It was about three months ago that I received an invitation to participate in a social media cruise. The deal? A handful of travel bloggers were invited for seven days of Caribbean cruising in exchange for covering their adventures on Twitter, their blogs, whatever social media format they choose. I declined for a handful of reasons -- I get seasick, I'm a little claustrophobic, I was highly skeptical that this trip was my scene.

I took a guided tour yesterday. I'm not really a guided tour person -- I didn't like climbing in and out of the minivan, I didn't like having someone else decide when I get to stop to take pictures, and I didn't really appreciate the day's agenda. Hey, it was an experiment, every now and then I like to try out something I might not otherwise do. It's good to look at other ways of travel. I don't judge -- if you like guided tours you go right ahead, they're crazy efficient and on good ones, you learn stuff.

I freaked right out when visiting Warwick with my now repatriated friend who was living, at the time, in England. The bowels of that castle were full of horrors, plus, until we moved through history to more genteel times, it seemed like no way to live. I fell in to a giant weeping mess at Toul Sleng in Phnom Pehn and had to be removed to a quiet courtyard across the street where I recovered with a cup of tea. I was less traumatized by Schoenbrunn, Vienna's sprawling palace complex, though I am still mad at Queen Marie Therese for being anti-Semitic.

Please note: This post is a statement of my own opinion and does not reflect the business contractual relationship I have with BlogHer, for which I comply with their editorial guidelines.

Last year, shortly before Halloween, some pals went on a haunted/spooky/some third adjective tour in Georgetown, a recovering industrial neighborhood here in Seattle. I missed it, I was in Tampa and ended up a bit too close to a Sarah Palin rally for my likings, that's all I needed to set the tone for my Halloween. I wish I'd been able to attend the Seattle tour, those things have a way of sticking with you and now, every time we buzz through Georgetown -- there's a coffee house I like there -- my husband points out haunted brothels and places where other unseemly events took place.