foXnoMad

Over the last 2 years, I’ve slowly and steadily grown my personal RSS reader and email subscriptions and would like to expand my list. What travel blogs do you read or recommend?

Here is my list below, (with a description from the site’s about page and my own), please let me know if I’ve missed any of you!

• Away’s Travel Blog - Our roving team of travel editors will apply their collective wisdom and experience to help you successfully navigate the virtual world of travel information.
• Blissful Travel - Erica Johansson is a freelance writer and photographer from Sweden. Her love for writing and traveling led her to travel writing.
• Eye Flare - This site is run by Jack Norell, sometimes photographer, traveler, and teller of tall stories.
• Family Travel - See the world with your kids.
• :: future gringo :: - Great blog about the Denver region, even when James strays off topic
• Go Girlfriend - Where intelligent women (and men, ah-hem) go for travel information that matters. We inform, connect and inspire women to live their travel dreams.
• InFlightHQ - A blog that publishes tools, tips, and techniques for tech-savvy business travelers.
• Jaunted - Our daily web magazine is a pop culture travel review for a generation that possesses a small attention span.
• Nordic Travel - Advice and compelling videos from the Nordic region.

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The results of last week’s poll showed that 75% of you preferred travel tips with the occasional travel story in between. Travel bloggers however, often find their best inspiration from their travels. The key to reaching a wider audience is to take your trips and turn them into tips and useful information.

Take The Trip

Don’t lose sight of the reason you began writing in the first place. Write a few posts from the road about very specific elements and experiences. This lays the framework for more general posts and helps your readers connect with you. Concise travel stories and some well taken photos give life to any post.

Notes As You Go

Each of us learns something new every time we set out on a new trip. Make note of your preparations and keep in mind how you adapted to your destination once you got there. Think in terms of geography (continental, country, and local) as well as what stood out to you and what made you stand out.

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New bloggers who don’t write about gadgets, technology, or their personal lives tend to gravitate toward writing about travel. Many blogs begin as a journal of one or two trips and then quietly fade off into the night. Many of us however trudge on, aiming to write our wisdom gathered during trips, research common questions, and connect with other vagaboonds long after that.

Travel blogging isn’t easy to keep up with, since most of the people who do it have full-time day jobs and spend their free time traveling. (Not to mention having families and a life.)

I recently wrote about a transition that has helped me in my writing and posted a comment in response on one of Problogger’s posts on the subject.

Set hours for work and define your objectives. Ever since I began doing this a few months ago I??ve produced better quality posts.

The extra free time also made my relationships with other people and commitments smoother??

Lea Woodward agrees with me that treating your writing like a profession and your traveling like a hobby will help to reduce stress, keep your writing interesting, and keep your love of travel and blogging alive.

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One of the main machines I use to store all of my porn important data and use to do site work died a few weeks ago. It’s been a long journey to bring her back to life - part of the process was an “upgrade” to Vista Home Premium. After 3 failed installation attempts and a replacement DVD from Microsoft, I’ve finally got things working. There are more details after the jump, for the rest of you, expect some clean up and better organization with the sites, foXnoMad and Be Lazier - and the return of Live Cheap, Save Big and wineNoob on Monday.

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Lala, the service which had been offering free music streams online, pulled the plug on the service a few weeks ago only after 1 month in business.

The company had started to let users stream their favorite songs to their computers for free. But Lala managed only to sign an agreement with one of the four major labels??Warner Music Group. Now it has shut off its streaming songs service until it has more label partners.

I know I’m a bit late on this, but it’s not the first time Lala and it’s predecessors failed. Will we ever be able to get free music online? Until then there’s always YouTube.

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After looking around for some good bargains for a last minute trip on a Wednesday night (the best time to buy) on FareCompare I noticed that many of the deals came from Airfare.com. The better (usually best) prices to Europe with the convenient times and dates I was looking for - I had a good experience with them.

The site interface is nice and clean and doesn’t require you to sign up to any mailing lists or do anything more than a simple registration. From their privacy policy:

We will not modify, copy, distribute, transmit, license, sell or redistribute any of your personal profile information.

Has anyone else booked with Airfare or have any good discount sites they’d like to share? Had my travels been solely within the US I would have given Skybus a chance.

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On a recent trip from BWI airport to Long Island, I brought along my usual backpack for short trips. I left for the airport in Baltimore at the latest time possible without actually missing the flight.

Now my bag usually gets a through looking over from the X-Ray examiner, since I fly with lots of electronics (laptop, iPod, etc). Aside from the occasional, “Would you mind turning your laptop on”, I don’t have any problems - and didn’t at BWI.

I wasn’t until I was on my way back to BWI that security in NY found something.
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I thought it might be interesting to hear some other perspectives, here is one story about a taxi driver, Turkish Milo.

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In response to this comment asking how we were able to take pictures (there are more stay tuned) I though it best to describe the inspection process on the first day.

On the first day when you enter the base ground everyone walks through a metal detector that incessantly beeps. It looks weird if you don’t beep as you walk through but everybody does and none of the solders take notice. After the initiation process all of the bags are checked once again.

People bring all sorts of luggage from full suitcases to small gym bags lacking soap and shampoo as I had. (I probably should post about the night before I got to Burdur to explain). Everything is given a decent look-over and mostly books and pills draw attention. Pills including vitamins, medicine, and Pepto-Bismal are allowed in, only to be confiscated the next day.

You are allowed to bring “necessary” pills on the first day and then they ask everyone if they have any pills on the second. We’ve already been allowed right so no problem everyone responds honestly and then the pills/vitamins are confiscated and destroyed. (Personally I believe the “good ones” are sold or taken by solders in the infirmary). A lesson for anyone who has to do army time in Burdur, Turkey - KEEP YOU MOUTH SHUT ABOUT YOUR VITAMIN C. No one will find out if you shut-up and discretely keep it in your locker.

Books are checked to make sure they don’t contain any political or controversial content and cell phones are registered and taken away for keeping. This is only during the first week however then everyone becomes privy to this and so have the shopkeepers just outside the base.

Being Turkish they’ve found a way to make a buck off of an opportunity - they offer to keep the cell phones during the week and you can pick them up on the weekends when you are let out for a few hours. This way when you return you can sneak it back in (not registered remember) and then take pictures. The shop keepers also take cameras too and this is how the pictures were taken.

The store owners all seemed pretty trust worth and countless people got their expensive electronics back without any being “lost”.

More pictures to come…

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…in Burdur, Turkey.

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