Ever try to juggle schedules of a group of friends planning to travel together? Ever get saddled with organizing a family reunion? Usually it’s impossible to get everyone together at the same time, right? But now there’s a tool that should make it easier: Travel Group Planner.
“We built the site to make it easy for friends and families to plan their trips without lots of hassle,” says Shawna Barnhart, who founded the site with Jay Wopschall. Vacation brainstorming is broken down into four categories—planning, booking, things to do and memories (where you can share photos with fellow travelers).
From Athletic Minded Traveler comes a list of the Best Hotel Gyms in the U.S. for 2007. (The list for this year is not yet available.) You can check out the entire list online, but I’ll tell you in advance that two of the ten best are in the Midwest. One is at Embassy Suites Lakefront in Chicago. You’ll find the second at the Grand Hotel in Minneapolis.
With its new Interactive Hotel Maps feature, Hotel Magician allows users to enter an address, a city or an airport code and see all hotels nearby right on the map. You can search anywhere from 1 to 100 miles from the search point and use your mouse to move around the map.
“This technology is perfect for the traveler who wants to be in a certain geographic area and can’t tell where a hotel is just by looking at the address,” says Dave Grossman of Hotel Magician.
With many families cutting back on vacations and restaurant meals in tight times, some who might have willingly taken in a foreign exchange student are opting out until the economy improves. Thousands of high school students arrive in the U.S. each August and September to study. Some agencies are looking for new ways to recruit hosts. Others have reduced the number of foreign teenagers accepted. For example, the Chicago-based Center for Cultural Interchange matched 39 students with Oregon families last year. As of mid-August, only 16 had volunteered for the upcoming school year. The agency is 150 families short for 1,000 visiting students.
Traverse City’s Epicurean Classic (this year September 11-13) brings together notable culinarians, award-winning cookbook authors and food makers. They sign their cookbooks, teach culinary classes, share provocative stand-up nibbles and host chef dinners at Traverse City’s best restaurants. Students from the Great Lakes Culinary Institute at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City work hand in hand with the visiting celebrities, preparing their famed recipes for cooking demos, tastings and receptions. This is the fifth year of the Epicurean Classic. Three-day passes will be available that will give participants full access to most classes and tastings. A one-day pass is $129. Two-day passes go for $229. You can find general information about TC at Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau or call 1-800-TRAVERSE.
Although the Solace Spa Trapeze Experience at the Mountain Grand Lodge in Boyne City ends on September 1, it might be good to keep in mind for the future. The two-hour trapeze workshop is limited to 10 participants and costs $75 per person. To learn more about this unique twist on a spa visit or to check on future workshops, call the spa at 231-549-7946.
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