Ice for your loins, Gov. Spitzer?

At Washington, DC’s Mayflower Hotel—where Eliot Spitzer hired a hooker, Marion Barry allegedly snorted cocaine, and Zach Everson vacationed with his family—I swung by room 871 where the former New York governor committed career suicide:

I’m not sure why I brought the ice bucket though.

2010 travel highlights: Beijing, the Big Island of Hawaii, and a new travel buddy

A trip to San Diego in June marked my daughter's first dip in the Pacific Ocean.

Just over a week into 2010, I became a dad. During the year I realized though that any concerns I had about parenthood—and my new editor-in-chief gig at Louisville.com, which I also started in January—impacting my travel were unfounded.

Here are my travel highlights for 2010 (and while my daughter didn’t go on all of these trips with me, she did make it to 14 states and Washington, DC in her first year):

• In February I visited the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach and wrote about its teen club for Air Canada’s in-flight magazine, enRoute, and one of my rare visits to a spa for UpTake.
• A road trip to Milwaukee and Chicago in March marked my daughter’s first trip out of Kentucky; I talked about the experience on a podcast for UpTake and mentioned our Chicago hotel room’s wonderful view in enRoute.
• As much as I enjoy traveling, it’s nice when a big event comes to me. In May it was the Kentucky Derby, which I wrote about for BlackBook and oversaw Louisville.com’s best week of traffic ever (November’s Breeders’ Cup did well too).
• While family was the focus of my June visits to San Diego (brother’s wedding) and Kamiah, ID (to see my grandmother), I wrote about San Diego restaurant Jsix’s chef’s kitchen experience for BlackBook.
• In June I made it back to New York City for TBEX, a travel bloggers conference, and finally got to meet in person a lot of folks I’d only known on the tubes. They were terribly disappointing exceeded high expectations.
• Coming from a small family (no aunts or uncles), my wife’s family’s annual reunion just outside of Morgantown, WV is a can’t miss—I’m serious.
• In Columbus, Ohio for my brother-in-law’s wedding, I stayed in a hotel where James Thurber use to live.
• In August I flew to the The Big Island of Hawaii on assignment for enRoute to take a fine art photography class with Photo Safari Hawaii.
• Later that month Las Vegas was the destination for another enRoute assignment, this time to take a poker lesson from two-time World Series of Poker champ Mark Seif.
• I wrote about looking out over Gerald Ford’s grave site from my hotel room in Grand Rapids, Mich. for UpTake and visiting the art fair with the world’s largest prize (if not the best art) for Gridskipper.
• On Columbus Day weekend we trekked to Watoga State Park in West Virginia for another of my wife’s family reunions (it’s a big clan).
• At Thanksgiving I returned to my hometown of Reading, Mass. for the first time in 17 months, the longest I’d ever gone without a visit; I reviewed the accommodations at my parents’ house for UpTake (executive summary: meh).
• For the second year in a row, I visited China with the Ritz-Carlton (this time it was Beijing); I won’t complain if trips to China with that hotelier become an annual tradition. Culinary highlights already have been posted on Gridskipper.
• It was fantastic to get back to Washington, DC and see our friends. I wrote our stay at the Ritz-Carlton, Washington DC about for UpTake.
• For the third time in four years, both my wife’s family and mine gathered in the neutral playing location of Deep Creek Lake Maryland for Christmas.

Peter Greenberg’s website posts my write-up of Christmas at Washington, DC’s Willard

A recent post on Peter Greenberg’s website, Holiday Celebrations and Winter Wonderlands Around the World, included my write-up of Christmas festivities at the Willard in Washington, DC.

Greenberg, of course, is the travel editor for CBS News, appearing on its Early Show, as well as an editor and contributor for several other travel publications.

Examiner.com publishes my first post as the Louisville Budget Travel Examiner

I just started a gig as the Louisville Budget Travel Examiner for Examiner.com. My first article was posted yesterday:

A budget survival guide to Washington, DC, for Barack Obama’s inauguration

It was a fun piece to write, and I enjoy the flexibility I have in writing about budget travel—I can pretty much write about any location I want.

And my upcoming trip, driving from Louisville to Las Vegas and then flying to DC for the inauguration, should provide ample fodder for this new job.

I’m starting a few other writing gigs in the upcoming weeks too, but I’ll post more about them once I have something published.

My new office: Heading west, but stopping short

I am moving to Louisville, KY, on Nov. 18. My wife accepted a new job and we bought a house out there, so I figured it’d make sense for me to move to Louisville as well.

This move, however, won’t impact my ability to help my clients. I am confident that I’ll still be able to help you from my new home office in Louisville. I also will be returning to Washington, DC often.

I’ve been a huge fan of Louisville since I first visited it four years ago. My wife and I, while sure to miss DC, are thrilled to be relocating there.

(And, of course, we used Brandon Green Companies to help us find a real estate agent in Louisville.)