The Advisor is Back

(image taken from the web)

I used to be a frequent contributor to TripAdvisor.  (In case you are not familiar with it, TripAdvisor is a website where people write reviews of hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions from all over the world.  They also have travel forums in which people can ask questions about their upcoming trips.)  I was active on the site between 2005 and 2011.  During that time I wrote 52 reviews and 462 posts on the forums. I was classified as a Top Contributor, and they sent me a nice canvas bag that I still use when I travel.  My user name on the site was (is) "wmsf".

I enjoyed sharing my travel experiences and giving advice on the forums.  In spite of controversy about fake reviews, I have also found it helpful when planning trips, especially for picking hotels.  I never had a bad experience with a hotel that had received mostly good reviews.  I found restaurant reviews to be much more subjective, and there were a number of times when a restaurant that received rave reviews on TripAdvisor was disappointing to me.

Anyway, after six years, I got away from posting on TripAdvisor.  My last review was in November of 2011, and my last forum post was in December of 2013 (about the same time that I started my blog).  A couple days ago I returned to being an active contributor again.

As I have mentioned, I will be playing tour guide in Mexico City this autumn when a couple of my friends travel down there.  In spite of spending so much time in Mexico City, there were a couple things about which I wasn't sure... and, after all, the tour guide should know everything!  It had been so long since I had logged in that I guess my password was no longer valid.  They had to send me a new one.  Even though I had not written anything for so long, "wmsf" was still there as a "Top Contributor".  Well, actually, they have changed the classifications since I was last on the site.  I am now ranked as a "Level 6" contributor, and they give badges for participation.  I have earned 30 badges, including "Top Contributor" for writing over 50 reviews, a "Helpful Contributor" badge for receiving over 200 "thumbs up" votes from members, and a "Readership" badge for having been read by over 20,000 members. 

So I logged in, and posted a couple of questions on the Mexico City Travel Forum.  I wanted to know how much the authorized taxi would cost for my friends to go from the airport to their hotel near the World Trade Center.  Within in a day, someone had given me an answer... 254 pesos.

I also had a question about the ruins of Teotihuacan, the enormous archaeological site north of the city.  From end to end, it stretches about 2.5 miles... quite a bit of walking to do, especially if we plan to climb both pyramids as well.  There are several entrances to the site.  I asked if one can park at one entrance, see what there is to see, go back to the car, drive to another entrance, and be able to reenter with the ticket stubs.  Within an hour, I had received a response.  Yes, you are allowed to drive from one parking lot to another, and reenter the site with your ticket. 

I also wrote some restaurant reviews.  I had never done a review of my favorite restaurant in Mexico City, Angelopolitano, so I wrote a glowing recommendation.  (I noticed that most of the other reviews were very favorable also.)  I then wrote a scathing review of the terrible place where we ate in Cholula.  There were also a couple restaurants which I had reviewed some years ago.  The first time I ate at El Cardenal, for some reason I was not that impressed, and I wrote a so-so review.  Now the place is one of my favorites, so I rectified my old review with a second more favorable one.   There was another restaurant that got a rave review from me seven years ago.  They serve "chiles en nogada" all year long, and I would go there on every trip.  But a few years ago it seemed that the quality had gone downhill, so I wrote a second review saying, "Sorry, they are not as good as they used to be."