We all know Darren Cronian for being an award-winner blogger on TravelRants, where he’s been delivering news and advice on travel for consumers for quite some time now. Darren is now up to something new and very interesting: MyLifeInLeeds is a brand new magazine on things do to, to see, to eat and to drink in Leeds, his hometown.

The magazine itself seems structured to easily give you all the information you need to plan your vacations: each article is a guide in itself, with pratical information about specific aspects or your trip. It soft-launched to his followers with a tweet, and we’re very happy to tell you all about it, so that you can bookmark it for your next trip to Leeds. Taking advantage of this its large student population (University of Leeds attracts more than 30.000 students every year), Leeds is a perfect place if you want to enjoy a weekend of fun and nightlife. Darren’s advice extends to hotels as well, starting with those who can satisfy the needs of the most exigent traveler.

It is obviously a work in progress, but everything seems mapped out very conveniently: we’ll be watching the next step of this very interesting project, and we can’t help but asking ourselves (and Darren): is this just the beginning of something bigger?

Capri Palace Hotel & Spa

Michelin-starred Med cuisine, a serious Beauty Farm, and seaside chic as only Capri knows how. CapriPalace’s past is recorded in its vaulted ceilings and columns, now a backdrop for huge sofas and artworks; and the pool, overlooking the Isle of Ischia, where you can nibble on exotic-fruit skewers while wearing oversized sunglasses, sets the tone of Italian indulgence.

Room rates

€320–€3,500, including buffet breakfast and tax.

Whether you are a do-it-yourself, or book through a travel agent, hotel reviews are often an important part of the booking procress. Except they are also often the most controversial part of the process.

Tripadvisor, for example, uses as its motto – “Get the truth, then go.” And they allow “real” travellers to post reviews.

But one of the problems with allowing anyone to be a critic is that, not only is the process subject to abuse, but people have different standards. A basic motel with clean sheets may get a rave review; a five-star resort with expensive food and drink choices can get a terrible review.

And booking sites, such as Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz, use a rating system that is capricious at best, and usually heavily tilted towards making the hotels sound as good as possible.

In fact, I am sure most travellers have had the experience of either having stayed at a so-called three- or four-star place, that really isn’t up to its rating. Or of seeing an online review of a place you already know and thinking, “What were they drinking to give it that rating?”

One option is Star Service, which uses paid reviews, and is a favorite of many travel agents. But it is a subscription-only service that starts at around $249.00 a year, which is probably out of the reach of most do-it-yourself travelers. Personally, I have found it to be a great tool for my clients and very reliable, albeit not perfect. Because even with paid reviewers there are differences of opinions, and hotels can change quickly.

Now, a new entrant is joining the field, called Oyster.com

Oyster.com is starting out with four areas for review, Aruba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Miami. They plan to add New York and Las Vegas. The site employs reporters to write all reviews, pays for their own hotel nights, and does not function as a booking engine. And at the moment, they are free. In answer to the question – “How do you make money?”, their response on their site is:

Oyster.com does not currently make any money. We don’t, however, plan on that being the case forever. We are currently focused on building out additional destinations and improving our site experience so that we can acquire more customers. Over time, we believe there will be a lot of ways for us to make money while ensuring that our editorial opinions remain independent and unbiased. In the meantime, our first priority is creating a site that will help millions of people make the right decisions about where to stay.

The founders have obtained funding from venture capital companies including Bain Capital. Clearly, they have convinced some smart people that they have some hopes of making this work.

Admittedly, even if Oyster becomes successful, they will probably not cover many smaller towns and motels. Sites like Tripadvisor and online travel sites will probably still be the only source of information in those cases. But a preliminary look at the site is encouraging; it is fast, well-written, and the reviews are interesting.

As with most startups, it remains to be seen if Oyster.com can become a viable option, but for now, it’s a promising new contender in the hotel review wars.

photo by gailf548 of Sandals White House in Jamaica on Flickr

How does one sum up one lone day in a city you never visited before? A tough task.

I touched down in Vancouver at 10.30am on Monday morning. It is my first visit to the west coast of Canada and to this city that’s gearing up for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Driving into downtown from the airport, it felt very much like Seattle – a Pacific Northwest metropolis with a stunning natural setting that takes your breath away. Mountains meet the ocean meets the rainforest greenery and old-growth forests hiding hundreds of years of unspoken wisdom.

After checking into my downtown hotel, I went out to explore. I had a 5.30pm appointment so my encounter with Vancouver was to be short and hopefully sweet. I strolled Robson Street, the main shopping thoroughfare lined with big-name stores and funky independent boutiques. It was a pleasant walk but shopping isn’t what a city makes. At least for me. Food, more so. My lunch was delicious, at a small waterfront restaurant, Raincity Grill on Denman Street, that serves organic locally sourced food from within the 100-mile radius. My salmon was succulent and perfect fuel for the walk along scenic English Bay toward the Granville Island ferry.

After what was probably the shortest ferry ride of my life (about five minutes long and $3 cheap) on the tiny Aquabus boat, I took a wander through the delightful Granville Island Public Market. The food looked so appealing that I almost regretted having had that filling lunch. What followed was a ramble along the back streets of this artist enclave chockablock with galleries and crafts shops. I loved the echoes of the area’s industrial past – once home to sawmills, warehouses and factories – and the bridge running above, giving it an urban edge. Below, a few market scenes.

At 3pm, I had the ambitious idea of zipping over to Stanley Park in a cab in order to rent a bike and see this evergreen oasis on wheels. By the time I arrived to the park’s edge, I realized I am about to enter a 1000-acre swath of dense forest and hop on a sea wall path that takes at least an hour to circumnavigate. I had to be back at my hotel within the hour so, regrettably, I had to stand up Stanley.

Or so I thought. But the evening had a lovely twist in store. After dinner, I joined a small group – two Saudis, two New Yorkers (including yours truly) and our Canadian guide Pieter – for an evening exploration of Vancouver sights. While I prefer to stumble into things unexpectedly, explore independently and get lost in cities new to me, this particular tour was a pleasant surprise. We saw the usual roster of sights: the First Nations totem poles in Stanley Park (I did make it after all, although on four wheels not two), the hip gentrified waterfront community of Yaletown, the narrowest office building in Chinatown and the panoramic views from Vancouver Lookout, a viewing deck more than 40 floors above ground with a 360-degree view of Burrard Inlet and the North Shore Islands.

But what impressed me more were Pieter’s stories, the tidbits of information only locals know, the “secret” spots like Third Beach in Stanley Park at sunset and historic Gastown, the birthplace of Vancouver with cobblestone streets and Victorian houses once frequented by sailors and now transformed into a restaurant-bar row near the edge of Vancouver’s rough alleyways. We ended the night at a Gastown sidewalk over a glass of red wine, watching the gallery of local faces – quarreling couples, quirky characters and homeless artists paraded past us, some stopped for a chat… No better way to end my single day in Vancouver than with a little local flavor.

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Casa Angelina

It’s hard to imagine a more majestic location than perched on the Amalfi coastal cliffs, between the green mountains and the deep blue sea – from the rooftop terrace, the ocean view spreads out before you like an azure blanket, disturbed only by the island bumps of Capri and Li Galli and the rocky toe of Italy stretching into the horizon. Every fixture, fitting and furnishing gleams brilliant white, solely offset by the wild and whimsical colours of the Murano glass sculptures dotted around the communal areas.

Room rates
Low season, €280–€720; high season €320–€990, including VAT. Buffet breakfast costs €21 a person

The heat sears my neck as I turn over my camera equipment at the heavily guarded checkpoint. No photos are allowed of what we’re about to see.  Between the heat and my nakedness I lack the proper anticipation for what lies in the beehive of caves ahead.

Sullen, I fall to the back of the small group as we enter the first cave. I’d blown off the guide’s introduction, deservedly missing important clues about what to expect (I did catch the part about he being the only one allowed to have a flashlight — seemed unfair).

The group brakes en mass at the mouth of what appears a cavernous tunnel. Ducking behind and squeezing to the side, I move around into an empty space and take several steps. I’m blessedly alone in the cool, refreshing darkness. My eyes adjust. I’m nose to nose with something the size of my house protruding towards me. Colors and scale come into focus and a smile breaks my stony face.

An UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Mogao Caves are part of a system of 492 Buddhist grottoes carved into cliffs along the Silk Road at the far western end of the Great Wall. Paintings and sculpture of a quantity and size I struggled to grasp, the caves contain one of the greatest repositories of Buddhist art in the world. Manuscripts alone approximate 50,000. It’s estimated the artwork could fill 15 miles of gallery space.

At its pinnacle the site had 18 monasteries, 1400 monks and nuns, and numerous artists, calligraphers, and translators. The construction of the caves spanned 10 dynasties. Generally agreed to have been founded in AD 366, the collapse of trade after the Yuan dynasty left the 1700 meters of grottoes and a millennium of art untouched for centuries as the Gobi desert took hold.

The hidden treasure went undiscovered until the early 1900’s when Wang Yuanlu, a Chinese Taoist appointed himself guardian of the temples.Yuanlu discovered a walled-up containment area holding hordes of manuscripts. He proceeded to sell these for a pittance to Aurel Stein a Hungarian archaeologist, who then discovered the Diamond Sutra, the world’s oldest dated printed text, along with 40,000 other scrolls (all removed by gradually winning the confidence of Yuanlu, the Taoist caretaker).

Word got out and the European archaeologists descended in 1910 laying claim. Greed ran amok. Bits and pieces of the discovery were sold and scattered all over the world while wall murals and other permanent works were destroyed in the removal process. Between the plundering of archaeologists, the Chinese themselves, a few Muslims, and Russian troops who intentionally destroyed and defaced some of the art, a fair amount remains to be enjoyed in its original and rightful environment.

While various art objects can be viewed today in the British Museum, the British Library, the Srinagar Museum, and the National Museum, New Delhi, there is but one way to see the Mogao Caves. Trek to the far Western end of the Great Wall, walk into the dark coolness and open your eyes to see their occupants staring back at you .

Photo by Tammie Dooley

Tucked away on a little street in Ottensen, Hamburg you will find a cosy and personal Portuguese restaurant which is different from the somewhat soulless and touristy Portuguese restaurants in the so called portugese quarter of Neustadt.

The restaurant Ribatejo (translated: on the shores of the river Tejo) in Ottensen is far more atmospheric and attracts a mixed crowd of youngsters, couples and elderly people. There are many regular guests – always a good sign that customers like to come back again and again.

Here you can either just enjoy a decent wine (really tasty Rose wine for example!!) or you can enjoy Tapas or other traditional dishes The tiny and somewhat open kitchen is set pretty much in the middle of the place. So sit down on a wooden bench, relax and sip your wine while watching your meal getting prepared!

Compared to many other portuguese restaurants and bars, this place has a really nice atmosphere: Nice lighting, a tasteful interior and bar/counter, old cobble stone (!) on the floor (as it used to be the entrance of a backyard for carriages). In summer there are two little benches outside of the bar – sit down and watch the quiet life of Ottensen floating by like the river Tejo. This place can only make you feel very comfortable!

By Linda Nepicks from SpottedByLocals.com/hamburg
See full original article including details & map

Today’s post is a collection of questions I have been asked or heard asked in and about the state of Hawaii. And I promise I have not made any of them up.

The inspiration came from a manager from the Four Seasons Lanai, who told me that when he talked to a guest about spear-fishing, was asked

“Can you swim all the way under the island?”

Another true questions, either asked of me personally or vouched for by hotel or boat staff:

“Is there water on the other side of the island?”

And to hotel employees regularly,

“Do you live on the island?”

Along with,

“Where do you get electricity?”

Asked to me as a travel agent,

“Can you use U.S. money in Hawaii?”

And its corollaries,

“Do you need a passport to go to Hawaii?” and “Do the natives speak English?”

“Can you drop off a rental car on a different island?” (The person in question thought it was like the Florida Keys with bridges.)

Asked on a catamaran off Maui,

“What altitude are we at now?”

“Where do the whales sleep?”

And of an island in the distance,

“Is that Catalina?”

And my all time favorite:

“How do they keep the islands from floating apart?”

(The person in question here was commenting on the “nice” formation of the islands, with Hawaii as the most southeast, Kauai on the west. The hotel employee who told me the story said he still wishes he had told her they were all anchored to the ocean floor with really big anchors.)

Although if any TripShake readers have heard questions to match or top these, please feel free to add them in comments.

Photo from the Fairmont Orchid on the Big Island of Hawaii.

This isn’t Beijing. It’s on the opposite side of the country, as far away as you can get from the major Chinese travel destinations. And if you managed to get here (a feat my friend), without knowing where you were headed you wouldn’t recognize it, or anyone living here, as being associated with China.

We embarked from Kashgar (Kashi) airport into a land untouched by time. Kashgar is a time warp that could just as easily have been the set of a Star Trek or Twilight Zone. It was indeed just as exciting as stepping through that portal opening. The Han Chinese are minorities here. Uigher is the language. The people (Uighers, Tajiks, Krygyzs, and Uzbeks) seemed the happiest and were indisputably the kindest we encountered during 5 weeks backpacking China.

The West of China, specifically the provinces of XinJiang and Gansu, had beckoned me just as the Western United States has always enticed me. There are many similarities in their appeal. Still considered a no-man’s land (and marked so on a few maps), Kashgar in the Xinjiang Province is a fixture in time on the 6,000 year old Silk Road. Eight nations border to create a collision of people/culture/language, giving XinJiang’s capital, Urumqui, the title “most land-locked city in the world.”

Dunhuang is southeast from Urumqui in the province of Gansu, just south of Mongolia. Also on the world’s first information superhighway, the Silk Road, Gansu is a treasure trove of Buddhist paintings and sculptures, and the Buddhist grottoes of the Mogao Caves. The arid land and harsh climate has made the land barely inhabitable. As such, the Gansu Province is one of the 5 poorest provinces in China. Dunhuang may be poor, but when we pulled into downtown in a “taxi”, we were instantly transported from weary travelers to starry eyed tourists. The town is alight at night with magical colors that gratefully rejuvenated us. The light of day replaced the magic with a sobering reality. Yet even that meant 4 days of adventure we’ll never forget.

China is culturally and topographically vast. Unless you’re there on a prolonged stay, you’ll only see a fraction of it. If you want to take home memories and photographs that few China visitors see, Go West!

I first visited Sarajevo with my parents in 1984 during the Sarajevo Winter Olympics. I recall walking through the cobblestone streets of Baščaršija quarter, as if I’ve walked into a fairytale. I remember savoring the sweetest baklava ever at a cake shop. I recollect staying in a high-rise with friends of my parents, in a tiny apartment with air perennially perfumed with strong coffee. I remember burning my finger on hot running water one day and sporting a painful blister for the rest of our stay. I remember the figure skating events we attended. I remember the warmth and famous Bosnian hospitality of all the people we met along the way. What I don’t remember is any talk of ethnicity, in this diverse city of former Yugoslavia where Muslims, Serbs and Croats lived together as one people.

Fast forward. It is 1992 and I am sitting at home in Zagreb with my parents, watching the news of the infamous bread line massacre in Sarajevo. Memories of my Olympic stay start flooding back, as I watch the blood, gore, missing limbs and corpses of a city I recall with tenderness. It turns out to be just one of many massacres that the city suffered over the coming years. I experience them through my Bosnian refugee friends in London in the mid-1990s and then later in the States. There are stories and stories, most involving loss and a great deal of anguish. The war narrative unrolls… but the resilient Bosnian spirit doesn’t give in. In 1995, with the city still under siege, the first Sarajevo Film Festival is held to an audience of 15,000 people, with 37 films from 15 different countries.

Fast forward yet again. It is 2006. Sarajevo is slowly waking up from post-war slumber, recovering from its many wounds. By this time, Sarajevo Film Festival is an internationally acclaimed event, with big names in the movie industry and film buffs flocking to the city each August for a few days of cinematic fun and great parties. With a friend of mine, I make my way from Croatia to Sarajevo that summer, to catch the festival buzz and see the city I loved back in 1984.

We’re awaited by a friend of a friend of a friend who would host us in his house for the next couple of days. In Bosnia, people tend to open their doors generously to friends three times removed. For the next week, there are endless parties, cool events, hidden restaurants and cafés we’re taken to (I won’t reveal the names and locations, as I promised to keep them under wraps), all fueled by copious amounts of strong coffee.

Our hosts, two brothers, had spent the entire war in Sarajevo. They talk about the siege as just another fact of life. And there’s me, who had only visited the city once as a ten-year-old, feeling intense sadness the whole entire time of my stay – during parties, film screenings, walks, talks, coffee breaks… One afternoon as we’re walking through the city streets swarmed by international visitors, our host points out the market where the war’s bloodiest massacre took place in 1994. I stand there for a while, overwhelmed, quiet, wondering how this place of horror turned into a sight, a curiosity, a point of interest for tourists.

On most days, we’d descend into town from the hillside neighborhood where we stayed, passing what I saw as the city’s most wrenching sight: the shattered Sarajevo Library. In August 1992, Serb artillery shelled the library, originally built as the town hall in 1896. Shelves and shelves of books, manuscripts and archives went up in flames, a record of the city’s rich history lost within minutes. With boarded windows and a charred facade, it now stands as a painful symbol of a shattered culture.

I’d urge anyone to go to Sarajevo, don’t mind me. It’s a delightful city, with some of the nicest funniest people you’ll meet anywhere, excellent food (don’t skip the delicious burek meat pastries and cheese and spinach pies!) and lovely cafés. There’s something very serene about listening to call to prayer as you walk the twisting streets of Baščaršija or sip coffee in a restaurant garden. And despite all that’s happened, there’s a definite cheer to the city and its people. Perhaps it was just me coming to terms with the war that ravaged my former country, dealing with a sense of guilt for not having stayed behind, for not having done more for my Sarajevo friends.

Visit everthenomad.com for more by Anja Mutic