Through the years of renting cars in Florida, I’ve been all over the Internet. My expeditions have yielded dozens of cars from websites and rental companies, with varying degrees of success. Goal for my latest Florida car rental was hanging out with the pelicans in the Keys (Photo by David G. Molyneaux, TheTravelMavens.com) The cost…
I’m not much of a birder. I love to watch the Great Lake Erie birds swoop by my porch on the north coast of Ohio, especially the eagles that have returned to the marsh near Old Woman Creek. They dive for fish in the waters outside my window. But I am a dunce when it…
Mating grounds for the Northern Royal Albatross are reason enough to visit New Zealand’s Otago Peninsula, but these grand birds are not the only attraction on a shore excursion from the cruise ship port of Dunedin. Yellow Eyed Penguin (center) approaches a beach in New Zealand Above a wide beach with rolling ocean surf, our…
Preparing to meet a colony of Northern Royal Albatrosses — or are they albatri — I remembered an image from high school when my English class was studying Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” A sailor wore a dead albatross around his neck as penance. The poem is one of those prized pieces…
After two days and three nights at sea from Tasmania on the southern tip of Australia, Celebrity Century plunged into Milford Sound at sunrise. You would not want to sleep-in on the day that your cruise ship slips through the three sounds on New Zealand’s southwest coast, not if you want to see Milford, anyway.…
Many of the newer condos and resorts lining the coast of Southwest Florida in and around Naples stand tall toward the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. Paddling in the mangroves of Naples Fla. (Photos by David G. Molyneaux, TheTravelMavens.com) That’s toward, but not on the beach, because man, these days, no longer is stupid…
Cambridge, Ohio As soon as Halloween is over, the Central Ohio town of Cambridge will have a festive Victorian look, not only among its buildings, but also its people, some of whom dress and act like Charles Dickens characters for two months each winter. Through early January, downtown Cambridge celebrates all things Dickens, from carolers…
With bargain rates on many cruise ships at $100-$150 a day or less per person, why would a couple on vacation spend $500- $1,000 a day, each, for a cruise? A man is his 50s asked me that question recently at a party. He was concerned also that his wife was about to book him…
If you cruise on the new Carnival Magic, what you will see is: Carnival’s first Italian restaurant, first Caribbean pub, first draught beer labeled just for Carnival, first ropes course, a host of family deck games, and three flashy production shows. New interior designs make the ship brighter and more cheerful than its sister Carnival…
Carnival Cruise Lines has introduced the first ropes course on a cruise ship. The 230-foot course on the new Carnival Magic, now cruising in the Mediterranean, is so well planned that anyone of moderate athletic ability will be able to get around. Yet, if you want to tackle the course at a different pace and…