Life is a journey

Budapest offers cheap city break Hungarian capital sees spending money go the furthest Budapest is a cracking city and one of the most popular stop offs on an InterRailing trip. With some simply stunning sights to see in the day and a night life that can rival any, Budapest has a lot to offer backpackers and travellers. Now there’s even more reason to go as it’s just been voted as one of the cheapest cities to travel to. The city offered the best value for money of 25 destinations in a cost-comparison table compiled by Post Office Travel Money. Twelve typical city break items, including meals, a sight-seeing bus tour and accommodation, cost just £134.76 in Budapest. This compared with Europe’s most-expensive cities, Stockholm, where the same items cost £420.36, and Copenhagen, where a city break cost £440.45. Other good value cities for holidaying Britons at the moment are Lithuania’s capital Vilnius (where the items cost £140.99), Warsaw in Poland (£151.69...

Gideon Sundback zip doodle on Google Gideon Sundback owes 'Google zipper' to gap year doodling Gideon Sundback was honoured by Google with his own doodle today, and he owes it all to taking a gap year.  Following the death of his wife in 1911 Sundback pioneered the 'bereavement gap year', and dedicated himself to developing the zip that is so important to the lives of backpackers around the world.  Sundback studied engineering in Germany before emigrating to the United States. It was in America where he spent years perfecting the technology of the zip.  Many had toyed with the concept of the zip before, but it was during his bereavement period that Sundback created a version with interlocking teeth. And just like that, the future of the modern zip was sewn up. Or, to put it another way, zipped up.  The zipper device makes a difference to the travels of gap year backpackers across the globe. Without zips, backpacks would simply sp...

Most travelers know about Kayak, Priceline and CouchSurfing, but this being the online, it should come as no surprise that there are scores of other sites dedicated to acquiring you similarly low-cost seats, discount rooms and no cost couches. This list over at Wisebread.com runs down 40 of some of the lesser known sites that numerous men and women have but to explore, like iStopOver, a internet site committed to hometels (yup, folks renting out rooms in their homes) wegolo, a web page that in fact displays the final price of that on the net fare, like taxes and charges (ultimately) and Farecast, the stock exchange-like website that predicts the direction tickets are heading so you can time your buy just correct.

Don’t ask me why the Travel Channel splits up their seasons using an “A” and “B” alternatively of just beginning with a new quantity, but I don't forget Andrew Zimmern mentioning this back at the NYT Travel Show when he was saying that he was either in his sixth or third season, depending on how you looked at it. So Bourdain’s either closing out his tenth or his fifth season of “No Reservations” this week with his return to Vietnam, dwelling of the Banh Mi, a pate smothered baguette filled with cucumber, egg, ham and mayonnaise. Watch as he digs in, describing the heart-stopping sandwich as a “symphony in a sandwich” (:55) whilst standing next to his eerily equivalent searching travelmate. (Like a Bourdain Mini-Me don’t you assume?)

Rolf Potts, travel assistance columnist and champion of the resistance band reflects on his travels more than the past 10 years and his thoughts on the future of travel and travel writing in an interview on Globe Hum. Rolf describes how David Foster Wallace’s 1996 genre-bending essay on cruise travel helped set the tone for travel writing in the decade ahead, and how globalization has hampered the ability of travel writers to find out uniqueness in a planet of ubiquitous pop-culture. Potts also bemoans the loss of quality travel editors in the wake of the newspaper market’s economic woes, which to me signals the inevitable rise of independent, non-media conglomerated publications on line dedicated to the enjoy of travel. This is, of course, as Rolf points out the point of travel writing: a medium to discover truth in the planet.