How Do You Like to Tour a Location?

On April 4, 2019 By Isobar ExpeditionsIn Travel Tips1 Comment

There are usually options on how you can tour a location such as self-guided walking tours, group tours, or hiring a private guide. Even if you just read a guide book and walk the streets on your own, you are actually touring a location, it is just very casual. We have tried a variety of styles of touring and have probably done a combination of several styles on every trip. We don’t like being on a schedule, so we lean towards self-guiding ourselves through an area, but there are times when it requires a guide of some sort to really understand the history of a place.

Self-Guided Tours – Whether you get a map and highlight the path that you want to follow or just pick a starting point and wander, self-guided touring is a very relaxing way to see a place. You can see what you want to see, decide how long you want to spend at a certain site, and stop for a bite to eat at a place that fits your style and budget. One of the downsides is that it is up to you to make sure that you have read all of the information to truly understand the history and interesting facts about a location. Also, there are often times when informational signs are only in the local language and if you are not fluent, you might miss out on some interesting facts.
Group Tour in Amsterdam
Group Tours – These can take on a variety of types of tours from hop-on, hop-off buses, river boat cruises, or group walking tours. These tours can be interesting depending upon the personality of the guide. It is often look this way, get a couple of sentences about it, and then you are off to the next site. If you are with a group of people who are truly interested in the place and have read a certain amount of information in advance, you can often learn interesting things based on the questions that are asked in addition to whatever information was on the guide’s script. The schedule is not your own, though, and you can sometimes end up spending more time in places that don’t interest you as much as perhaps it does others. Also, on walking tours, if you have people who decide to wander off to take pictures, you can find yourself standing around waiting for the group to regather.
Private Tour in Bolivia
Private Tours – Although you definitely pay a little bit more for private attention, there a many benefits to having a private tour guide. We have found them to be highly knowledgeable about the locations that you want to see and you have their complete attention to ask them questions that are of interest to you. Since the tour is private, the guides are usually willing to cater to your tastes, physical capabilities, and even potentially add things to the tour that might not have been in the original schedule. Obviously, the experience is completely dependent on the personality of the guide. If you are going to spend several hours with only yourselves and the guide, they better have a good personality or it will be the longest few ours of your trip.
Learning from an Egyptologist in Luxor

There is no one-size fits all solution when it comes to touring a location and we have found that it often takes a mix to see a place from all of the different angles. If you are going to do a guided tour, be sure to negotiate the price in advance, especially if you are hiring a guide right at a specific site. You should also consider a tip and it should be reflective of the information that you received and the quality of the tour and the guide.

Do You Need an Actual Camera When You Travel?

On March 21, 2019 By Isobar ExpeditionsIn Travel Tips21 Comments

With cell phone cameras getting better and better every year, it begs the question whether or not you should take up room in your bags for a camera. Even if we have a camera with us, we still use our camera phones in addition to using a traditional camera. On a couple of occasions we have decided not to take our camera with us at all, but in most cases we always take a camera with us. There are several reasons for packing our camera and extra lenses when traveling, despite the improvements in cell phone camera technology.

Colosseum in Rome with the Camera and Zoom

We have a couple of lenses for our camera, including a vibration reduction zoom lens. There are many times during a trip that we get the opportunity to have amazing views of a city or landscape. Having a camera with a zoom lens allows us to take photographs of objects in the distance and see them in a way that we couldn’t otherwise. Many of these photographs turn out to be some of our favorite photographs from a location. Another benefit that we find for taking photographs with a camera when traveling is that we can quickly focus on various objects as we walk through a location. Whether on a tour or just walking through a place on our own, we don’t want to stop every 30 seconds to take a picture and we find that we can get photographs of different objects without having to come to a full stop and playing with the zoom of a camera phone.

Quick Picture in the French Quarter of New Orleans

With that said, there are times when the cell phone camera is our preferred choice. Obviously, there are the selfies, probably one of the biggest reasons that camera phones became popular. Also, when we are in a restaurant and want to take a photograph of our food, we’re not likely to pull out our camera and snap a few pictures. Depending on the lighting, we have also found that cell phone cameras work fairly well in low light situations like inside of buildings, churches, and museums. There certainly isn’t any doubt that camera phones continue to improve and they can produce high quality photographs.

Camera Inside of the Church in Nuremberg

We have included several similar photographs here, one taken with the camera and the other will the cell phone. Obviously, there are other factors that come into play regarding the results, but we found the comparison interesting. For the reasons previously mentioned, we’ll continue to take a camera with us, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should. Would you leave your camera at home on your next trip and rely solely on your cell phone camera?

Our Traveler Evolution

On March 14, 2019March 18, 2019 By Isobar ExpeditionsIn Blogging, Travel Tips9 Comments

Just like everyone else, the way that we travel today is no where near how we started out earlier in our lives. If we were able to go back in time and were to bump into our former selves on a trip, we’d likely shake our heads and laugh at ourselves. Likewise, we will undoubtedly change again as more time passes and more experiences are compiled. Just like human evolution, there has been a very distinct evolution of the way that we travel that has taken us from crawling on all fours to walking upright on two feet.

Phase 1 – After we first met, our jobs and careers sent us to several different states in different parts of the US. During those days, our children were young and we would explore the places where we lived, but we wouldn’t actively seek out everything that a location had to offer. We would save up for a big trip here or there to places like Disneyland where everyone would have that experience. These were simply family vacations for the sake of getting away and spending time together.
Kids with Mad Hatter
Phase 2 – As our children got older, we started going on what we lovingly call “education vacations”. We made sure that we took at least one trip together each year and the destinations were always one of important historic significance or one of the country’s many national parks. Although they were certainly enjoyable, it was all about making sure that we all had an appreciation for our rich history. We wouldn’t, however, see much more than the museums, recreations, and natural wonders.
Mount Rushmore
Phase 3 – We became empty-nesters and for the first time wanted to see more of the world than our own backyard and had a combination of actual beach vacations in places like Mexico or seeing parts of Europe that we’d always dreamed of. We’d pack up several suitcases, drag a variety of clothes and shoes, and go to places that were wonderful, but didn’t take us out of comfort zone. We went to large cities in countries that were familiar to us and, for the most part, people spoke English. We were still taking vacations.
Eiffel Tower in Autumn
Phase 4 – After getting our first taste of someplace exotic that challenged us in ways that we could have never expected, we gained a desire to see the world. The whole world, big places, small places, especially places where the people didn’t look like us, speak English, and the cultures were as foreign as the land itself. In our attempt to see more and go to places that aren’t always easy to reach, we learned to live out of a carry-on bag, only take what we need, and interact with the locals with respect and a true desire of understanding. We had become actual travelers.
Our Trip to India
Phase 5 – We told our stories to all of our friends and shared our photographs with them. With their encouragement, we started to share our experiences on this humble site. We had become travel bloggers. Now we not only seek out the experiences of our previous phase, but knowing that we’re going to write about the places after our return has caused to do even more research, learn more, and push us to go to even more places that challenge us, like jungles, frozen lands, deserts, and more.
Paddling in the Small Canoe in the Amazon
Phase 6 – Obviously we’re not here yet, so life will only tell what this next phase will bring, but we know what we’d like. Having enjoyed seeing many countries on 5 different continents and getting the opportunity to live abroad, we would like to live in countries throughout the world, especially ones that will challenge us. Spending two weeks in a place is wonderful, but to spend a year or two would provide an even greater experience. At that point we would graduate from a traveler to a world citizen.
The Giza Plateau in Egypt

So, we started with family vacations, moved on to education vacations, then started to see more of the world, and have finally become what we would consider to be true travelers. Regardless of where our evolution takes us, we definitely appreciate the growth that we have experienced over the years. Some of you have probably been able to jump straight to being a traveler, but there is some nostalgia about having moved through each of the phases of our travel lives.