Introductions
My wife and I are what I would term slow travelers. Hell, it’s become a real movement (no pun intended).
I’m a fan of blogging, so I’ll probably be looking after this site. We have a wordpress blog as well. It’s mainly used for when we are on a trip to keep people updated on our goings on. We haven’t done a huge amount of traveling yet but we’re planning it. I’m lucky in my job I get a fair amount of “down time” while my wife has to organize her vacation time a bit more. We’re avid amateur photographers and videographers. We’ve set up a few simple rules for traveling (mind you some of these rules are just suited to us)
1. Any city we travel to should be at least 350 years old.
2. The city should have a river running through it.
These first two are really just totally personal preferences. We just really enjoy walking around very old cities.
3. We should stay more than 7 days.
4. We should rent an apartment and avoid hotels. This one might strike people as a bit odd since it is a vacation. Here’s my example. End of the low season in Paris in the 7ème (this district includes the Eiffel tower, Musée d’Orsay, Musée Rodin, École Militaire, Hôtel des Invalides, etc. It’s a pretty good, but busy, location). Expedia.ca lists hotels in this district ranging in price for a week from $875 CAD to $11963 CAD. Lodgis.com’s (slightly more expensive, but one of many options for vacation rentals) price range in the same area during the same time is $587 CAD to $2994 CAD. There is a 25% agency fee, but it still comes out a better deal. Also we like to have the option to do some laundry once inawhile or if we want to go to the markets and cook at home.
5. We should only use either our feet or public transportation to get around. No Taxis. No car rentals. No tours. The only time, so far, we’ve made an exception for this was in Paris where we took a boat tour along the Siene.
6. We should learn as much of the language as we can beforehand. We like these guys alot. They have a great selection of language lessons for free and also offer premium lessons for a price.
7. No camping! I’m an unapologetic city person.
8. No guidebooks. No fold out maps. I’ve personally come to prefer the Moleskine. It has district maps, metro maps, blank tabbed pages, tracing paper for drawing routes & more. I’ve also been know to use an iPhone. The internet is an amazing place for info when used correctly.
9. Document lots. Comment little. Don’t take this one the wrong way, we have strong and definite opinions on things and we will let them be known when we want but not everyone is us and we would never dictate our beliefs on yours.
These aren’t set in stone by any means. I’ll change them on a whim (and even right now my wife is questioning me on the ‘No Hotels’ rule) but it’s a good starting point.
We’ve begun to do some preliminary research for next vacation (and I’ll be dropping some hints here until we get everything booked). Before that though we’ve got a short trip to Montreal coming up for a family wedding, but we’ll try to fit in a bit of the sights as well.
That’s it for now,
M.
