We're Engaged .... Hawaiian Honeymoon????

We are finally engaged - so, let the honeymoon planning begin! #1 pick for a romantic honeymoon? - HAWAII!!

So, I've just checked out this site: Deep Hawaii - Hawaiian Directory - A Hawaii portal and comprehensive directory of websites. It all looks good!

Lots of planning to do. Never mind the wedding - it's all about the honeymoon.

Perhaps we'll charter a boat...
Hawaii Fishing Charter - Experience heart pounding big game sport fishing. Oahu, Hawaii - with Capt Rusty Spencer: blue marlin, wahoo, mahimahi & yellowfin tuna. Friendly experienced crew aboard well equipped 31-foot Bertram

Kauai Activities and Tours - Kauai fun things to do - An online guide with the best prices on Helicopter tours, Tubing, ziplines, and much more.

Hawaii Vacation - A directory of Hawaii vacation and travel information for the state of Hawaii including Kauai, Maui, Molokai, Lanai, Oahu, and The Big Island.

Kauai Vacation RentalsKauai Vacation Rentals, Condos, Cottages, Homes, Accommodations, and Condo Hotel Resorts available for nightly rentals by owners.

Kauai Condos at Kuhio Shores
Beautiful 1 and 2 Bedroom Oceanfront condo rentals in Poipu, Kauai, Hawaii.

Vacation Rentals, Condos, Homes, and Villas
Vacation Rentals, Condos, Homes, and Villas by Summit Pacific.

Cabo San Lucas
Resorts, Condos, Villas, and Accommodations available for vacation rentals in Los Cabos Mexico.

Make Money Online in Order to Travel

In order to support myself and travel as much as I do – I need to make money – and lots of it. To make money online is what I've set out to do. If some search engine marketing techniques are applied to blogging – it's definitely possible to make money – and lots of it.

Search engine optimization has changed dramatically over the years. What worked well years ago to have a site rank in the search engines - no longer works. Today a website needs to have links from other quality websites – in order to be visible in search engines. I've been using Linkworth for several years to find websites offering text link advertising. Unlike web directories, which can be like link farms, Linkworth has a large selection of quality websites offering text ads. Links can really help a site rank in the search engines – and ranking well in the search engines – is an excellent way to make money online.

Sponsored Ad: Linkworth

Dreams of Going to Hawaii

What could be better than a Hawaiian vacation! We try and travel as much as possible, in fact whenever time and finances allow - we go away. There a many places we'd love to travel to - but, we know they have to be put on the back burner for the time being. I spend a got bit of time researching places on the Internet of where we can go next. Hawaii is on the top of the list.

I never really thought much about Hawaii, but recently I've come across several websites about Hawaii travel, that have me very curious. Here's a list of some of these sites:

Search the Hawaiian Islands
Big Island Super Guide - It's more like entertainment!
Hawaii Shark Adventures - Hawaii Shark Encounters gives you the opportunity to experience the beauty and excitement sharks in their native waters. Proud partners in a worldwide effort to improve the understanding of sharks.

Maui Homes and Townhouse Rentals - Choose oceanfront or ocean view homes and townhouses that offer the best combination of privacy, comfort and amenities for your Maui vacation as well as easy access to restaurants, shopping, golf courses, beaches and Lahaina Town. View photos and descriptions of the unique features that make our homes special.

Vacation Rentals By Owners

Oahu Travel Guide - Travel guide and planner to the island of Oahu.

Vacation Packages from Hawaii-Aloha.com

I also found a great site for planning my Hawaiian travel - http://www.traveldirectory.org.uk

Always a good idea - Travel Insurance - Obtain cheap annual medical health travel insurance now.

I'm sure we'll get to Hawaii one of these days - hopefully soon. I went to visit my brother in Atlanta recently. He went to Hawaii a few years ago and he's planning another Hawaii vacation for this summer. I asked him about Hawaii and he says everything you see in brochures and magazines that looks so amazing and you couldn't believe that it's really like that (they only photograph the best of Hawaii) - it's even better than it looks. There are private waterfalls, beautiful ocean views and more.

So, I have to start looking for a Hawaiian vacation package soon!

Philadelphia Hotels During the Learning Annex Expo Weekend

Lizzie was in Philadelphia this past weekend for the Real Estate and Wealth Expo at the Convention Center, which was held by the Learning Annex. This consisted of a bunch of speeches and classes on different investment vehicles. Although Lizzie and I did not buy into any of the packages, we did get a lot of info, and will be exploring some of these investment options in the future, and will be doing some blog post on the Pixelheadonline blog about these financial endeavors.

Lizzie made the arrangements for the weekend back around November, and we were planning on staying overnight only one night. But a friend of Lizzie's wanted to hang out in the city, so a month or so ago, Lizzie made reservation at another hotel, The Club Quarters for Friday night, since our Saturday hotel, The Sofitel Philadelphia had no vacancy. This worked out great, because it gave us the opportunity to review not one but two great Philadelphia hotels.

The Club Quarters Philadelphia

The Club Quarters can be described as a unique hotel with a club like atmosphere, which specializes in short to long term residential stays for business people. If we had been on an extended stay, our accommodations would have been very acceptable. The only problem that I had, but Lizzie did not was the noise. Our room was on the second floor, and the noise from the street woke me numerous times. But then again I am not a very sound sleeper. But the room was not like any other hotel room that I have ever stayed. The ceiling was height was well over 15 feet high, the windows which stretched to the top of the ceiling were old style arched windows.
The room also had came a small kitchenette, had a fridge, microwave, and coffee maker as well as dishes for warming up meals.
The bathroom was very simple, but very modern and clean.
The bed was ultra comfortable, so much so that in spite of being woken up numerous times by the noise of the city, I was easily able to fall back to sleep.
Lizzie and I would definitely go back to the Philadelphia Club Quarters again. I however, would like to stay on one of the upper floors to see if it would be less noisy.

The Sofitel Hotel

Of the two hotels that we stayed at this past weekend, the Sofitel was by far the better Philadelphia hotel. It was very plush and highly decorated. The bathroom which had both a tub and shower also had French Doors. This makes sense since Sofitel is a French Hotel. While staying the night we(well I did at least)enjoyed watching The Good Shepherd. Lizzie actually was asleep after the first 15 minutes. It might have been a little too boring for her. The next morning, at 8am, we were awoken by the room service who was delivering our morning coffee and juice.
According to Lizzie, the Philadelphia Sofitel was on the same level as the Philadelphia Lowes, which was Lizzie's favorite Hotel of 2006.
In addition to posts in the Pixelheadonline.com blog about the Expo, the restaurants that we ate at during the Real Estate Expo weekend will be reviewed by Lizzie on Fatladysingz.com, as well as Thegrubhound.com.

Courtyard Marriott - Knoxville, Tenn

Lizzie headed north in the afternoon after stopping off at Atlanta's Varsity for Slaw dogs and Chili dogs. Not wanting to come back the same way, we headed to Knoxville, Tennessee and then over to the Blue Ridge Parkway today, which we will take further south.
Upon reaching the Courtyard Marriott in Knoxville, Lizzie was very unhappy with the accommodations. The furniture in the room was very dated and limited. The chair and desk are not well matched, making typing very awkward, and tedious at best. Thankfully, we won't be staying here for an extended period of time, because if we did, Lizzie would surely come down with a severe case of carpel tunnel.
The bathroom was little more than a box with a shower. The normal curved shower rod found in all the updated hotel rooms was no were to be found. The expected patio was little more than a window over looking the parking lot. The entertainment center which consisted of a TV on a dresser, much like the bathroom was reminiscent of a cheap motel rather than a 3 star hotel that is expected when staying at a Courtyard Marriott.
If not for the friendliness of the staff and the splendid swimming facilities, our stay would have hopefully been easy to forget.

Corn Grills At Emory

Lizzie cooked for the Emory students on a corn grill on Friday 13th of April. The hot Georgia sun gave us a good sun burn, and brought out a fair number of Emory students, for whom Lizzie eagerly grilled several hundred veggie burgers, veggie dogs, and chicken dogs. The Earthinhand corn grill worked splendidly, and many of the Earth festival visitors were very impressed. The hospitality of Lizzie's brother was very much appreciated. Lizzie, her daughter, and I were treated like royalty.
We also dined out on more than one occasion, and these events will be written about on Thegrubhound.com at a latter date.

Corn Grill Goes to Atlanta

It appears that we're taking an unexpected trip to Atlanta. We were just contacted by Emory University to bring our Corn Grill from EarthinHand Corn Stoves to the GA Earth Fair at Emory University on April 13th. So far all we really know is that the fair is Friday April 13th from 12 to 3:30 on McDonough Field, in the center of campus.

A few days ago we receive this message from an undergraduate student - "Emory Environmental Alliance is currently organizing an Earth Fair on Friday April 13th. I know that is really soon but I would love to have the Earth in Hand Corn Grill represented some how. Your business is amazing and it would be great if we could educate our campus on alternative fueled grills."

Of course, we're always excited to travel just about anywhere, but being able to help out with the corn grills and stoves is an added benefit.

So, we'll probably head out on Thursday morning before sunrise, with the grill in the back of the Honda Odyssey and drive the 800+ miles to Atlanta, Georgia. We undecided about a few things as of yet... do we take the two kids that would really like to go? and do we stop Thursday night or drive straight through? Most of the time that we travel - we fly, so we don't want to take the children, but now we're driving and I do have family in Atlanta that the kiddies would love to see. As for the hotel, we may just have to stop and the kids may drive us crazy and we'll need the break.

More to come....

Airbus A380 in America

I was reading the headline stories this morning on Yahoo, when the article Airbus A380 makes 1st flight to America, caught my eye because of the A380's enormous wingspan, which is a little less than the length of a football field, and is able to carry over 500 people. Wow, that is one huge jet.

As I was reading the Airbus article, I could not help to think of the Titanic. Hopefully this was just because the Kate Winslet movie was on yesterday, and not because of I am experiencing a premonition. The full service A380 Airbus is a doubledecker jet that has a better fuel economy than smaller jets that are in service and will save the owners more than 10% per seat in fuel.

Airbus, currently has 166 orders for the A380 from 15 different airlines, including Asian airlines. I wonder if Lizzie's favorite airline, Cathay Pacific is one of the airlines that has an A380 order. I asked Lizzie if she would like to or if she would be afraid to fly in such a large plane, and she said she prefers flying in large planes to the small planes like Cessnas. Perhaps we can take an A380 next time we fly to Whistler for a skiing vacation.

Going to Gananoque

We've been to Canada and Gananoque before, but we've always stayed at the small fishing camp on Red Horse lake that we love so much. Our plans were to go back to the cabins at Shawmere for one week this coming summer, but we were thinking of actually bumping it up to two weeks. But that may pose some problems... and that's what this next weekend is about.

I've never had much success with technology in Canada - I'm sure it's just fine and they are as technologically capable as anywhere in the US, but I've only experienced difficulties. So, the thought of being without a computer or access to the Internet - my lifeline - for an entire week - let alone TWO - sent shivers up my spine. We contacted Chuck Shaw - proprietor of Shawmere - and he assured us that his little village is a "hot spot" and we will be fine.

Well, still leery of this, we decided that we have to check this out before we commit to spending any length of time at the fishing village this summer. This brings us to the trip we'll be taking this coming weekend to Gananoque. We decided that we MUST check this out and it was both a perfect opportunity to get away and without children AND to see if Shawmere really is a hot spot.

I did some research and I couldn't find a hotel in Gan (what it's know as to the local folk) that seemed as if it would be adequate. But, having been there before and being very impressed with the town - I remembered the Gananoque Inn. The Inn is charming, old and best of all - right on the St. Lawrence River in the heart of the Thousand Islands of Canada.

I found several packages offered by the Inn and the best looking offer for our needs was the Rendezvous Package, which includes:

Two Nights of Accommodation
Sparkling Wine and a Cheese Selection waiting in Your Room
Two Candle Lit Dinners (at the FABULOUS Gananoque Inn Dining Room!)
Two Breakfasts
Popcorn and a Movie

Needless to say - I'm excited!

And, if the Internet is a go at Shawmere - we'll be heading to Canada for two weeks summer 2007!

DoubleTree for a Hockey Tournament

Lizzie will be staying at the Doubletree Hotel Downtown Wilmington next Saturday night. We have the privilege of escorting my son to his tournament this up coming weekend for the Delaware Jr Blue Hens, Tim Roman & Paul Guyer Memorial Ice Hockey Tournament. Reservations for the Doubletree Hotel were made via Hotels.com.

Hershey Lodge

The Hershey Lodge was the location that Lizzie and I took refuge during a winter storm last night. Well, there was a storm, we really did not need to stay here, but we did need to get away. Lizzie has wanted to get away for some time now. She had initially wanted to go to Puerto Rico, and had found a package deal at the El Conquistador, which is either a four or four and half star resort, but I was a party pooper and put a kabosh to the plan. However, she is determined to stay there in the near future. Other plans that we have rummaging around include various other hotels in the Philadelphia area, to include the two casinos in the metropolitan area that we have yet to visit. She also was thinking about going to the Delaware shore.
Hershey, however, was the destination for last nights stay, which was badly needed to recharge the batteries. If I don't get her out of the house, she continues to work when ever she is awake.
So yesterday after church, with an impending snow storm, I suggested we go away for the night, since school for her one son was not a problem. The choices were Willow Valley Farms resort, which Lizzie had visited years ago with the family for numerous visits. Next was Philly, but Hershey won out after looking on line. She then called the Hershey Hotel, and found out that rooms with a King were available at both the Hershey Hotel and the Lodge. The Lodge is about a hundred dollars cheaper, and is a little more relaxed atmosphere. The Hershey Hotel, which is easily a 5 star hotel is on our list of hotels to review. According to Ninette Petrasch, the assistant Restaurant Manager at the FourBay Restaurant, were we dined last evening,(see Thegrubhound.com for a review of the Hershey Lodge's FourBay Restaurant) the Hotel is a beautiful place to visit, especially in the spring when the gardens are blooming. One difference between the Hotel and the Lodge is that at dinner, the Hotel requires men to wear a jacket and tie, were as the Lodge, informal clothing is perfectly acceptable.
Upon checking in at the Lodge, a bag man helped us to get our bags out of our car, and a bellhop escorted us up to our room and brought the bags into our luxurious Hershey Lodge room. The room is equipped with not only a King size bed, but also a mini fridge, single serve coffee pot, Television with HBO and standard cable, and also wireless Internet access, which is available in not only the rooms, but also in the Lodge Lobby. The Hershey Lodge/Convention center has an indoor swimming pool, two hot tubs, an arcade, a fitness center, a gift shop, five restaurants, and a Lobby bar.
Of the facilities that we utilized only the Forebay Restaurant for dinner last night and the Cocoa Beanery for breakfast this morning. We did wander around the facility and locate the other locations, but chose to relax in our room while watching Lizzie's Favorite, Law and Order, of which a marathon was underway.

Restaurant Reviews

Restaurant review posts will be made at our new blog Thegrubhound.com, which is starting out as a Restaurant review blog, but may evolve over time into a food related portal. The site is pretty raw at present, but with the addition of a new logo, a food related sites directory, and the cooperative efforts of numerous food critics the site should do very well. The culinary staff of Thegrubhound.com will be spear headed by a seasoned Chef, currently known as Duhchef. Interviews with the DuhChef will be forthcoming on Thegrubhound.com.

Restaurant review posts that have been made on the Lizzie Bean Travel Blog, will be moved to Thegrubhound.com.

Diet & Weight Loss Blog

I've begun a new blog to help with my annual weight loss efforts. But this year I'm going to do a different diet program each month and after six months and six different diet programs - I will review each program to see which I liked best. I'm starting with the Right Size Smoothies. Check it out at FatLadySingz.com.

Travel Blog Year in Review

Lizzie Bean has done a bit of traveling this year and has visited many memorable places and eaten many fine meals.
List of trips we took in no particular order to the best of my recollection.

• Our first major trip of the year was a Ski trip to Whistler, BC at the beginning of the year. Fabulous trip which was our favorite trip of the year.
  
• We took many Philadelphia trips and we attempted to stay at different hotels on each visit. Loews was nominated as our favorite hotel to stay at in Philly for the 2006 year.
• The worst trip was easily a day trip we had to Washington D.C.
• Numerous trips to Winston-Salem, North Carolina
• Several trips to Red Horse Lake located in Ontario
• Our major family vacation to the Avon, N.C.
• We made one trip to Atlantic City, which we are not too eager to repeat. The hotel we stayed at was truly the worst hotel we stayed at this past year. We both would prefer to gamble in Vegas, then again, who wouldn't.
• Our Las Vegas trip this past October were we stayed at the MGM Grand, who downgraded our room and would have charged us the same without giving us any comps if we had not complained. Also had a bad experience with the Philly airport on this trip when they lost my bag and would still be lost if I had not done some Internet research of my own to find it.

Our Favorites for the Year

• As mentioned above, our favorite Hotel in Philadelphia for 2006 was Loews
• Our favorite trip was the Whistler ski trip
• My favorite sandwich was the Zep from Eve's Lunch
• Lizzie's favorite burger was from the Continental Martini Bar
• The best Cheese Cake was really hard to pin down, because we have rarely had a bad one, but I do believe the best of the year is going to Old Man Raffertys in New Brunswick,NJ.
• Favorite restaurant was the restaurant in Whistler was the Rimrock Cafe.
• Favorite wine of the year was the wine we had at the Rimrock, which was a Famous Gate Pinot Noir.
  
• Favorite Airline for the year is Cathay Pacific.

Sheraton Society Hill

Out in front of the Sheraton Society Hill
Originally uploaded by Emperor Anton.

Hotel Reservations were made at Sheraton Society Hill, where we went for the first Friday at the beginning of the month. A really great time was had by both Lizzie and I. We got to check out lots of great new artists in the Philadelphia area. Further posts about that adventure will be forthcoming. The back log on our adventures is huge. The Sheraton at Society Hill was great, we love its location and the friendliness of the staff. We would make hotel reserations there again for sure.

Hotel Reservations from Hotelreservations.com

Making hotel reservations online for traveling is becoming more and more common as ecommerce becomes an everyday part of our lives. In 2005, online travel was projected to be around 65 Billion dollar industry, so I am sure it is well over 70 billion by now. Lizzy makes reservations online at a number of other hotel reservation sites, and usually ends up going with what ever site has the better deal. However, with the guarantee of a 100 dollar rebate, it seems like HotelReservation.com is making an attempt to persuade us online travel shoppers to come and use their travel site.
With Hotelreservations.com you can save up to 70% off of your reservations and then there is also the $100 rebate if you make a reservation on the Internet. Potentially getting money back if you find an online reservation cheaper at anther site is pretty cool. However some conditions do apply, so make sure you read the small print. But hey, 100 bucks is a hundred bucks, so you might as well give it a try. I am sure that if the site does not do as it says, it won't be around for long.
In addition to making reservations for hotels, flights, cars, vacation rentals or combination vacation packages, many other options are available. Just searching through the site gives me some ideas for future trips. I particularly like the bed and breakfast section...some of those bed and breakfasts sound too cool. Another groovy feature of the site is the destination guides which they may not have for every city, but it appears that many are, and it seems like more are being added all the time.
So I took the search bar for a ride and typed in Philadelphia for New Years eve. The hotel reservations that were available included accommodations from $59- $350, with a few of the places that Lizzy and I have stayed at being discounted more than when we had stayed there. Well I don't do the reservations for our travels, Lizzy does that, but if it is cheaper she will use it. However, HotelReservations.com does not have an affiliate program, so we would more than likely check our affiliate partners first, and then we would do a comparison. I will remind her when making our next reservations to use the Hotelreservation.com site as one of the comparison sites.

Critiquing the site from a webmaster stand point, with an SEO Skew, the site does need some work to be competitive. The site is currently nowhere in the SERP's for the search term "hotel reservations" for which they want to be found. But it can be found for its name and for I am assuming its owners name. For example, Title tags need quite a bit of work, (Hotel reservations is in the title tag on the home page) the site name is used in them way too much. That's fine if you want to rank for HotelReservations.com or Barry Sowder, but it would seem that they would have their keywords in the front of the title on all of their pages, not just the home page. Far to valuable SEO real estate to be wasted on the site name or the owners name. Also, for wanting to rank for the search term "Hotel reservations", the site should have internal links with this as the link text, even perhaps in the top navigation. And were is the site map to be found? Optimize that site better for a better ROI. tsk tsk. Your SEO company must be slacking.

One last thing, if you have a blog, you may also be able to participate in a paid program they have for reviewing their site, which seems to be a really unique opportunity for bloggers. This site is not eligible for it because this post is a paid for advertisement.

CD's Place Boyertown, PA

CD's Place Menu
Originally uploaded by Emperor Anton.

This a menu of Lizzies favorite Boyertown Diner, CD's Place, that she visits atleast twice a week...once being almost every Saturday morning at 8am. Ask for Lizzie's omlete. Having slaw dogs and good music, makes CD's Place Lizzies Favorite Boyertown Diner.

Slot Machines Prize Money Paris Casino, Las Vegas

Moola!
Originally uploaded by arkworld.

Oh how sweet it would have come home from Vegas with all this loot. This is a photo according to Arkworld " is the one million dollar prize money for this slot tournament the Paris Hotel & Casino will be holding." Thats weird, how can you have a slots tournament. I can see a poker tournament, that actually involves a little skill. What skill is there in putting money into a machine? I picture little old laddies making lots of money at the slotts. I mayself had a few minor slot windfalls, but nothing that would pay for a good meal in Vegas.

Well I will have to keep my eye out for info on the slot tournament.

Art Galleries of Philadelphia

First Friday of every month is when the all the galleries in Philadelphia have openings for the Art loving public of the Philadelphia area. First Friday is concentrated in Northern Liberties, which is a section of Philadelphia located near Penns Landing and Society Hill. Were we will be staying at the Sheraton Society Hill this coming Friday evening. Lizzie has a friend, Elaine B Douds, who will be exhibiting her oil paintings at the Artist's House Gallery, with a reception from 5-830pm on Dec. 1st. An additional reception will be held on Sunday Dec. 3rd from 130-4pm. Elaine specializes in realistic still life paintings. We had last seen Elaine at the show she did with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts at the Gregg Conference Center gallery. We hope to get to spend a little more time with Lizzie's old friend, while viewing art galleries full of works of some of the Philadelphia areas new budding artists.

Thanksgiving Holiday

Our Thanksgiving plans were changed the week before. Due to some family problems, we decided it was best to stay home and have a traditional Thanksgiving. This was probably a very smart thing indeed. Lizzie and I worked most of the day making the meal(well Lizzie did most of the work) I was responsible for prepping the Turkey and for carving. I looked on Yahoo and got directions from Epicurious on how to prepare and carve the Turkey. The twenty pound bird was stuffed with the famous White Castle stuffing recipe, which everyone loved.
We did make a few little trips to a local restaurant, Durangos for dinner several times over the long holiday weekend. We especially had a great time on Monday after Thanksgiving because it is pasta night along with being open mike night. Great toons and the best Italian food in Boyertown along with an amazing selection of deserts which always includes at least one heavinly chocolate desert. Lizzie's favorite is the Dark Side of The Moon. As much as I love their deserts, I think my favorite dish is their Sausage Marinara. Since it was Monday, my favorite dish was a special.