Travel with JoY

Sunset at Picard Beach I think that AirBnb and other travel sites should have a category in their rating system for charm. After you’ve stayed in one of their member accommodations you are asked to rate them for location, accuracy, cleanliness, communication and value.  We’ve had a strange run here with AirBnb.  Maybe it isn’t designed for old folks like us.  When you read the reviews of sites, they are often young travelers, rarely people like us in our sixth decade.   The garden at Sister's Sea Lodge But this run of bad luck in Antigua, and now in Dominica, brings back memories of some of the other less than pleasant lodgings we’ve stayed in over our last eighteen years of travel.  For example there was the tent in the Masai Mara while on safari, that was riddled with mosquitoes, a sagging cot and a spare bathroom attached at the back. There was the hovel in Isla Mujeras that was so grungy I had to drink a few shots of tequila to be able to ...

Week five Antigua. Feb 5th-12th This is our last week on Antigua. Sunday we fly to the country/island of Dominica.  Sounds quite different than this island, a tired money-laundering (historically) over used tourism country. Out for an evening walk Do I sound a bit jaded.  I know it may sound like all our travels are fun and games, lying in a hammock strumming a guitar or cooking up some gourmet creation but one must take the bad with the good.  We love this style of travel;  booking rooms, apartments, cottages and all the unique travelers and hosts that we meet from around the world.  But of course once in a while you get the bad that I mention. This home we are staying in is lovely, on the internet, on AirBnb's website. It shows a swimming pool through a pair of palm trees, a large bedroom and modern bathroom en suite as well as a large open plan living room, kitchen.  It is surrounded entirely by a ten foot wide veranda and it is up the hill a ...