slamboard

The US embargo against Cuba is a unique situation. Generally speaking, embargoes tend to have the intended effect eventually. It really doesn’t seem like this particular strategy has worked. Realistically, the embargo against Cuba is not an international issue but a national one. Cuban Americans are a significant voting block in places like Florida that have time and again had national significance at election time.

Travelocity is not one of the businesses that has a permit to sell American travel services to Cuba. These permits are generally for visits related to academic, religious, humanitarian or journalistic purposes or family visits. The huge travel website is stating that it did not intend to break regulations, it was a mistake. The company carries out business Worldwide including Canada, which does a booming trade in Cuban vacation packages. Travelocity is paying its fine and learning an expensive lesson.

Numerous US Presidents have smoked Cuban cigars since the embargo was imposed in the early 60’s. I suspect some of them even inhaled.

My wife gets an eNewsletter from a cruise provider regularly. As far as I know, we don’t have any plans to go on a cruise. She opens it and reads it every month because it feels good to think about these kind of things. If you were to opt in to a Trusted Tours eNewsletter all about the different sightseeing tours that they arrange all over the USA, you would enjoy the same kind of experience.

Of course, you can’t spend your life dreaming. The time will come when you decide to head out on one of these adventures. This company likes to make sure you enjoy yourself. They make sure that every stop along the way has outstanding hospitality. They make sure that sites have excellent content, cleanliness and that there are well researched scripts and material. This all adds up to exceptional value and a family friendly atmosphere.

San Francisco is one place that I have always wanted to go. The San Francisco Sightseeing offered by trusted tours sounds top notch. Having had a couple of big city vacations with the family, I think I would like to have an element of my vacation involve getting out of town. Trusted Tours runs a Wine Country Tour that would be very refreshing. Since I wouldn’t be the one driving, I could enjoy a few glasses of wine. California has World Class wine. Trusted Tours have World Class tours.

The charter service that operates www.FlyPrudent.com has a very interesting plan for up front payment. Basically, you choose to place any amount in a third party escrow account. Unused funds have a guaranteed return, it’s not huge, but it’s probably better than you bank account. When you decide to book a flight, the charter service immediately takes action with regard to finding the best value. Some charter services pocket empty leg discounts for themselves, but Prudential Aviation passes the savings on to you.

They have access to a wide range of aircraft from 5 passenger jets right up to full size jet airliners. Gordon Gerstein at Prudential Aviation (Gordon(at)flyprudent.com) can get you hooked up for on demand flight charters that are safe, dependable and affordable.

I have taken up snorkeling as a hobby. I was looking at videos that a SCUBA diver had made in the waters that I play in recently. The diver wrote in his blog that his visit to Gozo had made him change his mind as to where the nearest good diving is from the UK.

Most people think of the Red Sea as the closest and most economical diving trip that offers enough underwater plants and animals to make it worthwhile. I have experienced the life under the Mediterranean and it is amazing. I am sure the Red Sea is spectacular too. Holidayhypermarket.co.uk can hook you up with bargain holidays to Sharm El Sheikh. This is the resort town in Egypt that helped make diving in the Red Sea so popular.

Holidayhypermarket.co.uk has a great holiday search engine that you can use to help you find bargain holidays and late deals from some of Britain’s leading brand Tour Operators such as First Choice Holidays, Thomson and Thomas Cook.

I used the search to find a package that I could recommend. I stayed in Mellieha Bay for a month once. It’s quite a nice spot, except you have to go up a long hill to get to shops and restaurants. During high season though, your every need is catered to near the bay.

The biggest American city that I have ever spent time in is Seattle. One evening, I went with my colleagues from the Fair Trade Coffee Roastery looking for an authentic and interesting Chinese restaurant in China Town. We weren’t exactly lost on the way there, because we didn’t know where we were going. At one point, my boss asked a homeless guy for directions and one part of the answer was “Don’t go DOWN THERE!!!”

We managed to find a pretty funky place with lots of melamine decor and elderly relatives parked in the corner.

On the way back to out hotel, my boss decided we should go splits on a cab. I opted out saying that I would walk. this was partly because I was being cheap, but I also wanted to ditch the old guys and go clubbing at least one night while I was there. It wasn’t to be that night, because my production manager decided he would walk too. I have made this story a bit long, sorry. The point is the two of us got lost at night in a strange city. It wasn’t that bad, we just ended up walking more than we would have liked.

If I was ever in a situation where I was finding my way through a larger, scarier city, I would want some to play it safe with a map. PublicRoutes.com has a great tool for creating a customized New York city map. You key in your destination and mode of transport and you get the ideal route map.

The coolest thing about the service is that it is available for your PDA. I have often thought that GPS devices were overkill for navigating around a city. PublicRoutes allows you to create a document with the travel information that is relevant to your trip.

A traditional Africa hunting safari is an experience of a lifetime. Africa is the land mass that witnessed the dawn of our human species. Hunting animals was a vocation long before accounting, or motivational speaking, or even farming. It is arguably the World’s oldest profession.

Africa probably has the largest combination of density, range of freedom, and diversity of wild animal populations. Large carnivores like lions, hyenas, and cheetahs abound. Buffalo, deer, elephants, camels, and giraffes range freely on open plains.

I have spent a couple of years living on an island that has no large native mammals. I grew up in Canada an hunting was part of my life. My grandfather and many before him has relied on Moose and White-Tailed Deer as a source of food. My father lived in different times, it wasn’t vital for him to hunt. He would go for a few years without shooting a deer. I have never killed a deer. I do not know how many Snowshoe Hares I have shot.

There is no denying the rush that a hunter gets when he is on the hunt. It is this rush, and also the richly sensual experience of just being on an African plain, that brings people out on safari. Many Americans dream for most of their lives of going to Africa. If you are going to act on that dream, you’d best arrange the event with an profesional experienced outfitter like The T. Jeffrey Safari Company. They are a full time, full service, hunting and sport fishing consultancy and they are dedicated to satisfying their customers.

I have never been on a Park City Utah vacation. The closest that I have come to that was a training conference that was held at Keystone Lodge in Colorado.

I am an east coast boy and I was amazed at how different the air is in that part of the continent. The standards of service at places like Deer Valley are very high. Speaking of high, the one thing that I didn’t like about my very long weekend in Colorado was my 24 hours of altuitude sickness. I think the 2,000 foot difference in elevation might make Park City a little easier to adjust to. The city is a popular summer destination for Utah residents because it’s 7,000 foot elevation makes it 11 degrees cooler than Salt Lake City.

Lespri Resort Property Management can provide you with beautiful accomodations in the Deer Valley resort area and in Park City itself.

Starbucks has opened it’s first outlet in Cairo. I learned about this from a news channel that I will not name on my blog. The segment was quite critical of the company’s efforts at World domination.

Not surprisingly, nobody had the head office of Starbucks would talk to the journalist.

Something that Starbucks is faced with on the frontiers of its expansion are local businesses that have a similar level of service and a loyal base of customers. In Egypt this competitor is Cilantro. This Egypt based company is a member of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. It also is a good corporate citizen in that its operators strive to use products produced in the region as much as possible. the owners of the Middle Eastern franchisee of Starbucks is based in Kuwait.

Related Article in BusinessTodayEgypt

Laptops these days has a transformer which can be used with a wide range of voltages. If you live a sheltered life, you may not be aware that residential power supplies around the world vary a lot in voltage. They generally fall between 110 and 250 volts. The shape of outlets vary a great deal. The vary just enough top drive you crazy. There are at least ten different plug configuratons around the World.

I actually have the laptop that I am using right now plugged into an adapter that is plugged into another adapter that is plugged into the outlet. The adapters that we found in bulk at a low price are for ungrounded plugs. Most brands of laptops are grounded.

My wife just got a really good business idea. I can’t talk about it. The day before that I had a business idea that was monumentally better than most of my other ideas. Actually, as I was typing this, my wife found out that somebody is sort of already doing her idea

People are talking about the thing that my wife want to do. It is a really cool and REALLY big idea. It’s kind of ironic that her idea is very IRL based and my idea is totally web based. A few short years ago I was the guy working with my hands at a day job.