Travel Ideas

by: Keith Kingston

Thinking you could use an escape from the wintertime blahs, maybe even that dream holiday you’ve been thinking about for years? A Caribbean cruise vacation is the answer! What makes a cruise your dream holiday, you ask? Well, put simply, a cruise combines all the elements of a dream vacation into one blissful trip. There is ALWAYS something to do, no matter your age or interests. Whether you’re on your honeymoon, vacationing with the family, or spending quality time reuniting old friends, a cruise is guaranteed to fulfill your dreams.
Picture yourself riding on a beautiful cruise ship, looking over the railing to see brilliant blue waters, idyllic sunsets, and dolphins playing in the white-capped waves. Do you feel dreamy already? This fantasy can be your reality if you choose a cruise for your next vacation. With multiple poolside decks to lay out in the sunshine while enjoying the sights and sounds of the ocean, along with reggae music and fruity island beverages, daytime on the cruise ship can be very relaxing. If you prefer to be more active, most ships are fully equipped with activities. Take a jog around the boat-top track, or spend the day in aerobics and yoga classes followed by a massage and facial at the spa. If shopping is your one true love, you’ll be in heaven with all the shops on the ships, ranging from inexpensive trinkets to fancy wine and fine clothing.
As if there isn’t enough to do aboard the boat, don’t forget about island excursions! As the ship makes stops at various tropical paradises, you can take in the local culture or fulfill your need for adventure. Locals await you to take you to their favorite coral to swim with the dolphins or on a waterfall climb. Also, there is unlimited shopping on the islands, so you can really add to your art collection or your wardrobe. Try the native food of the islands, and maybe learn a new word or two. By the time you climb back aboard your ship you’ll truly feel like you’ve visited another world.
Now it’s time to hop in the shower to prepare for the evening. Every night on a cruise ship is magical. Start out with a five-course meal in the fine dining room (that’s already paid for!!). Enjoy drinks, piano music, cover bands, dancing and more in one of the several bars, or try your luck at black jack or poker in the casino. There are always cruise-wide games to play on the decks if you want to meet new people or just be silly with your friends and family. No matter what you are looking for in a holiday vacation, a cruise is sure to fulfill your dreams!

About The Author

Keith Kingston is a professional web publisher offering Royal Caribbean cruises and cruise discounts
http://www.cruises-4-u.com/

by: Elvis King

Call them dirty old men. Call them sugar daddys. But with Elvis Preston King on their team these guys get their dream girls!
Bachelor Dream Tours Dating Service
There are dating services after dating service after dating service, but there is only one Bachelor Dream Tours dating service with Elvis P. King at the helm. The king of dating services. Is Elvis back in the building with his girlfriends or is it all just a fantasy. You owe it to yourself to see for yourself. George Clooney bows down to Elvis when Elvis enters the building.
Girlfriend, girlfriends, girlfriend, girlfriends and more girlfriends! Dream girl! Dream girls! Dream Girl! Elvis the matchmaker, matchmaker, matchmaker.
For the older man who likes the much younger woman. The young girl or young girls of you dreams.Your problem of how to find a girlfriend has just been solved. Hot girls, young girls, white girls, brown girls, black girls. Elvis the Matchmaker King, Elvis P. King?s private, one on one dating service, also known as Bachelor Dream Tours are now available.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I am Elvis Preston King. The King. I am the guy every guy loves to hate. And every older woman just hates me because I am a bad influence on other older men. It?s hard enough for the older woman to find her man. Let alone the likes of Elvis P. King. No sensible woman would ever let her husband or boyfriend within 50 feet of Elvis P. King.
Elvis has made Jack Nicholson proud. And yes I get hate mail! I hold the world record of girlfriends age 18 to 22 years old in the men over age 50 class. They all have sisters, cousins, and girlfriends waiting to meet any guy who is a buddy of Elvis P, the King. I use to work for free for all my buddies back home but when my estate was sold I was left holding the empty bag. I am broke. I can?t claim my estate. My best buddy Red West Perry doesn?t come around any more after he had a heart attack and his wife put the brakes on the bachelor tours with Elvis. Truthfully, I miss my buddies, and my daughter, Tina Marie, but I have the life to die for. I think about my ex-wife Princess sometimes, but when you are Elvis and all the girls love you the temptation is just too hard to resist to be with just one woman no matter how beautiful she is. I can not come home for obvious reasons. Most people think I am really just a myth.
I will never forget the time when a very handsome 35 year old man all alone in a beautiful all-inclusive beach resort where I was vacationing with two of my stunners came up to me and said, ?You are my idol because nobody has girls like that and certainly not two! What is your secret? You remind me a little bit of Elvis, sir.? ?Elvis P. King at your service.?
Is it a case of Elvis Aaron Presley back in the building. My girls will tell you yes he is Elvis, The King has come home. Yes I was born in Mississippi and I lived in Memphis. I don?t want you to picture me as the young perfect Elvis. Elvis was fat in the end and so is your Elvis. My fried peanut butter and banana sandwhiches are easy to make with an island full of bananas and beautiful girls to cook them. But this is not a story about Elvis Presley or Elvis King. This is a story about the older man getting his young dream girl or dream girls. Most of Elvis?s buddies are old, fat and bald. So don?t get self-conscious and think you can?t get a girl. All of Elvis?s buddies always get their girl!
Whether you want a wife, girlfriend, young girlfriend, sexy girlfriend, kind girlfriend, real girlfriend, horny girlfriend, daily girlfriend, naughty girlfriend, beautiful girlfriend, hot girlfriend, teen girlfriend, cute girlfriend, tall girlfriend, short girlfriend, fat girlfriend, chubby girlfriend, or many girlfriends. You will never have to worry about how to get a girlfriend again with Elvis by your side. Elvis will hand -pick your dream girl right before your eyes. Say hello future girlfriend. Good bye ex-girlfriend.
Forget how to get your girlfriend back, forget singles bars, forget singles clubs, forget singles events, forget cyber girlfriends, forget virtual girlfriends, Forget on line dating, forget internet dating, forget dating agency, forget interracial dating, forget dating site, forget dating web site, forget Christian dating services, forget Asian dating, forget Indian dating, forget Black dating, forget love dating, forget Jewish dating, forget dating agency, forget Hispanic dating service, forget dating personals, forget adult dating, forget single dating, forget internet dating service, forget personal ads, forget hard to get girls, forget your cheating girlfriend, forget the ex-girlfriend, forget Donald Trump?s girlfriend, forget Hugh Hefner and Playboy Magazine girlfriends, forget sex dating, and above all forget senior dating services. Elvis has it all for you in his one-stop shopping dream girl dating service. Forget American girls, Asian girls, Latin girls, Canadian girls, English girls, German girls, Russian girls, forget Columbian girls. Elvis has the dream girls for you.
All you see on the internet is online dating, online dating, online dating, Russian girls, Russian girls and Russian girls. Who wants to date a girl online or go to Russia anyway. Nobody. If Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Google do not place your buddy Elvis P King and the Bachelor Dream Tours in the number one search engine placement position under dating you should email Larry and Sergey and complain. Long live the King, Elvis King and all his new buddies. Mention Elvis to Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Elvis would like to hang out with Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Also Elvis would like to meet Paul Allen and he likes Larry Ellison, just don?t tell the new Mrs. if Larry should decide to hang out with Elvis. Not to mention Elvis is a big Jack Nicholson fan. Who doesn?t want to hang out with Jack Nicholson. Even Elvis wants to hang out with Jack Nicholson!
If you need advice on dating, girlfriend, or love Elvis is the man. Take a dating tip from Elvis. Elvis has Fantasy Island hide-aways where few Westerners have ever strolled. My girls are not bleached out white girls and they love and crave the older man! One of my happiest clients is from Japan. You should see the girl he took home! Although I will admit I have a few beautiful white girlfriends. They are for the most part exotic island girls with Hawaiian tans and big brown eyes and curves to die for. My favorite island holds the title for Miss Universe literally! My girls would die for a Westerner Sugar Daddy like you. Don?t worry about speaking another language. My chauffeur speaks eight languages. Elvis tries to take care of all the girls, but there are simply too many. Come on down. Join Elvis on a one on one Bachelor Dream Tour.
I would write a book but I refuse to sell my secrets cheap. You can sit home and say ?yeah, yeah Elvis sure, sure we believe your story.? Or you can skip your trip to the Bahamas, Florida, Cancun or Hawaii and take a real vacation and see for yourself. A fantasy island vacation to remember for the rest of your life. Should you desire you can take your bikini girl home and marry her. Or just pick up the tab and hang out with Elvis and watch the sunsets over the ocean every night for the rest of your life with dream girl after dream girl after dream girl in the real Margaritaville, but this Margaritaville has available girls! And Elvis knows how to get them for you.
Elvis King specializes in finding that special dream girl or dream girls for the older gentleman who has everything except his own private Miss Universe! His one on one Bachelor Dream Tours are very popular and there is nothing else like it on the planet. Elvis has no competition. Yet his exclusive services can still be retained at bargain prices. Don?t be shy E-mail Elvis at: loverboybachelor@yahoo.com or check out his blog site at:

http://bachelortours.blogspot.com/
Please feel free to publish this article and resource box in your ezine, newsletter, offline publication or website. A copy would be appreciated at loverboybachelor@yahoo.com

About The Author

Elvis King specializes in finding that special dream girl or dream girls for the older gentleman who has everything except his own private Miss Universe! His one on one Bachelor Dream Tours are very popular and there is nothing else like it on the planet. Elvis has no competition. Yet his exclusive services can still be retained at bargain prices. Don?t be shy E-mail Elvis at: loverboybachelor@yahoo.com or check out his blog site at: http://bachelortours.blogspot.com/

by: Elvis King

Step aside Hugh Hefner. Elvis King is back in the building.
Bachelors, remember the guy in high school who got all the girls. Maybe he was the home coming king or the football captain. He?s Probably not getting the girls any more. I am sure he married the home coming queen and has four kids by now. And you should see the fat little wife he has. But not you and the Loverboy Bachelor, your eternal bachelors. Why a bachelor at 56? Because I love it. There?s nothing like the thrill of a new girl. A new date every single day. I hold the world record of beautiful young girlfriends 18 to 22 years old. (Girlfriends no pros) And I have came close a few times to giving it all up and marrying one of my dream girls. I frequent a few exotic fantasy islands. One of my favorite islands holds the Miss Universe crown. I laugh at poor Donald Trump knocking himself dead to find beautiful girls and he rarely gets lucky. And I know secret bachelor hide-aways where virtually no westerner has ever walked before. And If he ever was at one of my bachelor hide-aways he is probably one of those guys who just doesn?t know how to pick up girls and went home empty handed. Wouldn?t it have been nice if you could have been the best buddy of a rock star or a movie star who gets all the girls. Well you just got lucky. No rock star or movie star has ever had more girlfriends than your buddy Elvis.
I am not anscious to share my secrets or my dream girls, but Lucky for you I ran out of cash. If I hadn?t lost all my cash no one would ever know my secret. If you have always envied the guy who gets all the girls. Nows your chance to get even and get lucky. If you are a friendly, fun loving guy with deep pockets join me on my Bachelor Dream Tour. Give Elvis an email and we can talk about it. We?re not talking about taking 1000 guys to meet 100 girls. We?re talking buddies one on one hanging out with dream girls. Just you, me and the chauffeur and your dream girl of the day. Even my chauffeur has hundreds of girlfriends. Just the luck of the draw getting the right job with the right guy. Forget online dating, dating services, singles bars, and forget the singles groups and your blue haired mommys. Give Elvis an email and we can talk about it. For a week or a lifetime you owe it to yourself to hang out with the King, Elvis King. Your buddies back home will never believe your story once you take the Bachelor Dream Tour with the Loverboy Bachelor. Truthfully you may not ever want to go back home. You don?t have to be George Clooney or the perfect male model and the older gentlemen is welcome.
Elvis King specializes in finding that special dream girl or dream girls for the lonely, older man. His one on one Bachelor Dream Tours are becoming so popular that soon only the wealthiest men will be able to take the Bachelor Dream Tour do to the waiting list and popular demand. Email him at loverboybachelor@yahoo.com or join the group at http://www.msnusers.com/BachelorDreamTours.
Please feel to publish this article and resource box in your ezine, newsletter, offline publication or website. A copy would be appreciated at loverboybachelor@yahoo.com

About The Author

Elvis King was born in Missippi and grew up in Menphis, Tennesse. He is a retired actor and singer. Not to be confused with the other Elvis. Elvis Presley.
loverboybachelor@yahoo.com

by: Richard Robinson

??as ill luck would have it, it happened to be Friday and there was nothing to be had at the inn but some pieces of fish, which is called Abadexo in Castile, Bacallao in Andaluc?a, Curadillo in some places?? Cervantes: Don Quixote, 1605.
We here in Britain/US might think of it as salt cod, or stockfish, were we to think about it at all - which is unlikely. But as in so many other ways, Spain differs from us too on the question of salt cod. Bacalao (to give its most widely-used title) is elevated to legendary, near mythical status, a dish of iconic significance in festival and fiesta, a staple of such immense substance it once saved a city from siege. For the feeding of the multitude, the Forty Fishes aren?t even in it. With their holds stuffed with bacalao, Biscayan whalers crossed the North Atlantic to Newfoundland, and the Spanish conquistadors reached the New World. In the Spanish language, cortar el bacalao, to ?cut the cod?, is to be the boss.
Concerning cod, written records are sketchy, but we can draw on at least a few sure facts. Certainly the first Carlist War of the 1830s is a matter of historic record, as is the siege of Bilbao. A footnote to the conflict describes how a shopkeeper of that city, before the outbreak of hostilities, ordered ?some 20 or 22? bacalao from a trader. Of course, in Spanish this would have read ?20 o 22?, an order which some sloppy clerk mis-recorded as 20,022. The boatload of bacalao arrived shortly before the Carlists laid siege to the city. The shopkeeper, at first bemused but soon delighted, became rich on the error, while Bilbao?s citizens saw out the siege on frugal rations of nutritious salt cod. To this day, spicy, garlicky bacalao al pil-pil and bacalao a la vizcaina, in a rich sauce of tomato and olives, are signature dishes of Basque cuisine, and no Bilbao bar would be without at least one type of bacalao-based, bite-size pintxo to offer the gourmet tippler.
The celebrity of bacalao in Spain seems an unlikely phenomenon on the face of it. The flensed, dried and crucified fillet looks anything but appetising. Old-vest off-white in colour and coated with a rough salty dandruff, its texture is of balsa wood and its aroma faintly urinal. Get your preparation wrong and your bacalao?s an assault on the senses. My first experience of bacalao was memorable, less for the eating than for the protracted spitting-out - of scales and bones - and the gulping of beer to purge the briny aftertaste. Don Qixote, too, was unlucky, for: ??the landlord brought him a piece of that salt fish, but ill-watered and as ill-dressed?? .
A single experience should not colour one?s outlook and in the company of Rafael Andr?s, president of the Madrid Restaurant and Caf? Association, I once enjoyed bacalao so fragrant, so succulent and delicious - its perfectly-cooked flesh yielding to the fork in moist flakes, the sauce rich and subtly spiced, complementing the cod to perfection - as to raise senses to gastronomic nirvana. And the secret, the alchemy, the magic by which malodorous slab is transmuted to mouth-watering delicacy is?. love.
Yes, cari?o, it seems, is all you need. That and plenty of time. First the ragged and scaly bits of the dry bacalao are trimmed, then the flesh with skin attached is placed in plenty of fresh water and left to soak for no less than 24 hours. Three times the water should be replaced so as to purge the unwanted sodium bicarbonate, and to rehydrate the cod to its former pale plumpness, to prepare it for the pan. The cod pieces are first boiled in an earthenware pot until a white froth appears, then removed to a casserole dish and sizzled in virgin olive oil, to one of a score of different recipes. From the storekeeper?s slab to the plate, the bacalao must be treated with tenderness and care. It must be watched-over, encouraged, coaxed and tricked into its edible guise and in this, Spanish chefs are expert.
Portuguese too, for in the matter of bacalao (or bacalh?o, over the border) the Portuguese are if anything even more obsessive. They each consume some ten kilos per annum, and the Portuguese housewife is said to have 365 different ways of preparing the stuff. A simple search of the Internet throws-up no fewer than 3,500 sites dedicated to bacalh?o. The Brazilians and other Latin Americans are similarly partial, as are the French, Greeks, Italians, North Africans and Norse. Bacalao has conquered the Iberian Peninsula and a large chunk of the world besides, but its story begins in the Basque lands of the Bay of Biscay.
From their scuffles with the Vikings, the Basques discovered that the belligerent, bull-horned invaders travelled on a diet of crude dried fish. The resourceful Basques took hold of this idea and improved on it, by salting as well as drying, a practice they already employed with whale meat. They also improved the design of their own boats, borrowing ideas from the Vikings. This was in the ninth century and, by the tenth, the long lasting qualities of salt fish meant that the Basques could extend their whaling expeditions way beyond the coastal shelf. Cod fishing was traditionally carried out while on whaling expeditions, and the exceptionally low fat content of cod made it particularly suited to curing. As the whale stocks of the Bay of Biscay dwindled, a galley-full of bacalao would enable the Basques to mount extended expeditions - first towards Galicia, then northwards to the summer breeding grounds of Iceland, the Outer Hebrides and the Faeroes. According to popular myth (and some fragments of historic evidence), the Basques pursued whale to Newfoundland years before either Cabot or Columbus made the crossing. Certainly they fished those northerly shores by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when cod were six feet long and plentiful, in contrast to the persecuted, scarce and diminutive specimens of today.
It was the Basques who marketed cod products far and wide, and were responsible for making bacalao into the peasant staple of southern Europe. Its enduring popularity and legendary versatility (some sources claim thousands of bacalao recipes, but this seems to be stretching credulity) mean that it appears on menus all over Spain, perhaps with a predominance in Vizcaya, Galicia and the North. Recently I tried ensalada de bacalao with onion, red peppers in the Southern town of Algar and bacalao al Moz?rabe ? cod Moorish style, with grapes in a sweet sauce, in Priego de C?rdoba. Empanada de bacalao con pasas, coliflor con bacalao, empanadillas de bacalao and chorizos de bacalao con pasas are just a few more sample dishes.
Bacalao is famous for its many uses and here?s another. Stuck for a gift to buy? It?s lightweight, easily transported, durable and nourishing. Give ?em bacalao!
MORE ON COD:
Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. Mark Kurlansky, Vintage, 1999. A 1,000-year history, and a story of the plundering of what was once one of the world?s richest food sources.
By Richard Robinson

richard@rural-andalucia.co.uk

www.rural-andalucia.co.uk/
Richard Robinson is a UK-based travel writer specialising in Spain. Visit his favourite corner of Andaluc?a on www.rural-andalucia.co.uk.
This article first appeared in Living Spain magazine, a UK monthly publication.

About The Author

Richard Robinson, the author, retains copyright of all submitted material. Where submitted material has already been published elsewhere it has been revised and updated. Richard Robinson is a freelance travel writer for The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, The Times, Living Spain (all UK)and Americas (USA) among other publications.

richard@rural-andalucia.co.uk