Travel blogs

Travel blogs

I’ve been a busy little bee trying to get things into a good groove over at my New York travel blog, NewYorkology and hope you all have been checking in.


I’m finding the peaks in traffic are coming when I have new info on the stuff that’s brand new – restaurant reviews, bars and shops opening, hotels not yet open. Unsure if that’s because my other content (the best way to get tickets for the Statue of Liberty etc.) isn’t yet ranked high enough in the search engines, or because the New York web scene tends to push the hot stuff to the top. Maybe both, and then some.


The site has been going almost six months and I’m finding it more work than I imagined, though I’m still in love with the idea behind the site. I’m still hoping that other people would do the same for their cities as it’s all the resources in one place that I look for when planning a trip.


Oddly, most of the travel stuff I’m finding on the web still tends to come out of a big corporate maw somewhere – whether it’s a Visitor’s Bureau, Chamber of Commerce, hotel rep or the like. And very few of the big travel sites update their information very often. Some are still sending readers to museums and restaurants that closed soon after Sept. 11. I find a traveler's journal minimally useful as they never really know what they're missing because they didn't spend much time at the destination. Pretty snapshots though.


But here's something I definitely want you to check out: My friend Ken Layne has just started his own travel site, Highways West, a beautifully written site covering Arizona, California, Idaho, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and his current state of residence, Nevada.


Ken’s doing a lot of driving and hiking these days, so you’ll get a lot of that along with his unique take on the secret lives of the jackalope and jerky made from Area 51 aliens. He has a great account of why so many mountains used to have the city’s initial etched into a hillside. I’d completely forgotten about those! I think Gorman north of Los Angeles used to have a “G” that hasn’t been there for a decade or so – anybody know?


Ken’s lovely wife Laura, keeper of the Carson River, is set to motherize herself any day now, so you can bet Ken’s writing will soon be filled with kid-friendly excursions as well.


Here’s a list of some other travel web sites I like:


Hotel Chatter – newish kind of site about hotels all over the world. A fun read even if you never intend to go.
Fodor’s travel blog - of course I like this one; they’ve got me on their short-list of New York links. They’re all over the map, and update intermittently.
WandaLust – travel blog out of England covering a bit of everything.
Gadling – adventure travel blog, international, updated all the freakin’ time.
Jet Set Lara – woman who says she’s a high-class call girl, profiles her locations and expensive boy toys (car, yachts, etc.)
Online Travel Review – quickie daily updates on the airline industry with a business bent
NYC a Paris – My friend Jason Stone, who moved to Paris from New York last year, is keeping a great blog about his travels in Paris and through France. Not specifically a travel blog, but he does a lot of stuff on trying to learn the language and how to get around when not knowing your way around. Turns out he’s a pretty great writer.
Delicious travel tags – Not a blog, but rather a link to travel stories and sites flagged by people who use the del.icio.us social bookmarking software.
Jen Leo’s Written Road Blog - a travel writer and editor talks about the business of travel writing, but with some good links to travel writing.
Bangalore Torpedo – This is another friend of mine, Jonathan Oatis, whose company has sent him off to live in Bangalore for a year or so. He only just arrived, but he’s already got his first impressions posted, including about the cows in front of his condo and how to give directions to your auto-rickshaw driver when you don’t quite know where you’re going.
- posted by Amy @ 1/21/2005 11:04:00 AM