DayZipping launches Android app, brings fresh trips to fresh places

It wasn’t quite a year ago that an Atlanta-based startup dubbed DayZipping set out to change the way people interacted with new places. But having a growing pool of day trips — journeys that can be completed within one to eight hours by foot, bike, car or train — only does a user so much good on the big screen. At last week’s Google I/O conference, the company launched their first foray into the mobile realm: the DayZipping Android app. All of the daytripping goodness found on the web, packaged into a free, intuitive mobile app. Simply load up the program on your Android phone or tablet, search for a location that you’re heading to, and see a whole host of possible day trip options added by fellow travelers who have already done the hard work for you.

We’re told that an iOS version should bring the same functionality to iPhone users in mid-to-late summer, but given the haste at which an Android build can be injected into the Market, the company’s using Google’s mobile OS as a proving ground. As for planned upgrades? They’re looking to integrate the mobile app with your web account so that you can save trips for offline viewing and get customized suggestions on the go. In other words, you could have rated trips in Atlanta, and the app will generate suggestions in San Francisco even if it’s your first visit to the area. Long-term, the outfit wants to provide in-app reviews, a direct way to receive a deal or purchase agreement (think local deals based on where you’re tripping), and group messaging functions if the code can be hammered out. Hit the Market here to give it a go — who knows what trips you may discover in your backyard?

From myth to Empire: Heracles to Alexander the Great


Today’s royals have nothing on the ancients.

Alexander the Great and his predecessors enjoyed a sumptuous lifestyle that beats anything William and Kate will ever enjoy, not to mention real power as opposed to lots of TV time. Now an amazing new exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, gives an insight into the life of the royal family of Macedon.

Alexander the Great conquered much of the known world before his death in 323 BC, but he didn’t come out of nowhere. He was the second-to-last king of a proud royal lineage that traced its roots to the legendary Herakles. Heracles to Alexander the Great: Treasures of the Royal Capital of Macedon, a Hellenic Kingdom in the Age of Democracy looks at the development of one of the ancient world’s greatest royal families. Their palace was almost as big as Buckingham Palace and what remains shows it was much more luxurious. There was gold, silver, ivory, and jewels everywhere, and plenty has made it into this exhibition. There’s everything from ornate golden wreaths to tiny ivory figurines like this one, which graced a couch on which a king once quaffed wine and consorted with maidens. It’s good to be the king.

The displays focus on more than 500 treasures from the royal tombs at the ancient capital of Aegae (modern Vergina in northern Greece). Three rooms show the role of the king, the role of the queen, and the famous banquets that took place in the palace.

%Gallery-122395%Especially interesting is the gallery about the role of the royal women, who are often overlooked in all the accounts of manly battles and assassinations. Women had a big role to play in religious life and presided at holy festivals and rites alongside men. They also wore heaps of heavy jewelry that, while impressive, couldn’t have been very comfortable.

The banqueting room shows what it was like to party in ancient times. Apparently the master of the banquet diluted the wine with varying proportions of water to “control the time and degree of drunkenness”!

There are even items from the tomb of Alexander IV, Alexander the Great’s son with princess Roxana of Bactria. Alex Jr had some pretty big shoes to fill, what with dad conquering most of the known world and all, but he didn’t get a chance to prove himself because he was poisoned when he was only thirteen. At least he went out in style, with lots of silver and gold thrown into his tomb with him.

This is the first major exhibition in the temporary galleries of the recently redesigned Ashmolean. Expect plenty of interesting shows from this world-class museum in coming years.

Heracles to Alexander the Great: Treasures of the Royal Capital of Macedon, a Hellenic Kingdom in the Age of Democracy runs until August 29, 2011. Oxford makes an easy and enjoyable day trip from London.

[Image © The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism – Archaeological Receipts Fund]

Madrid daytrip: a Renaissance castle and Spanish Civil War bunker


Madrid has a lot to offer–tasty tapas, wonderful wine, and amazing art. There’s so much to do in the center of town it’s easy to spend your entire vacation there without ever seeing the outskirts. Yet several daytrips offer a different look at Spain.

One possibility just opened up last year. Near the Metro stop Alameda de Osuna on the outskirts of town, the city government has recently opened a Renaissance castle and a Spanish Civil War bunker.

The castle is called Castillo de Alameda de Osuna, and it guarded an important road between Madrid and the city of Alacalá de Henares. Alameda was a village back then; Madrid was barely a town. The castle was home to the local duke and was built in the 15th century when Spain was becoming a major empire. It was improved in the 16th century and is a good example of a small Renaissance fort. A deep stone-lined moat is the first line of defense for a thick square fort with towers at the corners. Cannons and men with matchlock rifles would have defended the walls and it would have been tough to take. Sieges at the time were deadly affairs and the attacking army preferred to try and starve the fort into submission. The defenders made sure to have plenty of food stored up and some sieges lasted for a year or more.

You can find out more information at Castillosnet, including a handy Google map showing how to get there. The website is in Spanish but if you hit the little British flag at the top it will put it through Google translator, always an amusing experience.

The bunker stands right next to the castle, on the brow of a low hill with a clear field of fire across what would then have been open countryside. Madrid was under siege for much of the Civil War and many such bunkers remain. You can see several when hiking near Madrid.

While the city of Madrid is working hard to restore the castle, it still needs a lot of work. An ugly fence surrounds the place and gets in the way of the view, plus the park next to it is filled with trash and dog shit. Reconstruction on the castle isn’t complete and parts of look like a building site. The castle and bunker are open Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays from 10am to 9pm. Admission is free. The Metro stop is about forty minutes from central Madrid at the end of Line 5. While the place isn’t ideal, it’s well worth a visit for any history buff.

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A Day’s Hike In West Virginia

A grey dawn greets us; a stark, monochromatic world is waiting for us as we wake, languid and mottled, and emerge from our tents. The night’s mist and rain lies heavy in the air around us, on our tents, heavy on our souls. We are pilgrims setting foot on sacred land, a group of cowering vagrants, little more than ants to some sort of greater power that lurks in the mountains opposite our camp.

We dress and breakfast in silent reverie, paying mental tribute to the to the scene we’ve found ourselves in. Stretching before us are miles and miles of untapped perfection: rolling fields and an imposing range, flanked by a large lake filled with crystal water. Camp breaks and we head off, north, a cavalcade of monks heading to some distant and foreign chapel, our worship is our photography, our prayers are punctuated with the rhythmic slapping of boot on dirt.

We pass the lake, stopping for a meal of hummus and pita bread. Some of our party ventures a swim, though the lake is freezing cold. They lay, on backs and on stomachs and swim through the waters while the skies rotate about us; we all feel closer here, more human than ever before, it’s an addiction and we’re all addicts on the floor with needles in our arms and eyes bursting out of sockets.

Time seems to move slower up here, near the spine of the world. It seems like forever we’ve hiked, if we were born here in these mountains none of us would be the wiser. My pack becomes an appendage, an extension of my being. We move as one through the undergrowth, nearing the mountain range, though the mystic day’s lights are leaving us like some fleeting ghost leaving a widowed lover. At our backs it beats us on, master to mules, plowing an endless range. We beat on, ever forward into the night.

We break the night’s camp with a high, heavy moon watching; some ghastly outsider viewing us like so many creatures in a terrarium. Sheepishly we laugh, our breathes stolen from us by the majesty of the world around us. We share stories and food by the fire, though we can’t warm our souls or take our minds off the day’s journey. One by one, we retire, with the night growing thicker around us, creeping into every crevice and seam within our tents and bodies.

[Photo: Flickr/respres]

Two sublime day trips from London

A few days into a recent 8-day trip to London I was spent. This followed Portobello Road and Covent Garden shopping sprees, a delicious Guinness-oyster pie at Borough Market, a night of clubbing in Shoreditch (the masterful DJ Carl Craig spun at Plastic People), and a day of intensive art immersion (including Christian Marclay’s excellent film “The Time” at the White Cube gallery). The perfect palliative to minding too many gaps and aching blistered dogs proved to be two sublime daytrips.

The picturesque medieval town of Lewes, about an hour south of London, is set on a hill above the River Ouse. Its winding cobblestone streets, lined with locavore-minded restaurants, traditional pubs serving locally-brewed ales, unique boutiques and antiquarians, lead up to the ruins of an 11th century Norman Castle. The town’s charms have attracted many, including Virginia Woolf, American patriot Thomas Paine, and the Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts, but my primary motivation for this jaunt was timing.

Each November fifth, for the past 405 years, Lewes has celebrated the fire-filled British holiday of Guy Fawkes Night with more fervor and pageantry than anywhere in the U.K. The evening’s incendiary bacchanalia includes throngs of torch-wielding and elaborately-costumed marchers, young men racing through town towing barrels of burning tar, whole roasted pigs on spits and massive bonfires. The holiday, which commemorates a foiled-attempt in 1605 to overthrow the British Government (and is rooted in ancient pagan rituals), is like nothing you will find in London.

%Gallery-111983%The same can be said for the Cotswalds, the gorgeous west-central English countryside roughly an hour-and-a-half west of the capital. This officially designated “Area of Outstanding Beauty” lives up to its billing with gentle rolling hills, idyllic villages and ornate churches built with indigenous honey-hued limestone. Here there are still single-lane roads slicing through pastoral farmlands dotted with sheep and thatched-roof houses.

The best way to take-in the Cotswolds is by car, which you can easily rent in the nearby town of Oxford. Driving on the left side for most Americans is certainly a challenge; but not nearly as treacherous as avoiding the brightly plumed pheasants swooping down kamikaze-like towards my oncoming windshield. My route along the northern half of the area’s famed Romantic Road provided an excellent overview. This included stops in Woodstock where I glimpsed the grand Blenheim Palace; Grand Tew, a speck of a village (pop. 152) with a 16th century pub; Bourton-on-the-Water, a.k.a. “The Venice of the Cotswolds;” and the wondrous Broadway Tower, a small 18th century castle that once served as a refuge for Arts & Crafts movement founder William Morris.

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In the last decade the Cotswolds, much like the Hamptons, have become a haven for London’s boldface names. The likes of Lily Allen, Damien Hirst, Kate Winslet and Stella McCartney regularly come here to escape London’s bustle and recharge their batteries. There’s no reason lesser-known individuals on extended urban safaris can’t do the same-it certainly made my Indian food in Islington the next evening that much tastier.

GETTING THERE:
God save the Queen, and London to be sure, but for excursions outside the sprawling capital, God save Britain’s National Rail. It is user friendly, affordable and surprisingly comfortable. You can easily purchase same-day round trip tickets. London’s Victoria Station to Lewes and back costs about $32; London Paddington to Oxford is $42. A rental car via EasyCar, a subsidiary of the low cost air-carrier EasyJet, cost about $75. The rental agency is located a block from the Oxford train station and operates through Avis.