30 travel terms that don’t exist but should
The Oxford English Dictionary contains over 600,000 unique words – surely enough to describe any situation, one would think. But as any traveler knows, the world has a way of confronting us with sights and experiences that can leave even the smartest among us at a loss for words. Sometimes we’re limited by our vocabularies, [...]
Get answers from the Book of Everything
Have you ever found yourself slogging up the side of a mountain, silently wishing you had known how to shed a few pounds from that backpack before starting out? Or perhaps you once wound up at a posh English country house for the weekend, but didn’t know the correct etiquette for pouring and passing the [...]
Top 5 most suggestive US state tourism slogans
The USA’s least-visited state, North Dakota raised eyebrows recently, with a ‘flirty’ tourism ad ‘aimed at Canadians’ that suggested Fargo nightlife could lead to ‘legendary’ status in amorous matters del noche. The shot, one of 10 new ads, showed three women stopping on a Fargo sidewalk to chat with two guys — drinking beer! — [...]
Get happy! 5 rules for travel happiness
A couple years ago, before attending a powerhouse travel conference – complete with PowerPoint, flowcharts, the whole deal – I made a t-shirt. A plain blue tee, with white block letters that read ‘TRAVEL IS FUN.’ I wore it as a gentle reminder. Yes, travel may transform and educate and benefit places we go (and [...]
So it begins! Some say, a nutty few anyway, that doomsday is coming December 21, 2012, when the Mayan Long Count calendar clicks to a close. Well, look on the bright side: that gives us about 12 more months of travel. We better make them count. So, to help prioritize how to make a big [...]
In the January edition of Lonely Planet Magazine UK we wrongly suggested that Iceland Express had ceased flying – this was wholly inaccurate and Iceland Express continue to operate daily flights from London Gatwick to Reykjavík. We are happy to correct our error and apologise for our mistake.
Article source: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/blog/2011/12/23/iceland-express/
If you had the chance to see and experience anything you wanted, where would you go?
It’s the kind of question that friends like to ask each other around the campfire…or on Facebook. And it’s a question Lonely Planet wants to ask you – for the chance to actually make it come true.
Lonely Planet and Bing Travel are teaming up to become your Dream Trip travel agents.
Just tell us what you’d do if you had fifteen days, an open ticket and cash in your pocket. Would you hop on the Trans-Siberian Railway in Beijing and get off in Moscow? Would you visit all the places where they worship cats? Would you chase music festivals? Would you see how many iconic sights you could photograph in 2 weeks?
Options are endless, so to help out, we’ve put together a few lists of dream trips for fanatics of food, the outdoors, music, movies and art.
Or you could of course just close your eyes, point to any destination on a map and work the rest out from there. Sometimes planning a dream is half the fun. Sigh.
How to win (the bit you want to know):
On December 29, for 1 day only at bing.com/holiday, you can enter sweepstakes to win a customized $30,000 dream journey from Lonely Planet.
Competition details:
This competition is only open to US citizens.
The winner will receive a 14 consecutive nights/15 consecutive days trip to a destination of the winner’s choice (including up to 4 stops), to a value of US$30,000.
Lonely Planet will work with the winner to devise a custom itinerary, based on the winner’s interests.
Article source: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/blog/2011/12/21/competition-win-your-dream-trip/
It’s the end of the year, so here are some of the top rated travel literature books we’ve reviewed in 2011. If either you’re after some inspiration for your travels in 2012 or a gift for a friend or family member with wanderlust, you’re sure to find something of interest below.
Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory by Peter Hessler
Reviewed by Ben Handicott
Country Driving is a look at modern China through the eyes of a journalist fluent in the language and with a keen understanding of Chinese culture. The title is more than nominal with Peter Hessler traversing large parts of the countryside, but if you want to learn a great deal about all facets of China, the country and its people, then this is your book.
Read the full review here.
Along the Enchanted Way by William Blacker
Reviewed by Will Gourlay
‘Enchanting’ isn’t a word usually associated with Romania. Think ‘Romania’ and most people will conjure images of Communist-era architecture in Bucharest or hair-raising tales of Dracula. However, in Along the Enchanted Way, William Blacker’s account of years spent living in Romania paints an altogether different – and unexpected – picture of this little-known country.
Read the full review here.
Lost on Earth by Steve Crombie
Reviewed by Steve Waters
In Lost on Earth, young Aussie Crombie plans to ride his single-cylinder Honda 650cc motorcycle from Ushuaia at the southern tip of South America’s Tierra Del Fuego, toPrudhoe Bay, Alaska; the Pan American Highway’s unofficial endpoint well north of the Arctic Circle. This cracking tale of sheer determination should be mandatory reading for any young, would-be adventurer. (Disclaimer: Steve Crombie has worked for Lonely Planet.)
Read the full review here.
Travels: Collected Writings by Paul Bowles
Reviewed by Trent Holden
While Paul Bowles may not have the celebrity status of some of his contemporaries, namely the holy trinity of Beat writers (Ginsberg, Burroughs and Kerouac), his contribution to 20th-century literature was arguably just as significant. He’s remembered as one of the literary beacons of his time, not only because of his stellar body of work (including the masterpiece The Sheltering Sky). This is essential reading for not only all Bowles fans, but anyone interested in travel writing – as few have truly lived the life he has, immersed deep within the culture and blessed with the ability to articulate life as he saw it.
Read the full review here.
Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India by William Dalrymple
Reviewed by Elizabeth Shannon
Nine Lives is not really a travel book. This is not the tale of a bemused foreigner fumbling through an exotic landscape, but rather the result of William Dalrymple’s long familiarity with India: nine stories of religious practitioners navigating both the innate certitudes and contradictions of their own faiths and how India’s rapid development has affected these traditions and people’s roles in them.
Read the full review here.
In Tasmania by Nicholas Shakespeare
Reviewed by Kirsten Rawlings
In Nicholas Shakespeare’s eyes, Tasmania is a secret and rarely visited place, ‘a byword for remoteness’. His comprehensive biography In Tasmania paints this outpost as a magnet for the lost, a place to be renewed or be forgotten. From the burgeoning towns of Launceston and Hobart, to the fertile northeast and the windy and bleak west coast, Shakespeare reveals the hardships and inspirations of its inhabitants over the centuries, suffusing each corner with history and beauty.
Read the full review here.
Halfway House to Heaven by Bill Colegrave
Reviewed by Steve Waters
I must admit to a certain amount of jealously when I first encountered Halfway House to Heaven by Bill Colegrave. The Wakhan Corridor, that long thin sliver of Afghanistan thrusting into the Pamir Mountains, hemmed in on three sides by Pakistan, China andTajikistan, has long been on my own radar, ever since I read The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron and Peter Hopkirk’s Great Game series. Colegrave, though, claims a much older influence, the Central Asian tragedy of Sohrab and Rustum, as recounted by the 19th century English poet Matthew Arnold.
Read the full review here.
Thin Paths — Journeys in and around an Italian Mountain Village by Julia Blackburn
Reviewed by Claire Beyer
Julia Blackburn, author of Thin Paths, has an eye for detail. The seemingly small and insignificant are given big lives. The common dormouse, the developing tadpole and vocal owl are all given as much loving attention as her new surroundings in this lovely tale of life in an Italian mountain village.
Read the full review here.
Read all the Lonely Planet travel literature reviews here.
Article source: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/blog/2011/12/17/top-travel-literature-titles-of-2011/
Recently we asked our Twitter followers the question: which destinations have you (or will you) visit primarily for the food? As you would expect, hundreds of foodies replied with their favourite places to get their fill. The clear winner? Italy.
Image by Alaskan Dude
From Italy in number one position, the food lovers’ top 10 was mainly a glorious belly-filling trip through Asia and Europe:
1. Italy
2. Thailand
3. Malaysia
4. Singapore
5. Japan
6. India
7. Spain
8. Vietnam
9. China
10. France
Want to see how the cookie crumbled elsewhere? Here is the wordle of all the responses (the larger the destination, the more responses it received):
Get your mouth watering with some of the reasons behind the food choices from our Twitter followers:
@Piperpenny: ’Japan for sushi, Hongkong for dim-sum, Mexico for everything. And my Italy of course: I so miss a real pizza!’
@leasejones: ‘Did a road trip to Strasbourg just for Flammekeuche and choucroute! Washed down with Alsatian Riesling of course!’
@homes4holiday: ‘Croatia for seafood and olive oil, Israel for the fruit, veg. and spices, Singapore for all the food courts.’
@deadquotation: ‘The Kazakhs and Tibetans cook the best damn dumplings – I’d go back just for those.’
@G_DanB: ’Italy, Thailand, Spain India – Many reasons to visit, but food is a big reason for 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc visits 
’
@fi_hannah: ‘Malaysia for the roti and banana lassi, Mexico for fresh fish tacos and France for patisserie. Yum. Amazing!!’
Further reading:
Article source: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/blog/2011/12/15/food-travel-whats-your-favourite-destination/
We travel for many reasons. Some people do it for strict business needs, others to see their loved ones and most of us for the sheer pleasure of getting away from the mundane and discovering new sights and adventures. The Lonely Planet offices, unsurprisingly, are full of people with hundreds of travel stories to share, so we thought sharing some of them would be an excellent reminder of ‘happy’ times for anyone who has ever been on the road and experienced those blissfully unexpected moments that linger in our minds after we have come back to our ordinary lives.
We asked our staff around the globe what were the memories that brought a smile to the faces when they thought of travelling and these were some of their replies:
For James in the Online team, it has to be “arriving at a place you’ve never been before and remembering the time when it was just a dot on a map of some far-away country“, a sentiment echoed by many: “that twang of excitement, rush of anticipation and sense of freedom” as Sam from the Client Solutions team in Australia puts it, or that moment of “seeing the destination for the first time from the window of my plane” (Gary from the Sales team in America).
There are happy memories intertwined with those unmistakeable “lost in translation” moments, to which Sally from the European Publishing team can attest: “One time I confused ‘I’m lost’ with ‘I’ve got diarroeah’ while stuck in a paddy field in Laos. I was using my LP phrasebook, shouting to passers-by that I was lost and wondering why they were all in fits of giggles“. Or the time Naomi, one of our Publishing Coordinators, found herself in a Turkish bath being given treatment by “a five foot nothing eighty year old woman who squeezed my breasts and exclaimed with delight ‘Çok güzel!’ (Very beautiful!)“.
Some of us find joy on the nearly infinite possibilities of travel: for Mark, librarian extraordinaire, it’s all about being “free of the everyday” and experiencing “something completely new – or slightly out of joint from how I experience it at home“, while others relish the bliss of sharing the travelling experience with the youngest ones – here’s what makes Lainey in the US Marketing team happy: “the smile on my kids’ faces and the sparkle in their eyes when they discover something new, particularly when they’ve seen photos about it or read about it somewhere beforehand. Just this weekend we were driving through San Francisco and my daughter saw a big tower and screamed, ‘Look mommy, it’s London!’“.
There is also a yearning for “the sounds, sights and smells of a foreign city, town or village” (David from the Asia Sales team), or in the case of Steve, Database Master, “the smell of spices and woodsmoke the minute the airplane doors open. You know you’re now in Asia“. Although sometimes this authenticity can lead to another type of happy stories, like the time Clifton arrived in Udaipur (India) to find himself “walking past a cow with a very noisy rear end“, who then went on to “spray what had been building up inside its stomachs” all over him.
Sometimes we stumble upon those delightful instants almost by accident, like the time Heather from our Comms Team literally “walked into a turtle laying its eggs on a deserted beach one night in the Philippines“, and more often than not we are the recipients of those magic moments ourselves. Here’s Carla’s story:
Anytime I feel like the world is rotten I remember backpacking after college. My friend and I were on the ferry to Greece and we met this lovely Greek couple who insisted we come stay with them for a few days. Well, we were dirt poor and living on roughly 8 euro a day and accepted their offer. When we got to their house it was a two bedroom and they had four kids! We really didn’t feel right about staying, but the couple wouldn’t hear of it and finally we decided that we would stay but only in a tent on their front lawn. I will never forget their kindness and how there are still people out there who genuinely care about others.
But speaking about getting more than you bargained for, nothing trumps Stephanie’s happiest memento: “the memory of my first big solo trip, where I found both myself and the love of my life“. Lucky girl!
And what do some of our travel experts have to say about what makes them happy? Robert Reid, our US travel editor, cracks a smile when he thinks of “the generous, friendly man-hug a North Vietnamese veteran gave me in a dark cave on Cat Ba Island, Vietnam“, while for Tom Hall, UK travel editor, it’s the thought of “Seeking out great coffee anywhere I go. When I find the right place I tend to find it is in an interesting part of town with hip young people“. As it turns out, it doesn’t matter how far you have travelled: in the end, all we are looking for to make us happy is great companionship and damn good coffee.
To find out how happiness is created and spread around the world, check out Lonely Planet’s new book Happy.
Article source: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/blog/2011/12/14/smile-lonely-planets-guide-to-happy-travelling/