Saturday 9 April 2011

The rocking chair hypothesis

There is a very good reason why a lot of New Zealanders never travel further than Australia, it cost's to dam much. Flying to the other side of the world for 6 weeks is more expensive than I thought it would be initially.
Putting the cost into perspective, I could have bought a brand new Ford Fiesta.
Six week holiday or new car?

Think about this scenario, when you are sitting in your rocking chair talking to your grandkids do you want to tell them "Yes when I was young I bought a new TV, a new car and I had an iPad 2!" or do you want to be able to say "I traveled. I saw the Colosseum in Rome, I rode a Donkey in the Greek islands, I herded goats in the Swiss alps, Layee odl, layee odl layee-oo"
In most cases you would probably will not be able to afford to have both, so sacrifices sometimes have to be made.You might just have to put up with a car that was produced in Britney Spear's heyday, and not have all the latest gadgets, the iPad, the iPhone, the iWant iWant iWant....

Sacrifice is never easy, and sometimes it does feel like you are pouring money into an every increasing black hole of very expensive bits of paper that you wont see the results of for many months. It might well be easier to buy that new pair of boots you wanted, but isn't forgoing some luxuries to save that little bit extra so you can visit the Sun King Palace in Versailles, or spend the day visiting the island of Capri worth it?

A lot of people say "one day I want to go to Paris", but never make the effort to, because quite frankly its to dam hard and expensive. They can't face giving up their daily lattes to pay for a trip to Europe. We are not as lucky as people in England or America, where these fabulous exotic places are that much closer, we do have to spend that much more to travel.

Those little old people in rocking chairs, which one do you want to be?

Wednesday 6 April 2011

The Secrets to travel writing

So I got a bit sick of my last blog site not allowing links to be added to the blog, so I'm starting afresh. I really enjoy reading about travel so I thought I would start writing more about it.
However though I have no idea where start, my writing tends to be the very dry variety..."I went to A, then B, saw X, then went to C'. Not thrilling...at all...

So I did what most people do, I googled it.

I found some excellent blogs about what to write, and how to write. No more A went to B for me. I found this blog on How to write a travel Journal, and in the process I figured out how to link a blog without copy and pasting links! I have a travel journal which I intend to write notes in, probably about photos I take mostly, but it does seem like a good idea to take notes about what we do each day.
I would never have thought about writing about the food, but I suppose that is a big part of foreign travel, mushy peas at KFC in England anyone? No need to write about the tube trip, even though it might be new to me, its not to everyone, if something interesting happens on the tube then sure, but leave the mundane out.

Secondly I had to come up with a catchy, witty title for this blog...*crickets chirp*...nada...nothing...so back to google I went. How to craft brilliant travel blog headlines gave some excellent ideas, and the idea for the title of this blog. I must say I do love reading blogs with the headlines "how to...". As a travel overplanner I just love reading about locations I intend to travel to.

So bear with me as I enter the world of travel blogging, hopefully it will improve over time.