Travel Picks of the Week - 11/23/07

November 23, 2007

Photo : Flickr/vrog
Nothing like a spoonful of warm soup, or a plate of colorful variety pasta to invigorate the taste buds, especially if you cooked them yourself. Thanks to television shows and extensive newspaper articles, culinary travel, one where you satisfy your knowledge and your hunger for food while traveling, is a growing offshoot of cultural travel. Kathy Widing lists resources in The Best Guides to Learning a Culture Through its Cuisine.

Travel softens our worldviews, makes us sympathize with hardships faced by people we hardly know and enhances our understanding of cultures. Anthony Bourdain, the ‘no-reservations’ celebrity cook and television personality speaks of the way his travel around the globe brought changes to his personality in Chef Tempers Views after World Travel.

Backpacker Paul Neville finds solo travel immensely gratifying and empowering. Loneliness is part of the journey, but independent travel promotes life changing cultural immersion and valuable self-knowledge, he says in The Positives and Negatives of Solo Backpacking

Gone are the days when someone who traveled could claim sophistication and put on airs of superiority. With the plethora of information available on the Internet and guidebooks, traveling knowledgeably is no longer a reserve of the privileged few. Focusing on experiences and being less judgmental of fellow travelers makes for more pleasant journeys says John Flinn in I’m a tourist, you’re a tourist and let’s all be OK with that

Good manners sometimes means simply putting up with other people’s bad manners, says novelist Brown Jr. With increase in holiday travel, polite words and simple acts of kindness can greatly reduce the stresses of crowded airports and long check-in lines. The right attitude will let you travel without much getting on your nerves, says Marylynne Pitz in Travel manners on an airplane.

To wrap up, and to make you smile, Big Ben points out great Irish scenery while providing a crash course on Driving in Ireland