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Saint Maarten Dutch SideIf you plan to spend your holiday in a Caribbean tropical island, you might want to consider the beautiful island St Maarten. It’s the smallest island that inhabited and shared between 2 countries France and Dutch Antilles / West Indies. The two main towns Philipsburg (Dutch side) and Marigot (French side) offer you a complete gratification, with its own uniqueness. You’ll find numerous boutiques that sell high quality duty free goods, which many people refer these places as Shopper’s paradise.

The French side, St-Martin, is known with its shopping, nude beaches, clothes with lots of Indian and French cuisine. While the Dutch side, St Maarten, is known with its casinos, rum-base guavaberry liquors (which is very exotic), jewelry, beaches, and festive nightlife.

St Martin and St Maarten Vacation Villas give you world-class accommodation and exclusive touch of Caribbean Tropical Island. You can find huge properties with more than 200 rooms or private properties with less than 20 rooms instead, so you decide which you prefer most.

More people nowadays prefers St Martin and St Maarten Villa Rentals compared with quality stars hotels, as these villa rentals services gives you more exclusivity of luxurious communal areas like swimming pool. Families, groups and couples can expect to spend more quality time together with no disturbance of other guests and or hotel staff.

Primary mode of transportation for visitors staying is rental cars. 4-wheel drive is recommended when you expect to drive off the main road and go to the secluded beach areas. However, long traffic jams between the 2 main cities Philipsburg, Marigot and the airport are common.

Saint Kitts, Nevis, Saba, St Eustatius, Anguilla, and St-Barthelemy are neighboring islands which can be seen easily on sunny day of St Maarten. Make sure to check the local weather information before going to this lovely area, especially on late summer and early fall as tropical activity storm is occasionally menaced.

Enjoy the beauty of St Martin and St Maarten.


Car travel preparationBreakdown could happened anytime and ruin your lovely summer plan. These tips might prevent your car from the unexpected breakdown:

1. Emergency Kit - Never forgot to bring some basic items in case of any emergency situations. Basic tools, windshield washer fluid, gloves, jumper cables, flash light, first aid, and a gallon of gas are some items that you might want to consider as your emergency kit. If you’re using car rental , ask whether they able to provide some of these emergency stuff.

2. Cooling system - check your coolant (remember to do this only when the engine is cold) and make sure that the radiator fins is not clogged by debris or dirt. Also keep an eye on the oil and fluids level for brakes, power steering and transmission.

3. Tires - Check the recommended pressure rating for your car in the owner’s manual and make sure the actual tire’s pressure are within this recommended range. Tire pressure that outside the recommended rate could easily blow out by overheating. Ask the vendor to check this for you if you use service from a car rental.

4. Temperature Gauge - Always keep an eye on the temperature level of your temperature gauge, when the indicator shows red zone immediately stop your car in a safe area. Do not open the radiator’s cap while the engine is hot. Overheated can caused a serious damage on your car.

5. Synthetic oil - gives you extra protection on high temperature for your engine

6. Lights - Always check your headlight’s low / high beam, turn right-left signal, brake lights, side marker lights and also emergency flashers.

7. Windshield wipers - wiper’s blade made of rubber which gets susceptible by summer heat. Investing a new (if necessary) set would always make sure your windshield wipers in a prime condition.

These tips might useful whether you use your own car or even use a car rental service. Have a great summer vacation.


CarHire vacationMany people having their dream travel around Europe by using rail transportation. But have you ever considering of driving your own car around Europe, where you can drive where ever you want and whenever you like?

Train prices are always goes up every year and car hire is a good option for every traveler in Europe, especially when you got limited budget. Below are few tips when you try to find car for hire to enjoy your vacation:

  1. Surf the Web. Internet is like a giant shopping catalogue where you can find and compare car hires on different rates, companies, car types, pick locations, schedule, etc. Many car hire companies also provide discount to anybody who rent through internet. The best thing is that You can get the information 24 hours a day, 365 days. It’s also regardless you want to find car hire Spain, England, Denmark or where ever you want.
  2. Travel on weekend. Most of car hire companies would provide cheaper rates at weekend (although this is not always the case).
    Hire weekly. It is most likely that all car hire companies would give you better rate if you hire weekly, rather than daily. One of the car hire france companies even gives 30% discount if you rent for the whole week, so it will be a pocket saver.
  3. Take look insurance carefully. (CDW) Collision Damage Waiver and (LDW) Loss Damage Waiver are common type of car hire insurance that offered to you when rent car. Both are good coverage for you, but not if they duplicate with your own existing insurance policy. Some Credit Card provider even also offer this coverage if you paid using their CC. Double check with your credit card provide before proceed with the Car’s insurance.
  4. Avoid airport pickups. Due to its additional fee and taxes, most of airport car hire / rental are 11.5 percent more expensive than at nearby neighborhood.
  5. Be Careful on bigger vehicle upgrade. Some car hire companies will give you free upgrade into bigger vehicle, which sounds like a good deal. But remember that bigger vehicle consumes more gas. So this ‘free upgrade’ is not really free, as you must pay for the extra gas. But this feature can be really a good deal, especially when you do need extra spaces on your car, to more enjoy your vacation.

By following those tips, I hope that you can more enjoying your vacation through Europe.


Travellers useful references

If you often have back-to-back business trips, you’ll know that sometimes you completely have no idea what day or time it is and what’s going on. Take my advice, check out these websites before setting out on you next trip.

www.LowFares.com Find cheap airline tickets , hotels, rental car and any vacation packages at low fare on this website. Don’t buy any tickets, book hotels or rental car before visit, search and compare deals on this great website.

www.TimeAndDate.com is a nice website that shows the time in different parts of the world. It also provide time converter to calculate your local time based on a date and time in another location. In case you need to call someone, this site also has a listing of international dialing codes.

www.babelfish.altavista.com/tr The web free translation service comes in handy when you’re faced with information in a foreign language. It can help you to translate short passages of text (150 characters at a time) or entire websites among 19 language pairs.

www.weather.com Check this site before leaving your home or even pack your suitcase. You can also download a tool from the website that lets you receive local weather updates and alerts.

www.google.com/gmm If you have a GPS-enabled phone, you’ll love Google maps mobile. It’s still same great site to find locations, but with GPS running, it can pinpoint exactly where you are standing. Get directions on how to get from point A to point B or select a contact from your address book and find his/her address on the map.


Castillo del morroLocated in Sea of Caribbean, Cuba is an archipelago country that surrounded by 4 main islands Colorados, Canrreos, Jardines de la Reina, and Sabana-Camaguey. Its tropical climate combined with moderate trade winds will gives you best holiday experiences at Caribbean island.

Cuba holiday also offers cultural visit, salsa dance experiences, walkthrough cigar industries with cigar experts, fly fishing, birdwatching, or even a golf tour.

Some interesting places to visits:
1. Castilo de los Tres Reyes del Morro (fortress) built in 1589 in Havana bay
2. Garcia Lorca, where you can find the Great Theater of Havana
3. The magnificent Museum of the revolution, which was a presidential palace in Havana
4. Havana’s Chinatown area, where you can find slices of china’s cultural living in Cuba
5. El malecon de la Habana, a nice bay area with wonderful city view (specially after sunset)
6. An exotic architectural building, Casa de Simon Bolivar free museums, etc.

“Palacio Azul” or the Blue Palace is a state hotel with an open view to the great Caribbean Sea in Cienfuegos province. Palacio de Velle or Velle’s place is also a wonderful and recommended hotel located in Punta Gorda (still in Cienfuegos area). Refer to Cuba Hotel if you need to find more hotel information with best rate at Cuba.

If this is your first time in Cuba, a tour package will definitely help you. Cuba Tour will give you more information on whatever you need to get around in Cuba.

Enjoy the wonderful Cuba.


Baltic terminology started to use in 19th century that denoted the region east from the sea. It’s the continent that offered thousand slices of historical and adventurous places to enjoy. Baltic is the land of legendary Viking raiders, who travels through the great sea to conquest and conquer the unknown land.

In late 1920s, three countries Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (sometimes also Finland) were known as the Baltic States. Second World War changed the entire Baltic map by incorporating these countries as part of USSR. Falls of USSR in 1991 cracked these exotic areas into separate countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Finland, and Poland.

Enough for the history lessons J …now let’s talk on the interesting places on these Baltic areas, where you can spend your holiday.

Lithuania holiday – You might want to spend your holiday in Vilnius, capital city of Lithuania. With wide choice ranges of entertainment, hotels and restaurant, there’s always something for everybody in Vilnius to explore. Don’t forget to visit the wonderful Trakai castle that set amidst Lake Galve. Many other castles like Birzai, Dubingiai, Kaunas, Norviliskes, Raudone (and many more castles) gives its own historical attractions in Lithuania.

Latvia holiday – previously known as Lettonia / Lettland with Riga as its capital city offers many exotic hotels, restaurant, etc. Riga consists of few micro regions (residential neighborhoods) like Agenskalns, Dzirciems, Jugla, Pardaugava, Plavnieki, etc. In Latvia, places has common patterns like “vec” (old), “mez” (forest), “sala” (island), “ciems” (village), and “kalns” (hill). Latvia’s coast was known across Europe for its amber, which now frequently used by Latvian’s jewellery.

Russia holiday – spread across the unique continent of Eurasia, Russia owns huge diversity of climates, soils, vegetations and animals. Spans with 11 time zones, Russia offers vast natural attractions: Central Russian upland (Zaraysk), Sochi (Krasnodar Krai), Virgin Komi Forests, Magadan (Russian Far east), etc. Moscow will give you other lovely places like Spasskaya Tower of Kremlin, St.Basil’s Cathedral, Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, and many others.

Baltic, is always a great place to visit.


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