Andrew McCarthy

I had another fun, interesting and long day at the New York Times Travel Show.
On Friday I attended Travel Industry Day (read about some of the highlights HERE).

Yesterday I returned for the first of two General Public Days. There was a much larger crowd which made it harder at times to get the attention of the travel representatives, but overall it was not too bad.
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During my visit, I attended a couple of seminars, chatted with representatives of various tourism boards & travel companies and also learned about some new travel- related products.
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We were running late in the morning so I ended up missing a travel seminar featuring Seth Kugel, the NY Times Frugal Traveler. We ended up making it (a few minutes late) to a seminar given by Andrew McCarthy.
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McCarthy is an actor and editor at large for National Geographic Traveler. His seminar was supposed to be about his memoir “The Longest Way Home” but it ended up being a talk more about his travels. He also touched on what it’s like to travel for pleasure opposed to travel on assignment. He  shared some interesting videos from his travels. My favorite story he told was about his visit to Sudan. I also found it interesting to hear about how he pitches stories and locations to his editors.

After Andrew’s presentation, I had a chance to chat with him (when he was done signing copies of his book). We spoke for a while about various travel destinations and he seemed like a friendly and down to earth guy.

Julia Dimon

I also stopped by a seminar presented by Julia Dimon. Julia is a travel writer and Nat Geo TV personality. She has traveled to over 80 countries and shared stories about some of her trips.
I found out that some of her favorite destinations in the world were Thailand and Tanzania. She also mentioned an incredible animal experience that Kim and I got to take part in also during our trip to Thailand. Elephant Nature Park is a place where you can spend a day to get to learn about Asian elephants. You also get the opportunity to feed and wash them in a river. Fun stuff.

Elephant Nature Park was listed in My Top 5 Animal Encounters post which you can read here.
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While walking around the show, I ran into a couple of interesting characters.

The Taiwan Booth

SpongeBob-  cruise line guest

I stopped by the booth for one of my favorite travel- clothing companies- SCOTTEVEST.
The booth was pretty busy with lots of people checking out and trying on their goods.

I had a chance to chat with SEV founder and CEO Scott Jordan.

Michael W. with Scott Jordan

I mentioned to Scott that I had reviewed one of his products last year- the Fleece 5.0.
After our brief chat about SEV, we spoke about his appearance on TV show Shark Tank.
It was really interesting to hear what it was like for Scott to be on Shark Tank and I learned a little more about the show.
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Scott was a very friendly and fun guy to chat with so I told him about my Jumping Pics tab on the blog. I asked Scott if he knew how to jump and if he would like to join me for a try. His response was an enthusiastic F*CK YEA!

Jumping at the Travel Show

We tried to get a good photo but the lighting at the Javits Center wasn’t on our side. My brother took a few shots of Scott and I jumping but they all came out blurry. Sorry for the grainy photo but I still thought the photo was worth posting!
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Overall I had a fun time at the travel show. I met a lot of friendly people and got to chat for hours about travel. Sounds like a good day to me!