Travels with Steve & Alisa

Alisa and I have been traveling for as long as we have known each other. In fact, that's how we met - while I was traveling with my job. We'd like to share some of our experiences with you. Perhaps, we can help you in planning your next trip.

We started traveling a lot more during the last few years. (The kids have left the nest.) We have a few simple rules which we go by - we never go on organized tours (except jeep trips), and we don't like to run from place to place without getting to know an area for a few days. I do all the planning and use the internet to learn about an area and find interesting hotels. I try to find people from the area we're going to visit and chat with them on the web - using travel forums or chat services. Web surfers LOVE to help other surfers. We also try to meet our cyber friends when we get there, and I can say that we've done it several times, and every meeting has been a huge success. I'd also like to mention my favorite travel forums - Fodor's Europe travel forum and Slowtravel-talk which are both great sources for travel information.

We live in Israel, so much of our traveling has been to Europe. In the last few years, we've been to Italy, Spain, Paris, Turkey, France, Portugal, Croatia, South America and a couple of trips to the United States. Last year (2007) we started visiting the far east and this year (2008) we are going to start on Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan). I plan each trip carefully and perhaps you can make use of some of the places we've found, or the itineraries we've followed.