Travelers Logon for Advice Before Booking Travel

Guidebooks and travel magazines are helpful when trying to choose hotels, excursions, or a destination for your next vacation. Travel agents are even better. But what could be less biased and more helpful than no-holds-barred, word-of-mouth comments and comparisons of trips made by other travelers just like you. This is idea behind MyTripReport.com, a web site devoted to consumer reviews – called “trip reports” – that provides these honest assessments for destinations all over globe, sometimes with dozens of reviews for a single hotel or destination.

At MyTripReport.com members post their trip reports in three easy steps, and can even include photos of their trip within their report. The site is simple, uncluttered and very easy to navigate. Members can then send their family a link to their report and share their vacation and photos easily with their loved ones, friends, and even with strangers on message boards and within newsgroups. And trip reports are just as easy to locate; searching can be done by destination, resort, vacation theme, cruise ship, or by member name.

Out on the bread run

BREAD has an almost mythical status in France so a chance to go out on daily delivery run could not be missed. Marie Ange Lavoix was to be my guide and as we loaded up van, with still warm loaves, she also checked over her route. It was to take in surrounding villages, schools and farms with a longer stop at Villefranche du Périgord. “The bread is different compared to regular bread as it keeps fresh for longer,” Marie Ange explained. “This comes about from baking process so it means that many of homes will buy a loaf every couple of days.” As we hit road you could hear bread crusts crackling as they slowly cooled in back of van. But it also means that inside van it is warm, useful in winter but a problem during long hot summers. Soon we disappear up a single-track lane into woods and discovered a small cottage or group of farm buildings. And with a beep of horn someone would pop out of house and pay a couple of Euro for a large loaf, which measures about 18 inches. “Many of people we deliver to have been buying bread off us for years so they know they are going to get good quality,” Marie Ange said. “But times are changing and younger people especially, don’t buy their bread from boulanger they just visit supermarket every week.”