Travel Bookshelf: Cheeky Guides

by Sean McLachlan on

Let’s face it–most guidebooks are boring. Sure, they’re informative, but they either read like a postgraduate thesis (Blue Guides) or are filled with snotty, uninformed opinions (take your pick)

The Cheeky Guides come as a breath of fresh air, or rather a gust of lager-laden belches from some local lush leaning against the bar at a seedy pub. These guides to Oxford and Brighton, two of England’s most popular destinations, manage to cover all the basics such as hotels, restaurants, and major tourist sights before veering off into the strange, silly, and even sinister.

Take Brighton, for example. You can learn where to go to speak to the dead (page 62), buy nipple clamps (page 260), or bathe in the nude (page 247). The authors are even kind enough to give you cryptic but probably sound advice. In the case of Brighton’s nude gay beach, “look out for the Windmill Man.” I’ll remember that.

If you’re wondering what the authors look like, they have a remarkable resemblance to the finger puppet “author photos” in the Brighton guide. There’s a real photo of them holding hands on the first page of “The Gay Scene” of the Oxford guide. Apparently they couldn’t find any real gays to pose for this picture.

The books are illustrated with clear, hand-drawn maps and the rare photo of something historic, but mostly feature random images of drunken students and midget strippers with hats on their willies. After all, who needs photos of some old building you’re going to take a photo of anyway? I’ve traveled all over the world and never once had the opportunity to take a photo of a stripping midget. Perhaps I’m not going to the right places.

The company also has Cheeky Guides to Student Life and Love, in case university and long-term relationships aren’t cheeky enough for you already.

While the books contain a hefty dose of silliness, and the occasional tall tale you’d have to be an American tourist to swallow, they do offer a wealth local color and unusual destinations you won’t find in regular guides and make a good addition to any traveler’s bookshelf.

So for a breezy, fun read, spread open a Cheeky Guide.

EasyJet tells six year old girl that her teddy bear has to travel as excess baggage

by Scott Carmichael on

It’s amazing what a total lack of common sense can do for your company.

Take for example the story of a check-in agent at Glasgow airport responsible for helping Easy Jet passengers. When 6 year old Amparo Peris-Bordes approched the desk with her mother, this EasyJet staffer told her that she’d have to pay 9 pounds, and send her teddy bear onto the conveyor belt, and into the hold as excess baggage.

For some reason, her mother refused to pay this, so they boxed the bear up, and sent it home with the mail.

EasyJet has of course announced that they’ll review their internal procedures, because nothing says “bad PR” like a smiling girl in the news reporting how mean your airline is.

Ten Mountains For The Amateur Mountaineer

by Kraig Becker on

A lot of adventure travelers also happen to be armchair mountaineers. They follow the worlds top climbers as they make bold attempts on impossibly high and remote mountains in all corners of the globe, and they cheer them on as they stand at the top of the world. Many of them secretly wish they could go on their own expeditions to these distant peaks, but for a variety of reasons, they never have the opportunity.

It turns out there are a number of great climbs that can give you the feeling of your own big mountain expedition, without the big mountain expense and the need to give up several months of your life. Forbes Traveler has put together a list of ten such mountains each of which will challenge the heartiest of travelers, while delivering a true mountaineering experience.

Several of the mountains on the list are icons that are already popular with amateur climbers. Mountains like Mount Blanc on the border Italy and France. The 12,000 foot peak is considered the birth place of modern mountaineering, and is one of the classic climbs of Europe. The 19,340 foot Mt. Kilimanjaro is also considered a classic climb, taking trekkers to the highest point in Africa.

The other mountains on the list, while possibly lesser known, offer unique mountain experiences that are sure to thrill any adventure traveler and would-be mountaineer. These peaks can be climbed in a matter of days, rather than weeks, and they won’t leave your pocket book quite so empty as say an Everest expedition, which can cost upwards of $50,000 and require two months of time on the mountain.

So, if you hear the call of the mountains yourself, and you can’t resist the lure, strap on your crampons, grab your trekking poles and head to any one of these peaks for an adventure of your own.

Photo of the Day (5-13-09)

by Jamie Rhein on

First, the composition and colors of this photo caught my attention, and then I wondered where this Buddha statue is. Using t3mujin‘s tags “Quinta dos Loridos” and “Portugal” as clues, my impression is that this gem is among the statuary at the Quinta dos Loridos winery estate. The estate is one of four that produces Bacalhoa wines. From the looks of this place, I’d say that the gardens are just a few of the pleasures.

If you have shots that hint at the pleasures you’ve come across in your travels, send them our way at Gadling’s Flickr Photo pool.

How global warming could change travel

by Brenda Yun on

We heard it from Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth,” and we’re hearing it again — this time from the World Ocean Conference 2009 that is in its third of a five-day conference, taking place in Manado, Indonesia: rising sea levels will likely displace millions of island dwellers in the next twenty years. According to two recent articles in the Conde Nast Portfolio and AFP, the the polar ice caps are melting, causing ocean levels to rise, thereby shrinking some very populated and travel-worthy islands.

Places like the Maldives, Kiribati, and Tuvalu are literally shrinking and could be completely submerged by 2050. Mount Kilimanjaro and the Swiss Alps could lose over 40% of their snow within 20 years. Perhaps most importantly, an estimated 150 million people could be displaced from their lowland homes because of significant sea level rises.

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So, what does this mean for travelers? Well, the implications are quite clear. Those of us interested in visiting the polar destinations like Greenland and Antarctica or even glacial regions threatened by shrinking glaciers should enjoy them while they’re still cold. The same goes for the shrinking islands, such as the Phillipines, and the warming waters of the Great Barrier Reef, which could lose over 90% of its live coral within 50 years.

The five-day World Ocean Conference has drawn hundreds of officials and ocean experts from 80 countries and is the prelude to December talks on a successor to the expiring Kyoto Protocol, whose aim was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2%, compared to data drawn in 1990. It has been twenty years since this Protocol and other climate initiatives have been evaluated, so it’s about time we think about being as green as possible.

The Alliance of Small Island States, the European Union, and the U.S. are all proposing greenhouse gas emission cuts of over 80% by 2050, but important developing nations such as China (who faces a very real threat to sea level rises in its overpopulated urban cities of Beijing and Shanghai) have yet to determine how much they can do in this global effort.