Travel Planning

I love the idea of going on trips.  I love the countless hours spent researching places to go, things to do, and imagining the experience of being there.  I love travel planning.  I’m sure a lot of people hate that kind of thing and cannot be bothered to do it, but seriously is there anything better to a self-professed travel lover?

I get the itch to travel probably every few months.  Sometimes it’s a big trip, others it’s a small trip, but overall it doesn’t matter to me.  I’ll go anywhere.  I think just the idea of going someplace new excites the hell out of me, and I can’t wait to delve into all the little details. 

Right now I’m planning my 30th birthday trip.  All my best girlfriends decided for our 30th’s we would go on a fun trip.  My bestie Jen did a cruise to the Caribbean and Central America (super fun), my friend MaeLee did a trip to Vegas (also fun, but bad timing for me after a 3-day overnight shoot), so now it’s my turn.  I was playing around with two ideas – a fun-in-the-sun trip to St. Thomas, USVI, or a wine country trip in Napa or Sonoma.  I mean we all know that I love my wine, but I have family history in St. Thomas, so that draws me as well.  The decision ended up being an easy one – my mom refuses to go to wine country, so St. Thomas it is.

St. Thomas, USVI

The worst thing about travel planning in my opinion is booking a flight.  I hate never knowing if I’m getting the absolute best price.  If I think a price is too high, I never know if I should wait for it to go back down (will it?) or go ahead and book it before it goes up in price even more.  Ugh the decisions.  It’s what I’m struggling with now the most for my St. Thomas trip.  I feel the price is ridiculously high, but the predictor on BingTravel is telling me to wait because it’ll go back down.  I’m putting my faith and trust in you BingTravel – don’t let me down!  I’m sure every travel planner goes through this same nightmare.  Why can’t they standardize airline fares and make it easy for everyone?  It’s such a racket.

Once the flight is booked, I’m much more at ease.  Hotels, activities, itineraries – all of that is so much easier to figure out and get accomplished.  You can always find a hotel in whatever price range you need, and once you know what you want to do when there, itineraries are a cinch (omg yes I said cinch).

Magen's Bay

In St. Thomas there’s no shortage of things to do.  Explore the island, go to world-famous Magen’s Bay, hang out in what I hope is a luxury villa overlooking the sea with our own private pool (a girl can dream right?), and taking a side trip over to St. John for the day.  Endless ideas to flesh out and plan.  As you’ve probably noticed, I’m not a spontaneous fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda girl, but I’m also not particularly anal about schedules.  I will plan the things I want to do and they happen when they happen – as long as I’ve thought it out ahead of time about how to go about doing it, we’re set.

So wish me luck as I plan my latest and greatest trip.  After two other amazing 30th birthday trips, I’m hoping mine will be just as good. 

And after St. Thomas, where will I plan a trip to next?  Let’s consult my list of top places to visit (in no particular order):

-       Norway/Sweden

-       Japan (well let’s wait a few years on this one)

-       Argentina/Chile

-       Alaska

-       Austrailia/New Zealand

Norway Fjords

Japanese Cherry Blossoms

Patagonia - Argentina/Chile

Alaska

Sydney, Australia

New Zealand

Let the travel planning dreaming begin!  And happy travel planning to everyone else out there!

British Television

Mr. Darcy

So I love the Brits…and not just because of their dreamy accents.  And I like it all – not just period pieces with the likes of Mr. Darcy (although very dreamy). The main way I get my British television is from PBS‘ Masterpiece Theater.  Masterpiece Classic in the Winter and Spring, and Masterpiece Mystery in the Summer and Fall.

I grew up on PBS.  My parents never invested in cable or satellite television, so there was a limit to the number of channels we got, and invariably the TV was almost always turned to PBS.  “This Old House,“ “New Yankee Workshop,“ “Victory Garden,“ “Cooking with Julia,“ etc, etc, etc., and of course Masterpiece are all shows that I grew up watching.  I never really appreciated any of it until the last four or five years or so, and now that I do, I can’t get enough of it.

Masterpiece Classic is always some type of period piece, like remakes of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens classics.  They weave in some more contemporary time periods as well, like this year’s Downton Abbey, which was set during the early 20th century.  The stories are all so amazing, and the cast of actors and actresses are recognizable from all sorts of British shows.  It’s like a 6 Degrees of Separation of British Television – do you recognize so and so from such and such?

Inspector Lewis

Masterpice Mystery is my all-time favorite.  I can remember the theme “song“ from when I was very little, and it always fascinated me with the girl wailing on top of the roof of an old manor house.  The titles for mystery range from Ms. Marple and Poirot to Inspector Lewis, Wallander and the new Sherlock.  Inspector Lewis is an offshoot of the Inspector Morse series (which my mom and I are rewatching right now).  Inspector Lewis‘ Detective Sargeant Hathaway is very dreamy too.  Tall, blonde, genius, a little nerdy – kind of like Steve Jerve the weatherman (who I also have a slight crush on).   The Inspector series are typically murder mysteries set in Oxford, England, and with that kind of education, they all are pretty smart.

Sherlock

Wallander

Now all that’s on PBS of course, and there’s obviously the BBC America channel.  I’ve got quite a few titles in my Netflix queue – MI 5 and the BBC version of Being Human just to name a few. I’m just starting to get into all the shows there, so I’ll keep you posted on what I end up loving.

There’s just something about British television that makes it feel so smart.  The stories are gripping, and it’s easy to become slightly obssesed (like myself).  I’m always looking forward to the next episode or the next story to debut, so I can get swept away in all the classics and mysteries that the Brits are so good at executing.