Category: Blogging

Travvies 2007: Best Travel Blog Awards: open voor voting

Travvies 2007

Upgrade: Travel Better is a blog that mainly describes techniques about how to get a better flying deal by obtaining an upgrade.

On February 2 the author had launched in 2007 Travvies: Best Travel Blog Awards the nomination for the best travel blogs awards in several categories.

Under the nominees were several blogs you will find in my right column, including a shameless bit of self promotion by yours truly.

Today the Finalists were published:

FINALISTS: BEST TRAVEL BLOG:

  • Gridskipper.

    Gridskipper is the well known decadent guide to the best in worldwide urban travel. Hotels, restaurants, clubs, flights, and sights all get their due, but we also pay lascivious attention to sex, entertainment, events, and insider advice on where to find the hottest local debauchery. On or off the grid, Gridskipper spotlights the upscale and the underbelly of global city culture.

    One of my resources for quite some time. Although I dislike their arrogance and platitudes sometimes, I give them my vote after considering the next nominated:

  • Brave New Traveler.

    We’re dedicated to publishing high quality content on the nature of travel in the 21st century – everything from useful on line travel tools, entertaining and inspiring travel websites, to exploring the philosophy of travel and the blessing (or curse) of globalization.

    Who Should Read Brave New Traveler?

    Are you someone who loves to wake up in the morning and wonder where they’ll be in the afternoon? Do you enjoy meeting interesting characters from around the world, and learning about their diverse cultures? Do you love travel and want to keep up on the latest on line tools to make your traveling easier, and your travel writing.

  • Girl Solo in Arabia

    Carolyn McIntyre will travel from the Moroccan City of Tangiers through 46 countries as she attempts to recreate an epic journey made 700 years ago by the famed Islamic scholar and traveler Ibn Battuta. Arabist, Middle East political analyst and award-winning expedition creator to Asia, Carolyn has almost three decades of living, working and traveling in the Middle East. A real-life ‘Indiana Jones’ meets ‘Holly Golightly’, her own wanderlust has taken her to all parts of the globe but her specialty lies in her extensive knowledge of and unique insight into, the Arab and Islamic worlds.

    It is very pity Carolyn is not nominated for the best single-author category. Would it have been I would have given her my vote.

  • National Geographic Inside Traveler By Jessie Johnston and Emily King. Difficult to navigate!
  • Newyorkology.

    NewYorkology is a guide to New York City updated daily with the latest openings, closings and reviews to help you plan your trip and know what to do if you’re already here.

    It is a rich source for anything connected with NYC. Consequently it gets my vote in the destination category.

FINALISTS: BEST DESTINATION BLOG:

  • Newyorkology See above.
  • Let’s Visit Asia. A B5media Blog writen by Ruth Schaffer:

    I currently write Let’s Visit Asia and Eating Fabulous for b5media, and The Biotech Weblog the Allergizer for Creative Weblogging.

    My interest in Asia travel was born out of work-related travel assignments in Southeast Asia (I am a Microbiologist by training, and used to work on experimental research for an international agricultural research institute). But the craving burgeoned when I relocated to Europe. It seems ironic, but amidst castle ruins and cobblestone streets, I found myself longing for exactly that place which is practically out-of-reach: Asia. Sunny, warm Southeast Asia, in particular. My top destination? The Philippines, of course.

    Next to traveling, eating is my favorite pastime. Luckily I have no problems with my weight. I strongly believe it’s matter of what one eats and how much, and if you can get the balance right, there’s no reason one should miss out on delectable goodies. I absolutely despise being told about stuff I shouldn’t eat. And that’s why EatingFabulous was born. A blog about functional foods and nutraceuticals.

  • Europe String. Also a B5media Blog

    Blogger FAQ

    Who are you? My name is Melissa Petri and I am one of b5media’s travel bloggers. I will be blogging about Travelling Europe on a Budget or Europe String.

    What exactly will you be posting? Tips and tips galore. I think a quick look at the categories I chose would give you an idea of the kind of information I will be sharing.

    Break bread – cheap eats in and around the continent
    Commute – cheaper ways of getting around, whether by land, sea or air
    Forty Winks – where to sleep; from hostels to sleeping at airports
    Did you know? – travel trivia
    Economy-sized tour – focused on a particular city with combination of info
    NEWS – latest budget travel news
    of bandannas and backpacks – featured pictures of readers and their budget traveling experience
    Armchair Traveler

    Are you qualified to blog about travel? Architecture may have been my initial vocation but I have earned my PhD in packing light and choosing the best hotels through years of practice. I am an expatriate in Germany; and count the USA, HongKong, China and Korea in my adoptive land list. Now that I have grown roots in Frankfurt, I have yet to give up my semi-nomadic life as I continue to traipse around the world for business and leisure.

  • JohnnyJet, written by Johnny Jet:

    I used to be afraid to fly (long story). Moved to California from Connecticut at 21– that’s when I conquered my fear. In college I started dating a bona fide princess from Hong Kong. She was accustomed to flying Biz Class. I had ONLY flown coach — and I had never been overseas. When she invited me home, I couldn’t let the opportunity slip by. I (okay, my dad) bought the seat next to her from a consolidator. I picked the right time to have my first out-of-coach experience. WOW! What a difference– A nice phat seat, some hot towels, a little sorbet to clean the palate, non-stop food, beverages and movies. When I returned to the U.S. I felt like a new man. I started working as a college recruiter. While traveling my 26-state territory on a tight budget, I learned traveling in style on a budget was possible. I started a weekly newsletter and JohnnyJet.com to share my tips. Three months later USAToday made JohnnyJet.com website of the week and now it’s my full time job.

  • Yucatan Living.

    This on line magazine is for expatriates who are living, working and playing in Yucatan, but especially for those who are discovering this unique location as a possible destination for retirement, starting a new business or owning a second home. Yucatan Living is also a favorite resource for people who prefer to explore this region and its special culture beyond what most tourist websites and guidebooks usually recommend.
    Yucatan Living covers practical subjects like the immigration process in Merida. We publish local color stories that reveal the variety of lifestyle choices available to new arrivals. We interview expatriates who already live and work in the area to tell how they made a success of moving here. Of course, we also research local services and offer insight into the common problems people face while adapting to a new culture and language.

    Not so much a travel Blog as a blog about the foreigner’s (expat) view to a certain area. Interesting indeed.

FINALISTS: BEST INFORMATIVE/PRACTICAL TRAVEL BLOG:

  • The Perrin Post.

    With over 15 years as Conde Nast Traveler’s consumer affairs expert Wendelin Perrin has an infinite store of timely and practical advice and insights on everything from the best hotel deal to navigating airport security.

    My choice from the 5 finalists.

  • Cheapest Destinations Blog.

    Tim Leffel is author of The World’s Cheapest Destinations, as well as Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune: The Contrarian Traveler’s Guide to Getting More for Less. He is also editor of Perceptive Travel (http://www.perceptivetravel.com/).

  • The Cranky Flier.

    Hello. My name is Brett, and I’m an airline dork. I’ve had the bug since I was young. By the age of 12, I was a travel agent. Since then, I’ve worked for USAir, America West, Eos, and United mostly in revenue management, marketing, and sales. Today, I run PriceGrabber.com Travel. As you can imagine, these views are mine and mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

  • View From the Wing.

    FlyerTalk, part of the WebFlyer Network, features discussions and chat boards that covers the most up-to-date traveler information. An interactive community dedicated to your favorite topic: travel! That’s right: all travel, all the time. The FlyerTalk forums are open for business 24 hours, 7 days a week. Even better, all travelers — from vacation travelers to mileage junkies — are welcome in the community. Just choose a forum and you can get to the business at hand: conversing about programs, how to make the most of your miles and points, general travel, airports, destination and dining information.

  • Today in Travel. Seems to me a place where they just clonk unedited stuff. Not my style.

FINALISTS: BEST GROUP-WRITTEN TRAVEL BLOG:

  • Brave New Traveler See above. It got my vote as Grid something got already my vote.
  • Gridskipper See above.
  • Vagablogging

    Rolf Potts has reported from more than fifty countries for the likes of National Geographic Traveler, National Geographic Adventure, Conde Nast Traveler, Slate.com, Outside, Islands, Surfer, Outpost, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, WorldHum.com, The Guardian (U.K.), and National Public Radio. Currently a travel columnist for Yahoo! News (and formerly a travel columnist for Salon.com), his adventures have taken him across five continents, and include piloting a fishing boat 900 miles down the Laotian Mekong, hitchhiking across Eastern Europe, traversing Israel on foot, bicycling across Burma, and driving a Land Rover from Sunnyvale, California to Ushuaia, Argentina.

    Potts is perhaps best known for promoting the ethic of independent travel, and his book on the subject, Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel (Random House, 2003), has been through six printings and translated into several foreign languages. His writing has also been featured in nearly twenty literary travel anthologies, and thirteen of his essays have been short-listed for Houghton Mifflin’s annual Best American Travel Writing collection — including the gonzo classic “Storming ‘The Beach'”, which Bill Bryson chose as a main selection in 2000, and “Tantric Sex for Dilettantes,” which Tim Cahill selected in 2006. His writing for National Geographic Traveler, Slate.com, and Outside garnered him Lowell Thomas Awards in 2003, 2004 and 2006; and he’s been cited as an expert on independent travel by publications around the world, from National Geographic Adventure, to TIME Asia, to Italy’s La Stampa daily, to the Australian Financial Review.

    Though he keeps no permanent residence, Potts feels somewhat at home in Bangkok, Cairo, Pusan, New Orleans, and north-central Kansas, where he keeps a small farmhouse on 30 acres near his family. Each July he can be found in France, where he is the summer writer-in-residence at the Paris American Academy.

    Impressive piece of self promotion :-)!

  • triphub Group Trip Advisor. By Jocelyn Milici:

    A Blog dedicated to Group Travel.
    A little background on me: I’ve worked in online travel for the last eight years (including producing and managing content at Expedia for nearly five years), traveled the globe (from Hawaii to Israel), helped organize events (from presidential campaigns to local auctions), planned numerous group trips (family and friend get-togethers mainly), and have felt the pain of using inefficient methods of planning a trip or an event with groups involved – email after email, endless phone calls, trying to keep track of RSVPs, accommodating changes. So many wasted hours keeping all the details straight! My hope is to help create group travel efficiency in any way possible by sharing and stimulating discussions.

  • Lost Girls’ World.

    Three twenty-something New Yorkers who ditched their media jobs to embark on a yearlong, round-the-world journey in search of adventure and inspiration. To find out what prompted them to leave everything familiar behind.

    First impression is a Blog about their whereabouts….

FINALISTS: BEST SINGLE-AUTHOR TRAVEL BLOG:

  • Killing Batteries. Leif Pettersen’s battery-powered rise to the zenith of travel writing rapture… I love it! I vote it! (sorry Carolyn).
  • AdventureGirl. The travel stories of a Flight Attendant who started in November 2004
  • The Cranky Flier. See above.
  • Flight Level 390. A blog of an Airline Pilot which gives the reader an insider view with photo’s added.
  • Travel Sweeps. About Travel Sweepstakes. Not my cup of tea.

FINALISTS: BEST PHOTOGRAPHY ON A TRAVEL BLOG:

  • Exposed Planet. A photo Blog of a fellow Dutchman, Harry Kikstra (36) who climbed 7 summits and also is a expedition leader/ photographer/ filmmaker/ producer/ writer and more. His statement:

    I have started ExposedPlanet.com not only as a way to show my portfolio, but also to share the beauty of our planet. Nowadays negative press & media might make people scared of everything foreign or different: culture, religion, people and the places themselves. This xenophobia is taking over our lives and prevents us from seeing the real world as it is: a wonderful place with beautiful people. There are no bad or evil countries, religions or people. There is bad and good people in every culture, including your own.

    Nice statement and nice site! I’ll consider it for my vote….It gets my vote.

  • Life Vicarious.

    My name is Christian Wagner and I am a 31 year old guy from Newport Beach, CA who loves to travel and take pictures. I have taken a number of international trips over the past 4 years and have decided to take a slightly longer trip. On September 29th, 2006 I take off on what will be a 448 day journey around the world. The plan is to cover 6 of the 7 continents (not going to Antartica, at least I don’t think I will but you never know!) and who knows how many countries. Along the way I will be keeping a daily photoblog chronicling the trip. And hopefully a story or two will accompany some of the photos.

    Very nice photos!

  • Michael Simon on the Road Blog seems to be discontinued. So not my vote, although nice photos!
  • Flight Level 390 A blog of an Airline Pilot which gives the reader an insider view with photo’s added. Not eligible for my vote in this category.
  • Notes From the Road To me this seems more like an anti developer Blog than a photo Blog. Wrong category, but see the comments to this post.

Also the members of the Jury were introduced.

Time to Vote which is possible until March 1, 2007.

Note: From time to time, after checking the nominees, I’ll add my findings to this post and order them according to my own preference.

Reviewing restaurants becoming dangerously costly?

The Northern Ireland newspaper Irish News -I must say I don’t like their policy of hiding their news behind a mandatory subscription- published a restaurant review back in 2000 by a renowned restaurant critic Caroline Workman.

The review criticized the quality of food and drink, the staff and the smoky atmosphere of the restaurant. On a scale of 1-5 the restaurant got a 1.

The owner of the Goodfellas Italian restaurant on Kennedy Way, Ciarnan Convery, had claimed the article was a “hatchet job” and sued the paper.

A jury found the review defamatory. The paper has to pay the restaurant owner £25,000 plus court costs. The paper lodged appeal.

Unfortunately I am unable to find the actual review.

Various papers claim this verdict a threat to the Freedom of Speech principle. Among them Maeve Kennedy in the Guardian in Critics bite back after restaurant reviewer sued for calling chicken too sweet

But it must be said that critics can be venomous when one sees some of the quotes:

“The worst meal I’ve ever eaten. Not by a small margin. I mean the worst! The most unrelievedly awful! You don’t need to be an atomic physicist to grill steaks. They arrived so raw you could have drowned swimming in the blood.”
Michael Winner, the Sunday Times, on Bibendum in Chelsea, London

“The taste and texture of the pease pudding reminded me of occasions when I have accidentally inhaled while emptying the Dyson.”
Giles Coren, the Times, on Court Restaurant at the British Museum in Bloomsbury, London

Interesting case to follow. During the 2006 hot month of July here in The Hague a restaurant had a problem with a critic who wanted to have desert on the terrace where she had her meal. The restaurant owner had to close the terrace at 9.30 PM pursuant to rules of the City. The critic refused to take the desert inside the restaurant and didn’t give points for the desert (while points for deserts count considerably for the overall points awarded). The restaurant claimed it to be unfair, but the paper in question did not redress which seemed not fair to me.

Bill Marriott Blog

Bill Marriot Blog

“Never too late to start something new” must be what Bill Marriott, 75 soon and over 50 years of a world renowned hotelier, thought when he started dictating his first post for his personal blog Marriott on the move on January 16, 2007.

The Guardian Travel: Quoted between Big Blog Shots

Guardian Travel

Ahem, in an article of Sean Dodson in the Saturday Guardian Travel Section Best Net Tips I am quoted:

Look at all the various dedicated hotel sites to find what you want then check back with the bigger sites such as Booking and Expedia for a better price.

This is one of my conclusions in an earlier draft of Istanbul and the art of booking a hotel online: Nothing Zen! between some Travel Gurus and Travel Blog Big Shots as:

Yes, I am proud! A Happy start of the year for a small one Happy Hotelier’s Blog.

Expatica: Dutch 2006 English Language News Re(ar)viewed

Expatica

The site of Expatica is devoted to the expats living in The Netherlands (or, if you wish Holland), Belgium, France, Germany and Spain and serves them in the English language with plenty advice about the respective countries, advice that is also useful for the foreign traveler.

Some highlights I find interesting:

  • 18 January 2006
    The Dutch put Australia on the map Australia celebrates Dutch ties
    Australia, the land first put on the map by Dutch explorers, has opened a year of celebrations to mark the 400-year history between the two countries. Australian Ambassador Stephen Brady outlined the jubilee events for the year during a press launch in the ‘Des Indes’ hotel in The Hague. The countries have been linked since the Dutch East Indies vessel ‘Duyfken’ sailed from the port of Batavia (now the Indonesian capital Jakarta) four centuries ago to map out the unknown territory south of the Dutch Indies.
  • 3 March 2006
    Suitcase loss costs KLM EUR 200,000
    Airline KLM is fined EUR 200,000 for losing a passenger’s suitcase and damaging his credibility more than seven years ago. Dr José Tiongco was traveling with KLM as an envoy of the Philippine authorities in November 1998. He was scheduled to give a lecture at a conference held by the World Health Organisation in Kazakhstan. He flew from Amsterdam to Frankfurt with KLM but his suitcase did not follow him. This meant he had give his lecture in jeans, t-shirt and sneakers — something that damaged his credibility, the judge agrees.
  • 25 August 2006
    Dutch release 12 ‘terror jet’ passengers
    Dutch justice officials have released the 12 passengers arrested when the cabin crew of an American plane bound for India thought they were acting suspiciously. The Northwest Airlines flight to Mumbai, with 149 passengers, was escorted back to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport by two Dutch F-16 fighter jets. The 12 Indian men were taken into custody and questioned by prosecution officials. The men were released from the detention center at the airport later in the evening.
  • 10 November 2006
    Mass emigration slows Dutch population growth
    In the first nine months of this year, almost 100,000 people left the Netherlands to settle elsewhere, 12,000 more than the same period last year. About half of the emigrants were Dutch natives, the national statistics office CBS says. If the trend continues, more than 130,000 people will have left the country by the end of this year. For the third successive year, the number of emigrants substantially outnumbers immigrants. The net effect means the Dutch population was reduced in the 2004-06 period by 75,000. In the preceding three years, there was a positive net migration of 75,000.
    (Note by GJE:) And this on a total population of approximately 16.5 mio in this densest populated country of the world.
  • 30 November 2006
    Amsterdam orders prostitution windows shut
    Red light windows to close
    A large amount of the window prostitution in Amsterdam’s red light district will be shut down as the city council gets tougher on criminal activities. Amsterdam City Council said investigations had revealed about one-third of the prostitution sector is allegedly involved in money laundering. About 100 of the 350 prostitution windows in the Dutch capital’s red-light district will be forced to close by the end of the year. The operators of the sex windows can still appeal, however, against the city council’s decision to withdraw their permits. A total of 33 permits were revoked.

Finally a link to an expat blog of a lady from the Philippines: Dutched Pinay which means Philippine becoming Dutch who is reviewed here on Expatica.