I Feel Bad for Travel Agents...

...But I love the way the Internet has changed international travel. I've been booking the various components of the upcoming Spanish leg of the GCW Tour and have been pretty amazed at how easy it is. Travelocity has taken care of about 80% of the necessary pieces, and it's pretty nice to be able to see pictures of a possible hotel, map it against the various airports, train stations and tourist destinations, and then compare it directly against all the other options.

And even the weird Rick Steves recommended independent places that aren't on Travelocity or Expedia all seem to have web sites and email addresses. And these days you can type an email message, have Google translate it into Spanish (or whatever) and then when the Spanish reply comes in, automatically translate that into English. 

A couple of hours with a computer and broadband, and I've got rooms in quirky little hotels, a flight on Royal Air Maroc, and most other details nailed down. I've been able to adapt the plan as new details emerged,* and generate a pretty reasonable itinerary.

It's sort of amazing how small the world has become with the advent of the Internet. I can't even imagine trying to do this without it -- though Sib2 did remind me that before the Internet there were travel agents who would take care of all this. 

I'm not that young, but even I find that hard to imagine anymore -- which makes that image in the corner all the more astonishing. I can't imagine betting on a career as a travel agent. 


* Who knew Barcelona was like a million miles from Morocco? But no biggie. Just add a train ride and trade a few days in Barcelona for Seville and Tarifa, and the distance drops to twenty kilometers.