Explore Hong Kong’s Best in Just One Day

The city of Hong Kong is huge and a day is too short, but it is possible to get a good taste of this incredible city if you plan ahead…

Nan Lian Gardens

On our first South China Sea cruise we spent a day in the port city of Hong Kong. While it is not enough time to do much we managed to hit a the highlights. Our first impression of the city as we sailed into port is one of rolling hills and countless skyscrapers. If you are cruising in, the ship will probably dock at the new cruise terminal that was once the site of the international airport in Kowloon.  Across Victoria Harbour is Hong Kong Island and the central business district with Victoria Peak standing above it. The first suggestion is to get yourself oriented as to where you are and what locations you would like to visit. Taxis are plentiful and inexpensive and the subway (MTR) is easy to use. You can find a number of official maps here .

HK5
Business District

Going up to Victoria Peak is one of the cities highlights. There is a Peak Tram that leaves from a station near Hong Kong Park and the Government Center but by the time we got to the tram the wait to buy tickets and catch the tram was several hours. We’ve been told that the tram is an experience in itself but from our experience we would recommend getting to the tram lower terminus early in the day and if you’re staying in Hong Kong for a few days don’t miss going up at night. We shared a taxi with another couple up and back for less than 25 Hong Kong Dollars (US$5) each person and the view is well worth the trip. I can imagine what it looks like at night with the city glowing below you but even in the day it is spectacular.

HK6
           View from Victoria Heights

On that say in port there was a free bus ride to Plaza Hollywood which is a large mall with exhibit space, a movie theatre and a couple hundred stores. It appears that these free buses are common allowing stores to get cruise ship traffic. Leaving the Plaza we walked a couple of blocks to the Nan Lian Gardens (look for the elevated highway and walk under it). The park is a classic style Chinese garden and is beautiful with flowers, water falls, Koi ponds and pagodas and completely surrounded by high rise buildings (admission is free). Afterwards we walked back to Plaza Hollywood and the MTR Diamond Hill Station where we caught a subway. We used the subway to get to the business district at the Central Station. The MTR is easy to figure out with well designed maps and ticket machines with English language options. The system allows “tap on tap off” using major credit cards. The trains and stations are modern, clean and well marked. From Central MTR station we walked to the Lower Peak Tram Terminus only a few blocks away. The area is in the area of commercial skyscrapers and upscale shopping with the alleys between buildings filled with market stalls selling everything from food to inexpensive clothing.

Hong Kong High Rise

One of the surprising things we learned is that while Hong Kong is a wealthy, vertical city with high rise buildings and skyscrapers everywhere, there are lower income neighborhoods where high rise apartments average only a dozen square meters per apartment. We were told that it is common to have them furnished with triple-decker bunk like beds. When you realize this you begin to notice laundry hanging out of windows all the way up to the higher floors.

If we weren’t running short on time we could have taken the MTR back to the Cruise Terminal but we used our remaining Hong Kong dollars to take a taxi. We would recommend changing money or using credit cards in Hong Kong as US dollars are not readily accepted.

As our ship sailed out of Victoria Harbour as the Sun began to slip behind the skyline it was a fitting end to the end of a great one-day visit, but this city really deserves several days of exploring.

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The Only Thing You Can Count On Is Change; The Roman Version

You’ll Have To Pay To See Trevi

We love Italy and especially Rome but each time we return it’s like culture shock. Individually and together we’ve been to Rome dozens of times with my first visit being in July 1965. On that visit the Coliseum sat in the middle of a frantic traffic circle and it had no fencing or admission charge or even a gate. Saint Peters only had crowds on Sunday for the Pope’s blessing and you just walked in. Trevi Fountain was at a small intersection with maybe a hundred visitors mostly throwing coins over their shoulder into the fountain, but things change.

The problem isn’t caused by Rome’s officials, but by Rome just being Rome. Over the past twenty years alone the number of visitors in Summer have increased eight fold. On our most recent visit about a year ago you had to buy tickets to visit the Coliseum, lines to get into Saint Peters had a two hour wait and chances were you couldn’t even get near Trevi. Most of the changes were necessary and every year you can expect more:

Starting in February, 2026 you will have to pay a US$2.35 entrance fee if you want to enter the square of the famed Trevi Fountain in Rome.

While the coins tossed into the fountain are donated to charity, the new fees collected will go to the city authority to pay for upkeep and crowd control. The city expects to raise €6,500,000 a year from the new fees from the fountain alone. 2026’s new fee system for certain museums and monuments for tourists and non-residents will include the Trevi Fountain and five other attractions including the Napoleonic Museum. Children under the age of five, and those with disabilities and an accompanying person, will be exempt from the fees.

Trevi History
One of Rome’s most iconic landmarks the Trevi Fountain was built between 1732 and 1762 and designed by Nicola Salvi, with Giuseppe Pannini completing the Baroque masterpiece after Salvi’s death, officially opening in 1762 under Pope Clement XIII.

People started throwing coins in the Trevi Fountain after the movie Three Coins in the Fountain, which claimed to follow the ancient Roman ritual of tossing one coin for a return to Rome, two for love, and three for marriage.

Screenshot

Coins from Rome’s Trevi Fountain started going to the Catholic charity Caritas Italiana in 2001, a practice initiated to support the city’s poor, funding soup kitchens and homeless shelters, and despite some debate in 2019, the practice of donating the coins to charity has continued.

Before the official system coin collection in 2001, anyone could take coins from the Trevi Fountain, but the most famous “person” who regularly collected them was Roberto Cercelletta, nicknamed “D’Artagnan,” who fished coins out of the fountain for decades (from 1968 until 2002) to support himself, facing many fines but becoming a notorious figure.

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Unforgettable Cruise Moments: Food, Friends, and Fun

The Intentional Travelers discovered cruising in 1999 and fell in love with it, and so did our kids. Even now, twenty five years later, we look forward to the next cruise and what it will bring. Outside of the adventure of traveling to new places it’s the people that are at the forefront of the experience.

Over a number of years we spent the first day on a ship running into old friends, both crew and passengers. Because you see, our generation, after retirement tended to become frequent cruisers and it wasn’t unusual for us to run into a number of cruising friends regularly. Unfortunately Covid seems to have put an end to cruising for too many people.

We also run into old friends in the crew. One incident is a perfect example of this. On one cruise we would go to a lounge for coffee and a pastry for breakfast and my wife would have a cappuccino. Several days into the cruise one young crew member got in the habit of having her cappuccino ready when we arrived and we spent a fair amount of time with him talking. About ten months later we were on another cruise ship and on our first morning we went down to the lounge. As we got to the door there he was waiting with her cappuccino! He said he saw us as we boarded and thought it would be fun to be ready in the lounge the next morning.

While we do enjoy the food and the dining room staff is always amazing, another part of the cruise experience we really love is the entertainment. For most of our lives we have enjoyed going out to hear live music and usually on a cruise ship the choices are always difficult to make. And the talent is almost always excellent. We’ve made friends with a number of them and one duo that we met on a ship now lives in our home town and we frequently go out to hear them.

There are often times when we know that the crew members are having as much fun as we are…

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Worlds Best & Worst Airports For Connecting Flights 2024

Selecting The Best Airports For Making Connecting Flights And Ones To Really Avoid Can Save Your Holiday

Calculating airport time is always a major part of travel planning. Arriving an hour before your flight can often not be nearly enough time. When booking flights that include connections what’s the minimum time you need to make it to the next departure gate? Trying to avoid a tight connection could leave you with extra hours in the airport but missing the connection can cost a whole day or more. When booking a cruise or a package tour often you are dependent on their booking office unless you’re willing to pay an up-charge and our experience would indicate that it’s money well spent*.

Welcome to Mumbai

After you’ve missed enough connections you start paying attention to which airports are the worst and which are the best for making those connections. In looking at reviews of airports there are some common threads that help define the best and worst. The better airports for connections have a high rate of on-time departures and arrivals, good layouts and modern internal transportation, well staffed security and passport checkpoints and a reputation for assisting people with tight connections. Following are the results of a 2019 study of airports and their connecting times.

Worst Airports For Making a Connecting Flight

  • Madrid Adolfo Suarez – Barajas Airport (MAD) +1.75 Hours
  • Frankfurt International (FRA): +1.5 Hours
  • London Heathrow (LHR): +1.5 Hours
  • Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG): +1.25 Hours
  • Shanghai Pudong International (PVG): +1.2 Hours
  • Los Angeles International (LAX): +1 Hour
  • Sydney Kingsford Smith (SYD): +1 Hour
  • Tokyo Narita International (NRT): +1 Hour
  • Boston Logan International (BOS): +1 Hour
  • Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (BOM) +1 Hou

Best Airports for Making a Connecting Flight

  • Zurich Airport (ZRH): <10 minutes
  • Salt Lake City International (SLC): <15 minutes
  • Tampa International (TPA): <15 minutes
  • Orlando International (MCO): <15 minutes
  • Charlotte Douglas International (CLT): <20 minutes
  • Denver International (DEN): <20 minutes
  • London Stansted (STN): <20 minutes
  • Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL): <25 minutes
  • Dubai International (DXB): <25 minutes
  • Hong Kong International (HKG): <25 minutes

This won’t guarantee you can avoid missing connections but it can go a long way when planning for that trip.

Of course there had to be an App to help. If you fly a lot FlightConnections can be a real asset. So don’t waste hours searching airports, airlines, flights and connections. Visit the website here FlightConnections! or download the app in Apple App Store or Google Play.

FLIGHTCONNECTIONS FEATURES:

  • Interactive Flight Route Map.
  • Plan a trip based on your preferred departure airport.
  • Find new, nearby airports on the map.
  • Filter by airline or travel alliance.
  • Discover airline routes and flight schedules / timetables.
  • Compare direct flights or connecting flights.
  • Show connecting flights with one or two stops.
  • Show connecting flights with different airlines, or the same airline only.
  • Find cheap flights and book flight tickets for the best price available.
SINGAPORE – 18 NOV, 2016: Travelers enter immigration control at Changi International Airport in Singapore.

*Often it is difficult to take control of your flight bookings if you’re using a cruise line or tour company to include flights. Let’s face it their first priority is profit and the truth is that you are much more concerned about the potential for missing flights than those agents. Our experience tells us when it’s important to pay the additional charge to avoid too short connections. Also we’ve found that if you argue with them and provide a strong case you can often get better connections.

We’ve also found a number of travel companies that are famous for booking connections that are either too short or have excessive layovers (8 plus hours) and most often they are travel itineraries that include flights. Land tours and river cruises are usually the worst.

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Creative Ways to Showcase Your Travel Photos

What To Do With Those Travel Photographs

If you’re like us we love to talk about our travels and isn’t that one of the reason we buy all those souvenir tee shirts? Our tees often start a conversation about where we’ve been? Also like most families our house is full of family photos but a close second is our travel images. Every trip adds to our travel decor.

Make Travel Books

Decorating With Travel Memories

Make Tee Shirts

You’ve got hundreds of great travel photos – why not show them off?

Our living room bragging wall

Decorating Accents That Celebrate Your Travels

Revisit those amazing places and remembered adventures by adding travel print accents to your home decorating. One of the joys of travel is the memories it creates and adding travel photos to your decorating brings those memories back every day.

Even if you don’t have a home printer you can easily order prints at dozens of convenient and inexpensive locations. You can get photos printed at drugstores (Walgreens, CVS) for fast, same-day pickup, major retailers like Walmart, online specialists like Shutterfly & Snapfish, office supply stores (Staples, Office Depot), or local professional photo labs for higher quality, in sizes that range from quick 4×6 prints to large formats and even online services that produce framed and ready to hang prints like Frameology and keepsake Frames.

Travel Themed Tee Shirts Are Easier Than You Think

Tell The World About Your Travels

Your image collection of iconic and stunning photographs from around the world can easily be used to create amazing tee shirts for very little cost or effort.

“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list”

Susan Sontag

One of our hobbies is creating tee shirts for sale in local stores and selling online and we’ve learned a bit about what works and what doesn’t.

Our favorite is vinyl transfers. All you need to create spectacular tees is a photograph, an inkjet printer and an iron. For less than US$1.75 you can print on a sheet of transfer vinyl and transfer it by dry ironing onto any tee shirt. As simple as 1,2,3.

We recommend a material from Avery that you can order from Amazon HERE*. There are a number of similar items but we’ve been very happy with this product. Print on this opaque vinyl with any inkjet printer and it can be transferred to any tee, even dark colors, using a dry iron. The resulting shirt is guaranteed to last through 20 washings without any fading or cracking.

“What a great idea. We love the idea of decorating with travel memories. Picked out several of our travel pictures and had them printed locally (Walmart). The prints were beautiful and really look great on our wall. Liked the idea that each print was from our travels.” Sue M

“We’re interior decorators specializing in offices and these prints seemed a great idea for clients spaces!” William & Megan James

Start A Travel Library Of Your Trips

While we’re on the subject of travel photographs we should mention our travel books. For over fifteen years we’ve been in the habit of recording our trips in custom printed, hardback books. We use Shutterfly, but there are a number of other options (Some computer photo applications often offer this in the app). It only takes a couple of hours to organize our photographs and design a book. Costs can actually be as inexpensive as US$24.00.

In our books we don’t just add photos but also record information on hotels, restaurants and tours. Our library includes over 30 books and we have neighbors that often borrow them to help in planning their travels. I even find them a great reference when working on this website.

* We currently earn no commission or advertising payments from any companies mentioned here including Amazon for references or links to products.

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The Historic Significance of Greccio’s Living Nativity and Saint Francis

Screenshot

The Very First Living Nativity In Greccio, Italy

Greccio is a historic Italian village renowned for its deep connection to St. Francis of Assisi, particularly as the site of the very first Living Nativity scene, which he created in the early 13th century which marked a pivotal moment in Christian tradition, emphasizing the nativity of Christ in a tangible and immersive way.

Origin
In 1223, St. Francis of Assisi wanted to bring the Christmas story to life for the people of Greccio, an Italian village, as many would never have the chance to visit Bethlehem. He arranged for a cave to be prepared with a manger filled with hay and live animals like an ox and a donkey to create a real live reenactment of the birth of Jesus. Today in Greccio reenactments take place in the same cave where St. Francis staged the original event.

As they celebrate this remarkable event, Greccio continues to attract pilgrims and visitors who seek to connect with the rich history and traditions that St. Francis fostered. Greccio stands as a testament to St. Francis’s impactful role in shaping Christian practices, particularly during the Christmas season.

Additionally the Sanctuary of Greccio, located just 1.5 kilometers from the village center, serves as a prominent site of meditation and worship established by St. Francis himself. This hermitage is one of four shrines he founded in the Sacred Valley, further solidifying Greccio’s importance in Franciscan history. Throughout his life, St. Francis frequently visited Greccio while preaching across Italy, leaving a lasting spiritual legacy in the region.

Saint Francis of Assisi
The tomb of St. Francis located in the crypt of the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, in Assisi, Italy. The remains are housed in a simple stone sarcophagus within a crypt beneath the Lower Basilica, a site that was intentionally hidden for centuries before its rediscovery in 1818. The crypt was later built around the tomb so that pilgrims could visit.

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