Cat and Dog Lover needed for Free Accommodation in Syros - Escape the Hanger now!

When SandWagon kicked off its first leg of this round and round and round the world journey of off-beat travel news, I ran a feature called 'Escape the hanger!'. Back then I inhabited a hanger of an office devoid of natural light, views or personality. This didn't sit well with my creative tendencies and undeniable travel urges. It took being 'penned in' to the extreme.

Anyways, 'Escape the Hanger!' was my little way of inspiring other claustrophobes to swap the day job for a freer lifestyle overseas working with travel companies, tour groups, volunteering, whatever caught my eye and set me dreaming of a life less tethered.

Escape the Hanger is back for 2009 with what could well be a gem of an opportunity in Greece.

Stray animals Lover Required - Syros, Greece

- approximately 3 hours work per day, caring for stray dogs and cats
- Cleaning out and feeding needed. Walking not obligatory but much appreciated.
- Non-smokers are preferred.
- One month minimum (or longer)
- Super market 5 mins away, also bus to main town.

Call Mrs Bates on 0030 22810 42054 between 6-8pm Greek time and she will call you back. Or write to Pagos 113, Syros 84100, Greece. (Letters can take up to 2 weeks). Read more!

Queen Mary, Long Beach, California - All (Californians) Aboard For FREE ADMISSION

Californians who've found themselves all spent up after the Christmas festivities are being offered a Happy New Year present of unlimited free days aboard this famous local landmark, throughout January 2009. General Admission is normally $24.95.

"Realising that we are all living through difficult economic times, we thought that offering free admission to California residents during January would be our small way of helping to ring in 2009 on a positive note," said Queen Mary General Manager Jay Primavera.

Fully-subscribed Golden State residents should head along to the Queen Mary's box office with their documentation of residency and photo ID at the ready. Awaiting visitors on board is the largest collection of Art Deco artwork in the US plus the 1930's glamour of 307 original staterooms spread between three decks. It's all available to discover courtesy of a free self-guided tour that's thrown in alongside the open-house admission.

The Queen Mary has been a Long Beach resident for the last 40 years, so if you've yet to pay homage to this old girl of the seas January 2009 is a prime opportunity to get well-acquainted with her....or plan your royal wedding aboard...or make a dinner reservation at the Five-Star Sir Winston's restaurant...or scope out the scene ahead of the Queen Mary Scottish Festival.

All (Californians) aboard! Read more!

Stuttgart's Christmas Market - Festive Photos

So, it's the time of year that the Sandwagon wraps itself up warm in a tinsel decked garage to see out the bleak mid winter. We'll be back again in the New Year, looking forward to all of the weird and wonderful travel news we'll come across, rather than the run of the mill bandwagon stuff. In the meantime, here's some festive images straight from Stuttgart to get us in the mood for Christmas Day.

Have a very merry festive season everyone.

















Read more!

Amsterdam - 4 random reasons to love this city. Just incase you need them

Heaps of the coolest, cosy bars, complete with cuddly cat bouncers.

Vast varieties of canal side buildings that keep architecture high on the city break agenda.

Bikes, bikes and more bikes, but best of all, ornate bikes.

Getting lost in the maze of Dam's streets and finding some ivy bunting.

Read more!

Does travel writing style rule over travel writing substance? Check these out

As a follow up to my previous post Travelling without a safety net, I really wanted to talk about the online and offline writing that informs and inspires this travel sandwagon.

It's quality travel ponderings that are wonderfully written and illustrated, rather than bandwagon factual content, that gets me excited. Endless lists of predictable restaurant reviews are surplus to requirements when you trust your eyes, ears and instincts to lead you around a new destination.

And as for the important details, including police station addresses, transport hubs and opening hours, I still trust the traditional travel publishers to get it right. A copy of a guidebook or a quick surf on Lonely Planet gives me instant information gratification. If that fails then I'm happy to head to the tourist information office once I'm in situ. Does anyone actually believe that ploughing through 1001 user generated comments on Milan's dialing code is good use of their pre-travel research time? It's worth accepting that sometimes travel information can come as easily as trusting a paid travel writer.

So, on with the Sandwagon travel writing roll of honour. Check out these sources of travel inspiration:

Online inspiration

My Marrakesh {a place for lifestyle and design} and the bemused tales of an American family's quest to build a guest house in Marrakesh.

Road Junky ... written to make you think, laugh and get a rough feel for a country. For the inspired, independent traveler. The person who can just get up and go. The person who is moved by what he/she sees. The dreamers.

Itchy Feet Magazine an online travel magazine published six times a year, committed to sharing travel tales and experiences from all over the globe.

Miss Expatria 'The Internet’s leading enabler of travel addiction,' comes to you from the other side of her dreams, and she is telling you it is worth it.

A Good Man in India An honestly written, insightful Travelogue.

Fully Booked Events with an edge in New York. Parties, press events, launches, shopping events. For those who are not invited...get invited for free.

Best in print

Le Cool Changed My Life Guidebooks Hardback beauties, refreshingly free of generic guidebook pagination. In their own words, 'LE COOL works with local editors, writers, photographers, illustrators and designers to create unique books that truly reflect the experience of each city.' Just brilliant.

H.V. Morton's classic journeys Respect to Methuen for re-releasing these travel gems. Morton introduced me to a new age of travel - a bygone age. Trust me; wandering cities with an appreciation of the past is far more rewarding than clinging to your internet connection and reading another inarticulate, subjective s user generated review.

Do you agree that travel writing style does rule over substance?

This post is all about inspiration, not information - so which sites, books and magazines inspire your travels? Read more!

Ryanair's Inflight Magazine Two Minute Guide to Bologna - information update

The age-old issue with travel guides, features and magazines is the waiting, waiting and more waiting between editions, until there's an opportunity to update an annoying snippet of outdated information.

Printed words, especially about cities, run the risk of being riddled with inaccuracy literally the day after they've been written. Pubs close and are replaced by restaurants, banks close and are replaced by pubs, museums that were last week's top freebie tip start to charge an entrance fee, bakeries become nail bars and hotels go bad, bankrupt or up in flames. That's just the urban life cycle, it happens and it's exactly why guidebooks include disclaimers about the accuracy of their content. But disclaimers don't make an editor feel any better about the travellers who, armed with their material, will certainly experience disappointment.

This is where the digital age does indeed rule. Long live the net and the instantaneous edit button. Horrah.

I'm posted now to help the editorial team of Ryanair's inflight magazine and any travellers to Bologna who fancy some jazz with their after-dinner espresso.

Ryanair's Two-Minute Guide to Bologna, on page 115 of the current inflight magazine, lists Cantina Bentivoglio as the 'top jazz venue in town with shows nightly from 10pm'.

I headed there on Sunday to find that the management were currently re-evaluating the 'nightly' jazz rule. After I'd peeled off scarf, gloves, coat and jumper, the waitress shared the news with me; 'tonight is their (jazz bands') night off'. It was a real shame, but we settled for drowning our sorrows in a bottle of red wine and good conversation.

We didn't try the food at Cantina Bentivoglio but it certainly was popular with the exclusively Italian diners. The ample dishes that arrived to nearby tables made me wonder if we'd missed out on more than the jazz that evening.

Sandwagon's tip: contact Cantina Bentivoglio before you head there for jazz, just to make sure that there's a show. Use the contact details on their own site.

I've emailed the Cantina for updates and I'll keep you posted when I hear from them.
Posts in a similar vein are:
Paris' Mona Lisa Museum Pass Turns 20
Sarajevo: City of briefcases not bayonets, backpacks not berets
101 Weekends in Europe. Interview with author Robin Barton
Quality Copenhagen. Monocle Magazine, me and thee Read more!

Travelling without a safety net

My Life Before Travel Guides
Before working for a UK travel guides publisher, I was well travelled and knew my stuff but I never fully subscribed to guidebooks. I did read them; for example, the entire Rough Guide to the USA, in preparation for my very first job in the travel industry. Prior to landing that job, I also spent a month lugging around two random inter-railing guidebooks, plus a copy of Thomas Cook's European Timetable. Those guidebooks were, for no particular reason at all Let's Go Europe and Katie Wood's Europe By Train. When I first started to travel, I wasn't loyal to any particular publishing brand, and to be honest the only reason that I read guidebooks was for background information and any pertinent destinational warnings.

My inter-railing trip didn't end in disaster just because we didn't follow the guidebooks' hints, tips and suggested itineraries. Even though we tried to call listed hostels, to book a bed in advance of our arrival in a new city, more often than not we either forgot to call (too busy having fun), the hostel didn't pick up or the published number was out of date. This was no worry. In the 90s, backpackers didn't arrange all of their travel in advance, online, so we simply rocked up straight from the station and always landed a safe place to sleep.

The main reason that we neglected our guidebooks on that trip was not because they sucked, but because it was more fun, and just as effective, to collect pointers and tips from fellow travellers as we arrived at consecutive train or bus station. Those waiting for the next train out of town were always more than happy to pass on where they'd just stayed, eaten, visited or enjoyed.

We weren't reckless inter-railers either. We just preferred to heed the warnings of less fortunate travellers that we met, rather than rely on the wise words of our printed 'bibles.'

Talking to other travellers has always been sensible
The popularity of user generated content strengthens the case for what every traveller knows in their hearts: that speaking to a person who’s just been in the same boat, plane, hostel or bar can't be beaten. It's fantastic that pages and pages of user generated travel content exists these day. But I do worry that it’s often irrelevant and out of date by the time you actually need to apply it to a real life travelling situation.

I'm still more likely to respect and act upon the opinion and recommendations of a backpacker who's sat beside me at the hostel bar - full of warnings after having survived a sticky situation - rather than the musings and rants of a faceless online reviewer, or a flippant online guru who aggregates travel ‘content’ for their site without editorial moderation. Such sites often smack of working more in the interests of their page rank than in the interest of circulating travel karma.

I’m not just a cynic, but a professional editor with a duty to question the source of published travel information. Readers should always question the source of any travel content and also the motivations of the contributor and site publisher. It’s so much easier to trust that the backpacker sat beside you in Amsterdam has actually visited The Red Light District recently. He/she has nothing to gain from sharing their insights with you, other than a warm glow inside and perhaps a friend for life. The online content provider may not have visited and may not really care how their content will now play out in your travels, as long as you've hit their page, stayed a while and improved their analytics profile.

Guidebooks can be really useful
Maybe we were just plain lucky on that inter-railing trip not to need the nitty-gritty health, safety, crime and medical information that differentiate guidebooks from travel literature and glossy travel features. Maybe we missed out on a myriad sights, memories and must-dos because we didn't plan our itinerary around an author's recommendations. But on the flip side, perhaps we made more of our time in Europe because we didn't join a bar-crawl at the base of the Spanish Steps like main other inter-railers do, or because we didn’t bypass Monte Carlo like many do because it's not the typical shoestring stop off.

Blissfully unaware of recommendations and guidebook facts, we just relaxed with our own agenda, followed our instincts and trusted in 'us'. Rather than be influenced by 'Best of' lists and 'Top Tens,' we spent nights in whichever bars looked and sounded like good fun, and we made a beeline for the major sights when we came across them.

Do travellers really need guidebooks?
Travel can be just as, if not more, rewarding when you don't take along a guidebook as a safety net. But travel publishers are in business because they do the hard work for you. They vet the writers (experienced travellers) and have procedures in place to ensure that details are as up to date as they can be. Travel guide publishers make money because the inspiring, informed voice of a travel writer can be just as valuable a travel companion as the great guy or girl you hook up with at the diving school in Dahab. You just have to interact with their recommendations in a different way to how you’d interact with an actual, physical being sat beside you.

Depending upon your destination, there’s always some background reading to do before hitting the road. And if I'm heading off the beaten track, I'd much more confident reading the succinct advice of an objective, experienced travel writer living in situ than the subjective snippets that are sprinkled across various blogs, review sites and online forums, or aggregated into a central site by a canny web guru.

Once the logistics of travel and transfers are behind you, leave your travel guidebook in your hostel room and just hit the streets, wander, talk to people and follow your own instincts. Perhaps put out a Twitter for suggestions once in a while and just play it all by ear. Take in the major sights by all means - I'm not suggesting that missing out on The Last Supper in Milan, for example, does you or the city any justice - but find your own sights too. Refer to your printed or electronic guide in times of absolutely boredom or desperation. Your memories will be more colourful and your post-trip conversation infinitely more interesting for it. And if you too are a travel blogger, your travel content will surpass generic, SEO ridden travel drivel in the quality stakes.

So, Sandwagon reads and respects traditional travel guides and travel writers, but also loves to go it alone and trust the recommendations of other travellers in the same boat. Meeting a traveller in a destination and learning from them is different to reading user generated content online. Without editorial moderation, online content may be out of date, totally fabricated or written by someone whose opinion you wouldn't trust if you met them in the flesh.

Are you cynical about online travel content?

Will we always rely on a travel safety net of some sort? Read more!

Around The World Clipper Race - Are you and your wallet up to the challenge?

Ultimate travel experience anyone?
If you, like me, are looking for a travel experience to eclipse all other options next year, Clipper's Around the World Race takes some beating.

Circumnavigating the world by sea actually becomes a possibility for us land-lubing folk, but only if you've the stamina and a hefty amount of cash to invest in a once in a lifetime experience.

Put it this way, you'll certainly have a unique travel story to tell, silencing the bores who roll out the Sydney and West Coast Australia backpacker trail tales time and again. Zzzzz

Want to know more?
David Cusworth, Recruitment Manager for Clipper Ventures whetted my appetite with the following:

'The race visits some great locations - Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Singapore, China, California, Canada... It is a competitive race - with the crew pushing the boats and themselves further than they thought possible.

'You will get cold, wet and tired. But you will find out so much about yourself - how you cope under pressure, how much you can really take, what's really important in life. You also learn about other people - about what can be achieved when a team bonds together, how you can support other people and they can support you, how you can keep each other going when you think you can't take any more'.

Number rarely make me smile, but these Clipper numbers did...
The Clipper Race involves
1 CIRCUMNAVIGATION, 7 LEGS, 10 YACHTS, 35000 MILES
14 RACES, 5 CONTINENTS, 400 PEOPLE.
134,400 TEA BAGS, 6,000 LOAVES OF BREAD, 12,000 ONIONS,
108,000 HIGH ENERGY SNACK BARS, 450 KG OF PASTA,
2 MILLION LITRES OF WATER, 375,000 SHEETS OF TOILET PAPER,

So you're up for it and want to apply
First things first, make contact with Clipper here

You'll then hear back from David personally with further information, prices and a more detailed questionnaire to fill in.

There's a £100 entry fee (£75 refundable if you're not successful), as well as selection interviews. Serious stuff!

This is not a cheap trip

The Round The World Race
Includes training package as below plus 5 extra days training free of charge £31,950

Individual Legs, training package (compulsory)
To include 19 days pre-race training and branded crew clothing pack £2,950
Plus
Leg 1 UK – Western European port – Brazil £4,660
Leg 2 Brazil – South Africa £3,900
Leg 3 South Africa – Western Australia £4,175
Leg 4 Western Australia – Singapore – China £4,650
Leg 5 China – Hawaii – West Coast of North America £4,175
Leg 6 West Coast of North America – Panama – Caribbean £4,280
Leg 7 Caribbean – East Coast North America – Home £4,660
(via Western European stopover)

Recruitment is taking place in Yorkshire, Singapore, California, New York – and possibly Ireland – in the coming months.
So, is anyone else still tempted to apply and start saving? Read more!

Around The World Flight or Clipper Around The World Ocean Race? Registration For 09/10 Now Open

If you like your travel a little more extreme than an around the world flight with Quantas, why not sign up for the Clipper Ocean Race 09/10? It's the trip and challenge of a lifetime. And because this is the only around the world boat race that allows novices to enter, hairdressers, piano teachers or students have as much chance as the next of getting accepted onto a Clipper team. Full training is provided.

The options
Race for a week, individual legs or complete a circumnavigation

The route
Setting off from the Humber, UK on 13th September 2009 and visiting 14 worldwide port stopovers over the 10 months voyage, this really supersedes the stock itineraries that high street travel agenst put together everyday. You'll round the Cape of Good Hope, race to Australia and sail the Panama Canal. There's more to brave than the backpacker hostels of Bangkok as you take on the icy of the North Pacific and then the heat of the tropics.

The latest stopover to be announced is California, following the leg from China.

Clipper Crews are been recruited now for 2009/10
Click here if you're up to a travel challenge (plus a low-carbon one at that) Read more!

Sustainable Travel & Tourism - can travel change its ways before it's too late?

Today's travel industry, media and consumers have some serious issues to get their heads around
Firstly, the majority of travellers are pondering the affordability of travel full-stop. Can we really afford to dream, escape, explore as much as we'd like or are used too?

Facing up to the reality of that question, the industry has had to become even more savvy, focusing on low-cost alternatives to their more indulgent travel experiences. They're also having to take 'baby steps,' as a representative of a well-known car rental company put it, to maximise dwindling PR and Marketing budgets via social networking sites, blogs and web 2.0 applications. Rather than splash out on glossy print ads, they're having to investigate how to up their brand's presence for free, online.

So we are faced by the reality of smaller travel companies and independents that are fighting for their financial life and clinging on by their fingertips to stay connected to the changing online world.

They have to face these issue right now, and that's before we even touch on the immediate need to start saving Planet Earth.

Let's park web 2.0 for a sec to focus on facing the long-overdue strategic solutions needed to enable sustainable tourism across the board
Again, the industry is dragging its heels on this. Nearly 30 years ago, I remember receiving a Friends of the Earth hardback annual from an environmentally-aware Santa. Acid rain, global warming and the threat of extinction have haunted me ever since. The areas of the travel industry that I've worked in haven't been operational enough to take a management stance over providing low-impact accommodation or initiatives in the local community, where the focus now needs to be. But I must have some peers who are decision makers, hoteliers, local government planning officials and construction companies. Don't they see that building golf courses on the edge of Marrakech or seabed dredging in Dubai isn't healthy or sustainable in the slightest? What are they doing to ensure that travel and tourism doesn't continue to contribute to the destruction of natural and local life?

I can't fathom how 30 years have slipped by and the message of eco-awareness is still having to be hammered home? And why the travel industry had a World Responsible Tourism Day this week, in 2008? Better late than never, of course.

I'd put this to all decision makers in the travel industry
You think the Credit Crunch is a problem? Are alarm bells ringing because you don't have a blog? Why not squeeze one more thing, beyond these concerns, into your business plan for the next ten years. Make it a genuine, measurable and committed plan for Sustainable Tourism. Take everything that you heard at World Travel Market's World Responsible Tourism Day on board: today, this year, not in another 30 years.

Here's three reasons to celebrate World Responsible Tourism Day
- The pleasure and pain of Mark Edwards' environmental call to action Hard Rain
- The BBC's Stephen Sackur's understandable confusion with Minaz Abji's linguistics, when he described the sustainable tourism agenda in regards the hotel business as a Tsunami. Minaz, - Executive Vice President, Host Hotels & Resorts, a company that partners with Marriott®, Ritz-Carlton®, Westin®, Sheraton®, The Luxury Collection®, Hyatt®, Fairmont®, Four Seasons®, Hilton®, and Swissôtel® - we were all left wondering this: why the negative connotation?
- Sri Lanka tourism's pledge to be carbon neutral by 2018

Hard Rain pulled at the industry's heart strings, while WTM chairman Fiona Jeffery took on the travel industry's purse strings, commenting,

“Businesses suffer from the misconception that responsible tourism strategies can mean taking a hit on profits."

“If responsible tourism activity is integrated with a well orchestrated business plan, it can have a positive impact on overall performance and has resulted in some highly successful businesses reaping the benefits of responsible tourism."

“A clear signal has now gone out to the world that responsible tourism must be at the top of the agenda, but this definitely does not mean the industry has to forgo profits.”

“Businesses suffer from the misconception that responsible tourism strategies can mean taking a hit on profits." Read more!