 60′s and 70′s. I guess the attraction [Mini Hollywood]  is worth it if you are in the area but I would not necessarily go out of my way to visit the old western set unless you are a spaghetti western freak. My 4.5 year old son really thought this was a real cemetary and I could not convince him otherwise.

Here is a slide show from the rest of the day spent there:

• Camera: Lumix DMC-LZ8
• Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/640)
• Aperture: f/5.7
• Focal Length: 17.5 mm
• ISO Speed: 100

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Lost in thought

This shot is from our trip to Oahu in 2007 on the east side of the island at the Kualoa Ranch jeep tours. They are not actually jeeps but rather ex Swiss Army six wheel drives that were actually pretty cool. The tour goes through the Ka’a'awa Valley where Jurassic Park, Windtalkers, You, Me & Dupree, 50 First Dates and Lost were filmed. It’s about two hours of six by six fun in the jungle. I would probably think about eating lunch elsewhere if you go in afternoon as the food there is pretty lame.

• Camera: Canon EOS 10D
• Exposure: 0.006 sec (1/180)
• Aperture: f/8.0
• Focal Length: 80 mm
• ISO Speed: 100

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The habitats a relatively large and very realistic in foliage etc and the animals are extremely well cared for. We usually make a weekend out of the trip but if you head out early enough you can get there and back in a day. Just be sure to allow about 4-6 hours of time at the zoo as it is pretty darn big and there are a lot of things to see.

The food on premise is pretty standard fair but just around the corner, from the zoo, is one of the best burger joints that you will ever come across. The Red Mill Burger joint is pretty famous in Seattle and the lines can be tediously long but the burgers they serve are out of this world. The service is great too and everyone there is ok with the wait.

If you are planning to stay the weekend there are plenty of hotels in the area but other than the zoo it’s pretty bleak for entertainment. We prefer to head downtown and stay either at the Best Western near the Seattle Science Centre or the Homewood Suites Inn closer to Belltown. We like the Homewood for the simple fact that there is a bed room and a kitchen in every suite. If it’s pure luxury or funk factor maybe go elsewhere but for families it is great and there is a free buffet breakfast too boot.

So as spring takes root and the days get a little warmer why not make a weekend of it at the Seattle Woodland Park Zoo.

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Well driving in Europe can be tricky. Round-a-bouts, lack of signage, crazy streets, foreign languages and foreign drivers for that matter. It can all be a bit much at times.  I am a good driver and pride myself on it but I have to admit I was a little nervous of the driving thing in Spain. The first week we used public transit and trains to get around but that all changed in week two. Week two in Seville was when we switched over to car mode and that meant that I would have to brave the driving madness in our shiny new Peugeot 308. I was totally sweating it as we pulled out of the rental car place at the train station. Luckily we rented the car on a Sunday and in Europe on Sundays everything is shut down and the roads are not the nightmare they are during the week.

Prior to pushing the car out into the traffic I programmed the Tom Tom GPS unit to take us out of town. The voice of reason just kept telling us where to go. It was great I could focus on driving and not navigation. If you have ever had those fights about where you are going with your significant other you know what kind of stress it can bring to the party. I could tell that this was not going to be the case with the Tom Tom. Hell if you do make a wrong turn on a six lane traffic circle Cathy, Martha or what ever the hell her name is just auto corrects and gets you back on the right course. It’s f*ck’n brilliant! I started to refer to the GPS as the marriage saver.

The cool thing about using Tom Tom in Europe is that the company is from the Netherlands so you know they have the right maps. Pre-programming the Tom Tom GPS is also a dream because it used Google maps for the desktop mapping software. If you have used Google maps then you already know how to look up a destination and then send it to the GPS unit. Once you are in the car just go to the favs and hit enter and you are off. I have had Garmin’s in the past and they pale in comparison for dash mounted GPS units. Tom Tom is like Apple or TiVo, they just work out of the box with little to no effort or steep learning curve.

Driving with a GPS unit is easy just punch in the destination in your GPS and go for it. The video in this post is a small town in the south of Spain called Vejer de la Frontera. Yes it was a tight fit but I honestly new that we would find our way out no problem and just focused on not hitting the mirrors on the buildings that were ever so close. On a side not make sure when you are programming the GPS that you don’t select “Avoid Tolls”. I did that by mistake, thank you dyslexia, and we went on a three hour back country jaunt through a cork tree forests that we were not sure we would make it out of…just a heads up there.

Have you driven in a foreign land? What are your great tips. Please share them with the folks here on Jaypiddy’s Blog.

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Last summer while travelling through Spain our family had to maximize our budget for accommodation in order to stretch out the trip to last the whole summer. I have been using sites like VRBO and Homeaway to get great deals on condos and apartments in North America for years and new the value of that kind of accommodation for extended stays. The problem I was having in Spain was that there were less sites that covered the country from a national perspective, so finding places to stay was tricky. That is it until I was using Google Earth to pre-visualize some of the areas of interest [That's another blog post entirely.] that we going to be travelling through. As the zoom tool Google Earth got closer to the city of Seville I noticed that there were little bed icons showing up across the city. “What is this?” I thought. Could this be another unadvertised feature of Google Earth? Why yes it was, Google maps now lets business’ geo-advertise for free. This is very handy for B&B, Pensions and lower profile accommodations. As the icons where clicked little windows extended out from the icons and there was hotel and rental apartment details. Curious I clicked a couple of the links that then opened up the web browser and what I found was a rag tag bunch of apartment rental networks for Seville. I poked around a bit more in Google Earth and found that there were similar icons in other Spanish cities. If you are looking to do the same in Canada try using Troovy it will give you similar results.

Instructions

1. Open Google Earth [Mac or PC]
2. Zoom into the city of interest.
3. Make sure that in your layers palette to the left that the “Places of Interest” is open.
4. Scroll down to lodging and make sure that it is checked to ‘on’.
5. Now zoom over the town or city that you are interested in finding accommodation and now little bed icons will appear. 
6. Zoom in further, click the icon and now the apartment or hotel information will appear. Most of the properties will have reviews, location and web address details.

So through using Google Earth and geo-targeting the cities and towns that I needed accommodation I was able to find the following networks in Spain. I am listing off Spain apartment networks as examples because that is what I was looking for. I am sure if you poke around other countries that you will be able to find the same.

Seville Apartments 

Barcelona 

Mabella

Good luck and good hunting

If you like my travel tips and are planning to book a package somewhere hot why not use hotels.com to book.

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Continuing the on the travel theme I thought I would publish my TripAdvisor travel map. If you have not already started using TripAdvisor.com for investigating hotels by reading the reviews of the traveller reviewed properties then I strongly recommend that you do before next trip. The site has been around now for a number of years and there are reviews for hotels just about anywhere you plan on travelling to. I have found helpful reviews for the smallest of towns on the site. You can even view photos and videos that other travellers have upload of thier hotel rooms and famous, and not so famous, attractions. One would be shocked at the differences there are between the glossy photo on the hotel website versus the real deal that travellers experienced. The site has saved me from exposure to bedbugs, surly staff and food poisoning time and time again and I never go to a hotel without first checking here. You should read through a good number of reviews to get an idea of what the general consensus of the hotel property. I also find that there are always a couple of bad reviews about every property so I suggest that you look at the good to bad ratios before rushing to judge too quickly. If you set up an account there is an interactive map that will track your world travels that you can be imbedded into blogs and posted to Facebook profiles. I guess it is kind of a traveller’s brag sheet of sorts.

If you like my travel tips and are planning to book a package somewhere hot why not use hotels.com to book. 

     

• View my profile
• Create your own travel map or travel blog
• Travel Info at TripAdvisor

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I did list this site as part travel and this is my first tip in that category. I have been going through some of my travel pictures to post here on the blog and I am continuing to be gravitated to the pictures of warm sunny climates…not sure why that is in these dark days of winter. Anyhow this was shot on the east side of the just south of Kaaawa on Oaho. We usually go at the end of March or the first week of April. There seems to be the best prices at that time and the weather is always nice.

Travel Tip: I have been to Hawaii four times now since 2002 and have learned that the misnomer about Hawaii is that it is sunny all the time. You would be suprised how many cloudy and rainy days there are in December and January. If you can make until February you will have a much higher chance of a sunny vacation.

The other thing to think about when chasing the sun on in Hawaii is that the North/Eastern sides of the islands get much more rain that the South/Western sides. It can be dark and torrential rains on one part of the island but sunny and clear only fifteen minutes south of you. Choose carefully when planning a trip in the winter months it could be a wet vacation if you don’t.

 
If you like my travel tips and if you like it and are planning to book a package somewhere hot why not use hotels.com to book.

Photo copyright JP Holecka

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