McCool Travel is excited to present tips from travel experts in our 5 Minutes interview series featuring travel industry giants, super frequent travelers, and adventurous persons.
For the latest profile, I am thrilled to present Shereen Rayle. Shereen is the owner and writer of Shereen Travels Cheap, a website that offers posts about her travels, current travel deals, budget tips and suggesting websites and products. She often writes about foods she has eaten on travels and where to find great restaurants on your trips. She is a Savvy Expert in Ebates’ Savvy Living Community, specializing in Travel, but also helping others to live more Savvy with money-saving tips and ideas. She is based in Portland, Oregon when not traveling the world.
Bio:
I like to call myself a budget travel enthusiast. I’m not a travel professional, getting paid to travel the world and sleep in the swankiest hotels, so saving money is seriously important when I plan my vacations. My husband and I like to get the most for our money, but still be comfortable and do as much as possible. With this in mind, I am constantly looking for ways to save on every aspect of a trip. Finding that so many others around me were also on a budget and didn’t even know where to start when planning an affordable vacation, I set out to write a book, with a corresponding blog, to help friends, family and all the other budget travelers out there take better vacations with the money they had. Readers can see some of the great current deals and tips, as well as ask me questions via my page on Facebook or my Twitter feed.
Always in my luggage…
Sunscreen, iGo multi-charger, netbook, mobile and camera.
3 favorite home-away-from-home places…
- London
- Anaheim
- Ecuador
A favorite travel memory is…
Waking up from being totally jetlagged to my husband having planned an entire afternoon and evening in Paris for us. We spent hours at Pere Lachaise Cemetery and took a gazillion pictures of the incredible tombs.
3 favorite travel brands…
3 money-saving travel tactics I use are…
- Fly on Wednesday or Saturday.
- Rent an apartment (or hotel with kitchenette), so we can make some of our own meals.
- Walk as much as possible.
3 ways that I have fun while traveling are…
- Finding yummy local restaurants
- Doing totally (and usually cheesy) touristy things
- Meeting new people.
8 word (or less) travel mantra…
Any budget can accommodate a great vacation.
My favorite non-travel website…
Ebates.com, because it saves me tons of money on everything I buy.
most memorable souvenir …
I pick up an ornament on every trip I go on, so each year my Christmas tree becomes more and more international.
favorite cheap eat …
Food carts! Specifically the ones in Paris that sell baguette sandwiches and crepes.
recent discovery …
Packable boots are amazing. I love a good, stylish boot, but they are always hard to pack and you definitely can’t wear them on a long plane rides. Packables are my new favorite travel companions.
I would like to meet …
Anthony Bourdain. I adore his sense of humor and love of food and travel.
Thank you, Shereen, for sharing your thoughts with McCool Travel and may you have countless more memorable travel adventures!
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