Vacations Blog

From guest blogger, Marsha Takeda-Morrison, of Sweatpantsmom.

When Kango asked me to make this week’s post about wintertime in Los Angeles, I thought about it for a moment, as I sat outside in my tank top and capris sipping an iced tea. What do Angelenos know about winter anyways? Even a drop of rain has the weatherman on the local news drooling with excitement. Speaking for myself, any day where it drops below 65° is reason to bundle up in a ski parka and thermal underwear.

But there are places where us sun worshippers can get a little taste of what the rest of the country experiences during these winter months. We may point and laugh when we see you on TV, digging out your cars and putting on boots just to get your newspaper, but we secretly want a little of the cold weather – just as long as we can still drive home in our shorts.

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I live in a flat, arid area of Texas so one of my joys is visiting the lush, hilly, historic section of Texas known as the Hill Country. One of my favorite places to visit is Fredericksburg. Fredericksburg combines a rich German heritage with a healthy dose of Texas hospitality and offers something for everyone in every age range.

For those of us who love to shop there are over 150 boutiques, along with some of the best antique shopping in the state at the antique emporiums. You won’t find chain or franchise stores here. The majority of the shops are locally owned. Do not pass up a chance to indulge your sweet tooth while you are here – take time to visit the Rather Sweet Bakery & Café, I promise you’ll thank me for it! With such a heavenly assortment of pastries, you are sure to be delighted. But don’t worry, you’ll walk off all of those calories while you’re window shopping!

If you’ve never been before you should definitely take the family to visit Enchanted Rock (AKA Crying Rock) located about 15 miles north of Fredericksburg. It looks like a giant pink pebble stretching up to the sky. It has a history going back 11,000 years and is the second largest batholith (an underground rock formation uncovered by erosion) in North America. The kids will love the legend of the ghost fires flickering near the top and the ghostly groaning and creaking noises that occur during the day.

Another must-see with the family is the Butterfly Haus. The Butterfly Haus boasts 3,000 square feet inhabited by hundreds of butterflies native to Texas. I can’t even begin to describe how peaceful it is to sit down and have butterflies landing right on your hand (or head as the case may be). It took a while for my son to calm down enough to sit still but the reward was almost instantaneous and he was soon happily talking to the butterfly on his leg!

Fredericksburg is a place that you just have to visit at least once, and will likely find yourself wanting to see again. In addition to the few activities listed here you will find art galleries, herb and wildflower farms, museums, wineries, spas, golf, some of the best bed and breakfast places in Texas, and so much more.

Do you have a favorite spot, activity, or story about Fredericksburg? Feel free to share! I’ve been several times and still haven’t seen all there is to see or do in this tiny town.

Until next time . . .

Paige aka PJsTravelinTexas

Last month, my family of four had the opportunity to travel to New Mexico to help my father-in-law celebrate a significant birthday (I won’t tell you which one, to protect his privacy . Besides meeting up with aunts, uncles and cousins, we also managed to pack in a great weekend getaway on a trip I would recommend…

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From guest blogger, Marie Minder, MMW International, www.mmwi.com

In November 2007, I had the opportunity to travel for the first time to Beijing, China, with a friend who was traveling on business. One afternoon, while Kim worked, I observed this exciting new culture up close. As I waited on the sidewalk, the school across the street let out for the day. All of a sudden, I found myself surrounded by a crowd of school age children with their backpacks and the adults who came to meet them. In front of me was an ancient man wearing the traditional nondescript gray Mao jacket with loose fitting trousers. He was riding a bicycle ever so slowly through the crowd of pedestrians. On the back of the bicycle with his arm’s around the man’s waist was a little boy of 8 or 10. On the right side of the grandfather and the little boy on the bicycle was a young woman in designer jeans, spiked high heel boots, a short coat with fur trimmed sleeves. She looked like a fashion model. She was maneuvering her motor scooter and her young son calmly through the crowd.

Welcome to Beijing, China, a world of contrasts. High rise luxury buildings, one room apartments with no plumbing, 8 lane highways, hutangs (maze-like alley ways ) with no cars, modern subways, bicycles and more. It is hard to get your bearings because so much of Beijing is in constant change. The roads change daily. It is not unusual for life-long Beijingers to find themselves a little lost.

If you are planning on visiting China, here are 5 recommendations:

• Carry small packs of toilet paper with you, you might find they come in handy.
• Practice with chop sticks before you go. I did not see many forks. Alternatively, pull out your guidebook and be prepared to ask for a fork.
• Hire an English speaking tour guide and driver. I know this one may be hard for rugged individualists or budget conscious folks but it was the best thing that I did on my trip. Tour guides and drivers are great deals and will cater to your specific needs. Talk with your hotel concierge for suggestions on local guides.
• Everything is negotiable, and the best negotiating tip is to just say “No”. Negotiating is a game and can be fun to play, if you are prepared. Don’t be afraid to talk with other tourists about their shopping experiences, to find the good deals. Have an idea of how much you are comfortable spending and stick to it. And have an idea of the value of an item before bargaining, it will help you keep to your budget. Do not be afraid of offering an amount too low. If it is indeed too low then, the merchant will simply shake his head and walk away. If the amount that you offered is in the acceptable range then the response will be something like “Are you serious? Give me a serious response.” This is where the game gets interesting! Prepare yourself for a unique shopping experience.
• Keep your eyes open. China is a beautiful country, full of contrasts, with many unexpected surprises. Even though the crowds may feel overwhelming and everything feels different, enjoy your visit and the experience.

Beijing, a world of contrasts. It is an exciting, chaotic place to be as it prepares for the big 2008 Summer Olympic unveiling. So buckle up my friends and jump right in. It will be an amazing trip.

Have you recently visited China? Do you have recommendations from your trip to share with other travelers? We would love to hear about them!

It’s winter, a perfect time to go to the beach at Pt. Reyes National Seashore. Point Reyes is about an hour’s drive north of San Francisco and filled with natural, wild beauty of the Pacific Ocean and Tomales Bay. The winter months offer the some of the most beautiful days of the year. The weather is usually clear, in the summer it can be foggy and cold, and all you need to stay warm is a sweater and a pair of jeans.

Our favorite family activity in Pt. Reyes is an easy mountain bike starting at the Pt. Reyes Hostel. The trail head is across the road from the hostel and about a two mile ride down a gently sloping fire road to the beach. (You can shorten the ride if you wish to about one mile each way by stopping at the many footpaths to the beach.) The road offers plenty of room for the kids to maneuver, winds through a small forest, past a bubbling stream and then along the low-lying bluffs above the ocean. I suggest you ride to the camp ground, park your bikes and take the short (100 ft.) little trail to the beach. Shed the shoes, spread the blanket and have a picnic lunch on the beach. If you walk south a hundred yards or so, you will see a cave like area carved out of the bluffs, it is completely protected from the wind and I have seen people sunbathing in this sheltered spot in January. Continue down the beach for tide pools and be sure to look for seals in the water. The beach usually only has one or two other people. If you are looking for a winter escape, this is the place to go.

Once your ride is complete, you may want to visit the Tomales Bay Oyster Company for an early dinner. This beautiful spot is located right on Tomales Bay and is California’s oldest continuously run shellfish farm. It is only 5 miles north of Pt. Reyes Station and well worth the drive. The farm is open to the public every day of the year from 8 am to 6 pm. They sell just picked oysters, mussels, clams, and various sundry items. The bayshore picnic area offers BBQ’s to enjoy the farm fresh oysters. The kids can walk on the beach or literally climb a tree while you prepare the food. They have a soda machine if you need beverages. We bring hot dogs for the kids and sometimes a salad. It is really a magical spot with the freshest seafood around. It is a beautiful place to linger by the bay.

I live just across the bridge from Berkeley & Oakland and I think these two cities are often overlooked by my friends and neighbors, who usually go south into the city for entertainment. I love Berkeley’s politics, the college influenced environment and the entertainment Oakland offers for families. East bay residents will have other suggestions, but here are my favorites for kids under the age of nine:

Aquatic Park—This small park in Berkeley has a nice concrete path along the “lake” suitable for trikes, strollers and little bikes. Kids can feed the ducks and play for hours on the large play structure on the north end of the park. Best of all, real trains go by on the tracks located right near the play structure and the conductors always wave back at the kids. This is fascinating for my kids. It beats a Thomas the Train video any day.

East Bay Vivarium—This is a wonderful weird place filled with snakes, lots of snakes, especially boa constrictors. It also happens to be one of the largest reptile stores in the nation. My young son can spend an hour looking at the exotic reptiles for sale here. If you ask , you can touch the a snake or two (ummm, I don’t ask.) They also have frogs, spiders and turtles. The turtles are nice. This is a creepy, crawly place and is fun for about an hour. It is one block from Berkeley’s 4^th Street which has several good restaurants, stores and a bookstore and it is only ten minutes from Aquatic park. The vivarium, park and 4th street are a nice way to spend morning, just enough to entertain a young toddler before a nap is needed.

Chabot Space & Science Center—The space center is a nice evening for kids and adults. Winter is a good time to visit because of the night time stargazing they offer through their huge telescopes. Once summer comes, the sky is too light until after nine o’clock to see much, too late for most kids. I suggest you have dinner in one of Berkeley’s or Montclair’s many restaurants and then venture to the nearby space center. My nine year daughter, who introduced me to the planetarium through her brownie troop recommends you go to “learn about outer space and see an interesting , wonderful, and amazing dinosaur show. After walking through all the exhibits about meteors, planets, and an astronaut’s life in a rocket ship you can dash to the telescopes and look beyond the starry night and enter a universe filled with many questions.” The place is interesting to kids and adults. I love gazing at star clusters millions of miles away.

The Oakland Zoo—I have always liked this zoo and used to go almost weekly when my kids were in pre-school. It is just the right size for little legs to wander without getting tired, the children’s exhibit is entertaining, the fruit bats horrifyingly interesting and the lunch spot is in the shade next to the flamingos. Does it get any better than that? It is also much warmer than the San Francisco zoo and more accessible for young kids. A bonus is the little rides park adjacent to the zoo entrance. The rides are fun for the kids and give a break to the “zooed out” parent. This zoo is safe, comfortable and just right for the animal lover in all of us.

There is also the Lawrence Hall of Science, a UC Berkeley Science & Math center, Tilden Park, one of the oldest and most popular parks in the bay area and Berkeley Iceland, a funky ice skating rink. If you need more information on anything in the Bay Area, I recommend the Berkeley Parent’s Network, a collection of tips, advice and discussion on everything for parents and visitors in the bay area.

Kango just announced the launch of our private beta yesterday morning and we would like to know what you think of our site. Please sign up for a private beta invitation and let us know what you like and what we can improve.

We recognize we have a long way to go to achieve our vision of becoming your first step for planning your trip. We look forward to your feedback.

In the meantime, the blogosphere has started giving us their candid opinions:

• Dan Kaplan at VentureBeat says, we have built “a technology with a refreshing spin on travel search…so someone looking for a family vacation in, say, Big Sur will see a different set of results than someone seeking romance or adventure. Kango’s technology extracts the sentiment from the postings it indexes and only shows results for locations that get positive buzz. If you’re looking for activities, you can filter using a number of criteria, including theme parks, playgrounds, wineries and breweries, and spas.”

• Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch highlights that Kango “looks at travel reviews and other information across the Web and automatically generates tags so it can categorize results by how “kid friendly” or “romantic” they may be.”

• Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim says ”if you have been waiting for social media to take on the travel industry, your wait is over” with Kango’s debut.

• Rafe Needleman of Webware (CNET) “found the search results page excellent” and that “the product philosophy makes sense.”

• Anne Zelenka from GigaOm says, “Kango could eliminate some of the multi-web site research that many vacationers undertake.”

But it’s not all rosy of course (otherwise we wouldn’t be in private beta!). Rafe points out that our search experience isn’t quite there, for example, we don’t cover surfing in Hawaii. Most bloggers commented that they would like Kango to cover more than California and Hawaii.

How do we do what the bloggers are talking about? We have aggregated and analyzed more than 20 million traveler opinions from more than 1,000 sites across the Web. We use natural language analysis and travel-specific term mapping to deliver reliable, relevant recommendations for you. This means you can now include subjective criteria like ‘romantic’ or objective criteria like price and ‘internet access’ and get relevant results.

With Kango, if you are looking for a romantic getaway in San Francisco, you will get different hotel and activity recommendations than if you are looking for a family vacation in San Francisco. We try to deliver search results by understanding your intention, so ‘good for kids’ is interpreted the same way as ‘child friendly’ or ‘family vacation’. The result of all this is Kango – a travel search application that helps you discover new travel choices and make better decisions.For more details about how and what we do, read more here.

We look forward to getting your feedback about how we can improve Kango.

From guest blogger, Stefania Pomponi Butler, of City Mama

My family and I spend just about every Christmas in Honolulu, Hawai’i because I was born there and it’s where my mom lives. For us, Christmas means fresh ahi poke, wearing “formal” flip-flops to parties (you know, the beaded ones), and spending Christmas in our swim suits. Christmas trees are shipped in from the Pacific Northwest and are dried out by the time they hit Hawaiian waters, and there isn’t any snow, but who cares when it’s 80º outside and the heady fragrance of plumeria flowers perfumes the air.

Honolulu is much-maligned for being touristy and crowded, but if you love the energy of big cities combined with a tropical locale, this is the place for you. Even if you aren’t on Maui or Kaua’i, you can still have a relaxing, Hawaiian holiday.

All Honolulu hotels will have listings of holiday events and the concierge can help you secure tickets to events so if you haven’t made any holiday plans, don’t panic, you’ll be well taken care of. But, if you’d like some ideas of where to go and what to do, read on!

If you land in Honolulu with holiday shopping to do, chances are you will end up at Ala Moana Center, Honolulu’s biggest mall and the home of flagship stores for Chanel, Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Versace, Prada, Christian Dior and more. Honolulu is the glittering gateway to Asia, and the stores at Ala Moana cater to O’ahu’s cosmopolitan tourists and discriminating locals. You can drop a lot of cash at Ala Moana or you can simply walk around and enjoy the festivities. Kids can ride the Santa Train or enjoy snow in Hawaii every evening. Check the the site or ask the helpful personnel about special performances on the main stage. Children of all ages will enjoy the nightly pageantry of the Christmas Gift of Aloha show and parade. We spend lots of time at the mall, but we try to time our visit to coincide with one of the fabulous holiday events.

Once it gets dark, you can pile into your rental car or hire a taxi and do the Honolulu City Lights tour. This is a longstanding local tradition. Think about that street in your town that gets really done up for the holidays and you’ll have a taste of what to expect. Times 100. Honolulu’s downtown district—near the state capital building—gets decked out for the holidays with lights, your favorite holiday scenes, and a giant, barefoot, lei-adorned Santa and Mrs. Claus. Touring the area is free, but once you are downtown, be sure to stop by the Christmas carnival where there are rides and delights for kids.

Around the holidays, Honolulu boasts many different concerts and performances. My favorite is the A Cazimero Christmas featuring local musicians The Brothers Cazimero. It has everything a Hawaiian Christmas needs: beautiful music, amazing singing by the Brothers Caz and their guest artists, and plenty of hula. Get your tickets well in advance and enjoy the recently remodeled Hawai’i Theater.

If it’s a big city experience you are after, and you’re in the mood to get dressed up after all those days on the beach, check the schedule for the Honolulu Symphony. From a Motown Christmas to a visit by Burt Bacharach, from classical to pops, there’s something for everyone.

On Christmas Eve, Kawaiaha’o Church, Honolulu’s oldest church, holds two candlelight services. Erected in 1842 by Christian missionaries, Kawaiaha’o Church was built from 1,000 pound coral blocks hewn by Hawaiian chisel-wielding divers. Experience what Christmas is all about in an intimate setting at the “Westminster Abbey of Honolulu.”

For a New Year’s Eve you’ll never forget do what we do and watch the fireworks from the beach. Our favorite viewing spot is right in front of the Kahala Hotel and Resort. All beaches in Hawai’i are public, even the groomed ones in front of the fanciest hotels. If you are lucky enough to stay at the Kahala ask for a beach front room. If you aren’t, bring your champagne out to the beach (look for the public access paths) and watch the fireworks literally burst right over your head. I can’t think of a more magical way to start the new year.

If you don’t want to do anything at all for Christmas but park yourself on the beach, you can do that, too. And remember, locals don’t pack up their towels when it rains, they head into the ocean and wait for the drizzle to pass. They call it “liquid sunshine,” and if you ask me, it’s better than any Christmas tree lights.

Mele Kalikimaka, Haouli Makahiki Hou!