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| In 2009, I had a lovely stay at Saskatoon's majestic Delta Bessborough |
Thanks for reading about all my travel antics and whatnot. I've been to so many amazing places and done many fabulous things around the world, and am so lucky to get to share those experiences with you.
Now I'd like to hear about yours! Share your favourite place to travel and why, or your favourite travel experience on this blog, and you could win one FREE night at ANY Delta Hotel or Resort across the country!
All you have to do to enter is share your thoughts in my comments section below or if you're feeling a bit shy, email me at setocolleen(at)gmail.com. Easy, peasy, right? And you should follow my blog too, if you haven't already!
Plus, check out the Delta Difference contest on Facebook
for the chance to win a grand prize, valued at $1,295. Both contests close November 23, 2011, so enter today! Thanks to Delta Hotels and Resorts for this fantastic prize!
My favorite place to travel is NYC, the big apple has it all, and is truly a sight to see. I highly reccommend the red double decker bus tours as they are both informative and fun. You can jump off the bus at any number of stops and go check out that area of the city, and just return to your bus stop and you will be picked up by another bus within 5-10 minutes. Best $60 you can spend, you can tour all day.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best trips, that I keep going back to was a trip in Europe. We were 3 nights in Istanbul, 5 on a cruise ship on the Agean Sea and 3 nights in Athens. We flew out of New York and met up with others on the same trip, 1st via email, then in person. In Istanbul, one of our new friends had read about a restaurant on the Asian side of Istanbul, we took a sea taxi over & moored right at the restaurant, had a fab. dinner & brought the sea taxi back. Our friend had read about the restaurant in the New Yorker magazine and had we not met up with these people we would have missed some wonderful spots & certainly wonderful memories.
ReplyDeleteEach day we all brought great ideas to the table. Everyone had read about some place that they wanted to visit, so we all tagged along. We ate in some great restaurants,that we would never had tried had we been out on our own. It helped in Athens that one of our traveller friends could speak Greek too.
My favourite personal travel experience was in New Zealand this April. I went for two weeks to write a few pieces for the Calgary Herald. Did I mention I went by myself without my three small children? It was incredible to savour 42 consecutive meals (some at top restaurants and wineries) without being interrupted and hollered for, and none of the meals included Kraft Dinner or ketchup.
ReplyDeleteIn NZ I toured an entire city of Art Deco in Napier, had a pint with a few cute rugby blokes in Auckland, hiked outside Queensland, and soaked in a back country natural hot spring in Rotorua. I sheared a sheep, stayed on a working farm, and toured the set of Hobbiton from the Lord of the Rings movies. I ate lamb and meat pies and golden kiwi I plucked from vine myself. I saw glow worms and a possum and I swam with sharks.
It was the trip of a lifetime, and I can't wait to go back!
My best travel experience was last April, when my Husband and I were flown to Chicago, so my husband could be a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
ReplyDeleteI had never wanted to go to Chicago for anything besides to see Oprah, but the city surprised me. It is full of amazing architecture and history.
We spent two and a half days being tourists after the show taped. We saw Millennium Park, and Navy Pier, as well as did a little shopping. I found Garrett's Popcorn, which really is worthy of being one of Oprah's Favorite Things, and we had a cocktail on the 95th floor of the Hancock Tower.
I'm not sure if it was the 'high' we were on from meeting Oprah and being on the Oprah show, or if the city really is as fabulous as we thought, but I would definitely go back, and recommend it to all my friends.
I love LOVE the Delta Bessborough! I've stayed there three times this year - the chef there is fantastic, too!
ReplyDeleteHmm... I'd have to say my favourite place to travel is New York. Or Vancouver, if we're talking Canada! Wait, Montreal is pretty fab, and I've never been to Quebec City. That's the great thing about traveling - you don't have to pick just one place!
Thanks for running this great contest!
L.A. It's got a bad rep but I love it for the mountains and sea, fish tacos and the best burger in the world (it's not In'N'Out...). PCH by convertible isn't too bad either...
ReplyDeleteAbsolute favourite travel experience would have to be a week in the Bahamas that my husband and I spent at Sandals. We didn't think of ourselves as "all inclusive people" but were we ever wrong. AMAZING. If you go, spend all your time on the private island in a private cabana on the beach and forget anyone else even exists!
ReplyDeleteCloser to home, one of my favourites is the Delta Lodge at Kananaskis. Fabulous service, great staff, beautiful location. What more could you ask and all of it only an hour and a half from Calgary.
I have traveled Europe (southern Mediterranean), the western US and western Canada, Mexico, and Cuba. But by far the best was the island of Moorea in Tahiti.
ReplyDeleteYou are truly on Island Time, with friendly locals who smile at your efforts to speak their Polynesian dialect and offer amazing service. This is an "un-Americanized" tropical destination. Fine French food, authentic island dishes, and the local Hanano brew fill you up for your days under the hot hot sun. Snorkeling with manta rays and reef sharks, chasing humpback whales around the island to listen to their song, and tropical safaris are amongst the activities that take you away from a smartphone/internet/television addiction. A minimum two week visit refreshes and restores, and it's a relaxed, tanned you that returns back to city life.
Did I sell you on it??
Tofino! It has all the creature comforts along with a roaring British Columbian landscape. Amazing hotels, delicious restaurants and the ocean, forest and beaches swallow you up whole. It's all so real. I loved being there earlier this year during storm-watching season: Winter surfing, fireside drinking, amazing.
ReplyDeleteI've been all over Asia, Central America and Europe, and I'd have to say my favorite places are always more remote. My favorite trip was to Costa Rica for my honeymoon (for more that just the obvious reasons). We started off at an all-inclusive that was booked for a week.....
ReplyDeleteWe only lasted 2 nights, and proceeded to an area called Malpais to stay at an incredible small private resort named Milarepa with open air bathrooms and large netted beds. The other huge adventure in Costa Rica planted us on the Caribbean coastline in a town called Cahuita north of Port Limon. It's an incredible place where sloths climb through the trees up and down main street (which is a dirt road). The electrical grid is incredibly unreliable there and every meal is spent by candlelight and all the food is cooked on gas. A national park on the south end of the town is an amazing day hike where howler monkeys, spider monkeys and all sorts of interesting insects cross your path. AHHHHH I miss travelling for fun......
I love New Orleans. I flew into Memphis with my husband and two children and drove down Mississippi, down to New Orleans. The music, people and food were amazing. I would go back in a heartbeat.
ReplyDeleteI also prefer the more "exotic" locales that get me learning more about all the different people, places, cultures, and religions in the world. That being said, going to India in 2006 was definitely the most amazing travel experience for all those reasons. It was a shock, but in a good way. Plus, I met some really amazing fellow travellers!
ReplyDeleteThe island of Corfu, Greece. Access to some great ruins, monastaries, sea caves and day trips galore. A great trip every time and as busy or chill as you want it to be.
ReplyDeleteI have been lucky enough to travel all over the world and experience many "trips of a lifetime": Hiking in Patagonia; climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania; rafting the Grand Canyon; and diving the Great Barrier Reef in Australia just to name a few. But walking with my family, on Martinique - a beautiful white sand beach, minutes from my home on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia is my favourite place to travel. We go in every season - our Boxing Day walk is now a family tradition. Sometimes we never meet another soul. Just miles of gorgeous sand and sparkling water. Ahhh...
ReplyDeleteMy favourite place to travel is Mexico. I love the culture, beaches, Aztec and Mayan ruins, Mexico City, the food and the margaritas. We've been fortunate to visit the Mayan Riviera, Manzanillo, Cabo San Lucas, La Paz, Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta and a handful of smaller destinations such as Palenque and Taxco. The country has been getting a bad rap lately, but we went to P.V. with our two kids and my mom last March and felt completely safe. I will be back!
ReplyDeleteMy favorite place to travel is Vietnam. The people are incredibly friendly, it's history fascinating, and the food fantastic. Travel within the country is so diverse -- from the bustling metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to the mountain regions of Sapa, Vietnam truly has it all.
ReplyDeleteYou have also got to love the currency...the Vietnam Dong. In Vietnam, everyone is a millionaire (about $50 Canadian).
Hard to pick one but I can tell you that this week it is Chiang Mai in Thailand. We're here now waiting for the lantern festival which from all accounts is going to be beautiful - they light hundreds of lanterns and send them off into the sky. In the meantime there are friendly people, monks in their orange robes and over 1600 temples....not to mention the food. What's not to love?
ReplyDeleteI would have to say it's Waterton National Park! Gorgeous hidden jewel right in our backyard. The mountains, the wildlife, the wildflowers, the views don't get any better than this!
ReplyDeleteI've never met a trip I didn't like, but I think my favourite place is New Zealand's Northland. Good food, warm people, wild horses, and a maelstrom.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite place is Koh Phangan, Thailand. I've been twice and my fiancée and I are planning on going there for part of our honeymoon (after a bike trip through Cambodia). We love the food, the people and the culture there...and of course the beaches!
ReplyDeleteAnywhere the ocean is calm, and she's listening to all the secrets I'm tellin her :)
ReplyDeleteSpain - enough said!
ReplyDeleteI love the whale watching close to home
ReplyDeleteIt's a snowy November morning. This brings to mind the Christmas I spent with my family in Manzanillo, Mexico. I thought leaving for Mexico on Christmas eve would ruin the Christmas Spirit but of course Christmas is strong in Mexico, just warmer!
ReplyDeleteHmmm... I have been fortunate to travel quite a bit, so picking a fave place is a toughie.
ReplyDeleteI'll go with my most recent trip (two weeks ago) to San Francisco and Sonoma. The weather was so lovely. The food rocked. And the wineries were gorgeous. I could see myself living there.
Pick me, pick me!
Best travel experience for sure was a trip to Spain with my wife. Barcelona and the east coast - so much culture, beautiful architecture (Goudi!), beaches, not to mention the food and wine. We loved it so much that we extended our stay an extra week. I've traveled all over the world, and extensively through Europe - there's no question Spain is the best place I've ever been. It might feel a little far away for some people - but I would recommend it to anyone.
ReplyDeleteCinque Terre on the Italian Riviera, one of our favorites, and one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. Our days consisted of hiking the mountainsides of one Italian village to another, overlooking the Mediterranean. The evenings consisted of eating seafood and drinking copious amounts of the regions Cinque Terre wine. Brilliant!
ReplyDeleteA number of years ago we decided to make a stop over in Burma. We were on our way somewhere else, had been traveling Asia for months, and were perhaps a little travel-jaded. Anyway, our expectations were low. We had only a one-week visa, the maximum that visitors could get either then or now. Burma, also called Myanmar, is a politically divided country with a corrupt government and the customs officer that inspected us at the airport was drunk.
ReplyDeleteIt was an unpromising start to what turned out to be our most wonderful, memorable week of travel ever. We've enjoyed the charms of Paris, London, New York, etc. This was a different magic.
The beauty of Burma, its soft-spoken people, the verdant land, the thousands of ancient temple ruins, the spicy bowls of fish and rice noodles — it cast a spell on us and we've never forgotten it.
Officially, the most of the country remains closed to tourism. But in practice you could hire guides to take you up-country in small trucks. The travel was spartan, but you had a canopy to protect you from the sun, and the breeze kept you cool as the rice paddies and mountains went by. There were just us two and a woman from Australia.
Burma was a land of hidden marvels. We saw sumptuous gilded temples out of fairy tales, came upon Buddhas the size of Boeings reclining in the jungle, observed working elephants dragging logs down mountain roads. At the army checkpoints, our driver paid his baksheesh and we were waved onward.
When we stopped, gorgeous traditional meals awaited us at outdoor tables, sometimes restaurants, sometimes just people's houses. We never ordered or dealt with money. Everything was included in the price, which was low. We stayed in villages, old British hill stations. One day our guide gave us bicycles and we spent a day riding among the hundreds of empty, abandoned stone temples of Bagan. We watched the sunset from atop one of them. We travelled by boat up Inle Lake to see its stilt houses and had tea over the water with some monks who had cat that did tricks. Local people we met along the way smiled and blessed us.
The struggles of the Burmese were, and remain, enormous. Despite the resource wealth of the land, average people deal with oppression, corruption. Despite the hardships, the Burmese were profoundly kind, generous and authentic.
The Big Island, Hawaii. It was such a spiritual, healing place. I loved the culture, the microclimates, the music, the flowers. Plus it was the last "real" vacation (aka. before we had a kid) we took.
ReplyDeleteThe most unforgettable trip that my husband and I took together was within Canada! Oh yes! This was our trip to Victoria, BC. My husband is from England and I was determined to show him his new country, coast to coast. Imagine my surprise when after several days of gorgeous coastal weather, whale-watching and dining out, my then boyfriend proposed over afternoon tea! Victoria will always be a city with special memories for us.
ReplyDeleteI have been a huge fan of the Olympics for as long as I can remember. I was fortunate enough to volunteer at the 2006 Olympics in Torino, Italy. It was wonderful to experience the Olympics and to meet so many people. The city of Torino is beautiful and not a common destination for those traveling to Italy. The food, atmosphere and people were fantastic.
ReplyDeleteMy other favourite city is Vancouver! I remember loving the city when I went in grade 7 and have loved visiting it ever since. My last trip to Vancouver was for the 2010 Olympics. What an amazing feeling it was to be there - there was such incredible energy and a feeling of pride to be Canadian!
Next stop....London 2012! What can I say I am an Olympic junkie :)
My most memorable travel experience is, of course, the most accidental of discoveries: a stumble upon (what I now know) is the rumoured haunt of Edith Piaf, a truly eccentric restaurant called Chez Louisette buried somewhere in Paris' Marche aux Puces St. Ouen de Clignancourt.
ReplyDeleteI'd gotten tired of my tour companions and set out solo for the renowned (and world's largest?) flea market. My goal was to find gifts for family, but spend no more than $5 per item, and it had to be small enough for my already crammed suitcase.
Distracted by my quest, of course I got lost in the market. And really really hungry. So it didn't feel real when I turned a corner and saw Chez Louisette. I still don't know how to describe it: filled with people sitting at these long banquet tables, loud and full of energy, decorated with strings of coloured lights and lanterns and photos and...this stage in the corner where an eccentrically-attired woman was singing with some seriously intense vibrato.
My table companions, a lovely French family that pulled me into their meal when I was seated next to them, tried to convince me that of the two menu options I needed to try the steak tartare.
I'm sorry to disappoint, but in the middle of the flea market, in this dream-like cliche of a French restaurant, I ate spaghetti and meatballs. Next time I'll order steak tartare, I promise.
i'm a foodie at heart, so my most memorable travel experiences typically revolve around food. ;) italia, you had me at the gelato! closer to home, i'd say montreal -- poutine & schwartz's montreal-smoked sammies. so good.
ReplyDeleteGotta love the Bess. The Delta Bessborough is the place to stay in Saskatoon. The staff are always fantastic and I've been lucky enough to attend special times in their beautiful event rooms. I even remember being a little one (probably 7 or 8) and being mesmorized by the gorgeous hotel.
ReplyDeleteMy Favorite Holiday session started in PEI (statyed at the Delta in Charlotte Town) We toured the Maritimes then back to spend some time in the Radium Valley then met up with our kids in Osoyoos BC for a week.
ReplyDeleteAs I said – so far.
For food, music, history, art, scenery, street life, great climate, beautiful people, it has to be Spain. The roast suckling pig in Segovia, you could cut it with your fork. Mmmm.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite travel experience was an unexpected stop in Verona, Italy. We were traveling the city to visit various chapels, historic landmarks and amazing art. The city, however, is not all that beautiful. Very smoggy and polluted at times, and at one point we found ourselves walking along a dirty, smelly street.
ReplyDeleteI longed to leave the city when we spotted an entrance to what looked like a park. We accidentally wandered into Giusti Gardens, which we later learned is one of the crowning gardens of Italy. A lush, quiet landscape set inside the craziness and haziness of an otherwise urban cityscape. It was so shockingly different from where we had just come-a welcome respite from noise, life and busyness. It truly was a step back in time.
Being surrounded by greenery, manicured shrubs, fountains and statues, we truly felt a part of a natural history we had never considered before. Should you ever find yourself in Italy, bypass the much travelled Boboli Gardens in Florence and take a detour to Giusti in Verona. You will not be disappointed.
Maui is my all-time favourite place. Beautiful beaches, fresh seafood, amazing weather, friendly people; I could definitely stay there for a very long time.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite travel experience to date was a week-long sea kayaking trip in Baja Mexico. With an average of less than a week of rain per year, Baja offers consistent sunshine and warmth. For five glorious days, our group sea kayaked crystal clear aquamarine waters. When we weren't kayaking, we had the opportunity to snorkel, hike or just relax. Our guides prepared authentic Mexican meals and served happy hour while we awaited dinner each night. We saw dolphins, mantarays and pelicans. The trip was bookended by a brief stay in the town of Loreto at a beautiful hotel within walking distance of the heart of the town.
ReplyDeleteI love England; the history, the architecture, the blokes! :)
ReplyDelete