Greek Mojitos and gyros in Mykonos

Last May I had the opportunity to go on a travel agent familiarization trip, aka fam trip. All that means is that I sometimes get to go on a trip with a bunch of travel agents and tour operators to become familiar with the product so I can sell the product more confidentally. This particular trip brought me to Greece.

The trip started with a direct flight from Toronto to Athens on Air Transat. If any of you have flown on Air Transat, you may have either heard of their answer to First Class which they call Club Class. It is a much more confortable way to travel (more on that in a later post) but I opted to upgrade my economy class seat to include their Option Plus which allowed me to receive certain perks. I arrived in Athens the following morning, not having slept at all on the flight over. I was too excited and too busy reading "Fifty Shades of Grey" to be able to sleep. From the airport, our group left for the pier in Athens to board our Louis Cruise ship to make our way to Mykonos. At this point all we had seen in Athens was the airport and rush hour traffic.

After a few hours on board the ship and a short nap, I was in Mykonos. We only spent the evening there and the better part of it was checking out a few hotels. After all, I was "working". So not complaining.

The first hotel we went to was the Mykonian Ambassador where they greeted us with a special Greek Mojito. Normally, I am not a fan of Mojitos but the ones I had at this hotel was delicious. It had mint and sugar and a Greek liquor in it called Skinnos. It has been a great addition to my basement bar.

After we were done with hotel visits, we had some time to go into town to grab some food, shop and just take a look around. I managed to get some souvenir shopping done and had my first authentic Greek food which was also the first time I had a gyro.

Next, I will tell you about Kusadasi and Ephesus.

Conch fritters, Smithwicks and where you need to go on your next vacation...

This blog post has been a long time coming. Mainly because I took these photos on a trip to the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos in December 2010.

What can I say, I am really just starting to get into the routine of blogging on a regular basis, maybe in this case, only, the saying that better late then never is accurate.

So back in December of 2010, I was able to visit the island of Great Exuma in the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos and Nassau, Bahamas to see a few different all-inclusive properties of a chain you may have heard of...the one and only Sandals.

Luxury Included Vacation is not only a part of their branding, but it is there motto and what they are known for and let me just tell you, if you were to visit either a Sandals property or Beaches property, that is the type of vacation experience you will have. Some of the highlights for me were the beaches. Sandals has a way of acquiring the most beautiful properties in the Caribbean and the beaches are amazing. The food was out of this world. While I was at Beaches Turks and Caicos I had the opportunity to try duck and in Nassau at the Sandals Royal Bahamian I tried conch fritters. For those of you who know me, you know that I am a picky eater, so for me to go out and try these food items and to admit that they were pretty good is saying alot.

The attention to detail that I saw while wandering around the properties was impeccable. They offer a pub at their hotels that serves domestic and imported beverages such as Smithwicks and Guiness (included, by the way) which is awesome and they could have just left it at that and had pub constructed with locally produced materials or North American materials, but they didn't. They actually went to auction houses in Great Britain and Ireland and purchased dismantled pub furniture and fixtures to bring to their resorts.

If you are thinking about a vacation spot for just the heck of it or for a special occassion like a wedding, bachelorette party or a honeymoon, I urge you to consider Sandals and Beaches.

The Start of 2013 and Travel Thursdays

Happy New Year everyone!!

It has been a busy start to the new year for me, at least with my day job. And 2013 will be a very big year for me.

Not only do I plan on some home renovations including decorating my living room, hopefully installing hard wood flooring throughout the better part of our main floor and some major landscaping for our backyard, but I am turning 30!!! Yikes, it even looks scary in writing.

I will also be doing some travelling in 2013, which is pretty exciting.

There have been a couple mentions of my day job on the blog which I haven't really gotten into for a few different reasons. But I think now, with the start of new year (and blog schedule) is the time to get into it.

I am very fortunate to have three jobs that I am passionate about. The first, and most important is being a mom to my four year old son, Braeden and a loving and supportive wife to my husband Adam. The second is part-time wedding and boudoir photographer and the third (which pays the bills) is a full-time travel agent. Yes, I am very fortunate. I am new to all three jobs and in some cases, learning as I go.

So with this passion for travel and having a career that revolves around it, I am again very fortunate to have the opportunity to travel to some incredible places. In 2012, I had the opportunity to travel to Greece with Transat Holidays, which was amazing.

With trying to be more organized in 2013, I have come up with a new blog schedule which will include regular, weekly posts about travel. So to start, over the next several weeks, I will be posting about my trip to Greece. Of course, I have "some" photos from the nine day trip.

Stay tuned....