wow - 16 countries! Jealous - I love travel so much!

Nick, I expect you've put in more flight time than me!
I've been lucky to reap the benefits of mom's frequent flyer miles and getting to come along as her photographer on the occasional press junket. This seems to work well on cruises, if they have to give her a cabin anyway, why not toss in me? That's how the Galapagos trip came together. This is what we'll be on next month:
http://www.ecoventura....

Frequent Flyer miles have a lot to do with my travels as well, so I can relate.... but the press junket part sounds very interesting, and not just because I've always wanted to say "press junket". I can imagine that is a tremendous opportunity.
I've been salivating over that site - I've never been on a cruse and frankly have not had much interest in traditional Caribbean eat, drink, sail type affairs...but we constantly talk about how much fun a smaller boat with the right type of friends would be - this looks perfect.

When we were in (I think we are cross-posting - I just saw an email from pownce with your name pop up...too funny) Australia we looked into some eco-tourism ...some very extravagant tree-canopy places in the rain forest, and the idea has become considerably more appealing considering the geo-political climate ....

I cannot wait to see your pictures - I feel like Galapagos is inextricably tied to the FSM ...but thats another thread

Mom and I visited a rain forest in Cairn that was quite cool. I totally dig cruises. But it has to be the right kind. One of those floating cities would totally turn me off. I also have no need to travel with ballgowns and dress for dinner.

My first cruise (only one on a proper ship really) was on http://www.windstarcru... We sailed on the Windsurf (Venice, Rab Island, Dubrovnik, Corfu, Messina, Amalfi, Rome) less than 300 passengers and great food. (dinner was slightly above biz cas, nice pants or dresses for women, khakis and blazers w/o tie for men.) http://filer.case.edu/...

Sometime I want to just pack up my laptop and take one of their Atlantic crossings so I can just hang out on the boat and write for 2 weeks. Might be a good way to work on my book.

2 yrs ago we did http://www.schoonerher... which is more like sailing with friends who have a rather large sailboat. Superb time (pics at http://www.flickr.com/...) . It's probably the coolest boat in the schooner fleet as Captain and crew are all brilliant and fun. The cook was one of the skipper's daughters taking a year off from MIT. Her sister works for Google. 30 passengers and cheap. Less than 1K for the week. Granted you have to like to rough it as the cabins are tiny and there aren't proper showers, but super fun.

Mom edits a section of her local paper. It's small but part of a chain. So whenever she goes anywhere she'll write about it and send her clippings to the travel PR firms. She's amassed enough clippings that they'll send her various places. Sometimes I get to tag along. She's also an ice skating judge. That's what builds the miles. Judging is voluntary, but your expenses and travel are covered.

So when we have the miles we cross the pacific. She sends her clippings to various hotels then we get comped in places like http://hongkong-ic.int... (freaking astounding views and superb food. there room service is cheaper than eating in the hotel restaurants) or http://www.ritzcarlton... (got a wicked sunburn there. The seawater therapy pool is astounding http://www.ritzcarlton....

Praise mom. She takes me cool places and whether we're roughing it or staying in 4 star hotels it's always interesting.

Once in awhile we'll also do silly things like skibble off to Europe for a long weekend if she needs a few miles to keep her status level. Then we go cheap, we've done that for Munich and Brussels, but cheap family hotels in Europe are usually quite cozy.