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Trying to plan a vacation
Giselle
Registered Users Posts: 367 Major grins
I finally got the go ahead from my husband to use our tax return on a vacation. I want to go somewhere with water and sun but want to make sure there is great picture opportunities (nature and people). Please let me know your top choices, please include pics and best time of year to go.
Thanks
Thanks
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And yes, there's water...
my words, my "pro"pictures, my "fun" pictures, my videos.
We have been in Burma/Myanmar and it is georgeous.
It is the best we have seen in the Indochina. And we have been in all the countries of this peninsula.
Unfortunaly you can only see few pictures of the place in my website because then, I was making film and not adicted to pictures yet.
Another place really beautifull and pleasant to go - we have been there also - is Costa Rica.
Americans are well accepted on the contrary of certain parts of the world, thought I have been with americans all over the world.
I could also recommend India. Poor, beautifull, colored, nice pictures to take.
About the best time to go, because of the wheater I'll be able to let you know when my wife wakes up.
Enjoy your vacations, take many pictures (1.000 minimum) select 50 and let us have a look.
Heath.
People
Wildlife:
Beaches:
I ought to update the pictures on the site but there are some here
The weather is great all year, the east coast in september, the south and west in March.
Google: Kandy, Temple of the tooth, Sigiriya, Pinnawela elephant orphanage, Nuwara Eliya Yala. It's endless.
Cheers.
Stan
Our budget is @ $4,000
Ville-Franche-sur-mer, France
The Dalmatia Coast of Croatia...
Where have you been in the past? We've done a lot of Western Europe, so we want to do something different this year.
http://maegandougherty.com
Mianmar - Decembre, January, February
India - Depends if it is south or north
Costa Rica - November to January
One of the link we use (very good):
www.worldtravelguide.net
Because we do not know the prices of travels in the US we can not help about prices.
We uselly travel with French people. Great prices and service.
We speak French and English, besides our native language. We understand and hardly speak Spanish also .
Check visa problems to Mianmar.
We are preparing India for Fev 07.
Irland in 20 days from now.
Regards
I have been to England (southern area...London and down), also Paris and Canada (does that count as a forgein country?
We went to Mexico (near Playa de Carmen) for our wedding.
Hi Antonio,
Unfortunatly, being an ignorant american, I only speak english... except for a few cuss words.
Thanks for all the info, I will check out the link you gave.
I'm not sure I want to die for the perfect shot! Did you do that?
I have been to England (southern area...London and down), also Paris and Canada (does that count as a forgein country?
We went to Mexico (near Playa de Carmen) for our wedding.[/quote]
Europe is nice as you know.
German / Black Forest is very nice. We have been there also, quite some time ago.
Seville, Cordoba, Granada my wife wispers to me (she is here by my side).
Kenia safari great also.
Namibia also great. (dry)
You know, we are in the 50 ies ...
Paris is also a good place to visit and - gess, gess - PORTUGAL.
Yeh !!!! Why not ?
If you come let me know !
Regards.
To speak only his native language is not a shame.
Don't you have time to learn another language ?
Yes, English is spoken all over the world and is an importante language to master even making so many mistakes as I do ...:D
You weren't rude at all. I noticed when I did travel to other countries most people spoke 3 or 4 languages. Most americans speak only english, I personally think it has something to do with our self-righteous attitude, we think the world should conform to our needs. Don't get me wrong I love the US but we are spoiled. I could make time to learn if prioritized better
smugmug: www.StandOutphoto.smugmug.com
Or you are welcome to the spare room at my house if you come to australia.
You gave me an ideia. Alaska.
Regards.
You are one of those americans who has traveled around the world.
Many many stay at home. Yes, the US is large and there is much to see in it ... and beautifull things .
Because we portuguese are a small country we - as long as I am cocerned - try to compensate with other thinks like speaking 2 languages for example.
Of course you love the US. I do love my country as well.
Yes you are spoiled. But be aware with the chinese. They are going to dominate the world the way you do nowadays.
Regards.
Hi Stan
I checked out Sri Lanka on the site Antonio recommended and it said:
following insert from www.worldtravelguide.net
Travellers are advised against all but essential travel to the north or east other than to the towns of Trincomalee, Nilaveli and Arugam Bay. Much of the north and east of Sri Lanka remains heavily mined, particularly around the A9 road to Jaffna.
The Government of Sri Lanka has declared a state of emergency following the assassination of the Foreign Minister in Colombo on 12 August. The state of emergency gives enhanced powers to the police investigating the killing. Visitors should follow local developments closely, be aware of their surroundings and avoid political gatherings or demonstrations.
The tsunami in December 2004 resulted in extensive damage and large numbers of casualties on the south-western, southern and eastern coasts of Sri Lanka.
Where were you?
Thanks so much for the spare room offer, who is your decorator?
Actually Aust or N Zealand could be cool, what areas do you like araound there?
http://maegandougherty.com
We travel in a group of people.
As a matter of fact in Sri Lanca we were 2 couples. Only.
In this case and we do not care much about this security problem :uhoh because everything is arranged and planned: Follow the guide !
Though in Cambodia we could not go out of the tracks while beeing in a group ...
Later today I will be able to tell you preciselly where we have been.
Meanwhile I can give you the link of the travel agency and the travels they make to Sri Lanca. It is in french but w'll manage somehow.
http://www.asia.fr/asia/Localitetheme.cfm?IdLocalite=85&IdTheme=125&utl=PUBLIC
We started in a great Guest House in Negombo called Villa Araliya, which is run by a Dutch lady and her partner, then drove to Sigiriya Via the elephant orphanage and stayed at the Elephant corridor hotel, then south to Kandy, Nuwara Eliya and the Tea plantations staying in the Hill Club, which was the old colonial club then south to Yala. Staying at the Yala Village hotel. in the south west, aparently, although that coast took the full force of the tsunami not one elephant or leopard died.
After that we drove back along the south coast staying at a couple of nasty beach resorts along the way neither of which survived the tsunami...
So nothing north of Sigiriya and although the bay of Trincomalee is spectacular we did not go there either. The trip took about 14 days.
Another good reason for going is that they need your money,and you can stay in some great guest houses rather than the multinationals that we stayed in. (if only we had researched more)
Stan
Very pleasant to be there.
Do not blame about the time of flight... Take Aspirine 100mg everyday for a month before you fly to make the blood fluid, fly business if you can afford !
If you can't afford, you will have to fly tight like chickens as I say ...
In New Zealand be aware of the UV rays.
Too much radiation.
Use glasses with good protection (polarized) and grade 3 or 4.
(I am not a travel agency
The tray: put it on the ground. The hell with it. Call the attendant.
Stucked: It happens.
If you are trapped by the window, take your shoos off and jump over the others to the corridor.
Business: Very very expensive. But super. Once, no twice, we had the chance of travelling in business for free (yes!!!) from Joanburg (South Africa) to Paris. We were lucky. It was my birthday !
We take some soft pills to sleep. A drug not strong but which let you sleep for 6 7 hours.
We fly with the eyes blinded by a mask. Eye driness is not good. Use artificial tears.
My wife uses a mask because of the AC beeing too cold what happens offen when the plain is not full.
Pillow to the neck.
Cotton swetter. Shoes off. Socks on.
In Sri Lanka (2002) on the west coat mainlly where there are no problems with the Tamil.
Regards
I have hired people before but they dont seem to get what mood i was after so i ended up doing most of the decorating myself.
Here is an album of my local scenes but i really want to go to Uluru (ayers rock) is out of town a way.
I already knew this site:
http://wildthingsphotography.com/detected.php?page=&pass=
Regards
If you have been to western Europe, you ought to try Eastern Europe.
Here's a really cool rail trip I have taken twice; once when I was a student in Budapest, and again 2 years ago for nostalgia.
This trip is a great transition from Christian Europe to Muslim Near East; through areas that are entirely safe and relatively inexpensive. All of the intercity trips can be made by night train, so your travel is typically limited to evenings, and you get a lot of day phototaking time.
CENTRAL EUROPE
Prague and Budapest aren't bargains anymore, but both of them are delightful cities.
Prague is the most beautiful city, architecturally, in the whole world. Beats the hell even out of Paris. Hands down. It is basically the only city in the region where battles for control of the city where fought well outside (like Bila Hora) and where the Nazis abandoned it to the Red Army rather than fight over it. Consequently it's historic architecture from all periods is still standing- medieval, baroque, and belles artes.
Medieval
Baroque
Beaux Artes
The city is totally modern, and totally integrated into the EU. Sort of a pity really. The overnight train to Budapest leaves at around 11 PM and gets you into Budapest early the next morning. It costs around $100 for a sleeper.
Prague is a pretty village writ large, for a big city, its awfully small, and almost quaint. Budapest, not so much (sacked and rebuilt 8 times) but it is a triumph of modernism. It is an Imperial City.
National Museum on Buda Hill
Parliement Building on the Danube
Budapest, like Vienna, also has a wonderful cafe culture. This is the "refined" bit of the trip were you can share many a romantic moment with your husband. Later on, it gets a little rougher around the edges. In fact, one of the things I like about this trip is the way it carries you from the center of one civilization (Prague-Budapest) through the wilds (the Balkans) to the center of a very different civilization (Istanbul) doing it by rail allows you to see the transformation from region to region slowly, as it naturally unfolds.
Be sure to check out the swankiest cafe in Budapest, the "Gerbaud" on Vorosmarty Square. Serving the Habsburg elite since the late 19th century.
Cafe Gerbaud
tasty treats available at Gerbaud
Another nice cafe is the "cafe New York" on Blaha Lujza square. It's not some lame "americana" cafe, but has been called "cafe New York" ever since it opened up, also in the 19th century. It was a sort of salon for the Hungarian modernist writers movement, hosting folks such as Endre Ady, and Ferenc Molnar. According to legend, Molnar once trhew the keys of the Cafe into the Danube so that it would never close.
The real "kick off" to the trip is the market near the main station (Keleti Palyaudvar) in Budapest. I think of this as sort of a market or "Trade route" trip. The market near Keleti is where goods that start out in China and central asia end up for distribution in eastenr europe. It's not as thriving now as it was 15 years ago, before budapest was integrated economically into western europe, but still quite a bit of an entrepot.
one of the routes to Istanbul, (the more arduous one) the "Dacia" to Bucharest
The night train leaves Keleti (IIRC) about 10PM, and puts you into Belgrade Central station at about 8 AM. I think it costs around $70- this is for a sleeper, so if you think of it as transport and a hotel, its not too bad. Buy your ticket in the Wasteels office inside the Keleti train station. Do not buy a ticket in the US, and do not buy a ticket all the way to Istanbul. It is much cheaper to buy them stage by stage at each city. like 1/10th of the price.
THE BALKANS
Don't be scared off by Serbia. There is no longer any conflict in the region (and hasn't been for 10 years) Belgraders always were a cosmopolitan group, and Serbs love Americans. Very strange; I was there in 1998, after we had bombed them in Bosnia and before we bombed belgrade itself (everyone knew it was coming. One taxi driver said "we will f--- up until you have to bomb us, just watch) when our financial sanctions had degraded the currency to the point where Serbian Dinars were not accepted, and all trade was done in D-Marks, and still people were super friendly.
Belgrade Central Station
No one goes to Belgrade. Both times I have been there I was the only tourist I saw the whole time. Consequently, there are no "tourist scams" so common at other central european rail stations, no "come see my cousin's carpet shop" or things of that nature, becuase there is no economic payoff for it. Everyone kind of looks at you in shock - "A foriegner, what are they doing here?" Belgrade is a very sophisticated city. And its cheap. I slept there in 98 or $10. You can get a lovely turkish coffee in the Jugoslav Airlines Hotel cafe and watch the traffic go by, they have a nice fortress, a lively theater scene, and a good many people speak english.
Last time I spent only the day in Belgrade, but you could easily spend a few days there. There is a cinema there with an English language bookshop (ask at the train station, everybody know it) and a cafe. If you hang out there, you will meet nice, earnest young intellectual college students, who may very well offer to take you to their cottage for the weekend and show you the whole country.
Balkan folks are like this. If you meet a legit person in a situation like that, go hang out with them. It's not unusual for them to offer extreme hospitality to random strangers. If its a scruffy looking type at the train station, well, that's a different matter. Also, avoid people in Adidas track suits. they are all Mafia. Or want to be- I can't figure out which is worse.
The restaurant in the Central Station is cheap and primitive, but extremely "typical." The waiting room is positively Dante-esque and smells of Cheese-Feet. Just like that phrase sounds, only worse. When you are ready to go, buy a ticket for the overnight train, sleeping car, to Sofia. This should set you back around $30. The accomodations are nice. Well, not luxury, but clean and private if there are two of you (two bunks to a cabin). The train is mostly deserted anyway.
Sofia is sweet, but a little harder to navigate than Belgrade, because everything is in Cyrillic. (In Belgrade, its mixed). Nevertheless, this is a nice palce with, again, hardly any tourists. It reminds me of Prague or Bratislava in 1991. If you feel like you missed out on "golden Prague's" post-revoltuionary moment where things were cheap and the locals not jaded, and you could glimpse an eastern europe that was unwesternized, authentic, yet "free" then Sofia is it.
Also, they sell hand painted Icons for like $20, and I am nuts about Icons. Great churches, a few mosques (the local population is 10% muslim) this is where you really see islam lapping at the shores of christendom- its starting to get very interesting.
Alexander Nevsky Orthodox Cathedral
mosaic in Svata Nedele Church
Orthodox Priest with Parishoner, Sofia
The churches are great, you can easily take a side trip to Lovech or Veliko Turnovo to see some old Balkan towns- people are friendly, and if you are dying for the beach you can go to the black sea.
We also took a bit of a pause in Plovdiv, a city on the Sofia-Istanbul route. Nice, but better to spend your time in Veliko Turnovo or Sofia itself.
The Night Train from Sofia to Istanbul leaves Sofia at about 8PM, rather early. This is the longest rail stretch of the journey. As you travel towards the border, you will see more and more mosques, and more and more evidence of a "levantine" sort of lifestyle.
the border itself is interesting. the train stops for about 1 hour at around midnight, and you stand in an austere office with two soldiers, a desk, and a portrait of Kemal Attaturk. You pay $40, get your visa stamped, and get back on the train. If you feel like hanging out in the train station for a few hours, you can get off the train in Adrianople (Edirne) an old Ottoman and Byzantine city. It's supposed to be cool. I was too tired to get off.
THE LEVANT
The Mosque of "Selim the Grim (Selim Yaviz Camii)
This is the part of the trip that is super cool. Your train rolls into Istanbul/Byzantium/Constantinople early in the morning, as the mists are begining to burn off and reveal the spires of hundreds of minarets. The train travels along the contour of the old walls of Theodosius bulit by that emporer in the 4th century, which withstood dozens of sieges utnil finally overcome by the Ottomans in 1453.
The station is located in Sultanhamet, the "Golden Horn" This area, about 3-4 square miles, is probably the most densley packed area of historical landmarks in the world.
Bed down in one of the many hostels near the Aya Sofya- mine was a converted turkish bath.
the view from my hotel's rooftop garden
Close by are the relics spanning almost the entire 3,000 years that this city has been inhabited. It has been a greek city State (byzantium), the capitol of the roman empire (Constantinople, Nova Roma), and, of course, the capitol of an islamic empire, ruled by a sultan Caliph, whose authority extended from Tunis to The persian Gulf, from the walls of Vienna to the pyramid of egypt.
The obolisk of Karnak, placed in the Hippodrome by Emporer Theodosius, 390 AD
The two most famous monuments are the Haghia Sofia, Αγία Σοφία (Aya Sofya); the church of the holy wisdom, for over a thousand years the center of the orthodox christian world. Built in 537 AD, it was the world's largest cathedral for over 1,000 years, until the construction of the cathedral of seville. It claimed the worldhighest unsupported dome until the construction of saint peter's basilica in rome, again over 1,000 years later. It remains the world's 4th largest cathedral- captured by the Turks and turned into a mosque, it is now a state museum.
Aya Sofya
Interior of the Aya Sofya- to get a sense of the scale, notice the people milling about in front of the altar in the bottom of the center section of the photo
The Blue Mosque of Suleyman the Magnificent, across the street from Aya Sofya
The Aqueduct of Valens, built by the eponymous emporer in 368 AD
Another view of the Blue Mosque
Also in Sultanahmet is the Byzantine Cistern, The Hippodrome where the Greens and the Reds used to riot over thier favorite racing teams under emporers of the Paleologus dynasty, The Topkapi palace and museum, with the Harem. Ever seen an Emerald the size of your fist? Its here.
Other districts include Galata on the Asian side of Istanbul, across the Bosphorus- where the old Genoese trading district was.
Galata Tower, built by the Genoese
Eminonu, down the hill from Sultanhamet, witht he Kapali Carsi, the largest covered bazaar in the world, with over 4,000 stalls.
The Grand Bazaar
Also the old Greek district, the Phanar
A view of the Bosphorus from the Phanar
The orthodox patriarchate moved to the Phanar after the sack of constanople in the 15th century. Its very small and unasuming now, and they don't like you to take photos, so you will have to be discrete.
The Orthodox patriarchate
There is also the BEyazit district, with the city university and another thriving MArket
Istanbul University, Beyazit
From Istanbul, you an also take day trips to Gallipoli, The dardanelles, Adrianople, or Bursa.
Ulu Beg mosque in Bursa, covered in Snow
All in all, Istanbul is enoguh to spend 3 weeks in alone, without the rest of the trip.
I did all of this for about $1500, including the money that I spent on a rug that I haggled 3 horus for.
So its well within your budget, and definitely a trip of your lifetime.