There is this one aspect of travel that particularly irks me, and that usually involves dealing with naysayers in travel.

I'm talking about people who use the words "can't" "impossible" "never" etc. all in one sentence. Over the past few months, I've been hearing some "you can't do it" type of feedback from people, especially since I'm about to become a new mom. And here's the typical feedback:

• You'll find it difficult to travel with your newborn;
• You'll be so tired you'll need every bit of sleep and you won't be able to travel;
• Forget about traveling with your kid –it's expensive.

A sunset in Aruba: photo credit Matthew Minucci of Butterflydiary.com

These kinds of comments are not empowering —they leave me wondering about the person who commented more than anything else. I've always been a "can do" person, and even now, during my pregnancy, I'm more active than ever —going to the gym daily, traveling every opportunity I get, and loving the entire travel and explorations phase without too much fatigue.

This reminds me of America's relationship to travel in general: they are phobic about taking vacations because they're worried that in this economy, they will be viewed as being "less dedicated" to their jobs if they take a vacation. The typical naysayer will often talk about the following topics:

• Vacation and travel are expensive: I don't have the money for that;
• I need to save up in case I get laid off;
• I'd rather read books than travel;
• I'm afraid to travel.

These are all very valid reasons why not to travel—so much so, that many don't travel at all thinking of all the excuses (and if you add a dose of global warming, earthquakes, recovery tourism etc. into the mix, then we might as well be home bodies for the rest of our lives). I'm not saying the answer is to be silly and schedule a visit to a war zone instead of going to Hawaii, but as I often say, once you're out on the road –it's addicting. Traveling is so much more about Dr. Suess' "Oh the Places You Will Go, The People You'll See" than reading dry words and seeing beautiful pictures on screen and in a book. While I certainly get inspired by blog posts and books, nothing—absolutely nothing– compares to the very act of seeing a place for yourself.

So, here's how I typically deal with the naysayers:

• I turn a deaf ear often–after all, that's too bad if they won't take the risks and rewards of travel;
• But in my effort to inspire them to travel, I let them know how they can travel–how it CAN be done and any budget friendly, kid friendly options out there–after all, we're in this business to educate, empower and inspire!;
• Be patient and understand their POV: they may have valid reasons for not traveling and being understanding and lending an ear often helps.

How do you deal with naysayers? Do you turn a deaf ear to them or try to steer them towards your POV?

We were late to the cruise. The traffic through New York city was jam thick, almost impenetrable as Fort Knox. I was anxious. I just hated to be late for anything, let alone a murder mystery cruise. What if they decided we were the victims who would be thrown overboard? Game over.

It turned out that lady luck was on our side. Armed with a prayer and a very speedy cab driver, we took the West Side Highway and made it to the Battery Park Pier at 7:10pm –JUST as the "Respect" was pulling away from the dock. I was crestfallen.

"Please let us in," I yelled amidst the purring of the engine to the very handsome but suspicious-looking "Respect" employee who was dressed in a white suit. He was about to pull the rope and ramp in. 

We were lucky because we weren't the only two who were late…there were five others who seemed to have been caught in the traffic jam.

"You're lucky, you know, we were about to pull away." I saw this as a beginning of a beautiful friendship.

This was my very first invite to a murder mystery dinner cruise. My husband and I are actually really fond of murder mysteries and whodunnits. We are die-hard Monk addicts (you know, the TV series with Tony Shaloub), and have even hosted a murder mystery dinner party at our house once with great success (we turned off all the lights during the moment the victim gets shot and I blew a brown paper bag and busted it to simulate the sound of a gun shot). Guests loved it.

But I had no idea how my three-hour long dinner cruise would be. All I knew was that it was a chance to see New York City at sunset, and have dinner and drinks aboard a majestic ship called the "Respect."

On first glance, the two-level boat is large enough to accommodate banquets and bands. We were seated on the upper level, which of course, has the better view. This level has a fully-stocked bar, and as I relaxed with a gin and tonic on the deck and took in the view, I was so glad the sky was clear as a bell.  The large and spacious deck really serves a souped-up New York City skyline and a hefty side of wind (notice my wind-swept hair here). I was having the time of my life because I find the water very therapeutic.

We set sail at around 7:20pm, drank in an orange fireball of a sunset, and took our place at our designated table where we were served salads. We waited for some gory announcement to usher in the whodunnit portion of the evening.

It was an impressive turnout that evening, with people from all professions and all age groups. There were high school kids who were smiling and chatting among themselves in a quiet, dimly-lit corner of the room,  starry-eyed couples and professionals who looked they just punched out of Wall Street before boarding the Respect. I felt as though I was in an episode of The Amazing Race. 

The MC, dressed in a policeman's outfit (his job was to tell the audience about the murder, and to help us solve it) was hilarious and had us in splits. He turned out to be a talented singer as well. The whodunnit portion of the evening started off with him announcing that the Post Master General (another talented actor) had been shot. After a series of interrogations (including pulling people from the crowd and asking them hilarious questions), the audience was left to inspect the evidence on a table and come up with the conclusion as to who committed the deed.

All the work and entertainment is pretty much done for you, and we got to enjoy a curated buffet dinner while listening to the police officer and suspects sing, dance and prove their case for innocence. If you enjoy being a bystander and like a Broadway-style performance, then you really can't beat the cruise + dinner + entertainment value for $99 (note, you do have to pay extra for drinks).

By the end of the Murder Mystery Dinner Cruise, I felt thrilled that I had not only taken some pretty beautiful photographs, but had laughed, mixed and mingled –wedding style –with a fun-loving crowd at my table.

There are only a few more dates available this summer to book the Murder Mystery Cruise on Statue Cruises:

- Saturday, May 21st, 2011

- Saturday, May 28th, 2011

- Saturday, June 4th, 2011

The tickets are $99 and can be booked online  at Statue Cruises.

We ended up making some friends at our table and missed the drop off point at Battery Park City when the boat returned (our evening felt like a bookends mishap). Luckily, there are two places where you can get on and off, and the second drop off point was on Liberty Island in New Jersey, very close to the Light Rail that takes us directly back to Weehawken.

As we walked back home, we realized we had seen the entire skyline in the span of four hours and felt as though we had gone to the theatre district and back. And, I'm also so glad we weren't thrown overboard.

- Charu Suri; photographs by Matthew Minucci

Disclosure: Statue Cruises provided us with two tickets for the cruise.

When I was a college student I won a scholarship for a summer tip to Greece where I witnessed my first truly jaw-dropping, almost Homeric sunset. As I stood at the tip of Attica, at a point called Sounion where the stately Temple of Poseidon looks over the Aegean Sea, I witnessed the sun sink down in epic fashion into the briny expanse of the ocean. Every wave was awash with a spectrum of colors from purple to pink to salmon.

A repeat performance occurred in Aruba this past February. The island provides an excellent backdrop from which to snap sunsets. The beaches are totally pristine, and the quality of the sand is like confectioner's sugar. There are no seashells, and the color of the ocean manages to radiate shades of blue, from the pale robin's egg color to a deeper, darker Atlantic shade.

Add to this an inviting landscape, silhouettes of lean cruise ships, petite lobster boats and the iconic, gnarly and almost poetic Divi Divi trees that are one part bonsai, one part temperate shrub… voila, the recipe for a poster.

The first sunset we loved just happened on our first day there when we took a boat out to Renaissance Island (this is the island where we saw the flamingos..there are a few sunset photos in that post as well). This was a gentle sunset, no fiery-blazed skies or streaks of orange across the horizon. A quiet chamomile tea of a sunset.

The next sunset we witnessed that was photo worthy produced these two shots (above) that were taken from the balcony of the Marriott Stellaris Casino in Aruba. First, I saw a stronge blaze of yellow-orange color, and in a few minutes, the ocean was painted completely blood red. I have NEVER before in my life seen anything quite like this (apart from that one instance in Sounion).

The above photo was taken on our second day of our visit to Renaissance Island. There's something so calming about this picture…the gentle bay and the curving ocean feel like a lullaby.

The final sunset we loved happened on the sixth day or our visit, on our way back from a visit to the famed Aruba Lighthouse. Pale as amber, the sun lit the sky almost as though it was getting ready to burn it, but then decidedly took a softer turn. We were speeding down the road in our rented car, and as soon as I saw this "frame" of the Divi Divi tree, cruise ship in the distance and the water, I knew I had to have this shot.
Please excuse the lens flare.

- Charu Suri

My Aruba series continues, and I jumped the gun a little when I posted pictures of flamingos on Renaissance Island. Of course, those gorgeous birds, with their photogenic S-shaped necks deserve the spotlight in and of themselves, but first let's start at the very beginning, shall we?

As you probably know, this was my third trip to Aruba. My husband Matt and I felt that we had been visiting the island forever, so we actually thought it was our FOURTH trip, but we calculated and found out that we had only been there two other times. I'm guessing that when you replay so many of the cherished memories in your mind, over and over again, time freezes. You feel as though you're a native, and you've been coming to that destination forever.

Well, the evening before our flight (which departed at 6:30am from JFK), I didn't sleep. I was catching up on all sorts of deliverables for the following day, and I figured I would simply sleep on the 4.5 hour plane journey to Aruba.

As soon as we landed, I could almost taste the salt in the air. The Aruba airport is shoebox small but so charming, and everyone seems to be smiling. I've always noticed that about the Caribbean. It doesn't matter if the locals make five cents a day or five hundred dollars a day…they always have a smile on their faces.

So, we typically never splurge on taxis if we can help it, but our luggage felt as though it was packed with heavy, Medieval-style stones, so we went straight to our hotel, the Renaissance Aruba. There we found our delicious room with a view:

I particularly loved the view that day: after having come from a bitterly cold, almost Ice Hotel worthy climate, it was refreshing to see a cruise ship the size of Texas outside the window.Hunger pangs, however, needed to be satisfied, and we saw a tapas place outside our hotel room in Oranjestad, and had delicious pizza and Spanish wine for lunch. We cannot fail to mention the Aruba Spicy Olive Oil that made its way to our table (I had never before equated Aruba with "spicy" oil, so this was a neat surprise for me:

After lunch, we went to the pier and took the boat to Renaissance Island, because we were so badly in need of a BEACH:

We waved goodbye to our lovely hotel:

Until it became a speck in the distance:

At Renaissance Island, I finally felt free and alive. My face broke into a smile. During the winter in New York, it was extraordinarily hard for me to be happy, even though I had invested in a new Land's End down jacket and endless cashmere sweaters. I felt extremely unnatural to consistently be layered in sweater after sweater.

Matthew was finally in his own personal heaven as well:

We took in the blissful hammocks, the seagulls dotting the horizon, the liberating colors of the Caribbean, and the Kokomo-style beaches. Every time I see the beach I think of the Beach Boys…

Finally, we ended the day by taking in a brilliant sunset that was tinged with gold, yellow and grays:

Our first day in Aruba and we finally felt alive, with sand in between our toes, bathing in bath water and appreciating the graceful sway of coconut trees. We were home.