Roaming Tales

• Sadly the owners of Danzante Hotel, a small eco hotel in Baja California, have sold up and a major tourist development is underway, according to the Intelligent Travel blog.

• Intelligent Travel also has a round-up of hotel deals in New York this winter.

• Have you heard about travel auction site Priceline but never tried it? Sheila at Family Travel checks it out.

• Looking for budget accommodation in Florence, Italy? Natasha at After a Year and a Half recommends Ostello Archi Rossi.

• Lara at Cool Travel Guide recommends the delightfully named Moonshadow Villas in Darwin, Australia, plus the luxury train sleeper service the Ghan from South Australia to the Northern Territory.

• Europe a la Carte recommends the HotelsCombined price comparison site to find the best hotel deals in Europe.

• It’s not exactly a hotel but it’s a place to stay and a roof over your head, albeit a canvas one. Europe a la Carte also has a post about wild camping in the UK.

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• Passports with Purpose: A travel blogging initiative to raise money for Heifer International. Raffle tickets go on sale on December 1 and remain available for the rest of the month. It’s a worthy cause and there are some great prizes on offer. More information.

• World map giveaway: Leave an entertaining comment on the relevant post on Europe a la Carte for your chance to win a giant wall map of the world. The deadline is November 30.

• Book giveaway: Perceptive Travel is giving a copy of Organic Explorer New Zealand - all you have to do is leave a comment on the relevant post by December 1.

• Travel writing competition: The Daily Telegraph in the UK is offering budding travel writers the chance to win a trip to South Africa or a laptop. The work will be judged by Telegraph editors on the quality of writing and originality of content. You have until December 12 to enter. (Link via Write to Travel).

• Travel photography competition: National Geographic Traveler wants to see your best photographs of Washington DC - the winning images will be published on the website and the winners will receive a year’s subscription to the magazine. You have until December 15 to enter.

• Baby kit giveaway: Debbie at Delicious Baby is giving away something called a GoGoBabyz Infant Cruizer. It’s worth $150 and it lets you convert a baby car seat into a stroller. She wants comments and social media and link love - enter by December 1. US only.

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Dakar, Senegal; May 2007

Goree Island lies just off the coast of Dakar, the Senegalese capital. Today it’s a happy and mellow place where people hang out on the beach, play soccer in the dusty town square and fish from wooden boats from the warm waters of the tropical Atlantic. A few people make their home in the village here but it’s also a popular recreation spot for residents of Dakar, who live just a short ferry ride away.

However, the history of Goree Island stands in stark contrast to this idyllic scene. In centuries gone by the fort that you see on the right-hand side of the photo was a holding prison for victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. You can visit the fort and Goree Island also has its own museum about this unfortunate chapter in human history.

This post is part of Photo Friday, a weekly blogging event run by Debbie at DeliciousBaby. See all the submissions for this week.

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I’m delighted to be a participant in Passports with Purpose, a travel bloggers’ fundraising event to raise money for a worthy cause.

We’re hosting a raffle to raise funds for Heifer International, a charity that aims to end poverty worldwide through supporting and encouraging self sustainability.

Tickets are $US10 and go on sale for a month from December 1, through FirstGiving. There are some great prizes lined up, all worth around $US100. For example, Pam at Nerd’s Eye View has lined up merino wool long underwear from Joneswares.

The nice folks at Lonely Planet have donated a prize on behalf of Roaming Tales so my contribution is a Lonely Planet travel guide of your choice and two copies of The Travel Book (it would make a great gift, though unfortunately not in time for Christmas). I’ll throw in free shipping anywhere in the world.

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I was lucky enough to go to Syria earlier this year, to write about an Iraqi wedding in Damascus for G2. As well as staying with an Iraqi family and experiencing Arab culture from within, I also took the opportunity to explore the fascinating, ancient city of Damascus. I’ve written an article on the highlights of Damascus, now up on the Guardian Travel site.

Previous posts on Syria on Roaming Tales:

8 August 2008 | Photo Friday: Resting in the Great Umayyad Mosque

14 August 2008 | Photo Friday: Religious tourism at Sayyida Zainab Mosque

18 August 2008 | Iraqi wedding in Damascus

Stay tuned for more on Syria - I took a wonderful side trip up to the Krak des Chevaliers and Hama that I’m yet to blog about. I might also publish a follow-up on the bits that didn’t make the final cut for my feature on Damascus. Don’t forget to subscribe!

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Avoca, Tasmania; February 2007

In Avoca on the east coast of Tasmania, you might run into fairy penguins - also known as little penguins. When I was there on a family holiday in 2007, we watched them huddling on a little rocky island about 15 metres off shore.

Longyearbyen, Svalbard; August 2006

Up in the Arctic, the traffic warning sign is for polar bears. ‘Gjelder hele Svalbard’ means ‘Valid for all Svalbard’. We did see polar bears too, though thankfully not near the main town of Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen.

Despite the Coca Cola advert, polar bears and penguins do not live side by side. The polar bears would eat the penguins in a heart beat.

Both animals are cool creatures but I know which one I’d rather meet face to face.

This post is part of Photo Friday, a weekly photo blogging feature hosted by Debbie at Delicious Baby. Click here to see all the other submissions this week.

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The discussions from the Travel Blog Camp in London continue in the blogosphere.

The Travel Blog Camp in London last week has generated a bit of buzz in the blogosphere - perhaps not surprisingly since it was a blogging event attended largely by bloggers!

As well as my own summary, the following bloggers who attended the event have written about it on their own sites.

• Our host, Darren, from Travel Rants. He is also continuing similarly themed discussions at a new site Traveldotnet.

• Karen from Europe a la Carte (one of the presenters).

• Molly from STA Travelbuzz (presenter).
  

• Kevin from Travolution (presenter).

• Alex from Musings on travel ecommerce (presenter).
  

• Heather from On Her Travels.

• Guido from Happy Hotelier.

• Anthony from Mr and Mrs Smith.

• Ben from Trailbeater.

• Kelly from Sandwagon.

• Matt from Matt Parsons blog.

• Karen from Europe a la Carte.

• Jared from Joobili.

• Jeremy from Travelblatherer.

• Juliette from Mid sur l’Asie.

• Guillaume Thevenot on Hotel Blogs. 

And there’s been a some buzz from bloggers who weren’t at the event as well. Seattle-based Pam of Nerds Eye View gives it a mention on BlogHer, while all New Zealand-based Liz discusses it on Write to Travel.

It seems there is a lot of interest in travel blogging and social media, both for bloggers to be part of a community and for travel companies seeking to engage with and explore the space. The question is where do we go from here?

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Vintage clothes, art and stuffed squirrels on Brick Lane and Columbia Road.

Brick Lane, at the eastern edge of the square mile that is the City of London, is one of the most vibrant parts of London. It’s best known for the Indian and Bangladeshi restaurants that line the street and if you go at night you can barely move for the restaurant touts trying to entice you inside with various bribes of free drinks or samosas.

I prefer to get my curry elsewhere - at places such as New Tayyabs, a Pakistani restaurant behind the East London Mosque. And I prefer to visit Brick Lane during the day, especially on a Sunday when the Sunday UpMarket is on in the Old Truman Brewery and Columbia Road Flower Market is on up the road in Bethnal Green.

The Sunday UpMarket has great food - from Japanese to Ethiopian - in one half and secondhand and handmade clothes and other assorted flea market goodies in the other. It’s all under cover, which is perfect when it’s grey and drizzly outside as it so often is in London at this time of year.

As you wander further up the hill, you pass great cafés, famous bagel bakeries from the days when Brick Lane was a Jewish rather than Bangladeshi enclave, cool art galleries and around half a dozen great vintage clothing shops.

As you exit the northern end of Brick Lane and cross Bethnal Green Road, check out the contemporary furniture studio Unto This Last. Their best stuff is made to order as apparently they have had some problems with theft.

From there it’s just a hop, step and a jump to Columbia Road, which hosts a flower market every Sunday. I prefer to go late, around 2pm, when the crowds have died down and the flowers and pot plants are often on sale. This street is also full of funky independent shops. There’s the cupcake bakery Treacle (although cupcakes are not really my thing), a few gardening and homeware shops, and Nelly Duff gallery selling cool limited edition prints to name a few. If you’re still hungry after the Sunday UpMarket, the bagel bakery and cupcake shop, there’s a good Spanish restaurant called Laxeiro and the Royal Oak Pub.

There’s always something new to see in the East End. On my most recent visit, this past weekend, my eye was caught by the window display to a vintage clothing store halfway up Brick Lane, modestly called This Shop Rocks. The window display had two mannequins in dresses, one with a stuffed badger on a lead and one with a stuffed fox. There were also six stuffed squirrels wearing clothing dancing in a circle.

Have I missed something here? Is taxidermy back? Even though I’m sure they’re antique and not freshly stuffed, I actually found it a little disturbing, especially since they were rare, native red squirrels rather than the more common, foreign grey squirrels. They were cute but creepy.

It certainly got my attention but when it came down to it, none of us wanted to go in. Maybe the shop does rock but I might never know.

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In my first post for environmental blog EcoSalon, I write about Cornwall - a stylish choice for an eco-holiday.

I have some exciting news to share - I’m joining EcoSalon as a regular contributor. I’ve been asked to write two posts a week, one on green travel and one on green tech and lifestyle.

My first post is on eco-holidays in Cornwall, looking at walking, food, art and destinations such as the Eden Project. Cornwall is one of my favourite parts of Britain and, as I hope my photos show, an extremely beautiful part of the country. The post was published today and I’m delighted that it’s currently featured as the EcoSalon Daily Favourite right at the top of the site. Please take a look and let me know what you think. Leave a comment either here or on EcoSalon and if you like it, please feel free to share the link with your friends.

The theme of EcoSalon is about going green without sacrificing style and this is something that really strikes a chord with me. Readers who are familiar with this blog and my food blog The Gooseberry Fool might know that I am a passionate environmentalist. However, I also believe that people need inspiration and a reason for hope. We shouldn’t hide from the immensity of the challenge – but if we focus on doom and gloom, we risk generating despair rather than the committed and focused action the planet needs. Despair is just as destructive to the environment as denial.

I’m pleased to be blogging for EcoSalon because the blog is committed to the environment but with an aim to empower and inspire people rather than hector or scare them. There’s enough troubling environmental news out there – the question is what we can do about it.

Lest any fans of Roaming Tales be fretting about the future of this site - never fear! I fully intend to keep my own site and my blogging duties at EcoSalon are as well as, not instead of, what I already do. It’s a paid gig so this properly falls into my day job as a freelance writer.

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Svalbard, Arctic; August 2006

In 2006, for my 30th birthday, I took myself on a holiday to the Arctic. I wanted to see polar bears in their natural habitat while I still could.

I did that and a lot more besides. I took an 11-day boat trip around the Svalbard archipelago in the High Arctic with Aurora Expeditions (booked through World Expeditions). As well as polar bears, I saw walruses, seals, whales, reindeer and a huge variety of birds. I challenged myself to try sea kayaking and this was a highlight of the trip - paddling past glaciers, seals resting on ice floes and enormous bird cliffs.

This photo was taken from the ship. I’m not sure what time of day it was and I can’t tell from looking at the photo either. At this time of year the High Arctic has 24 hours of daylight, with the sun simply moving from one part of the southern sky to another. It’s perpetual twilight – or perhaps dawn. The photo is on sale along with other examples of my art photography at Redbubble - Christmas is coming so feel free to buy a print or a calendar or cards!

I’ve written about my experiences several times since, including reportage about the Russian ship crew for Anyway, a description of Arctic kayaking for Rough Guides Make the Most of Your Time on Earth and a humorous blog-style account of the holiday for Australian Women’s Health. I also have a fact box on Spitsbergen (the biggest island in Svalbard) on the blog.

This is part of Photo Friday, a weekly feature hosted by Debbie at travel blog Delicious Baby. Please click through to see all the other photos submitted by other travel bloggers this week.

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