Now I honestly haven’t a clue how I
ended up at OutTraveler.com. For one I like men and
I must say the chiseled, toned, and very visually appealing hunks featured in the stories on travel destinations like
Istanbul, Austin and the Galapagos Islands surely might be my type, yet the only problem is I’m not theirs. If you
haven’t guessed by now OutTraveler doesn’t refer to just being out in the woods, but more so about being out of the
closet. Perhaps you needn’t be in or out of the closet to read the travel suggestions in the current online spring
edition, but for the most part Out Traveler boasts themselves as being the standard of Gay travel. I took a moment to
read the piece on Istanbul, an area I’ve wanted to visit
for quite sometime to see what the column recommends for the extremely liberal traveler in Turkey’s most popular city.
What caught my attention most was the rating system used which rates things like: gay-friendliness, domestic
partnerships, adoption laws, anti-discrimination laws, HIV info and the Gay scene. Not my average travel guide for
sure, but I’m sure this information comes in handy to somebody out there. (No pun intended.)
Bailing to Banff
You’ve seen the pictures. The fact is that few towns in
the world are quite as lovely as Banff. I mean, the mountains, those cerulean lakes, and of course the mighty Bow River
courses right through town. The famous mountain that looms overhead, Mount Rundle, looks a bit like a shark fin…and in
every direction you look, more mountains, more beauty. Neil pointed out that there are lots of cool
things to do in Banff. To wit: the Banff Mountain Film Festival, a must-do for the adventuresome filmmaker. But where
should you stay? Where, here is a list
of accommodations for you should Banff be on your schedule. And if you’re looking for a series of excellent
driving tours, look no further than Frommer’s list here. So
that’s a start. Now get going.
Gadling on AOL Travel
Some of you may have noticed, perhaps because you came
here from there, but we here at Gadling.com have done a couple of helpful travel pieces this week for the good folks at
AOL.com. We worked our brains over how best to satisfy the AOL audience as Spring
approacheth and people are making plans. And we settled on seven ideas for seven days.
write ups on the best secret places to go in Mexico and Hawaii, as well as both East and West Coast Trips (Even through I’m from the West Coast, Neil
lives there now in So Cal, so he handled the West. And since I live in
York
piece by Adrienne on Caribbean Trips. Anyway, if you came
to Gadling.com from these pieces, then welcome! Bookmark us and come back often. If you are a Gadling.com regular or
occasional visitor, go check out these pieces, maybe they’ll give you some inspiration to do some traveling.
Urban Explorer at Explorer's Club
Neil gave us a nice little dose of Urban Adventure in this
post he did a while back, but I have to say I want to know more. I am fascinated by the concept, the idea of
experiencing a place everyone thinks they know well in a completely different way.
I more or less consider
myself a bit of an urban adventurer. When I was a kid growing up in California, at
a very young age I’d head out alone into my small town to find its hidden places, the nooks and shadowy corners and
empty buildings where I suspected not many people had been. That was a huge thrill to me to find an old warehouse or
tunnel where no one had been for a while.
And now that I live in a major metropolitan area, I still find
myself poking about here and there, especially if I’m alone and coming home after a few drinks, in search of a hidden
tunnel or secret passageway.
And I’m also a major fan of The Explorers Club. Located on the Upper East Side in a beautiful stone building, I’ve been up
there for a whole series of events including the Doc Fest and the famous dinner. I’ve also interviewed the Club’s President
and have spent a lot of time roaming around the halls. The connection here is that in the spirit of adventure, the
Explorer’s Club hosted a series on Urban Exploration with urban explorer Steve Duncan. Duncan has spent the past
decade scaling bridges, crawling through tunnels and playing Indian Jones beneath the city’s sidewalks.
Amy
over at Newyorkology did a fine post about the event, which you should read.
Summiting Aconcagua
A good friend of mine just achieved one of the
top items on my own personal "lifelist", that is, the list of things I’d most like to do in my life. This
item sits there at about number 21, after many diving adventures, paddling Greenland and a host of others. But it is
there, nonetheless, and I am psyched he pulled it off. He also wanted me to mention hs guiding outfit, which he says
did a superb job getting his small group to the top. The company is called South American Climbing.
What did he do, you ask? Well, he
summited Aconcagua, the 22,841-ft behemoth of a mountain in
the South of Argentina, that also happens to be the tallest mountain in the Southern and Western Hemispheres. Now, never
mind the fact that we have labeled this number one
on OUR Gadling Lifelist series. That was
just a matter of circumstance. I’d just read something about it and so posted the piece. We’ll be doing many more
Lifelist pieces in the near future, by the way.
So it took my friend Erik Riegler some three weeks to get
acclimated and to reach the summit, and as you can see by this
series of photos on Kodak (which I hope you CAN see), Aconcagua looks both brutally hard, and surprisingly barren.
But despite its enormous height, it is not THAT hard to climb, at least it’s not if yo ukeep yourself to the easiest
route up. Technically, I understand it can be done by relative novices. The key is to acclimatize so you don’t end up
with cerebral or pulmonary edema. So, here’s raising a glass to Erik and his effort. Nice job, dude.