Barbados is located bout 100 miles southeast of St. Lucia in the southern Caribbean and has a dramatic coastline on the Atlantic side and beautiful bays on the Caribbean sea.

The most entertaining activities here include water sports, golf, hiking, travelling and most importantly relaxing and enjoying the tranquil, serene environment the unending oceans offer.

A lot of unnecessary expenses can be reduced by renting a villa or a condo instead of staying at glittery resorts which charge humongously for every expense. The villa usually costs $200 in the off season that is summer and during the peak season, which is December and January; prices escalate to around $400.

All you need to do is slice a mango or pack a bunch of sandwiches in a cooler and get all your fish and meat from the nearby market and you are set for a perfect not to mention a delicious meal. And when it comes to the drinks Barbados is the best place to set aside all your champagne and martinis. Unwind with a cold beer or crack open a bottle of rum. Mount Gay Rum, produced in Barbados since 1703, bills itself as “the rum that invented rum”. For a fabulous scenic sunset you can settle down at the beach front bar with a cold beer or just get creative with the blender!

Travelling from one place to another has also been made simple but inter-city buses that travel within the area and also for long distances at just 75 cents. An important factor is to consider the frequency and the speed of the buses while travelling long distances. Usually this form of transport takes quite a while so it’s best to adopt island time and enjoy your journey. Another option is to rent a car or a jeep and even a buggy and you can ride around town at your own time!

Once you have your accommodation, budget and travelling planned out you should be ready to hit the lovely coast of Barbados as it definitely is the experience of a lifetime.

]]> http://travelflow.net/barbados-the-first-stop-on-the-stairway-to-heaven/feed 0 http://travelflow.net/wave-of-social-network-in-the-travel-world http://travelflow.net/wave-of-social-network-in-the-travel-world#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:13:14 +0000 Peter http://travelflow.net/?p=395 When you plan for a travel, you will pick up your telephone and contact any familiar travel agencies to get further details. This was the case among travelers before the arrival of the internet. Once the internet has started occupying the life of people, they simply sat before a computer to get the details on travel spots from various travel companies. The technology doesn’t end here; it takes them to a new extent through social networking sites where they can interact with all the other people interested in travel and get more tips apart from chatting with travel companies to discuss on special offer.

As people can get reply from concerned person through networking sites without waiting in a queue or time delay, many people have turned towards travel companies that support social networking sites. Most companies have started paying close attention to social networks. This is very clear from the recent study which states that JetBlue leads the pack on Twitter with 700,000 followers while Southwest Airlines and Virgin Atlantic have nearly 70,000 and 20,000 fans on their Facebook page.

A lot of success stories on the latest social media revolution revolve around the net. One such success story is about Jessica Gottlieb. Her kids, Jane and Alexander, were trapped on the tarmac, while she was waiting for their Virgin America flight to take off. She twittered about her trouble as “Dear Virgin Air, my children have been on the tarmac for one hour with 90 more minutes to wait. I am at JFK gate b25. Pls RT” using her iPhone.

Within minutes she received phone call from Virgin assuring her that her kids would be fine. Talking on this success story, she said “They contacted the gate agent manager and explained to us the entire weather situation. Within 20 minutes of that conversation, the plane took off.”

What you have to do is, just open an account in Twitter or Facebook and join their friends’ list or follow travel companies available on the site. This is just the beginning of the social media revolution, join it now and enjoy every moment in your life.

London Heathrow Airport and London Gatwick Airport are the two major international gateways in to Britain. Some of the other notable airports near tourist spots in London are Manchester airport, Birmingham Airport and Bristol respectively located in the North of England, England’s Midland and South West of England.

After booking your tickets, immediately book your cheap car hire in England securely online. You can get rental vehicles available in London by surfing on the net with phrases like ‘Cheap Car Hire London Gatwick Airport‘ to hire cars after landing in Gatwick Airport.

Start your visit from the capital of England, London. The Museum of Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace and its park, Hyde Park, Kennsington palace and its gardens, Regent and Bond Street, Big Ben and more are waiting for you in London. Outstretching beaches and bays clubbed with magnificent sceneries are the most attracting tourist spots.

The city of Bath, another large city after London, is renowned for its picturesque beauty. Some of the many fascinating tourist attractions in England are Cambridge, The Cotswolds, The Lake Disctrict, Oxford, Stratford-upon- Avon, York, South of Thames, Kent (known as the ‘Garden of England’), Essex and Hertfordshire, Berkshire, Isle of Wight, Isles of Scilly, Dorset, Warwickshire and the West Midlands and more.

Book your ticket today and enjoy your vacation in England.

First let us see about one of the best Ancient Sites in Rome, The Colosseum built in the heart of Rome. Amazingly its capacity was 87,000 spectators. An elevator in the Colosseum, facilitates visitors with limited ability to walk up stairs to enjoy the colosseum with ease. People dressed as Gladiators will be available outside the Colosseum during peak times, you can take pictures with them (but you have to pay them for posing).

Next, have a look at one of the most sacred places in Christendom, Vatican City. It is home to the Pope and the Vatican, St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel, and the fabulous Vatican Museums. St Peter’s Basilica with its double colonnade and a circular piazza in front and bordered by palaces and gardens is the largest religious building in the world.

Ostia Antica, the harbor city of ancient Rome is a large archeological site where you can wander around the old streets, shops, and houses. The site is open to visitors. It is easily reachable by a short rail trip from Rome or from the airport.

The Roman Forum which served as a city square and central hub where the people of Rome gathered for justice and faith is located between the Palatine hill and the Capitoline hill of the city of Rome. It has monuments from 900 years of history.

Rome is overflowing with a lot of vacation rental homes. Some of the hotels in Rome, Italy recommended by travelers are Daphne Inn, Hotel Residenza, Hotel des Artistes etc.

NASA had the following to say about this eclipse – “On Wednesday, 2009 July 22, a total eclipse of the Sun is visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses half of Earth. The path of the Moon’s umbral shadow begins in India and crosses through Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and China. After leaving mainland Asia, the path crosses Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and curves southeast through the Pacific Ocean where the maximum duration of totality reaches 6 min 39 s.“

Unfortunately if you are out of this region, the only way to watch this is to travel to one of these areas, or simply watch clips of it on the internet. Scientists from various institutes have already tented in those regions to conduct scientific experiments on that day. As a normal person, you could watch night in the day time and the diamond ring effect that occurs when the sun disappears or just after it emerges from behind the moon.

Apart from watching the celestial event for 6 minutes you can extend your joy by visiting tourist spots around the region. Many travel agencies have come up with special travel packages covering tourist spots either in China or India that allow people to enjoy tourist spots without missing the eclipse.

If you opt to visit eclipse in China, then you could visit some tourist destinations like Shangai, Beijing, Chengdu (Giant Panda research center, the Sanxingdui Museum) and Leshan (Giant Budha, Mt.Emei). In India, the tourist spots like Red Fort, Raj Ghat, Ashoka Pillar and the bustling Chandni Chowk bazaar in Delhi, the Taj Mahal in Agra, the Kandariya Mahadev Temple in Khajuraho and ancient temples in Varanasi can be covered.

An ideal package is the Eclipse Flight which is jointly organized under the technical guidance of Eclipse Chasers Athenaeum (ECa), the eclipse sphere of SPACE, & Cox and Kings. By booking an eclipse flight ticket, you can see this celestial event at 41,000 feet flying high above the thick Indian monsoon clouds.

The next Total Eclipse of longer duration will be visible only after 123 years, so don’t miss this golden opportunity.

To begin, go to taste some Californian wine from the 16th to 19^th July in the California Wine Festival. Pleasure will meet charity since the price of your tickets (from $49 to $79) is for a heart diseases association.

Enjoy for free the US Open of Surfing. You can admire the blue sea and a shining sun. Don’t forget your sun glasses!

For children and artistic souls, discover the 29th Annual U.S. Open Sandcastle Competition and Festival, you can admire impressive, fantastic and funny masterpieces. It could give to your children some creative ideas!

Do you want to go out this evening? California offers you a lot of concerts:

• the 17^th July – La Boheme at Mendocino Music Festival
• In the Lavender Festival you can listen to a concert for $20/person and it’s possible to dine for $30, on the July 18th & 19^thJuly.
• Or the 3rd Annual Mossbrae Music Festival on the 25^th of July, 2009 for $25

Enjoy the Farmer’s Market, Arts & Crafts and shop in an ecological and natural environment. Bring back original and handmade gifts for your family and friends!

Are you missing your homeland? You can catch a movie of your country in the Foreign Film Cinema on the 20th July ($9.25; for seniors $5.75)

Your program is ready, pack up your bags and let’s go!

Used by a great American agency for the U.S army and to face extreme situation such as in space, undersea or Polar Regions, the software program has shown surprising results. The president Reagan was a regular of this method.

It can reduce the number of days needed to adjust to a new time zone by half. Before this program, majority of travelers said they lost a whole day for each time zone crossed.
No drug whatsoever, this is just a healthy plan to adjust to the new time zone according to the background light level and the number of time zones traveled.

The program creates for you a plan of sleep, diet and activity schedule. It is a comprehensive and accurate method which allows you to beat jet lag. It lavishes a lot of advice about food choices or caffeine and melatonin supplement use, and the best times to be active or not. It takes into account the individual’s personal sleeping and eating habits.

You can be updated with new research and it permits you to synthesize all the information you need to fly. This program will take care of your body and your mind to offer the best possible trip to you!

Every time you travel or take a holiday to somewhere, there’s that familiar thrill about it, although some of us would like to be cool and not admit it. So whether you’re going to drive down or fly or take the train, it’s something we all look forward to; some time away from routine.

However, travelling isn’t easy. There are very few smart travellers. People working at airports will tell you that some travellers pack their brains with their bags. There really is a lot to it than just stuffing your bag up and being on your way to wherever. If you’re travelling international, right from booking tickets to hotels to tours to travel insurance, it can prove to be a headache if you don’t know your way around all of it. It just so happens that every country has a new set of rules and unless you’re a brisk business traveller running around the globe with two sets of clothes and a laptop, it can be a lot of trouble.

Many times, when people want to travel to a particular place, they take advice and suggestions from people who’ve already been there. It makes a world of difference. You don’t miss out on all the cool places that the tourism brochure might not talk about. You are prepared for expenses you may incur, and overall, it makes you feel a lot more confident. Try asking two people about the same place, and you might end up getting two completely different opinions. It could thoroughly confuse you.

The best thing you can do of course, is turn to the internet for help. There’s more information than you might possibly need on there. Everybody knows that watching videos that talk about the places you plan to visit or ones that simply sum up things you need to take care of for different kinds of travel, is the easiest way to make up your mind about a lot of things. Smart travellers will have a treasure of tips that you could use to make your travel so much easier. Travelling with kids or grandparents, finding your luggage too heavy, air sickness and jet lag are just some of the things you can get and give smart advice on. Since it’s something that comes free anyway, a website that provides users with videos on everything they need to know about travel would be immensely useful. Pick up one of the many video sharing scripts available in the market and build your own travel site.

www.agriya.com is the website of a Chennai based company that sells a powerful video sharing script called Rayzz. Log on to the site for further details.

It offers a warm, relaxing, fun, energetic holiday experience for travelers. Now another special thing for you is, the state of Queensland has decided to hire an island caretaker to enhance it more than before and attract people from worldwide.

They announced the job description and other details through social networking sites which are accessed by large number of people, under the title of “best job in the world”. It is quite shocking because of just two days after the launch of the “best job in the world” on social networking sites; they received more than 7,500 online applications and nearly 200,000 people logged on to the site to view more details.

The winning candidate must feed aquarium fish, write a weekly blog about their experiences, clean the swimming pool, explore the attractive islands, take snap shots and shoot videos of wild animals in the island to attract tourists throughout the world. They can stay on a luxury home which includes three bedrooms, a swimming pool and a golf cart.

The selected caretaker can work on a six-month contract on the Island on the Great Barrier Reef and he/she will get salary of Aus $150,000 (US $110,000).

In the selection process, prospective candidates were given by another chance through wild card round and finally 16 finalists were selected from 34,000 applicants. The short-listed candidates have arrived to Hamilton Island on the 3^rd of May for the final selection process. Candidates include a receptionist, some students, a teacher, a charity event manager, and an actress. They announced the results on 6^th.

• The obvious way to avoid illness is to eat healthy food while traveling. It is better to have dried fruits, nuts, low-fat granola bars, vegetable sandwiches, or fruit juices as they have nutrients that are necessary for your body and help in keeping you alert and active. Make sure that you never skip your breakfast. Avoid eating anything which is fried.
• Drink plenty of water to keep your body hydrated. Always drink bottled water and make sure it is properly sealed before you buy it.
• Contact your health care provider and get any recommended vaccines or preventative medication before traveling abroad. Common vaccines like hepatitis, tetanus, diphtheria etc will help you stay healthy.
• Wash your hands frequently with soap, especially before eating. You can also use Alcohol-based hand sanitizers, when water and soap are not available. They’re more effective than soap in killing bacteria and viruses that cause disease. Remember washing your hands thoroughly helps you avoid communicable diseases like common cold, meningitis, influenza, hepatitis A, diarrhea etc.
• Sleep well while traveling. Keep in mind that lack of sleep will make you feel very tired. If you have any difficulty in sleeping, then make sure to keep your own pillow with you. This is the best way to feel more comfortable while sleeping.
• While flying if you observe any person who is coughing, sneezing or who appears ill, next to you, ask for a change of place.
• Always keep a first aid kit handy. It should contain bandages, gauze, adhesive tape, scissors, cotton swabs, antibiotic cream and antihistamines.

Traveling may not be best way to relax your mind & body from the stress of your routine work, if you are unable to overcome problems. If you take care to pay attention to the above pointers, you can stay healthy throughout your journey.