My upcoming travel plans

I can’t help myself.  I haven’t really even begun sharing all the tips from our last cruise with you, and I’m already working on more trips.  Actually, I’m thinking about my next FOUR trips!  lol

TTT: Finding your luggage

If you have traditional black luggage, it can be pretty tough to pick out on the luggage carousel or a stack of bags from the cabins near you.  This Travel Tip Tuesday, I will share my glorious secret with you to avoiding this hassle: duct tape.  Colored duct tape, to be more precise.  My prefered color is neon green because that’s what I found at the store.  lol  It’s cheap, easy, and removable.  Just put a strip on in a place you’re likely to be able to see, and you’ll find your luggage out of a sea of nearly identical bags.  Trust me on this one – I can find our bags faster than our friends can find theirs.

Images from Nasco Arts & Crafts and Macy’s.

TTT: Place no age limit on family trips

For Travel Tip Tuesday this week, I highly recommend that you refrain from placing an age limit on taking vacation with your family.  Like Gab from Lonely Planet, I enjoy traveling with my husband and friends, but the trips with family are the ones I love best.  Combining friends and family can be tricky, but it can also make for the most fun trips.

From Mykonos, Greece

Destination: St. Martin/Sint Maarten

This post continues my Caribbean destination mini-series (see Belize, Nassau, St. Thomas, St. John).  St. Martin/Sint Maarten is a brilliant choice for those of us gunning for membership in the Travelers Century Club who enjoy the Caribbean – it’s two countries on one tiny island!  It’s divided approximate in half between France (northern half) and the Netherlands Antilles (southern half) and is the smallest inhabited sea island divided between two nations.

Review of RCI’s Splendour of the Seas

OUR GROUP: My husband and I are in our late 20s.  We traveled with another couple our age and my mother and aunt (50-60).  This was the third cruise for Mr. and Mrs. Feisty, second for our friends, and first for my mom and aunt.  Our past cruises were in the Caribbean on Carnival Destiny and Carnival Valor.  We loved those cruises – fair to good food, excellent service, and fun ports.  Everyone in our group ordinarily does land vacations and has done many, including in Europe.

THE RUMOR:  “You’ll love RCI!  It’s so much better than Carnival.  Carnival is full of drunken partiers and has terrible food and mediocre service.  RCI has much nicer people and great food and service.”

THE TRUTH:  I was delighted to find drunken partiers on RCI’s Splendour since I hadn’t found them on either our Carnival cruises.  (The “drunken partiers” were charming and a lot of fun, so this is definitely a point in RCI’s favor over Carnival.)  We were, however, very disappointed with the food and service on Splendour, which was severely lacking in comparison to our Carnival cruises.