November 29, 2011 | 10:04 am

Travel Happy Hour TODAY!

Posted by Lisa Niver Rajna

Travel with Technology! What is your favorite travel app?

Meet fellow travelers and the creators of both Ship Mate and StudioMini!  Come to share your favorite app and learn what others are using on the road!

WIN TICKETS to LACMA and Skirball Museums!

First TWENTY people will receive FREE download codes for SHIP MATE APP!!

We also have SHIRTS to give away!
Don’t miss out!!

Happy Hour Prices for Drinks and Appetizers!

See you at 7pm, X-Bar Century City!

X bar
Hyatt Regency Century Plaza
2025 Avenue of the Stars
Los Angeles, CA 90067

PARKING: $8 with validation or 2 hours free at Century City Mall

Want more Travel Apps now? Check out our new page!!
http://www.wesaidgotravel.com/apps.html

More information about us: www.wesaidgotravel.com

November 20, 2011 | 2:05 pm

Happy Thanksgiving! Realize Your Dreams! (video)

Posted by Lisa Niver Rajna

Give Yourself Time: The Joy of Taking a Break

Friends and family ask us, “How do you do it? How do you manage to leave for a year?” Others say, “You are crazy; I would never do that!” These people usually think of the dictionary definition of a vagabond as “…a person who wanders from place to place without a home or job.” I prefer Ralph Potts’ definition in his book Vagabonding:

‘Vagabonding’ is about taking time off from your normal life — from six weeks, to four months, to two years — to discover and experience the world on your own terms.

In this season of Thanksgiving, I reflect on what Seth Godin said last year:

A modern Thanksgiving would celebrate two things: The people in our lives who give us the support and love we need to make a difference, and… the opportunity to build something bigger than ourselves, something worth contributing. The ability to make connections, to lend a hand, to invent and create.

When we departed to realize George’s dream of travel in SE Asia, I wrote every month to my friends and former students, wondering at the time if anyone would read our words. Would I make a difference if I wrote at all? I remembered Ralph Waldo Emerson’s thoughts:

  Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Leaving both our homes and our careers can free us to think about our path and what we want to do with our lives. If you are considering a long vacation or a career break you might ask, “From where am I leaving and how might I find a purpose? What will the trip be like? What will happen in this new unknown world?”

A Sabbatical may allow us to step back so we might give more to our lives in the future. An academic study, Sabbatical Leave: Who Gains and How Much? conducted by researchers from the US, Israel and New Zealand, researches this question. The study concludes: “Sabbatical leave promotes well-being…the present study confirmed the beneficial effect of a respite on positive well-being.”

Maybe we cannot all take a year-long sabbatical but at least we may find a sabbatical second or moment to acknowledge our dreams and pull our lives more into focus, and become closer to making our dreams come true. Support someone else’s idea for a Gap Year, Mini-retirement, Big Trip or Sabbatical—between stages of life, after college, or after the home nest empties.

Last year passed without a National Meet Plan Go event in Los Angeles. I discovered that no one had volunteered to host the occasion. So this year, we facilitated the day, and drew an incredible panel with a sold-out crowd of over a hundred attendees. I wasn’t sure how to bring the event to fruition, but as with all such tasks, the journey began with a first step.

This Thanksgiving season I am grateful for a support team that allows me to ship early and helps to make my dreams come true. For many of us who have left “the rat race” with a sabbatical or career break, we realize that the journey is for the sake of the adventure and that we can be transformed by our travels. I hope that you will put one foot in front of the other and proceed firmly in your life to make your dreams come true. Find a tribe that understands our world, takes care of our planet and also supports its members.

I hope that this during this Thanksgiving and holiday season, you can carve time out of your schedule and not be permanently tied to your Blackberry, carpool, office or deadlines, to focus on realizing your dreams, whether they involve travel or something that only you can imagine.

For a moment, a year, or a lifetime.

This article was first published as part of The Happy Thanksgiving Magazine for Squidoo.

Want to know more about our event Meet Plan Go Los Angeles from October 18,  check out the video!

Meet Plan Go Giving Back

MPG Los Angeles hosts, George and Lisa Rajna (the creators of We Said Go Travel), participate in community lives when they travel and support those in need – whether it’s Burmese refugees in Northern Thailand, the Jewish World Watch Solar Oven project to help people acquire the tools they need to improve their lives, or importing purses fabricated from local tapestries made by Kazak women to better provide for their families. The idea of sharing profits from the Meet, Plan, Go! event with others came as a natural continuation of their other works.

Lisa Napoli, who wrote Radio Shangri-La and participated on the Los Angeles panel, has been working to help create a library in Mongar, Bhutan through her project, Books to Bhutan. She says, “Please help us bring the joy of books and reading to these kids, who are so eager to learn.” As teachers and library lovers, the Rajnas know that supporting Lisa’s project with the profits from their event made a perfect match; they’ve sent $300 to help fill the shelves in Mongar with books. If you would like to help add more to the library, please use this link.

From Lisa and George, We Said Go Travel:

We wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday with your families and friends. We are off to a tiny fishing village we learned about in Mongolia from a Canadian guy who lived in Bolivia and had a house in Mexico. We will tell you all about it!

We hope to see you Nov 29 at X-Bar in Century City for our next event, “Travel with Technology: My favorite Travel app!” Meet the founders of Ship Mate! More travel news and stories from us next week. Want more right now? go to: www.wesaidgotravel.com

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November 15, 2011 | 6:58 pm

Tasting with the Napa Wine Project

Posted by Lisa Niver Rajna

Please enjoy this Guest Post from Dave at Dave’s Travel Corner:

Thanks to George and Lisa for this guest post!

I first met them early this year at a travel blogging event at the Biltmore in downtown and have since been to several of their events including the very well attended Meet Plan Go event last month where I poured wines from smaller Napa producers.

Nearly 6 years ago I started the Napa Wine Project. I wanted to create a unique project on a large scale and decided to try and review all wineries in Napa by personally visiting them, meeting the owners and tasting the wines. I chose Napa because of its excellent International reputation and its wine regions are fairly well defined along a small valley surrounded by hillsides. Of course, when I started
the project - I didn’t realize there are approximately 900 producers making wine commercially in the Napa Valley!

Over time I have explored many of the off the beaten path wineries, individual appellations (wine regions within Napa Valley), met with some very interesting people from all walks of life, tasted some stellar wines and certainly increased my own knowledge of all aspects of the wine industry. In the process I hope I’ve created a resource that is valuable for both consumers and the trade.

My goal is still the same, and six years later I am a bit closer to reaching it - I’ve now visited the winery (or with a representative if there is no physical winery), tasted the wines and written reviews of over 670 commercial wine producers/wineries in Napa (including a number that have moved out of Napa or gone out of business in the last six years). Look for my 700th review sometime in early to mid 2012!

The Napa Valley sometimes gets a bad rap for being too high class or pretentious - but nothing could be further from the truth - especially if you take some time to explore this beautiful region. There are a few larger wineries that get much of the publicity -but by numbers, 95% of the producers in the Napa Valley are small (under 1000 cases) and are family owned.

There is a section of the Napa Valley along Highway 29 that locals sometimes refer to as “the wine strip”- this is the most visited winery part of the valley (larger tasting rooms, better known wineries) and on a busy summer weekend traffic can stack up significantly along the highway at certain times of the day. In addition, some of the more popular tasting rooms here might have lines around the bar
just to taste their wines.

There are well less than 100 wineries in Napa that do not require appointments and you can just walk in during their normal business hours. By numbers, most of the wineries in Napa require advance appointments. For more personalized experiences, I highly recommend making appointments at some of these smaller wineries. Often you can visit with the owner or winemaker and learn more about the entire process of making wine. Or if you want to visit the larger wineries, consider visiting during the winter season or during the middle of the week for fewer crowds.

Napa Valley produces only about 4% of the state of California’s entire wine production. Quality is paramount here rather than quantity. Vintners continue to strive to improve the quality of each
vintage. And as most winemakers will tell you, “80% of winemaking is conducted in the vineyard.”

The winemaking community refreshingly is an environment where information is shared, rather than guarded. Winemakers as a whole are willing to discuss how they make wine and answer a variety of questions about the industry.

I’m always happy to answer any questions or provide winery recommendations for this special region. You can contact me at: @davedtc, www.facebook.com/davestravelcorner, www.napawineproject.com or www.davestravelcorner.com

From Lisa and George, We Said Go Travel:
We appreciated Dave’s participation in our October Travel event and are so happy to host his guest post this week on our blog.
Thank you to Dave!!

We hope to see you Nov 29 at X-Bar in Century City for our next event, “Travel with Technology: My favorite Travel app!” Meet the founders of Ship Mate! More travel news and stories from us next week. Want more right now? go to: www.wesaidgotravel.com

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November 7, 2011 | 9:00 pm

I love Lucy! What is in your backpack?

Posted by Lisa Niver Rajna

I love Lucy clothes!

Just like the ads claim they are perfectly packable. While stuck inside for a couple of days in torrential rain while cooking upstairs at Fifita’s guesthouse in Pangai, Ha’apai, Tonga, Dwight asked me “Who is Lucy? And why is her name on all your clothes?”

It is true nearly everything in my backpack is from the Lucy store, on our summer trip in Tonga and Samoa this summer, I had two shorts, two capris, one long pants, half a dozen t-shirts and a long sleeve shirt all from the store. My one skirt and one zip up warmer shirt are also great Lucy products. Nothing wrinkles, the fabric is easy to clean and the colors are great. I figure why go anywhere else?

When we were away traveling for a year in SE Asia, I lost so much weight when we came home I needed clothes in a new size. I had already discovered Lucy clothes but now became a walking store.

As Laura Fraser says in her new book, All Over the Map

My desires—to be free and to belong, to be independent and to be inextricably loved, to be in motion and to be still—pull me back and forth.

Luckily I can use my Lucy clothes at my job, on my two-mile walk to work and for travel. If only everything fit my life this well!

One thing I am so happy about is the new Everyday Pant! Last year I wore my four pairs (I have them in every color) every day from October to April. I had hoped that the new version would be more slim leg and it is and they look great on! I like the new gray asphalt color and the new band at the waist is comfortable and flattering! I am glad they got rid of the zippers at the bottom of the pants because I never knew what those were for! Like all Lucy clothes they never wrinkle and wash and dry perfectly. The new fabric feels great, is lightweight and they are definitely my favorite pants.

At another time Fraser states in All Over the Map,

Almost anyone who is middle-aged can give you a long list of things that have gone wrong or that didn’t turn out the way they expected. But at least by now we have some measure of experience and wisdom to deal with it all. Things definitely aren’t easy for anyone.

She is a consummate traveler and does describe finding her own way by the end of this story but one thing I can tell you as a fellow traveler, some things can be easy! Shop at Lucy and you will have great clothes to wear and pack!

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