Best Western has set up its own free wi-fi campaign in an effort to get other hotel groups to offer online access to guests. The company claims that by offering free internet access it will boost British business – and I’m not entirely convinced by that rationale. Someone will have to pay for it somewhere [...]
So I’ve spent the last week or so re-designing worldofjames.com and moving it from a wordpress.com hosted blog to a self-hosted one (wordpress.org). You may notice some not-so-subtle changes in the design in that the home page has now changed to a showcase of some of my latest published work rather than a blog and [...]
I’ve had a request to put this up by a friend of a friend if anyone is interested: Looking for Bloggers to write about Religious Travel, Pilgrimages, and Spiritual Retreats. Patheos.com, a religion and spirituality website that launched in May 2009, is looking for bloggers — from all regions of the globe — to contribute [...]
If you’ve been put off holidaying in traditional hotspots like Thailand, Greece, Turkey and Israel this summer by varying bouts of civil unrest, perhaps you are looking for somewhere new. How about Yemen, tucked at the bottom of the Arabian peninsula? There’s tonnes of history, it’s hot, there’s sand (lots of it) plus the Arabian [...]
On Friday morning, I did something I have never considered doing before and went and queued outside a shop… To buy a new iPad – my first foray into early adoption! I’m not quite sure what possessed me to do it, except for some reason it feels like a groundbreaking device and I felt I [...]
In a few hours time, Virgin Holidays customers will be the first people into the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal’s Islands of Adventures in Orlando – the rest of the not-so-wizarding world gets in from June 18. Lookswise, the new park is pretty spectacular – see some of the pics below – but [...]
So America’s Department of Homeland Security (also know as ‘we scare you witless when we come on holiday’) has finally decided to scrap the need for visitors from Visa Waiver countries to fill in the green I94W form on arrival. Frequent visitors to the US will know that a supposed paperless system, the Electronic System [...]
This morning, Harry Potter film stars Robbie Coltrane, Matthew Lewis, Emma Watson, and Oliver and James Phelps began their sneak peek tour of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter by entering Hogsmeade. The group was invited to Universal Orlando Resort for a first-look at the immersive environment, and will spend the day visiting many of [...]
I’m currently over in Orlando for Virgin Holidays 25th birthday celebrations and managed, along with a couple of other journalists, to get a sneak preview of the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The ‘theme park within a theme park’ at Universal’s Islands of Adventure opens next week to special Virgin Holidays preview customers with [...]
Around six months ago, I received an email from Susan Baller-Shepard. Susan has an adopted Chinese daughter and was planning to embark on a trip to volunteer in a Beijing orphanage. I asked her to send me a guest post of her experience and she agreed. True to her word, she responded with a suggested [...]
