Schmaps

by Erik Olsen on

OK, I pretty much hate anything that requires me to down load some new application to put on my machine. But this looks pretty cool. This site called Schmaps offers downloadable information for various cities around the world, specifically cities in the US, Canada Europe and Oceania (aka Australia and New Zealand).

As I say, you have to download the Schmap Player which, according to the site “is a small and easy-to-use piece of freeware. Install it on your Windows PC” (sorry Apple folks). But ti does seem to have promise, as once you download it you can gain access to tours, trip-planning help. photos and a library of extensive city-specific information including picks for restaurants and hotels.

All very nice, the kind of thing every guidebook should be. So I say up front I didn’t try it out because I am not on a PC right now, but anyone brave enough to give it a try ,please do and post a review .

Peace Through People

by Adrienne Wilson on

This Sister Cities International site is one I’ve been meaning to get around to for a while as I saw this cool book Peace Through People and thought it might make for a nice gift. The book is a limited edition from what I can tell. Created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Sister Cities International the inside holds stories and photos from sister city members on the movement and how it has helped create 50 years of global citizenship. Anything that says global citizenship always seems honkey-dory to me, but check it out for yourself. The book is priced at $39.95.

Potts on Patagonia

by Erik Olsen on

It’s nice to see two great travel writers talk about one of my favorite places. Rolf Potts takes a look at Patagonia…actually he talks with South America expert Wayne Bernhardson about Patagonia. Potts, you may know, now does a regular column on Yahoo, but is also the author of the book Vagabonding, about traveling the world on a shoestring. (He is also the writer of one of my favorite articles of all time about infiltrating the movie set in Thailand where Leo DiCaprio was filming “The Beach”). Bernhardson is a former Lonely Planet writer (10 years there) who now does guidebooks for the good folks at Moon Handboooks. I remember Bernhardson’s work well from when I was living in South America.

Anyway, the important thing here is the topic: Patagonia. Just last night (no kidding) a friend at dinner asked me where he should go if he had 10 days to kill and could go anywhere (he’s kind of an outdoors buff, too, btw). Patagonia, I declared. Head down south and see Torres del Paine, Punta Arenas, Argentina’s Península Valdés…the list goes on. Potts gets Bernhardson to open up about the region’s vast history (also nicely covered in Bruce Chatwin’s On Patagonia) and the many things to do and see in the region. I scribbled some things a ways back about Patagonia, which you can check out here, but take a read of this email interview between Potts and Bernhardson and give some serious thought to heading down South…it is almost spring/summer there, after all.

Perceptive Travel New Issue

by Erik Olsen on

We’ve checked in a few times on Mr. Tim Leffel and his relatively new online magazine Perceptive Travel and we always come away satisfied. Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Leffel is out with a new edition of the magazine and, once again, we express our satisfaction in it.

This time around, he’d corralled a stable of writers (oh, the metaphor abuse!) to opine on the travel life and to write about their own experiences on the road. This issue features some known names, too, including Jeff Greenwald, whose article Searching for Rare Primates in the Valley of the Langurs is about…well, I suppose the title says it all. Greenwald, you may know, is the author of Shopping for Buddhas and The Size of the World.

Also, there’s a giggle-inducing piece by guidebook writer Edward Readicker-Henderson who heads to New Zealand where is is supposed to write about places that cater to travelers who might spend $50,000 on a trip (yes, you read that correctly) but becomes rather entranced by both the water swirling down the drain (he like to report that it swirls down a different direction, but alas, he can’t remember which direction it swirls here), and expensive bras hanging in the wind.

Anyway, good stuff all.

From Jetlag Travel

by Erik Olsen on

I gotta drag out some bits of an old post I did because the book I posted about – Phaic Tan is now out in the US. Before, I think it was only available in the UK and Australia. I’d gotten my hands on a copy of one of the earlier books called Molvania, the first in the mock-guide book series by a company called jetlag travel. I posted about it a while ago, expressing my enthusiastic regard for the idea.

Well, Phaic Tan ups the ante with a hilarious take on the whole exotic island motif. The country of Phaic Tan is said to be “an overwhelming explosion of sights, sounds, tastes, smells and strange colonic movements,” where “traffic police wear face masks but surgeons rarely do”.

Very clever, and that’s just the start.

There are also photos and clever little hotel recommendations, etc. For food, authors make up dishes in the “cuisine section”, and mention one particular dish called Nergak, which the book says “is a spicy fish sauce widely added to food throughout Phaic Tan. It is made at a massive processing plant in Pattaponga, one of the biggest factories in Asia, said to be the only man-made structure that can be smelt from the moon.”

This is one of those concepts I really wish I’d thought of.