EA Radio Travel Podcast extraordinaryadventures

Scott Stein, the owner of and travel planner for Extraordinary Adventures (https://www.myextraordinaryadventures.com/travel-podcast.html), shares 15 things you may or may not have known about him, all so you can get to know your friendly neighborhood travel planner a little better.
Music: www.bensound.com
(The show transcript is being provided by YouTube's automatic transcriber. Please forgive any inaccuracies or errors.)
hey everybody and welcome to the 16th episode of EA radio I'm Scott from extraordinary adventures and this week I thought we'd have a little bit of fun get to know your friendly neighborhood travel planner yes it's me one of the things that I firmly believe in is is having a more personal relationship with my service providers my product people I don't feel like you can put your faith in something so personal as a travel plan in someone that you don't really know in somebody that is distant or anonymous or like an online travel agency not to knock the them Expedia and Orbitz and all these things but you know that's very transactional so if you're gonna be in a position like mine you're in a very personal business and I feel like I would want to get to know my travel planner I would want to like make sure that he was in my corner understood my needs and I think the best way to do that is to once in a while be a little silly be a little quote/unquote unprofessional and share some stuff about yourself I think this whole idea from 30 40 50 years ago professionalism I think it's gone out the window in this day of social media instant access access to everything you have to stand out in some way and the weight that I think the best way to stand out is to be incredibly genuine to be transparent honest connect with your folks and that's something I do you'll see if you're not yet a client my clients already can attest to this I become Facebook friends with you I give you access to me I give up I like access to you I like to see what you're up to I like for you to see what I'm up to next week if you have a question 11 o'clock at night if I'm sitting there you know watching TV or whatever usually I'll answer your question 11 o'clock at night I don't I don't have those hard and fast 9 to 5 monday-friday hours you know I respect your privacy in your time and you respect mine and that's it I mean it's a it's a great relationship but I think you only get that through creating rapport so I thought today would be fun to again tell you things that help you to get you to know your friend neighborhood travel planner that's me so 15 things you may or may not know about me let's get started first one I think everybody knows this one but the single most important thing in my life is my wife Laura we've been together I was 18 she was 17 that was 26 years ago so you do the math figure out our ages we were babies I mean truly really really young we we went to different high schools on the mound met each other it was called cruising Hempstead Turnpike side of the road parking lot a bunch of kids would hang out and and meet people and date and whatever and that's how we met it was a great it was great first month she was supposed to leave to go to Indiana and we just fell in love and have been love ever since she came right back one month later and said I'm not leaving him and her father was upset and her mother was upset and everybody's everybody was upset but you know we clearly showed them prove them wrong because you know our wedding song is just still the one by chennai 20 because she's still the one and i'm happy to say that we are have beaten the odds of divorce in this country i think it's again because a my my philosophy our philosophy of the way we connect with people being genuine having open communication and transparency the same thing I do with my clients we do with each other so I think that is made for a really really open honest environment that has allowed for the flourishing of two people who be worse wit

Scott Stein, the owner of and travel planner for Extraordinary Adventures (https://www.myextraordinaryadventures.com/travel-podcast.html), is joined by his lovely wife, Laura, to discuss the virtues and drawbacks of fast travel vs. slow travel.
Music: www.bensound.com
(The show transcript is being provided by YouTube's automatic transcriber. Please forgive any inaccuracies or errors.)
 [Applause] [Music] hello everybody this is scott again from extraordinary adventures EA radio welcome you today to the 15th episode and today's episode we're gonna kick off with a question we got from George down in Lakeland it was curious about he's going parents going out Ireland and Scotland then he's curious about how much time he should spend there so I said you know what this would be a really great opportunity to discuss fast travel versus slow travel first the definitions and second the examples and I said you know this is a topic that's not heavy in research I thought it'd be a great opportunity for our guest host to come back and and join us hi everyone okay well that's the show for today though much all right so fast travel versus slow travel really for me the definition I think boils down to unfortunately the American days-off whatever they call that vacation time schedule we all get X amount two three four weeks a year whatever we get but even if we get four weeks a year very often we can't take more than a week or two at one time so even if you include that with you know weekends with that maybe a holiday the most you're gonna get up to is eight nine ten days that to me is fast travel there's not a lot of places you can go you can go to one city you can go to Rome and maybe you know day trip out to a few spots in a week because remember ten days you got to spend the whole day flying and getting over there a whole day flying and coming back so that's now you're down to eight days Rome itself is gonna take you two or three days and you make three or four day trips that's your trip you can't see all of Italy in a week slow travel on the other hand is what Lauren I do when we go we try to go for 16 18 20 days at a time so now you're in the country for two weeks three weeks at a time now that's giving you some time so now you can hit multiple cities you know but you really still can't do too much but that's just the time definition best travel versus slow travel to me more is also a philosophical definition than just a time one and four for me the fast travel is those folks which I've done it Lauren I did it when we were in DC you know it was a checklist travel check seen it check seen it check seen it check seen it and you just move and you move and you move you going yeah I've seen it done it been there then there's slow travel where very often would slow travel you don't even know if you care if you've seen it and done it it's about immersing yourself in the authenticity and and the culture of your travel of your destination so a slow travel may look like you go to Dublin for a month for two months you literally are in one city for a month or two and you're checking out all the neighbourhoods you go into the different grocery stores and then you you in that case you usually will be getting an apartment or some kind of a timeshare thing you're not gonna get a hotel because you're gonna be there for a while and it's really about getting to know the people and people getting to know you if you're doing that let's say in more of a natural spot so not a city like like Dublin but let's say you go out to you know the Ring of Kerry and you're out there and you're with the people you know maybe you can't spend two months out there maybe that's just too much time so you have to define slow travel also by how much there is to see and do so that's fast travel versus slow travel in terms of definitions now the gentleman asked about George asked about Ireland versus versus our Ireland and Scotland so Laura give us some because we're re

Scott Stein, the owner of and travel planner for Extraordinary Adventures (https://www.myextraordinaryadventures.com/travel-podcast.html), explains that using a travel specialist is a lot like using a medical specialist - you don't go to a neurosurgeon to fix your teeth!
Music: www.bensound.com
 
(The show transcript is being provided by YouTube's automatic transcriber. Please forgive any inaccuracies or errors.)
[Applause] [Music] hey everybody this is Scott from extraordinary adventures again coming to you with the 14 episode of EA radio first just wanted to say that I've got my phone ringer turned off my computer's turned off my other phone ring is turned off my cuckoo clock is turned off my dogs are all asleep so hopefully we can sound more professional in this episode we'll get it figured out one day anywho so on to the show I'm entitle in this one you don't go to a neurosurgeon to fix your teeth also known as use a travel specialist so first let's define what a specialist is just a dictionary definition it's a person who concentrates primarily on a particular subject or activity a person highly skilled in a specific and/or restricted field so basically this is me now not the definition basically it's someone who knows more and more about less and less kind of a jokey way to think about it but that's what it is really so let's let's look I'm gonna use this uhm the medical example because that's when people think of specialists is one of the things I think about is medical specialists so I'm gonna use that analogy throughout this episode with the general practitioner they have eight years nine years whatever it is of studies and exams and and they're proficient at being a general practitioner so they know a little bit about a lot of stuff and you get to go to them when you have issues whatever some which they'll be able to handle and some of which they'll realize their limitations and they'll say hey you should go to a specialist you should hire ologist neurosurgeon orthopedic surgeon skin doctor you know whatever they'll make that Deborah referral and sometimes if you have an HMO as opposed to a PPO I think that's how that works you can just go directly to the specialist because you already know hey this is probably above what my general practitioner can do same thing is true in trouble there are some what I would call like common cold travel things like booking you on let's say a Royal Caribbean cruise not the hardest thing to do could you do it on your own yes are you probably still better off having somebody help you with that just like an all-inclusive vacation in the islands could you do it on your own yeah but do you really know every cruise line out there do you really know every all-inclusive out there and what would be a best fit for you so you know honestly why take the chance you're better off using a travel agent Travel professional even in those cases just much like the the common cold you could self diagnose yourself self diagnosis you could self diagnose um and you could self medicate but is that really the best course of action maybe in some cases maybe but in other cases you know it might be worth it to get little expert advice so that's that's the general practitioner example but if on the other hand you absolutely know that you want to get you know a nose job if you're gonna get a nose job you're not going to your general practitioner you got to go to a myofascial surgeon I'm not sure who does that actually but if you're gonna go for a nose job you go to the nose job doctor likewise if you're gonna do something extraordinary in travel you're going to want to go to a specialist and more importantly again you're not gonna want to go to a neurosurgeon to fix your teeth both neurosurgery and Dentistry our specialties if you want neurosurgery done you go to the neurosurgeon if you want dentistry done you go to the dentist so the same thing in travel for instance I'll take I'll take the negative a

Scott Stein, the owner of and travel planner for Extraordinary Adventures (https://www.myextraordinaryadventures.com/travel-podcast.html), shares the lessons he learned from planning group cruises.
Music: www.bensound.com
 
(The show transcript is being provided by YouTube's automatic transcriber. Please forgive any inaccuracies or errors.)
[Applause] [Music] hey everybody this is Scott from extraordinary adventures welcoming you to the 13th episode of e a radio today I wanted to discuss something near and dear to us here lessons I learned from planning a group cruise why is that so near and dear well just today just yesterday no today we finalized the final payment for the final passenger on an affinity group cruise that we that we planned over the last couple years and I thought that today was a great time to teach the lessons that I learned from planning a group groups so that if you don't use stern adventures to plan your vacations which I don't know why you wouldn't that seems insane to me but if you choose not to I wanted to give you the information that you if you could do it without us hopefully again you'll come come to us so let's start off I put everything in chronological order meaning things you're gonna want to think about from the day this idea dawns and news that hey I'd love to go cruise with my friends because cruising with friends is definitely better than cruising alone think about it if you go on a cruise one of the things for most people is meeting other people at the bar or at their dining table or or at the nightclub or wherever they happen to be they bump into people at the spa the owner of a hot tub that you start chatting and you wanted Uppal people that you become like friends with like in real life not just on the cruise you become Facebook friends you and then you maybe cruise with them again and that was that that was the I forget the word on family the inspiration for why I did this one it wasn't because I wanted necessarily cruise with the people that I knew in my personal life right here right here in Orlando but they were welcome to it was to meet up again with the people that I had cruised with over the last several years I wanted to get together again so when that idea pops in your head that that's what you want to do you'd love to get together again with friends that you haven't seen in a while or maybe you want to do something locally let's a bachelorette or a bachelor party or maybe you're doing something for work there's a million different reasons why the family of our union crews the million different reasons why you might plan a group Cruise where everybody goes together so this could be used by anybody so you decide you're gonna do this what's the first thing to do okay I'm gonna make a suggestion select the cruise line the ship and the sale date by executive decision not democracy you might think oh well I want everybody have a say in this out in the other well if there's 10 15 20 30 people in your group and everyone gets to say you're never gonna get through this process they can't get a say in every single thing that happens what you're going to want to do though through your executive decision is figure out what cruise ship cruise line price point time of the year all these are the factors that go into it are gonna benefit the most amount of people so for instance probably gonna be harder to get people to go on Christmas it's probably gonna be harder to maybe get somebody to go on a Caribbean cruise during hurricane season so you have to think of different times of the year that people maybe maybe you know a lot of your friends like let's say you're going on a teacher group and teachers all have off in the summer so maybe you make it in the summer maybe you don't make it in January when everybody's in school and can't get off so you just think about everybody that's in your group think about their particular needs the best you can and then pick something to the best

Scott Stein, the owner of and travel planner for Extraordinary Adventures (https://www.myextraordinaryadventures.com/travel-podcast.html), gets on his soapbox to preach about how important travel is and The Not-So-Unintended Benefits Of Travel.
Music: www.bensound.com
 
(The show transcript is being provided by YouTube's automatic transcriber. Please forgive any inaccuracies or errors.)
[Applause] [Music] hey everybody this is Scott much Jordan area ventures again and I'd like to welcome you to the twelfth episode of EA radio today I wanted to quickly discuss the health benefits of travel everyone knows that they love to travel it's wonderful it's fun it's it's you know something we all strive to do but have you really considered then it's not just would you call it a an optional thing I think that people overlook the significance of travel and leisure time rest and relaxation but I believe they are essential to our well-being in fact I'm gonna read something here according to a joint study from the global Commission on Aging and trans America Center for retirement studies in partnership with the US Travel Association traveling actually keeps you healthier the study found that women who vacation at least twice a year should was significantly lower risk suffering heart attack than those who only travel every six years or so the same is true for men men who do not take an annual vacation to a 20 percent higher risk of death a 30% greater risk of heart disease now I could go on pull more and more facts off the internet but you can do it yourself you can go to Google check it out left and right all of them page that the pages of data that's been compiled of how important not just going to sleep not just doing you know yoga those are awesome too but taking a vacation getting out of your typical routine your typical space I think that for me it really boils down to four personal things factors that I don't know that if I didn't travel if I if these things would be where they're at you know for me and I know that when I don't travel for a certain amount of time I definitely see these factors coming up so let me let me go to the first one I think the first and most obvious one is stressful we all work probably too hard most of us the American Way of life is to work too hard we give up so many vacation days every year we just change change them in for money we are the least vacationed Society first-class world society everyone else takes more vacations and thus everyone else has passports we have like I know 30% of Americans or something like that passports where is like you go to other countries in Europe bache they all do and they don't even need it to get from you know all those Schengen countries they can go all throughout the EU without them and yet they all have them they all travel there's a reason for that and they have figured something out I think that we haven't figured out and that is you got to get out of your space to unwind to to take the pent up stuff and get rid of it and I don't think you can do that just sitting at home I don't think you can do that go to the movies or going for a nature hike I think you need to get out so for me that's something that's that's a big one is that you know life life is beautiful wonderful I love it overall very happy guy but I have stress you know I'm a small business owner I have an aging dog who you know gives us a challenge too we love him he's been around 14 and a half years Albert in case you don't know some of you dude some you don't he's pretty amazing but it's stressful having an old dog and of course we have all just stresses that everyone else does money and paying the bills and all these things you need to get away from all that all of it even your lovely beloved dog you need to take yourself away for a couple weeks and and unwind but I also think for me the next one up is probably more important and I think I don't put these in order that one would be quote unquo

Scott Stein, the owner of and travel planner for Extraordinary Adventures (https://www.myextraordinaryadventures.com/travel-podcast.html), explains what "Adventure Travel," "Hard Adventure Travel," and "Soft Adventure Travel" are and looks at whether or not you'll be a good fit for them.
Music: www.bensound.com
 
(The show transcript is being provided by YouTube's automatic transcriber. Please forgive any inaccuracies or errors.)
[Applause] [Music] hey everybody this is Scott from extraordinary adventures and you are listening to the eleventh episode of EA radio today I am not joined by my lovely better-half Laura she's got a lot of no plate so I'm gonna tackle this one by myself I thought today would be a good thing to talk about would be a topic I think that people are a little confused about it's uh adventure travel what is adventure travel what is a hard adventure travel over what is a soft adventure travel things like that so I think adventure travel you know it kind of brings to mind a thought when I say adventure travel you basically have a picture in your mind hiking biking camping snowboarding skiing scuba diving whitewater rafting etc there's an implication that to participate in adventure travel you have to be very physically fit like I know personally I wouldn't try climbing a straight face cliff I'm just not that fit but that's not all that adventure travel is adventure travel can include soft adventure travel as well I'm gonna give a little quote here that I loved it's as some of us take travel a little further we don't want to watch the world from afar we want to get up close and touch it for some that's embarking on heart racing African safari ziplining through Costa Rican rainforest we're meeting the multi-color inhabitants of the Great Barrier Reef for others it's simply transcending the daily routine to experience the sights and sounds tastes and smells of somewhere new from Close Encounters to distant wonders adventure is going beyond the typical vacation experience to become fully immersed in other cultures customs cuisine of our travels so let me repeat that one little blip adventure adventure is going beyond the typical vacation experience now that can be soft adventure that could be hard adventure here's where I'm here's where I'll tell you about Softimage sauce adventure so you have those those there's hiking's and and skiing's and all those things that we talked about but not quite that fit what if you're fit enough to mildly hike walk around you have no mobility challenges you're you're not disabled in any way and you want to get a little off the beaten path that is more about what soft adventure is than hiking less hard or cycling less hard so I'm not sure it can be about those but it just makes those things more approachable it's also not just out in nature I mean hiking through cities as opposed to taking a cab there's one way you can remain active while taking in the sights to get out of can you know get out of the bus get out and get out walk places when we went to Berlin we walked all over that city DC walked all over that city New Orleans okay normally as we took the look what was that like a streetcar thing that was fun no edit to it but that's you know that's what I mean get out there you know another one is cycle tours a lot of folks who go on river cruises through Germany and France and all the rest that's one of the things a lot of the river cruise ship companies have is cycles onboard for free that you can go out and take a cycle tour a lead cycle tour so you can get all over that town a heck a lot faster you get a little exercise obviously but you get to see all the sights in two hours instead of in four hours because you can get to each site faster another one is a Segway job yes even a Segway tour would be soft adventure I mean you're getting out there you're moving you're exploring you're not just sitting on a beach with a pina colada or or run a spa with a glass of champ