Since “where can we get a great view of Vancouver?” seems to be a frequent question from the international journalists in town for the upcoming 2010 Winter Games, I did a round-up of my Top 10 places to scope the city over at the Inside Vancouver blog.
Feel free to add your own recommendations!
Someone always asks when’s the best time to arrange a house swap, and the answer is: right now.
Even the workaholics among you are going to find it hard to put in an honest day’s labour for the next 72 hours, so in that idle time between unpacking your stocking and undoing your belt, I suggest [...]
Time didn’t allow for me to attend the travel panel at this year’s Blog World and New Media Expo in Las Vegas, but the beauty of social media is that it came to me instead via Twitter and RSS.
I know a lot of people reading here work in or around the travel industry, so I thought [...]
We hadn’t been back from our recent home exchange (our second, to Berlin) for more than a day when the first call came in: “Julie, can you have a coffee with me and tell me how this home exchange thing works?”
Actually, I can do better: travel writer Laura Byrne Paquet has just written what amounts to [...]
I blogged about this a few months back, but the topic of how to save on ATM fees came up the other day at work while everyone was talking about summer holiday plans, so I think it’s worth reposting this tip:
You already know it’s easy and convenient to use your ATM card to get local [...]
Sometimes enough is enough. Sometimes I just can’t bear another cookie-cutter hotel room, no matter how comfortable its beds are (you win, Westin) or how genteel its staff (props to Shangri-La and Fairmont).
Like today, for instance. Today, I’m in Hamilton, Ontario, having flown through the night to get here in time to speak at an [...]
If your idea of travelling with tunes means toting your own guitar or fiddle, check out www.thesession.org, an international website that lists informal music gatherings all around the world.
To find out where to connect with local musicians while you’re in town, just plug in your travel date or location and the site will quickly return [...]
[A week or so back I received a personal email from Tony DiCaprio and Anne Marie Babkine, Canadians who live in France--poor them!--and run a home exchange site called 1stHomeExchange.com. They have some great tips for prospective home exchangers, so I asked if I could post their note here at TheseBoots...]
Dear Julie:
We are Tony DiCaprio [...]
Judging by the huge number of hits on my January post about how to do a home swap, I gather the live-like-a-local trend is real and growing. So for those who aren’t keen on sleeping in cookie-cutter hotel rooms, who think variety is the spice of travel, or who simply need to travel on a shoestring, here [...]
“For every traveller who has any taste of his own, the only useful guidebook will be the one which he himself has written.”
-Aldous Huxley
No kidding. During our home exchange to Paris last summer, our best tips didn’t come from Fodor’s or Rough Guide or Lonely Planet but from the pile of hand-picked and [...]
