I'm still working on over a year of updates here. As I've mentioned several times - I'm clearly a horrible blogger. In the meantime though, I was just having a conversation with a friend about trip planning so I decided to add this link to my blog.

I've been very lucky to travel around this entire country, and to several different places in Canada, over the past 7 years. I'm a bit addicted to reading reviews about things (restaurants, hotels, attractions, products, etc...) and have spent a lot of time on several different review sites. However, when it comes to planning our trips, I always use TripAdvisor. I've found that out of all the sites out there, TripAdvisor seems to have the most authentic reviews. Most places on the site have written reviews along with a star review and its been a very helpful place for my trip planning. I've found that even the negative reviews are honest in a way that can allow me to decide if it is really a negative review or not. (i.e. One hotel had a 1 star review because the guest was mad that she wasn't allowed to smoke her medical marijuana in the room. So it was a legit review, but I could easily tell that that wasn't a good reason for ME to not stay there.) Plus, there are also oodles of positive reviews which is extremely helpful. I've found that a lot of other sites have an extreme amount of negative reviews because it seems like only angry people decide to leave a review. TripAdvisor seems to be one of the few places out there with happy reviewers.

So to end my rambling - TripAdvisor is the site that I find to be the most beneficial in trip planning. Because of that, I've tried to make it a point to leave my own honest reviews about the places we visit. Other reviews have helped me, so I want to leave my own thoughts to help others.

While I know that anyone reading this blog could probably care less about my personal experiences at places, I wanted to add the link to my own profile - just in case. (If anyone really IS interested in my own thoughts, I have a whole list of places that I am working on reviewing so my profile should be updated pretty soon.) While I'm doing that I decided to do a little plug for the website itself. And no, I am not being paid to endorse the site. I just happen to really like it and wanted to put it out there.

So in conclusion - if you're trip planning, TripAdvisor is the way to do it!

My TripAdvisor