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 [...]
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 [...]
Why on earth do people think that just anyone can be a travel writer? Because if you’re one of the dozens of scribes trying to scratch out a living at a time when newspapers are cutting commissioning budgets, the latest announcement from Virgin Holidays can only be seen as yet another insult to the profession. Apparently, [...]
For this post, I’ve teamed up with travel writing colleague, Jill Starley-Grainger to come up with our pet peeves about luxury hotels. Jill has come up with eight of the offerings, myself with two and the whole post has to be read over our two websites (well, we have to drive traffic you know). Whether [...]
Many thanks for today’s Crap Things guest blog to the lovely Catherine Mack of www.ethicaltraveller.co.uk and co-editor of www.greentraveller.co.uk I had been in Kenya for three days, on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to write about The Travel Foundation’s work with the Maasai. During 2007, Maasai village elders had come together with The Foundation to put a [...]
Quite a while ago, when I was travelling what seemed almost every weekend, I was in the middle of one of those mad sets of trips travel writers tend to do at some point. My memory is sketchy as to the actual series of events – the jetlag, not too much booze in business class [...]
In the latest in our series of Crap Things Seen while travelling, renowned travel writer and Times scribe Will Hide tells us why he never finds anything he thinks is rubbish… In 20+ years of travelling I can honestly say it is extremely difficult to think of much that I regard as “crap”. I think [...]
As news comes in that we are two degrees warmer than the poles, I’ve just been emailed this picture from the Dundee Satellite Receiving Station (www.sat.dundee.ac.uk) – it shows the UK looking pretty cool as it’s covered in snow… All the more reason to leave the country… or it would be if the airports were [...]
So mine and Laura’s wedding is now out of the way and thanks for bearing with me while I’ve been away. I’m currently in the final stages of planning our honeymoon to South Africa and, after much to-ing and fro-ing it looks like it is coming together. We fly out tomorrow night to Cape Town, [...]
Okay, okay… I know I’ve been a bit rubbish updating the blog for the last week or so but I am caught up in wedding fever in anticipation of our tying the knot this weekend. I’ll be shutting down now until next week when I’ll be back with three weeks of almost daily destination updates [...]
