David J.
Danto
Business travel
thoughts in my own, personal opinion
eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org 
Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD
The Top Ten (well
really six) List
The best travel
experiences (so far) of 2022 – October 2022
I am now home from the hospital I was
in last week. My Bottom ten list from
last week solicited some comments from you all about being too negative. (I am a critic and cynic by nature – it’s the
Brooklyn in me.) However, the comments
are fair and I should spend a little time highlighting the things that have
gone really well in my travels so far this year. I won’t however number them as they are in no
particular order. Here are my top six
experiences around travel so far this year – with some embedded photos and
links.
·
Hilton Diagonal Mar Barcelona – My first ever trip to Barcelona on business this
year was not very well 
planned by me, with my only day to explore the city
turning out to be when they were running their marathon, but major kudos to the
Hilton
Diagonal Mar there. They totally
broke the mold of the typical European hotel turning exhausted overnight
arrivals away till the afternoon. At 9am
on a Saturday they welcomed me (as a Honors Diamond)
with open arms, having a room ready for me along with access to the executive
lounge. They get hospitality right there.
· 
La Sagrada Familia – The only Gaudí work I was able to visit was just stunning. It is the largest unfinished Catholic Church
in the world. The streets and stores
around it are a typical tourist trap, but the beauty and intricacies of the
work make it a destination not to be missed.
·
Mayfair Supper Club – My wife and I accidentally stumbled into this spot
at the 
Bellagio in Las Vegas when we were looking for an
available restaurant reservation from where we could watch the fountains. Mayfair
is patterned after the supper clubs of the 1930s and 1940s, where the food is
great (if not outstanding) but the reason to be there is for the performers
that sing, dance, play music, hang from the ceiling sometimes and often break
into a conga line around the restaurant.
It makes for a very entertaining meal.
·
Broadway – As the pandemic started to wane, many of the
postponed Broadway shows started-up again. My wife and I try to get there (using discounted tickets) as often as possible. It was wonderful to see a number of shows as
things were restarted. If you’ve not
been to Broadway in NYC lately you are missing-out on a great experience.
·
Disney’s Star
Wars Galaxy’s Edge – Every once
in a while the Walt Disney World team pulls out all the stops to create a major
headliner experience, and this is certainly one of them. The entire area is designed to look like a “remote
frontier outpost” right out of the movies.
The embedded rides – especially “Star
Wars – Rise Of The Resistance” are also not-to-be-missed experiences.
·
Carvana – Maybe an odd throw-in for my travel list, but because
I mentioned car dealerships in my bottom ten list I felt it important to point
out this great experience. We needed to
sell our used car, and the dealership we got the new car from was only offering
us a 
fraction of its value as a trade in. “Never mind” we said, we’ll sell it
ourselves. We really didn’t want to take
on the effort and expense of listing the car in an ad and answering
calls/emails about it. We discovered
that Carvana
also buys cars. We put all the
details into their website and they made us an offer of about double what the
dealership would give us for the trade.
At a dozen points in the process we were sure there was going to be some
sort of bait-and-switch or gotcha (Ah-Ha!
You have a dent – the price drops 2k, etc.) but
there never was. Their person came to
our house with a car carrier, did a quick inspection, had us complete some
paperwork, and he handed us the check for the full amount they offered. It is a highly recommended process if you
have a car to sell.
I’ll be home resting and recovering for
a little while. My next travel will
either be in mid-November or for the New Year’s Eve holiday. For now, it’s just a matter of taking it easy
and getting strong enough to put up with airline travel.
This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal
opinions.
All image and links provided above as reference under
prevailing fair use statutes.
Copyright 2022 David Danto
++++++++
As always, feel free to write and comment, question or
disagree. Hearing from the traveling
community is always a highlight for me.
Thanks!