Posted on by Tina Hay

Trip Planning with Google’s ‘My Maps’

For me, part of the fun of travel is the anticipation. That includes reading the information from the tour company, Googling the places we’ll be visiting, seeing what people on Trip Advisor have to say about the hotel where we’ll be staying. As mentioned in a previous post, I also like to Google things like “Antarctica photography tips” or “best places to photograph in Buenos Aires” to get some ideas. I’m sure I spend more time dreaming about the trip in advance than I do actually being on the trip. But that’s OK—anticipating the trip is part of the experience.

Lately I’ve also been using Google’s “My Maps” feature to create a custom map for each new trip. You can do a search for the airport you’ll be flying into, the hotel where you’ll be staying, and the sites you’ll be seeing, and plug each of them into your map.

Why would anyone want to do this?, you might be thinking. Well, maybe you’re nerdy like me and you just like doing this sort of thing. (My spices are also organized in alphabetic order.) (Not that I ever cook.) But it also helps you figure out Read more

Posted on by Tina Hay · 3 Comments

That Other Time I Went to Antarctica

A younger me, at Port Lockroy, January 2002.

For most travelers, Antarctica is a “bucket list” trip, a place you hope to see once in your lifetime, often the last of the seven continents on which you can say you’ve set foot. I’m very mindful of my good fortune in being able to go to the Antarctic for a second time. The first time was in January 2002, and I was hosting a Penn State Alumni Association trip with Gohagan & Company, just as I’ll be doing in January 2018.

Last night I rooted around in the hall closet that contains several decades’ worth of photos and found the pictures I took on that 2002 trip. Those were the days of film cameras, and I have 37 rolls’ worth of pictures from Antarctica—and Ushuaia, and Buenos Aires—in a shoebox. I remember stuffing a bunch of rolls of film into my jacket each time we’d get on the Zodiac boats that took us from the ship to the penguin colonies onshore, and once over there, I’d have to change film every 36 images. Hard to imagine. I don’t miss that part at all. Read more