travel ideas, notes, links for interesting travel worth considering

2007.4.30

Danube river cruise 12 days - 7 on 68 cabin ship River Empress - Budapest, Vienna, Passau, Melk, Regensburg, Nurenburg, Prague - booked through uniworld.com
Mary McCain MVHOA jan07

2007.01

barges in europe
from the article in powercruisingmag.com Jan/Feb 2007
France’s Canal du Midi

The Barge Lady
http://bargelady.com/
Connoisseur Yachts
http://www.connoisseurafloat.com/
Crown Blue Line
http://crownblueline.com/
Locaboat
http://locaboat.com/gb/

2006.11

Cheap travel

Everygreen Club - members are 50+, must host in order to participate
http://www.evergreenclub.com/

Affordable Travel Club - members are 40+, must host in order to participate
http://www.affordabletravelclub.net/howitworks.htm

Lindblad Expeditions - natualists
http://www.expeditions.com/

Elderhostel is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing extraordinary learning adventures for people 55 and over. From New Hampshire to New Zealand, South Africa to South Dakota, Elderhostel offers you a world of educational opportunities - at exceptional values.
http://www.elderhostel.org/about/default.asp

Tauck Tours - bus tours with good accommodations - not cheap though
hiking buddies took central europe tour sept 2006
http://www.affordabletours.com/Tauck_Tours/

ML is back and offers these thoughts

Rick Steve’s book is the best - what tickets to order online before you get to Rome, Florence, Venice

Trevi fountain - beautiful but being maintained (no water) during her visit

Sistine Chapel is on the Vatican Museum tour, not St Peter’s

day trip to Florence possible - tours, about 90 minutes by train - beautiful building interiors of particular note

Venice - worth seeing, especially residential part near Guggenheim, St Mark’s - major tours area with long lines, crowds, very expensive

Most people spend money that they shouldn’t from time to time. However, having a mechanism in place to evaluate each purchase decision helps reduce the number of “oops - shouldn’t have bought that” events. Checklists are great.

20+ Questions To Ask Before You Buy

One of the most effective ways to keep yourself from these impulse purchases is to come up with a list of a few questions to ask yourself before you buy anything. What questions are on your list will depend greatly on what questions are most important to you and will get you to stop and think before making a purchase.

http://www.pfadvice.com/2007/04/26/20-questions-to-ask-before-you-buy/

Some of the questions suggested:

• Will I really use it?
• Do I already own something that I can use in place of this?
• Will it serve more than one purpose?
• Will this be cost effective to maintain?

A friend has always maintained “If you love it, buy it” but I think that was after you had made the general evaluation with the full checklist of questions.

from Dogs of the Dow
http://www.dogsofthedow.com/doggishp1.htm

Small Dogs

Symbol Company Price Yield Small Dog
NYSE / NASDAQ The Dow stocks ranked by yield on 4/20/07 on 4/20/07 on 4/20/07 on 4/20/07
T AT&T 39.87 3.56% Yes
VZ Verizon 37.91 4.27% Yes
GE General Electric 35.13 3.19% Yes
GM General Motors 31.68 3.16% Yes
PFE Pfizer 26.97 4.30% Yes

The other dogs of the Dow

Symbol Company Price Yield Small Dog
NYSE / NASDAQ The Dow stocks ranked by yield on 4/20/07 on 4/20/07 on 4/20/07 on 4/20/07
MO Altria 69.55 3.71% No
C Citigroup 53.42 4.04% No
JPM JP Morgan Chase 52.54 2.59% No
MRK Merck 51.49 2.95% No
DD DuPont 49.28 3.00% No