Archive for March, 2009
America’s most walkable neighborhoods
Do you know your neighborhood’s walk score? I recently came across a fascinating website called Walk Score - it ranks America’s most walkable cities and enables you to find the ”walk score” for your own neighborhood. Simply enter your address and it will create a map of all the stores, restaurants, schools, parks and libraries within walking distance [...]
Walk to school, save the planet
That’s the goal these days in Lecco, Italy. Along with combating childhood obesity. It’s a simple idea, really – children who live within a reasonable distance of school should walk there on most days. The children get much needed exercise, the town cuts down on some traffic jams, and the planet gets a very tiny respite [...]
Western tourists in Iraq
I wrote last fall about the Iraq Board of Tourism and its goal of building a tourist infrastructure and attracting foreign visitors to Baghdad and other parts of the country. It seemed like a faraway dream at the time, but in fact Iraq just recently played host to its first Western tourists in six years. According to [...]
Debating culture and tourism in Bali
It’s the eternal paradox of tourism. We travel to see exotic places and cultures, allegedly unspoiled by modern influences, and yet the very act of traveling there contributes to the despoiling of the native culture or the natural landscape. In an effort to investigate tourism’s impact on one of the world’s more unique cultures, John Bowe [...]
Rick Steves – From Iran to Salon
Rick Steves may be famous for his European travel guides, but he’s also a huge proponent of going beyond the tourist trail and using travel as a means to learn about oneself and the world. He went to Iran a while back in order to produce a documentary about that country and recently caught up with [...]
Which American states are the happiest?
If you want to be happy, apparently, it helps to be wealthy, to live in a family-oriented community, or to be surrounded by natural beauty. Those are at least some of the conclusions that can be drawn from the recently released study of well-being scores that ranked Americans by state and congressional district. Utah and [...]
Tales from the ‘Taxi Gourmet’
Here’s what you do: Move to Buenos Aires. Hop in a taxi. Ask the driver to take you to his favorite place to eat. Write about your adventures in a blog. Repeat weekly. Become semi-famous when the Washington Post publishes a feature story about you. I have to hand it to Layne Mosler. It’s a great [...]
More great cafe cities
If you recall, I recently wrote about some of my favorite cafe cities around the world. Well, now World Hum has come out with the very same story. Hmmm, maybe I should have submitted my idea there first? In any case, they have an intriguing list that includes some overlap with my choices (Rome, Vienna and Buenos [...]
Culture in the news
Culture is at the root of how we act and how we perceive the world. Whether we like it or not, we are all molded by the assumptions of the culture in which we are raised. So as I read through the news, I like to find examples of actions or statements that can best be understood [...]
Exotic Marrakesh
Marrakesh. The name conjures up images of winding souks, ancient palaces, desert winds, and perhaps even a snake charmer or two. It’s an exotic destination, even more so when you’re visiting with your 11- and 12-year-old children. That’s what Jennifer Conlin and her husband did recently, and their experience is beautifully recounted in this travel article. [...]
Lose your job, hit the road
Well, apparently there can be one upside to losing your job in this cratering economy – providing, of course, that you have sufficient savings to fall back on. You can travel. That is exactly what some out of work financial workers are doing these days. They’re lucky, of course, in that they’re more likely to have financial [...]
Sending American students abroad
Did you know that only 0.3 percent of U.S. college students study abroad? That’s a pitifully low number when considering that even two percent of Chinese students go abroad to study, and the percentage is much higher among some Europeans. With a little luck, though, the situation could soon be improving. A bill was recently introduced [...]
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Bob Riel is a writer and a traveler. Go here to read more about Bob, his work and the Travels in the Riel World blog.
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My travel memoir - Two Laps Around the World: Tales and Insights from a Life Sabbatical - is about two round-the-world journeys with my wife.
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