“TWO HUNDRED RUPEES?!” our India tour guide, Manu, gasped. “That’s WAY too much, David!”
“Sheesh,” mumbled my brother as we walked out of the Gandhi Memorial in New Delhi. “Three and a half dollars isn’t a terrible price to stroke one of those fancy snakes, especially since the guy said the fangs were removed. Anyway, I bargained him down from 1,000 rupees.”
“Next time,” Manu instructed my little brother, “Pay only 20 or 50 rupees– [...Read More!]
Here’s a budget travel secret: One and a half blocks in Old Delhi, India can provide more delicious photography opportunities than miles and miles of another region of the world!
When we last left off, our teacher tour of India was in day two of our adventures. We had lapped up the sights at the largest Mosque in India, and gotten some fabulous stares, sights, and photo bombs from our first steps into [...Read More!]
According to the theory “The 5 Love Languages,” each person has a different ranking of the following five manners of showing and receiving love: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time, and Physical Touch.
What this means is that there is a whole set of people (myself included) for whom gift giving is the lowest ranking way in which we understand love. Shopping for, giving, and receiving gifts is [...Read More!]
Perhaps you read in the Boston Globe that Boston just opened the New Boston Hostel: a gorgeous, affordable 480-bed hostel in the heart of downtown…
…and that I gave a rousing speech to the packed crowd at the grand opening and ribbon-cutting, alongside the Mayor of Boston!
Here is the text of my speech.
Hello, my name is Lillie Marshall, and I am a 30-year old Boston Public Schools teacher. Any guesses how [...Read More!]
Want to improve your romantic, friendship, or family relationships?
Here’s an easy method that works, and is even backed up by science: Travel for a day trip or longer.
Why does travel enhance human connections? Expansion.
To elaborate on the research behind this, let’s draw from the excellent New York Times article, “The Happy Marriage is the ‘Me” Marriage.” In this article, Tara Parker-Pope pulls together a number of recent studies to explain that happier [...Read More!]
Just when our teacher tour thought Nafplio, Greece couldn’t get any more gorgeous and charming, the owner of our hill-top hotel invited us to go orange picking in his private orchard!
We decided to get our hands on those oranges on our last morning in Nafplio, as a heavenly pit-stop on our bus travel back to Athens.
Walk with me now as we pull into the orchard, climb off the bus, scamper past [...Read More!]
HOORAY! We are all safely back from a phenomenal student tour in China!
I burst into tears of emotion when my fiance picked me up at the airport last night, so happy was I about what we accomplished over the past 8 days.
Here are the facts:
On the morning of Thursday 2/16/12, after a YEAR of planning, fundraising, and meetings, 42 Boston Students and 6 Boston teachers boarded a plane from Boston to [...Read More!]
“Oooh, Miss M.!” squealed my students the day after I got engaged. “Your diamond engagement ring is HUGE!”
Well, folks, it’s time to come clean. I do not have a diamond engagement ring.
What I really have is… a $25 crystal ring. Hah!!!!!
Colin and I bought the fake ring together, laughing uproariously the whole time, from the back of a sketchy store in Boston’s Downtown Crossing. ”The funniest part about this,” I squeaked amid gales of [...Read More!]
“Sell-out!” jeered a cyber-heckler when I posted my article about going on a 3-day Florida-Bahamas Cruise.
So I can only imagine this heckler’s horror when he learned that this “brave solo world traveler” (a.k.a. me) super “sold out” and accepted a free 40-person teacher travel tour to Spain over New Year’s through EF Tours.
Why are many hip travelers so against the idea of large-group travel?
“Ugh– It’s like being in a bubble of [...Read More!]
One of the most dramatic tourist attractions in New England is totally free: the 3.5-mile Cliff Walk in historic Newport, Rhode Island!
Just make sure, as this sign pictured to the left politely points out, not to hurtle off the “cliff” aspect of the whole “Cliff Walk” thing.
Here’s what makes the Cliff Walk so amazing: it’s a marriage of nature’s glory with the most opulent human-made mansions imaginable.
On one side, you have [...Read More!]