What’s better than a wine tasting tour? How about a wine tasting tour with no driving! Coming up this spring is the perfect getaway weekend for vinophiles: a cruise from Seattle to Victoria and Vancouver, B.C. April 24-27, 2009. (You return to port at 7 A.M. Monday morning—in time for work, but with no guarantees on your readiness to go back to the grind.) Your guide for this experience, which includes an exclusive wine maker’s lunch at the Pinnacle Grill, a wine tasting party, and a complimentary bottle of wine in addition to all the usual shipboard amenities on Holland America’s MS Amsterdam, is baby boomer and wine expert Deb McFarlane.

A dedicated and seasoned world traveler who also loves wine, McFarlane spent many years at Microsoft. After leaving the software giant in 2000, she began to study her passion in earnest, graduating with honors from the two-year program at the Wine Academy at South Seattle Community College. Her company, Wine Diva Deb, the realization of her desire to combine her two passions, leads small groups of wine aficionados on trips all over the world. Check out her Web site, www.winedivadeb.com, for details on lengthier upcoming 2009 adventures farther afield in Greece, Italy or Thailand.

To book your spot on the three-day, Northwest wine cruise, call Wine Diva Deb at (206) 617-6160 or email winedivadeb@yahoo.com.

You can still do something good for the world and its people in 2008. Bridges to Understanding, a Seattle non-profit, has one more international workshop next month. The Bridges team including founder and world-renowned photographer Phil Borges will take a group of volunteers to Guatemala November 1-9th to work with Fotokids, a Guatemalan organization.

The volunteers and the children will work together on storytelling. While familiarity with digital cameras and photography is a help, you don’t have to be an expert. You are likely to find avid amateur photographers along. Go to the Bridges Web site (http://www.bridgesweb.org/) to see the amazing and touching results from earlier trips.

Cost is $2,535 for adults, which includes food, lodging and in-country travel. Jeff Speigner, who went on this trip to Santiago Antitlan last year, said he found himself surprised and delighted by, “The degree of camaraderie amongst the volunteers and the kids as they went from introduction to producing a community film festival in a week.”

To go, contact Bridges to Understanding at info@bridgesweb.org.

If a boat trip down the Seine is in your plans this fall, buy your ticket for the Vedettes du Pont Neuf on the Web before you leave for Paris and save. An added bonus is that you also avoid the lines. If you pre-purchase your tickets on their web site, adults receive a discount of four euros and children get two euros off. The tickets are good for any of the day or night cruises, which generally depart about every half hour from the center of Paris, next to the famous Pont Neuf bridge. Or if you prefer, print out the other coupon, which entitles everyone in your party to a two-euro discount without the obligation of pre-purchase.

So if taking in the sunset on a crisp fall evening in the city of light is your idea of heaven, take a river cruise.  Discover some of the most beautiful monuments of Paris, and rest your feet while your stretch your savings!

Contact information:
Bateaux Les Vedettes du Pont-Neuf website

Square du Vert Galant
75001 Paris
Tel: 33 (0) 1 46 33 98 38
E-mail: info@vedettesdupontneuf.com

Use the link below to get your coupons now:
Bateaux Les Vedettes du Pont-Neuf Coupons

We’re all striving to live greener lives—choosing environmentally friendly and sustainable products for our homes and remembering those cloth bags when we go to the store. Now there’s a new way to be even “greener” when you travel. Merino outdoor clothing pioneer Icebreaker just introduced  “Baacode,” a revolutionary tracking system that lets you follow their garments through every step of the production process.

“We made the decision to put this information online to give consumers a clear understanding of Icebreaker, and of our deep and ongoing commitment to the environment and to social ethics,” says CEO Jeremy Moon.  The Icebreaker site also has some nifty video visits to the stations where the sheep are raised and a demo of the system.

Here’s how it works. Icebreaker garments have an internal label with a unique Baacode number. A swingtag on the garment shows you how to enter your individual Baacode on the Icebreaker website to trace the merino fiber in the clothing back to the sheep stations where it was grown.  Icebreaker sources its merino fiber directly from high country New Zealand farmers, all of whom must comply with stringent guidelines on animal health and welfare, long-term respect for the environment, and fiber quality. And since the company makes serious adventure clothing, as well as a special line of travel clothing for both men and women, you have lots of choices you can feel good about for whatever kind of travel you may want to do.  You can take a look at some of the travel clothes available here at our site (at the bottom center of the page in the Featured Products area).

Now that’s a right idea!

Hey, thanks for checking out the new BoomVoyage blog. In this space, we will tell you about upcoming events of interest to Baby Boomers (most with a travel slant), let you know about great new finds, which may be places, products or services, update you on people, places and events that we have told you about before on BoomVoyage, and alert you to special deals we have arranged. Be sure to check back often or to subscribe.

Coming up soon is Retire in Style, the third annual Boomers Show.  Held at Long Beach Convention Center in California, October 25-26, this year’s event promises to have lots of goodies plus valuable information on health, lifestyle, retirement possibilities, financial information, travel, and so much more.  Interested in attending? If you click on this link, you can get your $25 entrance tickets free!  Planning to make a weekend of it and come in from out of town? Use the BoomVoyage toll-free number 866-958-8687 and have our travel partner, Casto, find you a great place to stay and handle your travel.  See you at the show!