That's What Jenni Said

Two weeks after returning from our weekend in Andorra, NoVA Travelers launched a trip closer to home - Philadelphia. The city is steeped in American history and it's always a pleasure for me to introduce it to members who have never visited before.     We piled into our carpool caravan and headed for Philly on an early Saturday morning. Our first stop was the lovely Hotel Palomar - a historic architectural gem in downtown Philly that has been converted to a Kimpton luxury boutique hotel . I enjoy Kimpton properties because they treat guests so well- complimentary coffee and teas in the morning (and I usually negotiate free breakfast for my group) and a wine reception every afternoon.     Once we'd completed check-in we set off for the historic downtown area to visit Reading Terminal Market. The market has been in continuous operation since the late 1800s and features more than 80 merchants and vendors including Pennsylvania Dutch farmers who come to sell their fresh baked go...

    This weekend I've been delighted to carve out the time required to complete the remaining trip reports for 2009. I find it valuable to chronicle our excursions with the written word and pictures to give them the respect of permanency. I hope also that my record of events have been useful to you either as a guide in planning your itineraries for the destinations I've referenced, a general encouragement to step out in adventurous faith and see the world , or at the very least as entertaining fodder to pass the time consumed by reading the entries.     I've mentioned flyertalk.com in previous trip reports. This is an online community of mileage runners like myself (folks with a hobby of calculating the lowest cents per mile [CPM] route on their chosen airline carrier and flying for the reward of attaining elite status). Infuse extroverts with a liberal dose of thrifty ingenuity and a penchant for flying around the world and you get a group that loves to attend parties on...

Without a doubt, one of the most memorable aspects of the NoVA Travelers Costa Rica Trip was the level of vulnerability of the organizer. Having just returned recently from a more-adventurous-than-originally-planned trip in Switzerland, I found myself racing to pack my carry-on bag for the Costa Rica excursion .Financially I was in a bind in that I had no cash nor debit/credit cards of my own (only my husband's credit card which I was borrowing to take with me since mine had been stolen a few days before in Switzerland and who knew if I could get by using his cards when they had his name on them). Also I realized I would not be authorized to drive the rental car we had reserved in advance from the Hertz in San Jose, Costa Rica. Add to the mix a current of underlying generalized anxiety over the theft and a jet lag and it wasn't pretty. Still, I'm the organizer and I have a responsibility to my group so I marched onward. Penny (a member accompanying me on the trip) volunteer...