On our honeymoon, my wife and I stayed at the Palace Hotel in Port Townsend, WA. Built in 1889, the building has seen a lot of history. My wife was excited to stay there. The furniture and decorations in the rooms all evoke the Victorian era. The rates were reasonable and our room had a…
I’m on a red-eye flight from Washington D.C. to Charlotte, North Carolina. “Can the seats be any closer together?â€? I think to myself. Then, once settled in and slightly comfortable, the large sweaty man sitting next to me begins ordering vodka tonics as if the flight was his last. One by one, I watched as…
New contributor Elaine Sipos chimes in with a host of ghostly travel stories: 1) While staying at a prestigious hotel in New Orleans, I was quite annoyed to find that someone was repeatedly knocking on my door and upon answering no one would be there. I mentioned this to the hotel staff and they replied,…
Getting lost in a city of 1.5 million people can be a humbling experience. Especially if you’ve never been there. Even moreso if you don’t speak the language. It happened to me in Barcelona. As a first time visitor to Spain, Barcelona was our hub for a ten-day business-pleasure trip in 2002. Located on the…
Sometimes, when you’re on the road, your life can be threatened in ways you never imagined. More of my scariest travel moments: • Risking death by hitchhiking in Dunkirk, France: Landing in France at 1am after crossing the English Channel on a delayed ferry, my brother, two friends and I were picked up by an…
We’ve all had scary travel situations. We’ve been on planes that dropped thousands of feet or on boats that were sinking. But try this one on for size… I was scuba diving in Belize at The Great Blue Hole, a famous underwater cavern that begins at about 100 feet. After spending 12 minutes there, we…
Here is one more story from one of our intrepid global contributors and travel writer, Jacqui Horwood: “My scariest moment came many years ago, in 1989, when I was travelling on a Contiki trip (which was scary enough as it was) through Europe. We were in Amsterdam and were staying at a flea pit in…
EDITOR’S NOTE: We’ve all had our share of spooky moments while on the road. Some were actual threats of death. Some were merely amusing in hindsight. Here is the first in a series of articles from our contributors. Clare O’Donoghue shares these… It’s always the quiet ones… Back in my on-a-shoestring days, I was working…
My family and I recently returned from Africa. The three of us visited South Africa, Zambia and Botswana and I’ll be sharing some of my stories and photographs from the road with Vagablond readers. It was an amazing adventure! CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA — This is a beautiful and dynamic city, with more mountains than…
Technorati states that there are over 55 million blogs online. that’s million, by the way. Of those, about 9,400 are focused on travel. So how can you capitalize on this new publishing craze? Do you want to share a story about doing something memorable at the Eiffel Tower? Have you enjoyed high tea at Buckingham…
Trekking through the jungle in Thailand was always going to be an amazing experience. Taking that trek on the back of an Asian elephant would be magical. I was worried, though. I wanted to be sure the animals in question would be well cared for, not subject to any of the cruelty or exploitation of…
If you tire of the hustle and bustle of millions of Londoners, you can re-charge your batteries in the rolling hills and breathtaking countryside of Dorset. At the Warmwell Holiday Lodges, you can purchase or rent an upscale home on the range, overlooking the cows and such. I was surprised at the list of activities…