I think people who work at a city or state’s convention and visitors bureau have the hardest jobs. These are people who must tout the latest and greatest going on in their respective areas, but obviously have zero control over outside forces. Imagine working at New York’s tourism office right after 9/11. Ouch. We’ve discussed [...]
Entries from August 13th, 2010
Find Your Happy Place in Baltimore? Huh?
August 31st, 2010 · 2 Comments · Blog posts by Betty, Fail 'o' the Day, Wary of the advice of others
Tags:social media·tourism
Fail ‘o’ the Day: Budget Travel Edition
August 30th, 2010 · No Comments · Blog posts by Lia, Fail 'o' the Day, Wary of the advice of others
Budget Travel, I want to love you. I have subscribed to your magazine for years. I love your mission of inexpensive travel, and I do believe that you fulfill a good purpose. You’re like the scrappy cousin of the hoity-toity fancies at Travel + Leisure, the Nick Carraway to their Great Gatsby. So please take [...]
Tags:magazines·travel writing
Traveler Beware!
August 27th, 2010 · No Comments · Blog posts by Lia, Quick Post, Wary of the advice of others
We hearby dedicate this entry to all the travel writers, travel-store owners, and advice hawkers who convince every traveler that they’ll barely survive their trips without a locking bag, money belt, and/or “slashproof” purse. In Paris.
Tags:travel tchotchkes
My Daily Dutch Commute
August 26th, 2010 · No Comments · Blog posts by Lia, Dutch bikes, Dutch language school, Euro-style cycle chic, Good design, Novelty, Obsessed with the Dutch, Transportation bliss
I had a vision for my time at the Regina Coeli Language Institute (a.k.a Dutch Princess School), and that vision involved biking to and from school, in order to give myself a physical break after a long, mentally challenging day. I admit that almost an Eat Pray Love-style cliche, but I don’t care. I’ll own that’s it’s something almost exactly like this European fantasy.
I searched the Google maps nearby towns looking for a B&B, and mapped out my route using Google street view. It looked like the total commute time by bike would be 30 minutes, 45 tops. After my freakout about how it would work and my test drive in Delft, I found out that the Netherlands really makes biking easy, no matter where you are.
Video of my daily ride after the jump.
World Cup Nostalgia
August 25th, 2010 · No Comments · Blog posts by Lia, Obsessed with the Dutch
Today is a beautiful day in Seattle, and I’ll be spending some of it enjoying my Dutch bike on a day off. Hooray! This morning, I was thinking about how much fun it was to be in Holland during the World Cup, and I was feeling a little sentimental about it. So with that in [...]
Tags:World Cup
Fail ‘o’ the Day: Backpacking “Fashion”
August 24th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Blog posts by Lia, Fail 'o' the Day, Wary of the advice of others
Granted, it can be tough to be a stylish traveler. In general, avoiding anything reversible made of lycra seems like a good place to start. I try to give travel writers a curve when it comes to clothing options. I can almost forgive a pair of blocky mandles, for example, because, let’s face it, judging [...]
Tags:bad ideas
61 Flavors
August 21st, 2010 · No Comments · Novelty
Just for fun, we made a destinations list, where you can browse entries based on all 61 of our favorite places to date. Do you recognize them all? It’s sometimes funny to realize that in just six months, we’ve run the gamut from Eva Peron to Eva Gabor.
Tags:
Travel Movies We Love: Eat Pray Love Shop
August 19th, 2010 · No Comments · Travel Movies We Love
To come clean, we are opinionated about the travel movies we love. For that matter, we’re opinionated about exotic-locale movies we hate, based just on the preview. But after we posted our snarky “SATC2″ piece, we noticed that the collective girl-movie-bashing may be getting a squinch overheated (we’re looking at you, Lindy West).
Other people have made this point, of course, including the always-brilliant Emily Nussbam and the Guardian. We knew, going in, that “Eat Pray Love” was doing to fit all the stereotypes of a chick flick, and as Jezebel and EW so aptly summarized, “if women like it, it must be stupid.”
So–what did we actually think of the movie, the book, the whole Elizabeth-Gilbert-theme park that is “Eat Pray Love”?
Tags:Bali·India·Italy·McSweeney's·movies!
newelty: the app!
August 15th, 2010 · No Comments · Novelty
OK, so the headline is a little bit of a tease. We’re not actually an app, really. But considering how much we use and love our iPhones–and how we’ve already talked about how crucial they are for international travel–it seemed like a bit of an upgrade was in order.
If you’d like to add us to your iPhone, just open newelty.com in Safari or another browser. It will automatically redirect to the mobile version of our site. Add the home page to your home screen, and voila! An icon will be added.
Tags:iPhones
Friday Funny
August 13th, 2010 · No Comments · Blog posts by Lia, Quick Post
It’s been a TGIF kind of week, which makes this cute, funny comic series about an international red eye that much better.
Tags:comics