Find The World’s Best Festivals

by Meg Nesterov on

Do you travel for food, culture or history? You can find all that and more at a festival, and a website launched this week aims to connect travelers with some of the world’s most unique, exciting and unusual festivals. Fest300 is part practical directory, part inspirational magazine. On the homepage, you’ll find a mix of lists (how about top festivals to enjoy naked?), essays, videos and “festimonial” interviews with participants and performers. Ready to attend something? You can search for festivals by month, location or category (“wild parties” is intriguing).

Throughout Fest300, you’ll also find blog posts and tidbits from founder Chip Conley, a sort of festival “junkie” who founded the Joie de Vivre boutique hotel chain and now travels the world in search of the “collective effervescence” experienced at festivals, sharing his on-the-ground experiences. Why 300? Chip explains, “Fortune lists the 500 largest companies, and Forbes the 400 richest people in the world. We chose 300 experiences as the right number to capture the wide diversity and best festivals the world has to offer.” The site is adding more festivals each week, aiming for 270 by the end of year, with the final 30 to be crowd-sourced by the Fest300 community. Also in the works is a “matchmaking” feature to find the best festivals for you based on your interests.

Take the pledge to attend at least one festival this year at Fest300.com

‘Wild’ Movie Will Star Reese Witherspoon

by Libby Zay on

Cheryl Strayed’s travel memoir “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail” is set for the big screen. Reese Witherspoon will play Strayed, who went on a solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail in search of herself after the death of her mother and a battle with infidelity, divorce and heroin use. Nick Hornby, who wrote the novels “High Fidelity” and “About a Boy,” has written the screenplay. The film was just picked up by Fox Searchlight for distribution.

Shooting on the “Wild” movie is scheduled to begin this fall. In the meantime, our own Wandering Writer Rachel Friedman took a tour of Northeast Portland with Strayed, who made the city her home after walking her way to a new life through California and Oregon. When Strayed arrived, her life savings were around twenty cents.

Cheers to Strayed, who went from some loose change in her pocket to having an Oprah-approved memoir and movie deal.

Twitter Users Give Bankrupt Detroit New Tourism Slogans

by Libby Zay on

With a budget deficit believed to be upwards of $380 million and long-term debt that could be as much as $20 billion, Detroit has officially filed for bankruptcy. The city’s dire situation is no laughing matter, but Twitter users have made the once mighty Motor City the butt of their jokes using the hashtag #NewDetroitCityMottos.

Here’s a slideshow with a few suggested tourism slogans that made us laugh and some that made us grimace:
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Call An Ice Cream Truck On Demand Today With Uber

by Meg Nesterov on

Today is the hottest day yet in New York City’s latest heat wave, and the summer weather is no less forgiving in many other cities in the western hemisphere. To help beat the heat, car service app Uber is offering ice cream trucks on demand, today only from 11-5 p.m. in 33 cities worldwide. The stunt is to help promote the app’s expansion to new cities in the United States and in Australia, Europe and Singapore.

Demand is expected to be high and waits may be long, but if you want to try for a truck, download the Uber app and connect with your credit card info, request the ice cream app, and wait for one to show up in your area. Prices and ice cream treats vary, average is $25 for ice cream for five people. The full list of U.S. cities includes: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco Bay area, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

New to Uber cities include Miami, Portland (OR), Houston, Toronto, Sydney, Melbourne, Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Lyon, Milan, Munich, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, and Singapore. Incidentally, those are all cities where you can get a car and driver on demand anytime with Uber.

See all the details and get your ice cream on Uber’s blog.

New Website Offers Solo Travelers A Chance To Sleep With Strangers

by Dave Seminara on

Would you be willing to shack up with a complete stranger to save a few bucks on accommodation? If you’re the adventurous sort, you can do just that on a new website called Easynest, which matches up single travelers who don’t mind sharing a hotel room. Users set up a profile or use their Facebook profile and can post a hotel room they have booked and want to share or browse to see what other users are offering.

For example, a young Greek woman named Antigone wants to share a $200 room at the Milford Plaza Hotel in New York in December, someone named JC James wants to share a $60 room at the Hilton Garden Inn in Overland Park, Kansas, and a child who appears to be approximately 18 months old would like to share a $400 hotel room in Jakarta in July.

I’m a risk taker and I’ve spent plenty of nights at hostels around the world, but I don’t think I’d try my luck on a site like this one. Anyone can set up an innocuous looking profile online and then turn into a bloodthirsty Jeffrey Dahmer-esque cannibal once you turn the lights out. Would you be willing to give this site a try?