Month: July 2007

Categories
Tips USA

Harry Potter when you travel with kids

Fake Harry Potter book, released in China (courtesy Mutantfrog on flickr's Creative Commons)This is what happens when you are a writer and your entire family, but mostly your teenage daughter, are nuts for Harry Potter….

As you know, we’ll be in Virginia next week as a family, visiting Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown and a bunch of other stuff. Wouldn’t you know it; the long-awaited release of the next movie, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” is scheduled for 12 July while we’re traveling.

You haven’t lived until you’ve surfed the net for about 45 minutes looking for the ONE movie theater in Williamsburg, Virginia that will feature the HP movie on its release date. Web sites are sketchy, theater telephone numbers are answered by robotic voicemail; it makes you crazy.

It does appear that a crisis is averted and we’ll see the movie on time; younger brother will fuss because we don’t let him go to a PG-13 movie till an adult checks it out (he’s 7) so not everyone in the family will see flying owls and waving wands that night, but close enough.

On top of that, the last book in the HP series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” is being released at midnight 20 July, just about the time that my daughter and I will be visiting the tallgrass prairie of the Kansas Flint Hills, on the way from Texas to my speaking engagement at the BlogHer blogging conference in Chicago.

There’s been much teenage hollering and rending of clothing at the perfidy of mothers who take their kids away from much-anticipated midnight book releases; there can’t possibly be books in Kansas, the “middle of freakin’ nowhere!”

Au contraire, prairie dogs.

The fine purveyors of the Emporia, Kansas independent bookstore The Town Crier have a Potter book order set aside even as we speak, and after a well-marbled steak dinner at the Grand Central Hotel down the road in Cottonwood Falls, we’ll head back to Emporia to join their Muggle Block Party sometime after 9 p.m.

Of course, teenager will then stay up all night reading the whole thing, which is what she always does, so any sightseeing the next day in Kansas City (such as live jazz at the Blue Room in the American Jazz Museum) will be totally wasted.

Technorati tags: travel, family travel, Harry Potter, Kansas

Categories
Europe

Pounded by the Pound Sterling

I’ve seen two items in one day indicating that my recent warnings about high-cost London and Britain are still accurate.

The UK’s Guardian says that “The prospect of a further UK interest rate rise this week and continued problems in the United States housing market combined yesterday to push the pound to its highest level against the dollar in more than a quarter of a century.” Read more here in Guardian’s business section.

Joe Brancatelli, a super-experienced business traveler who writes the Seat 2B column for the new Conde Nast Portfolio magazine, says, “Later, London” and laments that although he loves the town personally, having to pay DOUBLE New York prices is causing him to lose considerable enthusiasm.

Can you imagine the costs for travel with kids, the ones who don’t have business expense accounts?

Technorati tags: travel, family travel, London

Categories
USA

We’re heading to Virginia

Colonial Williamsburg at night (courtesy VisitWilliamsburg)

When I wrote a post about Colonial Williamsburg and the historic triangle last month, I had no idea that our family would travel there again anytime soon.

Yeah, verily, put on your powdered wig/buckled shoes and call up the fife and drums, because a press trip has fallen into my lap and all of us are getting on a plane this coming Friday to fly to Virginia. 

I’ll be blogging all during the trip about our experiences:  visiting the live-action story of democracy at Williamsburg’s Revolutionary City,  seeing what the archaeologists are digging up at historic Jamestown, a re-created Continental Army encampment with historical interpreters at Yorktown, and oh, yes, partying like it’s 1776 at Busch Gardens and Water Country USA.

Sainted Husband and young son also plan to try out some golf at the Kingsmill resort.

I have never been on an organized press trip/media tour, and this one came to me courtesy of the communications/PR folks at VisitWilliamsburg, who like this blog and want to reach all of you bloggy family travel enthusiasts out there and show you what they can offer.  Since I’ve visited the area several times on personal travel, I think I can give you a well-rounded, honest view of all aspects of a family vacation in one of the birthplaces of the U.S. 

More to follow….our first stop is flying into Norfolk, Virginia.

Technorati tags:  travel, family travel, Williamsburg, Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, Yorktown, Virginia

Categories
Blog

Blogtipping July 2007

Do You Blogtip? courtesy Business Blogwire

Taa-daah! 

I usually never remember that the first of every month is the traditional day for blogtipping (sort of like Web 2.0 cowtipping) but with a Yahoo! calendar email reminder, a thwack with a two-by-four and some other mental pokes, here I am to join the monthly crowd. 

There’s sort of a standard format to these and I never follow it, but no one seems to mind….

This month, I want to highlight three new “old media” travel blogs, just to show that there are no hard feelings from my own recent corporate blogging experience.

1)  The Travel Log blog for the Washington Post travel section.  Team-written by section editors, it has very active comments sections written by experienced, articulate travelers, but I’d like to see more comment responses back from the writers for a better conversation. The recent series on wedding and honeymoon travel was fun to read, and reminded me that the best weddings aren’t necessarily angst-filled expensive blow-outs.

2)  This Just In…. blog from Budget Travel.  These guys cast a wide net and usually update multiple times daily.  I’ve learned about all sorts of new or lesser-known blogs and travel sites, plus late-breaking news like J.K. Rowling’s three-stop book tour in the U.S. in October 2007, which has already inspired me to figure out how to take my teenage daughter to New Orleans (it’s the closest city to our home in Texas) to see the Harry Potter creator.  I don’t even have to stray too far to get the lowdown on New Orleans; just click over to this article on Budget Travel Online.  These guys have blogging nailed, and they twist into creative pretzels to make just about anything travel-related.

3)  The Taking Off blog from the Chicago Tribune travel section.  Like the WaPo blog, it is team-written, and the writers do try to engage the audience.  Comments are starting to increase, but not to the level of the Post, although a post about kids and flying brought out the usual vituperative anti-child commentary.  Fairly frequent updates, with a Midwestern travel slant (the trans fat-free Indiana State Fair, for example. Who knew?) In an effort to engage readers at the start, there is a 50-day “What state are you in?” road trip challenge. There are some design issues to fix; there’s no way to go to “Previous Entries” at the bottom of the blog front page — you have to go look in the archives.  Comment hot links often show the person’s email, not their blog or Web site URL, which seems like a privacy problem. 

In these days of sometimes forcing journalists to work online, without a commensurate pay raise for the added work, it’s nice to see the newspaper travel sections making an effort (and having some fun with it, if the good-naturedly goofy photos of the Chicago Tribune editors are any indication.) 

Too much travel info is stale by the time it hits the printed street, and blogging allows a good flow of hot topics and info online to complement the in-depth, less-hurried features in print.  It also lets the cash-strapped newspaper travel sections add value to their product and connect with more readers without spending a bunch of money.

Happy Blogtipping Day!

Technorati tags: travel, family travel, blogtipping, blogging, blogs