Category: Travel Enlightenment (Page 3 of 3)

Why Do We Travel?

by Peggy Markel

Why do we travel? We want to escape. Learn. Relax. We want to experience life differently than the everyday. We want to take the time to nurture ourselves; alone or with loved ones, and meet strangers who don’t know anything about us at all. It’s a chance to get away from our habitual patterns; to experience new or hidden territory within, the great unknown and unexplored or just untended tender parts of ourselves in a fun way, reflected by a bigger world.

Something happens to me when I even think about traveling, something close to mischievous. My appetite swells, and I become ravenous for the road. An easeful smile comes over my face, when I think of who I will see, what I will eat and the general relaxed feeling a certain cultural atmosphere gives me. It’s like a massage of the senses. A total turn on. If I were to have an addiction, this I imagine, is what one feels like. Because if I couldn’t travel, I would feel…bound.

Of course, maybe not everyone loves traveling. The romance for the old days of exploration is hardly what it once was. Albeit treacherous, there was a sense of adventure exploring the unknown as the intrepid, unstoppable traveler. Now, we are dealing with a different sense of the unpredictable just to get places we already know are friendly.

Yet, the risk is not in getting on a plane. Although, it may seem so. The real risk is what it takes to say “yes.” It’s time for me to take some time for myself.

“As you strode deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do ~ determined to save the only life you could save”. (The Journey. Mary Oliver; New and Selected Poems Volume One, 1992)

A wise man (my former husband) would say, “find reasons to do things, not reasons not to do things,” whenever I was ambivalent about making a decision, which was often.  After a while, it started to sink in. I’m beginning to believe that being hesitant is part of being human. As if venturing out into the unknown still has the fear of the Neanderthal.

“Something is going to get me.” Rather than, “I’m going to get something.” In reality both is true. “I’m going to get it, if it doesn’t get me first.”

Anything can happen at any time. There are no guarantees. Life is uncertain. So what does that mean? Should we live in fear or should we live in courage? We are not living if we stay safe and protected or hold ourselves back. So, if we live with courage, what are we going to get? That’s the million dollar open-ended question. We don’t know. But at least there is the element of surprise. What’s behind door number one? We are a curious species. That’s how we made it as far as discovering fire. At least someone thought out of the box, used his or her creativity. Someone was motivated and more than likely…hungry.

How can we find ways to open ourselves up to the unexpected opportunities and connections that might take our life in a completely new direction? Trusting in this impetus to go, instead of looking for reasons to stay—whether it be timing or expense or hesitation?

18 years ago I decided that I wanted to take the leap and learn a new language. I was 35. It was a rather unexpected, high-pitched voice that came to me when I asked myself, “What is it that you really want to do?” And this voice just sprang from who knows where… “Study Italian!”

I questioned the voice, but paid attention the next day when I ran into a well-known Italian Professor quite by accident and I asked her if I could audit her class at the University. She agreed. One week later I was studying Italian.

At the same time, doors went flying open and red carpets were unfurling. From saying “Yes” to that, I took a trip to Italy that spring and on the first day, my business was born. Today, my life’s work has become holding the space for others to take journeys into new tastes and textures and ways of seeing. For me, traveling and connecting through food is what sets my inner gyroscope twirling like a dervish. I find home, a delicate balanced tender spot, keeping my seat while moving; not unlike meditation, where we stop to let the world swirl around us.

Having the possibility to be mindful, inside or outside, moving or still, is my idea of making the most of this life. Bringing more meaning into my belly not only creates more joy, it inspires me to be more alive and creative in the every day.

Conversations have more depth. My cooking has more to offer. My relationships are happier because I have tended to what moves me. I have more to give because I am rich with experience. I had a chance to shmooze with humanity, break bread, share a smile and remember what this living thing is all about: seeing our similarities, rather than our differences.

No longer questioning who we are, we “find our place in the family of things.”

 

To see Peggy Markel’s many Culinary Adventures: Connecting Cuisine Culture & Lifestyle

Click Here To View our Featured Culinary Trip: Tuscany – La Cucina al Focolare – Cooking by the Fireside

Peggy has provided a Morroccan Kefta Recipe for our Members. Check it out by signing in and Clicking Here: Recipe

About Peggy Markel

Peggy Markel is the Owner and Operator of Peggy Markel’s Culinary Adventures. In 1993, she started The Ligurian School of Poetic Cooking (1993–2000), with Angelo Cabani, master chef and proprietor of Locanda Miranda in Tellaro, a small village on the Italian Riviera. For the past 17 years Peggy has traversed the Mediterranean and North Africa, from Elban fishing villages and Moroccan markets to the homes of Tuscan artisans and chefs, furthering her own exploration of culture and cuisine. “For me, a connection to real food is a connection to life.” Peggy’s journeys help people explore the cuisines of Tuscany, Sicily, Morocco, Almafi, and India.

 

The Hotwire Hotel Hedge

By Robert Cole

Believe it or not, Summer is around the corner. I suspect some folks are looking to book their vacation travel and getting the best hotel rate is a great way to kick off summer vacation. But, it is hard to know where to buy. The best rates are online, but which website is the best? The questions just keep coming.

The answer is, “It depends on how you play it.” I am here to help guide through the mayhem. Let’s start with one of the websites that appears quite risky but really isn’t if you know how to hedge your bet.

Hotwire (www.hotwire.com) is a personal favorite when it comes to booking hotel rooms from online travel sites. Their widely advertised claim is Four-star hotels at two-star prices. That’s a pretty good deal, but not good enough for me.

I love a good deal, but I am always in search of a better deal – the BEST deal.  Not the cheapest price mind you, but the best value: the highest quality at the lowest possible price. To capture the best deal, I don’t cheat, but I will take every advantage every tool available at my disposal to “bend” the rules in my favor.

Hotwire is the online travel equivalent of the generic store brand at the supermarket – lose the brand name and save a buck.  On Hotwire, one only knows the general neighborhood and hotel category, not the exact hotel name, before making a purchase.

However, enlightened consumers willing to do some easy research can frequently figure out which hotel is being offered at the discounted price.  I personally love reducing my risk while maximizing my reward (No, I have NOT perfected this approach for the stock market, so don’t bother asking…)

The secret is that Hotwire is owned by Expedia and is a sister site to TripAdvisor. In the interest of corporate consistency, hints on the Hotwire site can be cross-referenced on TripAdvisor.

Here are the simple steps, I will use my most recent weekend trip to Chicago as the example:

  1. I selected a four-star hotel in the centrally located Magnificent Mile area of Chicago. The rate was $79/night.
  2. Note the list of amenities. Look for unique features. In this case, Hotwire indicates the hotel’s guest rooms are smoke-free and has a swimming pool.
  3. Click on the CONTINUE button below the price. More detailed information is provided. It shows a TripAdvisor customer rating of 3.5 stars
  4. Now go to the TripAdvisor website and filter your selections accordingly. You should be able to get a short list of 4-star hotels with swimming pools in the Magnificent Mile zone (there were 5). Upon further inspection, only two, the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers and the W Chicago Lakeshore had 3.5 customer ratings. We are getting close.
  5. There is no reason to even open the Expedia site, clicking on the Amenities link for each hotel listed on TripAdvisor opens the associated page on Expedia – what could be easier?  It is then simple to note that only the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers is a smoke-free hotel. Bingo.
  6. Finally, TripAdvisor will also search multiple websites (Sheraton, Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, Travelocity, etc.) to find the lowest rate. All the sites listed $109 as the lowest price.

This is not a perplexing decision. Take the risk of pre-paying $79 on Hotwire for two nights when the exact name of the hotel is not known or paying $30 more per night to be sure it was the Sheraton?

I booked,  it was the Sheraton.

Low risk, relatively high reward ($60 for under 10 minutes of effort) with no cheating involved. It may not always work out this easily, but I will tell you that for three out of my last four hotel bookings on Hotwire, I knew the property before I confirmed the booking. The only exception was in Berlin where I narrowed the choice to 5 properties, but since I was saving over $150/night, I really didn’t care to research any further.

Travel Well,

Robert

 

 

About Robert Cole

The Founder of Rock Cheetah LLC, Robert’s role in the travel industry is to help companies bridge the chasms separating marketing, technology and operations to create best practices and process improvements that benefit the consumer and drive profit. Robert has worked at the VP of Destination Experience for Mark Travel; VP of Hotel & Car for Cendant Corporation; VP of Business Development and Marketing Services for Anasazi Inc.; Director of Electronic Distribution for Budget Group; and Director of Hotel Distribution for Sabre Holdings. Robert is also active in many Travel Industry groups including the Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association, the Hospitality Technology & Financial Professionals, Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International and the Open Travel Alliance. Follow Robert on Twitter at @RobertKCole and for total travel industry geeks he also author the Views from a Corner Suite blog where he talks shop for industry insiders. Click here to read.

Travel, Change & Good Conversation

by Peggy Markel

Hello fans of intotheSoup.com. In my first column on this beautiful site, I wanted to talk to you about travel, food (of course), change and good conversation.

In September, I had the opportunity to cook for illustrious poet David Whyte, and 30 of his students, in the Tuscan countryside for a week. Normally, I teach more than I cook. Yet, cook I did, without recipes as if the Tuscan cuisine was a part of me. The experience was a harvest time of the last 17 years of my work in Tuscany and a great opportunity to bring nourishment to a group of hungry poets and appreciators of David’s incredible work with the human spirit.

While there, I found that this experience was changing me. I was faced with a deep question. I felt I needed more courage to expand my travel and cooking programs to include a broader and deeper context of exploration.

For all its intensity, 2009 was a rich time – a time of serious groundlessness in the world, and personally for me as well.  But to allow change, I need to acknowledge the need for change and allow it to happen, rather than resist it. The most important thing I choose to remember is: Change is refreshing.

My programs have always been transformative and guests seem to go home feeling quite happy, but there’s more to enlivening a journey. I thought about the great conversations that I had with these young poets and how important conversation is to good travel and a good meal. The journey is not just about where you go or how you get there, but with whom you share your table.

This holds true for any adventure whether it is a trip to an exotic land or just exploration of good food at home with friends. The table is a platform for gathering. What would the table be with all this delicious food if we were not all sitting around it conversing?

When the food is good at an Italian table, everyone talks about the last great meal they had. The conversation centers mostly around food, an experience that naturally nourishes them. Yet, I’m interested in taking it to another level.

It was on this topic, through a literary friend from the UK, that I was introduced to another philosopher and writer, Theodore Zeldin.  “He presents topics of conversation like a menu.” said Eleanor.

To quote Zeldin,

“The kind of conversation I’m interested in is one which you start with a willingness to emerge a slightly different person. It’s always an experiment, whose results are never guaranteed. It involves risk. It’s an adventure in which we agree to cook the world together and make it taste less bitter.”

I began to think about great travel companions. How perfect it would be to travel with Rumi, the 13th century Sufi mystic poet. How fun would it be to converse over a meal that we have cooked together in the wood-fired ovens of Tuscany, sitting down to roasted goodness, with a few bottles of 100% Sangiovese, or a Moroccan dinner of chicken tagine with our own preserved lemons, under the stars … or moored in a bay off the coast of Capri, eating freshly caught fish with local herbs and tiny tomatoes.. I digress.

Travel confronts us with people living very different lives. “Humanity is a family that has hardly met.” says Zeldin. Food and good conversation bring us that opportunity to get to know one another.

In Morocco in November, inspired by time with David Whyte and good conversations past, I introduced poetry as a new element to my trips. Rumi’s references to food are many, and it proved to be a welcomed addition as we read a poem while sitting at the table under a carob tree in the garden, or riding down a long stretch of road. Poetry offered “food for thought” while cooking, dining and traveling.

Change is happening all around us. Embrace it. We have the opportunity to bring life and style together in creative ways and have the conversations to bring us closer.

Enjoy the journey, everyone. I look forward to blazing new trails with intotheSoup.com in the new territory ahead.

Peggy Markel

 

To see Peggy Markel’s many Culinary Adventures: Connecting Cuisine Culture & Lifestyle

Click Here To View our Featured Culinary Trip: Tuscany – La Cucina al Focolare – Cooking by the Fireside

Peggy has provided a Morroccan Kefta Recipe for our Members. Check it out by signing in and Clicking Here: Recipe

About Peggy Markel

Peggy Markel is the Owner and Operator of Peggy Markel’s Culinary Adventures. In 1993, she started The Ligurian School of Poetic Cooking (1993–2000), with Angelo Cabani, master chef and proprietor of Locanda Miranda in Tellaro, a small village on the Italian Riviera. For the past 17 years Peggy has traversed the Mediterranean and North Africa, from Elban fishing villages and Moroccan markets to the homes of Tuscan artisans and chefs, furthering her own exploration of culture and cuisine. “For me, a connection to real food is a connection to life.” Peggy’s journeys help people explore the cuisines of Tuscany, Sicily, Morocco, Almafi, and India.

 

The Seven Steps to Travel Enlightenment

By Robert Cole, Founder Rock Cheetah LLC

Hello to all the fans of intotheSoup.com. I’m looking forward to contributing my insights about the unpredictable, exhausting, and occasionally incomparably rewarding world of travel.

I am a travel industry professional. What does that mean?  Your guess is as good as mine. Does it mean I travel extensively? Yes, but not necessarily for fun. What it really means is that I know a lot about travel information, travel pricing and how it all flows through the various systems to your travel agent, online travel company or hotel reservation agent. 

This can actually make one quite cynical about the experience. So when my friends at intotheSoup.com asked me to write an article for their new travel section, I thought, Can I make this entertaining & fun? Well maybe if I can help you buy travel better or make travel easier, then that has some entertainment value, right? We’ll see.

Let this be a warning, I look at the travel experience from a very broad perspective – what I call the seven steps to travel enlightenment:

  1. It starts with a moment of Inspiration for a trip, for some people, this may be called a desperate need to escape.
  2. Research is then required to discover and evaluate the myriad of travel options. This can be fun or frustrating depending on your approach. Some people really screw up this step and spend way too much money for not nearly enough quality benefit.  Fortunately, these same people are also generally clueless, so they are blissfully happy with their choices.
  3. Planning comes next – filtering out all the alternatives, and most importantly, compromising one’s dreams to suit the obstinate whims of a traveling companion or a budget.
  4. Validation, that moment of panic when you start asking everyone, including people you don’t know, don’t like, or even those whose views you can’t stomach for help to determine if you have truly created the trip of a lifetime.
  5. Booking is the moment of truth when dreams become a series of scary and interdependent realities – most having obscure, yet egregious, change or cancellation fees.
  6. Travel. Which is supposed to be the fun part until you realize, after having only a fractional amount of sleep due to the stress of completing last minute projects at work, packing, you forgot to make arrangements for (fill in the blank…)
  7. Sharing; to quote Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”  Either way, Facebook, Twitter and TripAdvisor will make certain both your social network and perfect strangers will find out about your triumphs and hopefully avoid any pitfalls you encountered.

The cycle then repeats with the sharing providing inspiration for others to travel, enlightened by the experiences of their predecessors.

So what will I be writing about going forward?  Whatever I can think of…  but mostly about things I like or don’t like about the travel experience and how I have learned to make it better, cheaper and easier.  Feel free to contact me with questions or suggestions for topics that you feel would be of interest to the Into the Soup community.

By the way, for total travel industry geeks, I also author the Views from a Corner Suite blog where I talk shop for industry insiders. Click here to read.

You can also follow me on Twitter at @RobertKCole 

 

 

About Robert Cole

The Founder of Rock Cheetah LLC, Robert’s role in the travel industry is to help companies bridge the chasms separating marketing, technology and operations to create best practices and process improvements that benefit the consumer and drive profit. Robert has worked at the VP of Destination Experience for Mark Travel; VP of Hotel & Car for Cendant Corporation; VP of Business Development and Marketing Services for Anasazi Inc.; Director of Electronic Distribution for Budget Group; and Director of Hotel Distribution for Sabre Holdings. Robert is also active in many Travel Industry groups including the Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association, the Hospitality Technology & Financial Professionals, Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International and the Open Travel Alliance.

Newer posts »

© 2024 Into the Soup

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑