Worth it?

How would you like to find somebody with similar tastes to you, to act as your personal unpaid trip planner for your next holiday? This is not as unlikely as you might think. Thanks to the power of web 2.0 technology there is a site called realtravel.com, voted one of the twelve essential travel sites by Forbes Magazine. This site is open for free registration to anybody who wants to share their latest travel experiences or comment on a trip planner report that another member has posted.

The site contains thousands of detailed and evocative vacation reports, where you can find out about the best and worst of a country, region or resort seen through the eyes of real people who paid for their trips, unlike many of the professional trip planner stories posted by reporters who visited the place on expenses!

I had a quick look round this site and found a beautifully illustrated report of a trip to Ephesus, a world heritage site in Turkey. This brought back memories for me, and there were some great photos of the restored library that forms the highlight of the visit. This lady (Emily) had also visited Pamukkale, a place I had wanted to visit after seeing so many photos of it. But thanks to Emily, I found out that there really is not a lot to see - my trip planner has therefore saved me the disappointment of planning a visit and finding it is an anticlimax. Highly recommended site.