Short and Sweet Travel Advice for the World’s Top Tech Cities

by Neil Woodburn on

If you’re in the tech industry these days, your travel has become increasingly more widespread in the last five years as international competition has started challenging Silicon Valley as the sole place to do business.

With this in mind, Business 2.0 has published a handy little guide in this month’s issue: The Road Warrior’s Guide to Travel.

The guide, which is available online here, or as a pull-out in the print edition, breaks out the travel basics for the planet’s hottest tech cities: Bangalore, Barcelona, Helsinki, Hong Kong, London, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Stockholm, Tallinn, Tel Aviv, and Tokyo.

Each city section addresses the same six questions; How to get around, where to find free Wi-Fi, where to get a trim, best place to get down to business, best place to celebrate closing the deal, and what you might not know.

Better get a print copy soon, however. I just learned that Business 2.0 (one of my favorite magazines) is going belly-up–perhaps yet another sign that the tech world is migrating out of America?

Spain’s Most Excellent Tomato Fight (This Month!)

by Neil Woodburn on

There is no better festival on the entire face of this planet than La Tomatina.

Sure, that’s my own personal opinion, but until a pie throwing festival comes along, La Tomatina will continue to be numero uno in my book. Part of the reason I love it so much is because of the pure simplicity of the event:

1. Provide 110 tons of tomatoes to a drunken crowd
2. Sound a horn
3. Let them throw tomatoes at each other for an hour

Can life get any better than this? I think not.

Just click on the video above and I think you’ll agree with me. Or better yet, jump on a plane and head on over to Buñol, Spain. This year’s tomato throwing festival occurs on August 29; you’ve still plenty of time to make it!

New Years’ Is Just Around the Corner

by Iva Skoch on

Or so it seems. It’s about time to buy those tickets, book those hotel rooms, otherwise you might be out of luck and stuck at home with a bag of Doritos again.

Whatever happened to spontaneous traveling you say? Got me. I guess you can’t be spontaneous and go to “it” places at the same time.

To get you motivated, here is Editors’ of Sherman’s Travel Top 5 Places to Ring in the New Year:

  1. Aspen, CO, US
  2. Bangkok, Thailand
  3. Barcelona, Spain
  4. Edinburgh, Scottland
  5. Goa, India

I can’t really comment on that because I haven’t spent New Year’s in any of these places although I am putting all of these on my list. I made a commitment to spend the New Year in a different city every year. For the last 13 years, I have managed to do that. My favorite one? Perhaps in Batopilas, in the Copper Canyon region of Mexico a few years ago.

Toboggan Riding in Madeira

by Jamie Rhein on

A friend of mine is writing a fictional memoir of her mother’s life. It’s fictious because she is imagining the specific details, but the big picture events she is writing about, for the most part, happened. One big picture event was when her mother went to Madeira on a Canary Islands cruise as the personal maid of a wealthy woman. My writing group feasts on the details.

While doing research for the flavorful details she could add in to make the story about her mother’s trip more vivid and real, my friend came across information about wicker basket toboggan rides in Monte. This was a memory jog. Her mother told her about these when my friend was growing up. Even though my friend’s mother may have whizzed down the streets in a basket built for two years ago, you can still do this.

It took looking at this You Tube video for me to fully get the picture. This looks like a blast and funky enough that if you go here, you just have to do it. Here’s Louise Douglas’s account of her Canary islands travels. In her article, “Boatgirl,” she fills in details about her experiences that includes this ride.

Running of the Bulls: Amazing/Disgusting Photo

by Justin Glow on

I took the liberty of censoring the above AP photo, because there may be some people out there who have no interest in seeing what this bull has done to Michael Lenahan’s leg during this years Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain. If you’re the squeamish type, trust me on this one — it’s pretty gross. The odd thing about it is there is absolutely no blood. It’s just….ugh. Kudos to the photographer — whoever you are — for getting this truly amazing, shocking, horrifying shot.

If you want to see the uncensored version, click on the above image. [via]