Travel 'experts', whether they are travel writers, guidebook authors, travel bloggers, tour guides, travel agents, hoteliers etc, are also 'real' travellers in my mind. Yet publishers and travel sites are frequently pitting the two against each other. Sure, the travel experts sometimes get special treatment and they can rarely shut themselves off from the act of reviewing, even when they're on holidays, but the fact is that they do take holidays and do travel like 'normal' people too. I book my flights and hotels online. I have to negotiate local transport like you do. I eat as many bad meals as I do good ones, and I also get allocated my share of crappy hotel rooms too. Yet increasingly the opinions of the experts - the people who stay in hundreds of hotel rooms a year, catch scores of flights, and talk to thousands of other travel experts and travellers - that is, the people who make it their business to accumulate vast travel experience and knowledge and develop skills at discernment - seem to be increasingly undervalued and overlooked in favor of the opinions of 'real' people. One example is the hotel reviews in Budget Travel (a magazine I love, by the way), such as this one which states that "Online reviews generally praise the hotel as an affordable gem with a fun, unique theme" and "Reader Dawn recommends Franklin Feel the Sound, where she stayed in June 2009. She writes that the Franklin exceeded her expectations and was excellent value". Frankly, unless I know who these online reviewers were and have more information about them and Dawn, I don't care what they think. I want to know how much hotel experience they've had, how many hotels in Rome they've checked into and inspected, and how many hotels they've stayed at fullstop, so I can then determine what their idea of "affordable" or "unique" is, and how different their expectations may be to that of other travellers. You see, travel experts know these things. What do you think?

Here's my response to an invitation from Eric over at TravelBlogs.com to reflect upon disappointment on the road:
"Giza’s pyramids were smaller than I’d imagined and their suburban location a surprise, Paris’ Eiffel Tower was little more than an elegant oversized transmission tower, Victoria’s Twelve Apostles tinier than I remembered, and, there weren’t even twelve anymore, and that hot air balloon ride was noisy, cramped, chaotic, and uncomfortably hot. As a travel writer, avoiding disappointment is a constant challenge. Because I know disappointment occurs when expectations are too high. Lower expectations and the chances of disappointment are lower. Raise them and we increase the risk of having a bad time. The irony is the very things we find inspiring – the stirring images we enjoy gazing at, the evocative stories we like reading – are the things responsible for our disappointment if our experiences don’t measure up. To have no expectations, we must read nothing, look at nothing, and listen to no travel tales – impossible for a writer. So the way I counteract disappointment is to seek out different ways of experiencing ‘familiar’ places – to look beyond the main attraction to the overlooked and under-written about (often beneath our very noses or right around the corner), to discover and communicate the wonder of everyday things and people, to write honestly about places, and to encourage others to seek out and appreciate the beauty of the authentic and everyday."

Drop over to Eric's site to see what other travel bloggers have to say, but I'd love to hear from you and find out how you overcome disappointment on the road, or whether you have any tips for avoiding it? Is this even something you think about and are conscious of? Or do you just deal with it when it happens. And if so, how?

"Expectation is a dangerous thing. The higher the expect- ations, the greater the chance they’ll be dashed," writes Eric over at TravelBlogs.com, "But when it does happen, know this: it happens to many travellers." To prove his point, Eric rounded up 19 travel bloggers (including myself) and asked them to share their thoughts on 'Disappointment: when places don't live up to your expectations' and to reflect on their experiences of trips and places that haven't met their expectations. Drop by and see what they have to say.

But I'm keen to hear from you about your travel disappointments, and why you think they came about. Do you think you might have been less disappointed had your expectations been lower? Or were there are other reasons for things not ending up as you'd hoped? And do you have any ideas or suggestions as to how people can prevent or avoid disappointment on the road? If you do, and you don't mind, I'd love to publish your best tips not just in the comments section, but in a separate post on this blog on 'How to avoid disappointment on the road: cool tips from travelers'. Let me know what you think.

Like many travellers I have an obsession with photographing doors. It started in Mexico many years ago and has stayed with me throughout my travels. The more colorful, faded, and older they are the better. If there's paint peeling off them, wonderful. If there are wooden shutters somewhere on the facade that match, perfect. Like the painted blue chairs in Greece, antique wooden doors are something we associate with atmospheric neighborhoods, characterful back streets, ramshackle buildings... it's about having those romantic notions of what an old village should be like satisfied, about having those travel expectations met. But for me, it's something more as well. I also want to take a look behind them. I want my curiosity about what's inside sated. I dream of an amiable little old lady in a headscarf and apron opening the door and inviting me in for tea and showing me around her home. If she offers me her photo album, I'll be in heaven. My ideal 'tour' is one where a guide shows me around a village or town for a day, inviting me into the homes of the locals. I want to be a fly on the wall and see how people live their lives. But then I'll be just as happy to join them for lunch. And I won't mind one bit doing the dishes afterwards.