An Afternoon at the Boston Globe Travel Show

I’d like to confess something to all five of you who are reading this right now: I had no idea what a “travel show” was when I purchased my ticket to this event a few months ago. “Showing” travel could mean so many things. Memories of my family breaking out the ol’ projector at Christmas and playing films of vacations that took place around the same time that man first walked on the moon began to fill my head. Did I really want to pay money for that?

But I thought, what the hell. 1) It’s in Boston, where I hang out a lot, so that’s convenient 2) Travel is in the title, a good sign and 3) The advertisements for the show had the cutest giraffe in them. Done deal.

First of all, I need to pose a question to the planners of the Boston Globe Travel Show: Why, after purchasing my ticket, would you email me a document that said in capital letters THIS IS YOUR TICKET, but then when I show it to the prickly older gentleman at the entrance he goes and forces me to turn around and wait in a separate looooooong line to exchange said document for a tiny blue raffle ticket? To quote my excitable step-dad, that’s just asinine.

Once I figured out the Matrix-like system of getting into the show, everything was gravy. The World Trade Center was packed! Not like, “green line at rush hour” packed, but enough where I kept having to apologize for knocking people over with my unnecessarily large purse (sorry!). Countries from every corner of the Earth had booths overflowing with pamphlets and contest entry sheets and business cards and glitter and bananas and penguins. I mean, what?

The penguins didn’t tap-dance or break out into Queen songs, but they were still pretty cool. The lizard was from Australia, and as a former iguana-owner and Australia resident, he immediately found a spot in my heart. Alas, the giraffe from the advertisements was nowhere to be found. Le sigh.

The booths were a trip (pun intended)! Complete sensory overload. They had everything from bright signs and free food, to giveaways and synchronized dancing. All of the tourism people were so nice and helpful. I’d like to holler at the guy at the Puerto Rico table who gave me one of his shiny orange pens because I liked it so much, and also to the people manning the Ireland section because I’m sure we’re somehow related. One of the most fun/torturous things about the travel show was that it made me want to start planning trips to, well, everywhere. Azores is the newest addition to my Travel Bucket List, and I almost booked a trip to Barbados right then and there.

And that’s exactly what people were doing. Sitting down and booking epic vacations in the middle of a crowded showroom. I’m not going to lie; I don’t understand this at all. I’m sure you can get really great travel deals at a show like this, but I would lose my head if I tried to make big financial decisions in the middle of all this commotion. More power to you if you feel differently. I’ll just be over here, kickin’ it with these biddies in the JetBlue seats.

Unfortunately, I missed Arthur and Pauline Frommer speak because I’m allergic to being punctual. But I did get to see Julia Dimon, a travel and social media junkie like me, give a presentation on becoming a travel writer. I’ve taken travel writing classes before so a lot of the information wasn’t new to me, but hearing about her National Geographic show, Word Travels, was really inspiring. I hope it gets picked up for American television!

Julia and I have also spoken on Twitter before, so I walked right up to her and said hello! Love meeting people from the internetz.

Overall, I had a lovely time at the show, and I can’t stop telling people about the Virgin America coupon I got which will take 20% off my next flight. Los Angeles, I’ll be seeing you.

Not everything can be cartwheels and fireworks though, people. What I didn’t like about the show was a) the lack of Australia representation, except for their lizard associate pictured earlier. That’s right Oz, I’m talking to you. Even Fiji had a booth! Tsk, tsk. And b) the lack of Yelp Boston’s finest:

Isn’t that empty booth the saddest thing you’ve ever seen? So sad that I missed them. I think I may have to deal with my depression by hopping on a flight to Barbados, where hopefully Rihanna’s family will adopt me.

- Alison