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The Vivid Traveler - Torre's Travel Blog:
Ten Tips to Jettison Jet Lag
Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:08:40 GMT
Before You Fly:
Plan ahead - Begin changing your schedule a few days before you travel in preparation for the time changes to come. If your destination is eight or more hours ahead of your usual time, try going to sleep earlier several days before, and also adjust your meal times.
Get Your Sleep - Try and get a restful sleep before you fly. If the anxiety and anticipation typicaly keep you up, consider one of those Acetaminophen with a "PM" formulation (Generic and brand names: acetaminophen and diphenhydramine, oral; Acetaminophen PM; Excedrin PM; Legatrin PM; Tylenol Severe Allergy; Tylenol PM; Unisom with Pain Relief). This medicine combines a pain reliever with an antihistamine that causes drowsiness and can be used to help you fall asleep.
On the Plane:
Adjust Your Watch - After you board, set your watch to the time at your destination. Get yourself thinking you are in the time zone of your arrival.
Drink Lots of Water - Humidity is very low on flights - Death Valey-low. Low hydration is believed to contribute to jet lag.
Eat Light - Cabin pressure is lower to coincide with the higher altitude, so you may feel more bloated from heavier meals, or more lethargic. On longer flights, try not to eat out of boredom which is easy to do when your flight is several hours long.
Use Less Caffeine and Alcohol - Keep your body from getting over-stimulated, especially during sleep time in your destination time zone. The effects of alcohol are stronger inflight, and can interfere with your sleep cycle. Alcohol and coffee will dehydrate you as well.
Keep Active - Move around during the flight to keep blood circulating - stretch, rotate your hands and ankles. Even small amounts of exercise are believed to lessen the effects of jet lag.
Adjust Your Cycle - Even aboard the plane try to follow the sleep pattern of your destination - if it is night there, sleep, if not, stay awake.
When You Arrive
Go Outdoors - Get outside when you arrive - It may help reset your internal time clock faster if you experience the time of day at your destination as soon as possible. If it is daytime at your destination when you arrive, try to stay awake until the sun goes down, and then get a good night's sleep to reset your clock. Expose yourself to some sunlight every day.
Pace yourself - Give yourself time to adjust and try not to plan anything too strenuous on the day you arrive.
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Florida: A day trip to Venice
Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:57:49 GMT
My introduction to the Sarasota area was during a day and a half of leisure carved out of a week and a half long business trip to Clearwater and Orlando.
I contacted a college friend whom I hadn't seen in 26 years, and he suggested I book a night at the Osprey Inn in Osprey Florida. The hour drive from Clearwater was beautiful, the highpoint being the bay crossing over the gorgeous Florida Skyway bridge. This beauty is a suspension bridge with a steeply arched roadbed that affords panoramic views of blue water, white beaches and a vast sky.
Now the Osprey Inn is just a short way off of 75. It is a one-story motel built arround a central courtyard, where there is a nice swimming pool. Pool-facing rooms are slightly more expensive than parking-lot-facing rooms, but the whole place is very affordable at less than $100 a night, and the worst thing that can be said of the accomodations is that the rooms smell like someone is drying pool-towels in the next room... not mildewie, but a faint smell of chlorine and humidity. A nice continental breakfast is provided, and the hotel contains a nightclub that featured Karaoke on the night that I was there.
I spent most of the afternoon at a beach between Osprey and Venice. The beach was primarily crushed shell, and in a few minutes of looking I turned up about three prehistoric shark's teeth. Tiki bars abound on this little strip of a key, and the hottest part of the afternoon found my friend and I in one, sipping beers and enjoying some farm-raised oysters (the gulf has been far too hot this summer for me to even concider anything BUT farm raised...)
Early evening we returned to the beach for a local drum-circle, and later retired to the Ospery Inn Lounge for some of that Karaoke. They serve what they called pizza, which was edible, but disapointing to an ex New Yorker.
Quiet Gulf beaches strand stores and tiki bars make this a fun day-trip from Tampa, Clearwater, or Sarasota.
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Some Tips to Finding Low Airfares Online
Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:32:55 GMT
Book your flight early.
Discount fares often require advanced reservations of seven to twenty-one days in advance, depending on the fare. Booking thirty days in advance will help secure better international fares. To increase your chances of finding a great fare, book your flight as soon as you know your travel dates. Airlines sell only a limited number of seats at the lowest fares, and when those seats sell out, the price goes up!
Fly on a weekday.
Flights departing on weekdays usually offer the lowest fares, but be careful, fares are often higher on Monday and Friday than on other weekdays. Saturday flights occasionally have discount fares, but as a rule it's less expensive to fly on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Stay through Saturday.
Most low fares require that you stay over at least one Saturday night before your return flight, though some fares may only require you to stay a minimum of 3 or 4 days.
Consider nearby airports.
You may enjoy significant savings if you are willing to fly into nearby airports. For example, when I fly to San Francisco (SFO) I often fly into San Jose (SJC) and save a chunk of change.
Try surrounding dates.
To get the lowest roundtrip fare, the same fare must be available on both the departing and return flights you select. If the fare is sold out on either of these, the price you end up with will be much higher. If possible, consider flying on another date.
Check out package deals.
If booking late, check out last minute deals, like my "Deals and Steals" (sign up for my newsletter and I will send you monthly savings).
Book your trip late at night/ early in the morning.
Online booking engines often temporarily lock seats out when someone is in the process of booking a trip. Between 11:00 PM and 5:00 AM fewer people are booking flights so less of the good fares are temporarily tied up.
Book your trip with me!
My booking engine lets you take advantage of all of these tips. Visit: http://www.vivitrav.com
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Wineries near the NC Coast
Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:02:58 GMT
There are vineyards all over North Carolina. I see signs for them everywhere from the mountains to the coast, and often stop on longer drives to stretch my legs and find out about them. A trip to Asheville takes me past a dozen of them, a trip to Wilmington, half a dozen more. I decide to study a bit on North Carolina Vineyards and I am not surprised to discover that North Carolina boasts the 10th largest grape and wine production in the United States. The geography is amazing, the Smokey Mountains, the Piedmont, the Yadkin Valley, the Coastal Planes: each distinct North Carolina area offers a different variety of grapes, producing quite possibly one of the widest variety of wine styles in the United States.
Toward the coast, growers still produce muscadine grapes, a hardy staple in southeastern states. Yet, this is just one small part of grape growing and wine growing here. Vintners in the mountain and Piedmont region of North Carolina have planted traditional European grape varieties and French-American Hybrids, with the result being a surprising and ever evolving selection of wines for travelers and wine lovers.
On the way home from Myrtle beach I visited the Silver Coast Winery, about 15 miles inland from the Atlantic coast. Their wines have won several international competitions, and I particularly liked their oak chardonnay.
Before conducting a travel seminar in Wilmington, I found Lumina Winery. Lumina uses a lot of fruit in its wine-making, I brought home a couple of bottles of black raspberry merlot that Karen and I both love.
Speaking of Wilmington, Karen and I often stop at Duplin Winery, just off of Interstate 40. They are famous for their Hatteras Red, North Carolina's most well known wine.
Just around the corner from Duplin is Bannerman Vineyard and Winery, specializing in muscadine varieties from their on-site vineyard. My dad likes their White Oak semi-sweet white, a bit fruity for every day, in my opinion, but served with barbecued pork it makes a nice white table wine.
Some tips for visiting the wineries - Wear comfortable shoes. You'll do a lot of walking around a larger winery, and if you're like me, you may visit two or more in a day. With all that walking and wine tasting, be sure to drink plenty of water.
Be sure to bring a light coat or sweater. The cellars can be pretty cool as well. Karen usually needs a jacket.
Spit. It's the only way to taste a lot of wine and not find yourself intoxicated by noon, and don't drink and drive.
If you like the wine at a particular winery, buy it, but don't, expect a discount. Wineries charge retail prices. Also, Wine does not like hot trunks, so try to park in the shade and take your wine back to your hotel room or home as soon as possible.
I'll share our take on some of the Piedmont and Mountain wineries in my next entry. In the mean time, visit SE Winery Review for a take on all the wineries in NC, SC, FL, GA, and VA!
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A Day at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC
Mon, 12 Nov 2007 00:22:14 GMT
Interstate 40 is pretty this time of year, the trees are finally starting to pop with Autumn color - and even the Industrial Corridor, this stretch of road between Raleigh and Winston Salem, is beautiful when it is bathed in sunlight - as it is today. Karen and I often head west to Asheville in the Autumn. This year, 2007, Autumn has come rather late, and drought has concentrated more minerals, and thus more colors in the folliage.
Before long we are in the mountains headed for Biltmore - the largest home in America - built by George Washington Vanderbilt in 1890s with money he inherited from his father - a shipping and railroad tycoon. We thought the Piedmont was pretty, but the mountains are absolutely stunning. The frost and the lack of rain has enticed fully laden trees into a glorious display. We make the final leg of the trip, up the steep incline of Black Mountain, in awe.
The gate, the deliberately rustic three-mile approach road (designed by Frederick Law Olmsted), and the intricate stone bridges do not prepare us for our first view of the mansion: a massive French Renaissance-inspired châteaux which rises out of the natural landscape and commands it. At three stories tall and 175,000 square feet, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the Gilded Age. In an attempt to replicate the working estates of Europe. Vanderbilt commissioned Richard Morris Hunt to design the house in the style of a Loire Valley Châteaux, the best known of these being Châteaux de Blois.
We park the car and approach the house on foot, passing through the formal gardens, also designed by Olmsted. We enter the house through the front, picking up a headset and a device which plays audio files for a self-directed audio tour of the house. All of the rooms are interesting, but some of our favorites were the dining room with its 64-seat banquet table, the pantry, the library, not to mention the bowling alley and the swimming pool in the basement.
At this point our legs are tired. The house is huge, and the floors are hard, and we havent seen much of the estate outside these walls. We decide it would be best to come back in the morning, because there is much to see. The estate today covers approximately 8,000 acres (32 km²) and is split in half by the French Broad River. Intending that the estate could be self-supporting, Vanderbilt set up scientific forestry programs, poultry farms, cattle farms, hog farms and a dairy. The estate included its own village (today Biltmore Village) and even a church. The Biltmore Estate is a fun educational way to spend a Saturday, and we will return in the morning to enjoy the stunning beauty of Vanderbilt's mountainous grounds.
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