Amazing Journeys and 65 amazing travelers have started our vacation, exploring the countries surrounding the Black Sea.  Starting out in Istanbul, Turkey we sailed on the Azamara Quest to Varna, Bulgaria on Monday and are exploring Constanta, Romania today.  We have had beautiful warm weather so far and are looking forward to a few days in different cities of Ukraine coming up next.  Here’s a few pictures of our amazing journey so far!

In the spring in the city of Seville in southern Spain, a week-long celebration takes place that draws over one million people a year – the event is called “La Feria de Sevilla”. Over the years, Feria has become an internationally known celebration of flamenco, bullfighting and fun. Flamenco is an integral part of the tradition because Seville is considered to be the cultural epicenter of flamenco culture and music. 

During Feria, a temporary “tent city” is born and the make-shift “tents” (or as they are known in Spanish, “casetas”) divide the land into different dance halls and private areas that are filled each evening with dancing and life lasting from 9 in the evening until 6 or 7 in the morning.  Every tent is set up differently with a unique atmosphere and different customs. Visitors roam around the fairgrounds until they find an open tent with a good vibe to have a drink, watch performances and experience the atmosphere.

The women are known to dress in their most spectacular gowns, usually brightly colored flamenco dresses inspired by Gypsy fashion. The most common beverage drunk in during the Seville Fair is Spanish sherry wine, very famous in southern Spain. Often, to battle the heat of April in Seville, the sherry wine is mixed with 7-up or sprite to produce a drink known as “rebujito”.

In addition the the long nights of stomping, clapping and celebrating in the casetas, Feria also offers a wide range of other events during the day. Andalusian horse parades with decorated carriages are daily processions as they make their way through the city and fairground.  The equestrian events are usually accompanied by singing groups who serenade crowds with traditional Sevillian ballads and guitar music. Many of the parade participants are members of Seville’s upper class aristocracy and normally dawn exquisite traditional Andalusian outfits with wide-brimmed “bolero” hats and short-cropped jackets. Of course, not to be missed during Feria are the afternoon bullfights. The bullring in Seville is known as one of the most beautiful in Spain and is commonly known by the locals as “the cathedral”.

Our Amazing Journeys travelers had the opportunity to experience the thrill of Feria. They sipped on sherry, explored the casetas and danced until the wee hours of the morning soaking in every bit of the tradition as possible!

After a long and committed relationship with couples and families, the travel industry is hitting the singles scene full force. There is a growing number of companies exclusively catering to unattached travelers organizing journeys that mix high-end vacationing with coed bonding. Many of these outfits are going beyond the old lonely hearts Carnival booze cruise, rolling out extended excursions to both nearby US National Parks and far-flung locales like Asia, Australia, South America and even Spitsbergen, Norway. 

According to the latest census, nearly half of all adult Americans are unmarried. With young people waiting till later in life to settle down and with more boomers retiring and getting their second wind, the travel industry has a lot of potential single clients. Research has found that 26 percent of leisure travelers took at least one trip by themselves last year. So while many others in the business are just starting to recover from the recession, solo-specific tour operators are reporting two or three times as many 2011 bookings as the industry overall.

Of course, going solo isn’t without its quirks. To begin with, singles-only companies sometimes avoid the single supplement by matching travelers with roommates, a delicate procedure. Then there’s the age factor: Since these trips draw nearly all ages, age-specific trips can lend itself to some people who miss the spectrum to feel left out….yet if a trip is open to too wide an age range it can tend to be too diverse for an interest group.

And women hoping to be surrounded by travel-loving men may be disappointed to discover that the clientele skews so heavily female that a few companies even reserve “emergency” spots for men. 

If you’re already humming the theme to The Love Boat, you’re not far off; while Julie and Gopher may not have been aboard, most early singles tours were cruises. Singles cruises today are no longer limited to just romantic Caribbean getaways.  Quite the contrary as experienced cruisers “outgrow” the fun in the sun idea in lieu of more destination-oriented endeavors.  Indeed, ocean-faring trips are still popular and becoming even more broad with cruising opportunties that not only include Europe, Alaska and Southeast Asia, but unique cruising experiences to far away places like Antarctica, Galapagos Islands and The Amazon.

Still, the singles-travel market now looks much like the general travel industry, with its constant stream of new and more unusual trips designed to appeal to experienced travelers. But no matter how much these companies tout their travel bona fides and stress that they’re not dating services, they say vacationers only care about one thing: more than where they are going, a recent survey showed that they want to know who else is going.

Despite even exotic destinations, it’s really the social side of the trips that has prompts many to sign up again and again.The preponderance of repeat bookers, though, can be intimidating to travelers who show up without knowing a soul. Travelers also report that the trips sometimes develop their own cliques, and even the companies admit that there are often one or two people who need a lot of help being eased into the group. Amazing Journeys, for example works diligently to “cater to the solo traveler”- expressing to first time travelers that everyone traveled with us for the first time once.  By nourishing the lasting value of repeat business while cultivating and catering to first time travelers, Amazing Journeys has had exceptional results in blending the two sources into each and every successful trip.

Hey dude…man up!  Its always fun to take a VAcation with that special lady…or that special group (Amazing Journeys!) but every once in a while you need MANcation with your buds for a no-ladies-allowed adventure. You’ve outgrown the Spring Break mentality but you’re looking for something fun, accessible and yes….manly.

Uphold your end of the man code by planning a fishing trip in San Diego, a trip to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, ski weekend to Lake Tahoe, a Vegas Weekend or a visit to legendary Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Here are a few other ideas with links on how to learn more:

Lingerie Bowl – The Lingerie Bowl is the ultimate fantasy football game, an annual Super Bowl alternative special. It’s full-contact football and the female athletes wear, you guessed it, just lingerie.  Really!

Amazing Journeys’ glorious vacation  to China has come and gone, oh too quickly. Thirty folks from 4 countries all convened in New York for a 13+ hour journey across the globe for a tour that was chock full of unbelievable experiences.  For ten fascinating days, we toured some of the most famed highlights in the world, tasted not-your-neighborhood-takeout Chinese food, shopped for pearls and silk, witnessed arguably the greatest archeological  find in history and hiked a wall that was really Great.  The tour began in Beijing and traveled through Xian and into Shanghai….and while it was a little chilly in the beginning, the warmth of such a great group enjoying so many wonderful experiences together meant that new friendships and amazing memories would not soon be forgotten.

From posing like a Terra Cotta Warrior to shopping from the “Hallo” people for “one dollah, one dollah”…. to hiking The Great Wall and biking through a Hutong neighborhood…..from making silk to making friends, …from anxious toilet experiences to exciting cultural performances… and from navigating traffic like nowhere on earth, to feeling a vibe like nowhere on earth, it really was, by definition, an amazing journey.

We sincerely thank all 30 of our guests; our newest AJ friends, for entrusting us with their travel plans and  for being part of such a memorable destination.

As they say in China..”XieXie”

Didn’t get a chance to visit Asia on this trip but wished you had?  Join us on our Asia Cruise for New Year’s Eve!  We set sail to the exciting ports of Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore. Sign up by this Friday, March 30 and you’ll get a $100 ship board credit!

Our Amazing Journeys China tour is off and running. Beijing is the first stop for four nights and here are a few moments of all the memories-in-motion!

As our travelers prepare for their upcoming journey to China, there are a lot of things to consider. What should I wear? What should I buy? What will I eat? In preparation for our trip, we wanted to highlight a few of the differences that will be noticed along our travels through China.

Food
The American version of Chinese food and the Chinese version of Chinese food are quite different. The American version is catered more towards our taste buds and aren’t quite as risky when it comes to ingredients. We are also looking forward to becoming skilled chopstickers.
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Drinks
The Chinese culture places an emphasis on tea, specifically the tea pouring ceremony. As opposed to the American coffee ritual of running down the street to your local Starbucks , there is a specific science and precision to the ceremony which is very unique to take part in.
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Bathrooms
As our travelers have already been warned, there is a noticeable difference between Western bathrooms and Eastern bathrooms – mainly, the seat! It takes some practice and balance to master the Eastern toilet but we are looking forward to the challenge and know that we will all come home having mastered the squat and having tones glutes to prove it!
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Height
For those of us who are taller than the average American, it is quite an experience to walk around China – you feel a little like Godzilla. I am 5’9” so I am 6.5 inches taller than the average Chinese woman. The average Chinese man is 5’5” as compared to the average American man at 5’10”.

Language
As many of us have learned throughout years of travel, there is often a language barrier that makes travel fun. Sometimes you are able to follow along because of the Spanish classes that you took in high school or you can kind of figure out what a sign says because words are similar to English. This, however, is not the case in China. The language, the letters, the signs – they are all in a completely different language that we are going to have fun interacting with.
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This will be an exotic adventure to a land very far away, with people and experiences unlike anything found at home. We look forward to reporting back all of the exciting and interesting differences that we experience while diving into the Chinese culture.

It’s hard to believe that our India 1 group recently returned from their Journey to India, and our India 2 group begins their long journey home in just a few short hours. What an amazing journey we all had! From the beautiful palaces in Rajasthan, to one of the world’s most loved landmark, the Taj Mahal ….to the Kama Sutra temples of Khajuraho to some of us spotting a tiger in Rathambore….from seeing cows in the street, dancing at a wedding procession, and our visit to Varanasi and the River Ganges, where the heart of India beats and where it all came together for us…the cities we visited, the culture we embraced, the history we learned will not soon be forgotten. Our two groups of travelers experienced so much in just two short weeks.

Our Top Ten list of things we learned while in India:

10. Any country with 1.2 billion people can have its own way of doing things. Some things we’ll never understand, and that’s OK

9. Traffic in India is crazy! The lines on the roads in India are merely for decoration, and the “rules of the road” are simply suggestions. Honking one’s horn as one moves through traffic is expected.

8. Organized chaos is a way of life. To the outsider it may look wild, but that’s just how it is.

7. We’ll miss livestock wandering through city streets.

6. There is a lot of curry used in Indian cooking.

5. Sunrise is a beautiful time of the day. Things look so much clearer at sunrise. The world is at peace.

4. A wedding celebration lasts 5 – 7 days and includes a parade. Being one that loves a great party, I think this is a fantastic way to celebrate wedded bliss.

3. The Taj Mahal is everything it’s cracked up to be. One cannot appreciate its beauty in a photo. You have to see it to believe it.

2. Strong family ties and traditions that are centuries old make for a people who have a value system that is unwavering.

1. The people of India are some of the most hospitable in the world!

Well, its already been a week since our first group arrived in India and they have been having an amazing time!  Check out some of the pictures below or follow us on Facebook to see a lot more pictures of our adventures!