Loaded with up-to-date sight-seeing info, handy Google Maps and all the photos you'll need to spot your next stop, the only thing that might keep travelers from tossing their paper guidebooks is expensive international data transfer rates. (AT&T has tips and packages on this).
Our favorite feature on the Amsterdam Mobile Guide, of course, is that it's organized to help travelers narrow down their choices. Rather than standing on street corner scrolling through hundreds of activities, restaurants, and bars you don't want, the Mobile Guide groups To-Do List items by, for example, Gay and Lesbian, Nightlife, Architecture, and so on.
On that note, another handy feature of this iPhone app is that you can also organize your trip hotspots by how long you are staying with 8-, 48, or 72-hour itinerary suggestions,
As laptops approach the size of cell phones and cell phones approach the functionality of laptops, it's only a matter of time before computers can be left at home in favor of a slim, stylish 3G+ travel companions.
Leading the way so far has been the iPhone -- surprise, surprise. Partly because making applications for it has become such a popular activity, this has also let the iPhone respond to the particular needs of folks on the go -- people who can't always lug the laptop.
This could be especially useful to frequent or light travelers and, capitalizing on this opportunity, GayCities.com has recently launched just that: a free, downloadable iPhone application that gives travelers access to their travel advice on the go.
Check it out here and, according to The Bay Area Reporter, look out for a few 'clones' to soon follow!
Follow Out Traveler Aefa Mulholland as she explores Ireland's culture, cuisine and quirks! Part one of four.
By the time I flew over Newfoundland, I had mastered both phrases deemed crucial enough to grace the first page of my Irish phrase book. I was now equipped with the winning conversational duo of “I have money” and “Will you have a drink?”
Having mastered the basics, I turned to page two. One lone word waited; Beidh, the Irish for “Yes.” No directional enquiries, lost passport reports, or emergency requests. It seems the book agrees with Oscar Wilde’s outlook that “Life is too important to be taken seriously.” Especially when there’s a cocktail to be ordered.
Rush hour traffic ebbed along green hems of the Grand Canal when my traveling companion Jen and I checked into hidden boutique gem, Number 31. Hidden behind a high wall, just ten minutes walk from Stephen’s Green, Grafton Street and the heart of Dublin, Number 31 is housed in a modernist gem of two converted coach houses and a gracious four-story Georgian townhouse.
We sauntered into the fantastically 1960s living room with its sunken conversation pit, mirror mosaic-tiled bar, and contemporary art.
Noel, the affable host rushed over to hug me with a cry of “You’re here and you’re very welcome!” He proceeded to inform me, “You’re a great girl.”
I wasn’t sure how he assessed this in the time it took to set down my Samsonite, but I took the compliment anyway. He asked us if we’d like a drink. What a shame I didn’t get as far as learning how to say “No.”
When was the last time you read a travel piece and were transported so vividly that you could detect the aroma of local cuisine in the air and envision romance unfolding with a sultry resident? At OutTraveler.com, we're as guilty as every other travel writing source of getting bogged down in just the facts, ma'am: Here's great trip-planning information/inspiration, good luck and godspeed. But to really get to the essence of a place, you need ample space for language to breathe -- something University of Wisconsin Press editor and former Out Traveler contributor Raphael Kadushin not only understands but also, thankfully, nurtures.
The recently released Big Trips: More Good Gay Travel Writing follows in the successful, globetrotting path of the Press's Wonderlands queer travel anthology. In these Trips, a stunning lineup of authors, from Edmund White and Andrew Holleran to Aaron Hamburger and Trebor Healey, pore over the global landscape in memoirs and fiction to find the shared humanity that slices across cultures.
Holleran's drive into the gated-community heart of Florida, Bruce Benderson's return to his hippie stomping grounds in San Francisco, Martin Sherman's Greek isle sojourn, where beauty and loneliness intersect, Hamburger muddling through his Czech-boy fantasy in Prague -- they all peel back the layers of their setting to reveal the veins feeding its beating heart. There is, after all, more to a journey than a hotel room with Frette sheets. Whether you're hopping a flight or curling up in an armchair, Big Trips will carry you across continents with poignancy, intellect, and a healthy dose of the unexpected.
Big Trips editor Raphael Kadushin will be reading and signing the book at A Different Light Bookstore (489 Castro St.; 415-431-0891) in San Francisco at 7:30 p.m., Feb. 16. Watch for a Big Trips reading in your area at www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/events.html
Have you read a great gay travel book lately? Send your must-pack-for-the-plane reading list to loann@outtraveler.com and we'll talk travel books in a future "LoAnn Loves…" column.
LoAnn Halden is a contributing editor to OutTraveler.com. Check back often for more dispatches on her travel "loves."
Every issue, our LGBT world maps concisely break down a different world region by current LGBT rights progress and social reception. For Out Travelers, they not only provide a great way to get in touch with countries on our itineraries, but also inspire us to visit and learn more about new places and cultures.
A new regular feature here on GPS and on our Facebook home, we'll be posting these maps for Out Travelers to download, share and use for free!
Photos in order: Courtesy Aircell (3) Story by Joseph Alexiou
Earlier this month we blogged about how much us gays can’t get enough of our gadgets. Although there is an ample choice of tech gear for travel aficionados, our laptop, iPhone, Blackberry, or PDA is much less exciting without instant internet gratification. Because we can’t do without even a few hours of connectivity during a cross-country flight, GogoTM has answered our prayers by providing in-flight wifi service on one of our favorite domestic airlines! American Airlines, the gold-medal winning domestic airline from our 2007 Reader’s Choice Awards has teamed up with Aircell to bring in “the first full inflight broadband service to the U.S. market. Aircell, the only company licensed in the U.S. to provides cellular communication in commercial airlines, has been providing onboard internet to private jets for several
years. The Gogo service, which costs $12.95 on flights more than three hours long, will be available on American Airlines flights from New York to San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Miami (some of our top-rated gay destinations!) on any the B767-200 aircrafts.
Although cell phones and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services such as Skype are not available
in-flight, those signed up to Gogo can chat and email with their friends and colleagues, do some online shopping, check stocks, or get up-to-the-minute weather information at the flight destination! How’s that for cloud surfing?
From my first copy of the Out Traveler, the Maps pages have been a favorite. Colorfully illustrated, they take on a new geographic and cultural region every issue and clearly code the current legal and social standing of non-heterosexuals there, further specifying by country.
Download PDFs of theIslamic World
(Fall 2007 issue), the Pacific
(Winter 2008 issue), Latin America
(Spring 2008 issue), the Orthodox World
(Summer 2008 issue), and Asia
(Fall 2008) by clicking the links here!
These maps are also great for planning trips! For all the details a great article on Cambodia can provide, a map can put things in a usefully larger context. Seeing the whole area at once, for example, you may well decide that Vietnam, rather than Cambodia, is where you want to go.
Stay posted here and on Facebook for regular digital updates of our maps as they are created!
Now, if one Paris guidebook crosses our desks that's food for inspiration, but when two arrive on the same day we consider it divine mandate to hightail it to the City of Lights.
Well, not really, but it does seem as if everyone is making plans to go soon so if you or a friend head out across the pond, check out the freshly released Paris: Wish You Were Here! and Eating and Drinking in Paris, which not only offer great local intel, but are also fully worthwhile cultural additions to your bookshelf -- and they're both written by LGBT authors. Paris: Wish You Were Here offers a guide to the standard sights of Paris alongside excerpts about the city by everyone from Victor Hugo to Jack Kerouac and David Sedaris, accommodations recommendations and snippets of Parisian history -- "from Gaul to Gaultier".
Eating and Drinking in Paris, on the other hand, is pocket-sized and ruthlessly unpretentious encyclopedia of every foodstuff one could possible encounter in France. Unbelievably useful.
No longer do we have to print out OutTraveler.com articles and cart them around with us on vacation! Available now, printed Out Traveler travel guides from two of The Out Traveler's finest LGBT travel experts!
Matt Link, who is one of The Out Traveler's MVP editorial players and who knows Hawai'i like it was his own back yard, has authored the Out Traveler: Hawai'i guide. Dan Allen, a long-time contributor to The Out Traveler and active gay traveler, compiles his extensive knowledge of New York City into the Out Traveler: New York City guide.
Both guides are loaded with far more than just essential LGBT accommodations listings, including great activity suggestions and some incredible queer historical information about tourist sites -- information no other guide provides. How much could they squeeze into those little "Gay and Lesbian Travel" boxes anyway?
Published by Alyson Books as part of an Out Traveler travel guide series, also keep an eye out for more forthcoming titles!
It's never fun when your flight is canceled. It's even less fun when you're forced to spend a night in the airport along with hundreds of other ill-tempered travelers who can get kind of testy about who gets to sleep in the waiting room seats. Come morning, everyone looks just awful and smells more than a little like the carpet. Ew.
If you've been around almost any airport in the U.S. these past few days, that's just the aftermath you would have found from the roughly 2,500 flights that American Airlines has canceled since Tuesday.
But the news isn't all bad. As I sat fuming into my food court coffee -- awful stuff, that -- over my own canceled flight at New York's LaGuardia airport early Wednesday morning, an uncommonly fresh-seeming young lady sat next to me with wet hair, a crisp shirt and bright, recently-moisturized skin. She had showered.
How this happened is still a mystery to me, but here's a bag of Emergency Beauty Tricks for the Terminally Grounded to hold us over until we figure out her showering secrets:
Duck into a bathroom as soon as you land. A quick face wash (and shave), hair re-arrangement, cologne/perfume spritz and make-up touch up usually suffices, but having a travel toothbrush/toothpaste, deodorant and a bit of hair product on hand never hurts -- and doesn't fill up your carry-on by much.
Never underestimate the power of a moist towelette and gum or breath mints to disguise the stress of travel.
Moisturize. And while hydrating your skin from that arid recirculated "air" on board, also rehydrate by drinking lots of water -- it'll actually help keep you healthy if your cabin mate is making you suffer from his whooping cough.
In a pinch, a bit of diluted moisturizer can also double as leave-in hair conditioner, hair shine and a revolume-izer.
Keep an extra, clean shirt in your carry-on. Never underestimate how re-energizing a new outfit can be as you rush out of baggage claim straight into a meeting.
Out Traveler G.P.S offers dispatches from the ever-expanding field of gay and lesbian travel -- as soon as we know, you know. Check back frequently for updates, insider information, advice, and offers brought to you by our ever-roving band of gay travel experts and by readers just like you.
OutTraveler.com Editor in Chief Ed Salvato and his team travel the world for you. Occasionally we miss something. If you don’t see your favorite destination, tip or deal featured here, tell us about it!
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New Zealand: Photo Gallery: Captions and photos by Jeffrey James Above: I took this shot on Mt. Coronet during this year's Gay Ski Week NZ in Queenstown. Mike Sanford and Craig Lawson host the biggest gay and lesbian alpine party in the southern hemisphere,...
Head west to see the Sistine Chapel: Story by Aefa Mulholland, photo by Berglind Hafsteinsdottir Don’t have the time or the budget to get to Rome? Head west instead. This week Seattle Art Museum opens a Michelangelo exhibit, Drawings from the Sistine Chapel -- the only place...
Stockholm, Sweden: Photo Gallery: Story and photos by Jeffrey James Keyes Above: Hey Mr. DJ StockholmThere's a reason Stockholm's Group F12 was awarded a Michelin-Star with flying colors. You can sit outside and listen to your favorite Scandinavian DJs, take in the full gastronomic...
Copenhagen, Denmark: Photo Gallery: Photos and story by Jeffrey James Keyes Above: Rosenborg Soldier - Copenhagen, Denmark What's better than day dreaming about the Crown Jewels at the Rosenborg Castle? Day dreaming about the sexy men who guard them, of course! Denmark has some...
Bali, Indonesia: Photo gallery: Photos and captions by correspondent Sydney Pfaff. Above: On the western side of the Bukit Peninsula, Balangan Beach sits quietly surrounded by cliffs with just a few bungalows, a couple of small restaurants, and a handful of warungs. Loud and...
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