Voice of Travel

This past Saturday I attended the New York Times Travel Show at the Jacob Javits Center in NYC. I can’t tell you what a really fun day I had! I look forward to it each year, and I am never disappointed.

This is the 5th year that they have run the show, and the 5th year that I have attended. Each year it keeps getting bigger, and there really was a lot to see and do!

They had hundreds of vendors, 2 seminar rooms full of great speakers such as Rick Steves and Arther Frommer, a cultural stage, and even a “taste of the world” cooking area where you could watch them make items from all over the world.

It wasn’t even expensive to get in. Tickets were $15.00 each, or $10.00 if you used your American Express card.

So what did I spend my day doing? Well, I spent most of it walking up and down all of the rows, looking at all of the different vendors, talking to some of them, and getting information so that I could look at it later at home.

That really is the best part of the show for me. You can talk to people who really know the area you are interested in, and ask any questions you have. They also have some great brochures, so when you get home you can learn more information about the destination or company. While websites are great and can give you a lot of information, sometimes it’s just easier and quicker to look at a quick brochure that highlights the best “things to do” in a certain city or country.

I also attended one of the two seminar’s that Arthur Frommer and his daughter Pauline put on. I’ll talk more about that one tomorrow, since I learned a lot there as well.

Each year I go, I tell myself that even though I am interested in many places, I will try not to take too many brochures. This is because the first year that I went, my friend and I took brochures for everything we were interested in, and our arms hurt for days! Even this year with trying to be careful, I still took too much information. The only good thing is that I am interested in what I took, and will be happy to read it all as I get the time.

It’s so great to see so many people interested in traveling all over the world. They had people there promoting everything you can thing of. Some were there to promote a country – there were big displays set up for Turkey, Ireland, and Greece for example, while others were promoting a company, like NCL, Princess Cruise Line, or even a private touring company.

Destinations from all over the world were represented, so whether you were interested in going down to the Jersey Shore, or to Australia, you would have had no problems finding information.

As I get to go through all of the information that I got, I’ll share with you all the great things I learn!