Twitter Travel Feeds Can Lead To Savings

Organizing those we follow on Twitter into lists can help us sort relevant information on just about any travel topic. Helpful and engaged sources that work their Twitter feeds can add value to the time we spend online too. Grouping Twitter users into categories like “Fun,” “Movies” or “Sports” puts a focus on topics we find important. When it comes to travel, that same theory applies, as users can find the most current information, contacts to tap when problems come up and some of the best savings possible.

Here are some great travel feeds to follow on Twitter along with some recent tweets.


@Airfarewatchdog

Commonly tweeting savings and super discounted fares throughout the day via their Twitter feed, @Airfarewatchdog brings some amazing fares that travelers can’t find elsewhere. That’s because real people work there to find the best fares.

Still available: to $446 rt w/tax

@Airfarewatchdog also alerts followers to sales they might not otherwise know about, like this one posted recently:

New spring sale from Southwest

@TravelEditor
Travel tips and news from the editors of Independent Traveler flow freely from @TravelEditor with advice on saving money, as well as making the whole process of travel easy. Just yesterday, we saw:


A few tips for saving money on your next car rental:

For best results, avoid these 5 foods before flying:


@Wanderluster
Seattle’s Beth Whitman is founder of WanderTours and the Wanderlust and Lipstick, a website packed with inspiration and tours to exotic destinations for those who aim to be good world citizen.

Travel Hacking New Zealand: Finding Cheap Accommodation & Activities via

@ViatorTravel
Viator is a tour operator that understands the value of having a trusted resource you can rely on to help you find, research and book some of the world’s best travel experiences.

One of the qualities to look for in a viable Twitter source is frequency. On the hour, @ViatorTravel tweets money-saving tips. Some feature tours they sell, which stack up nicely compared to other tour operators, and some are simply budget-minded tips we can count on.

If you’re on a budget in you’ll have no problem finding free things to do (via )


@KidTravel
Nancy Schretter is founder and editor of the Family Travel Network and a mom of two. Via @KidTravel, she shares practical information on making family travel budgets work, where to go, and what to see with first-hand reports from destinations around the world.

Looking for a cool spring break trip? Round Up the Family for an All-Inclusive Ranch Vacation:


@Travelzoo

Tweeting some of the best travel deals worldwide, @Travelzoo alerts us to discount pricing on everything from hotels to car rentals, cruises and entertainment packages found on the Travelzoo website.

Take your stay up a notch. Luxe hotel for $90 off reg. rates.




[Photo Credit- Flickr user joelaz]

‘Riding Shotgun’ Reddit Series Rolls Into New Orleans

When last we posted about Zach Anner, it was to inform you that he and reddit had partnered up to launch an online series called “Riding Shotgun.” The premise is simple, albeit it a great example of next-gen multi-media. Zach, who has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair, travels to various domestic destinations and participates in activities, all culled from and selected by vote by reddit users.

If this sounds warped, it’s only because that’s how Zach rolls (pun intended). He’s handsome, funny, charming, and by his own admission, has lousy luck with women. The latest episode takes place in New Orleans. Zach and his crew visit legendary restaurant Antoine’s, and then go honky-tonkin’ at Tulane University dive The Boot. Check it out, below.


The Wandering Writer: A Tour Through Manhattan’s East Village With Tony Perrottet

Tony Perrottet won’t talk to me. When I call him from the lobby he picks up his phone but doesn’t utter a word. Rules dictate that he can’t speak in the Writers Room, the shared workspace where he churns out articles and books, and the first stop on our walking tour of Perrottet’s favorite neighborhood spots. Five silent seconds pass, then ten.

“Oh heeeeyyy, Rachel,” he says finally, his Australian accent infused with a Bob Dylan-esque twang. “I’ll be right down.”

Silver-haired and wearing dark blue jeans and collared shirt under a soft green sweater, a college-professor-on-sabbatical look, Perrottet ushers me into the elevator. When we reach the Room, I can see why he’s a stickler for cellphone protocol. The large loft is quiet as a coffin except for the rhythmic tapping of keyboards – and the twenty or so writers present seem cognizant of doing even that as softly as their productive fingers can manage. Back to back desks are occupied by whoever has shown up for the day, faces obscured by dividing screens. There’s a kitchen for lunch breaks and a nap room in case you need to rest up before returning to the Muses. You can come here any day of the week, any time of the day, and stay as long as you like.

At this 30-year-old institution, Perrottet has rubbed elbows with literary celebrities like Jay McInerney, as well as the famous aspiring to the literary, like Molly Ringwald and Brooke Shields. But despite the many well-known authors who work here, Perrottet says it’s actually very democratic. “They’ll let anyone in as long as you’re serious about your writing.”

And membership isn’t too hard on a writer’s often-measly budget. “It’s around $100 a month and they give you free coffee so you could actually make a profit if you had a cup every day,” he says. It’s a pretty good sales pitch, especially in a place like New York, where we cram ourselves into apartments people in other parts of the country would assign to kitchens or particularly roomy bathrooms.“Working from home would be a fiasco anywhere, but in New York there’s a particular madness because of the claustrophobia,” he says. “I couldn’t exist without this space.”

The transplanted Aussie seems to revolve around places that make life in this chaotic city bearable. He’s set up “little refuges” all over the East Village where he can go depending on his mood or work needs. After touring the Writers Room, we set off for one of them: the Italian cafe Taralluci E Vino. It’s just after 4 p.m., the perfect time for an afternoon cappuccino.

We walk east, eventually winding up on 10th Street between First and Second Avenues. Perrottet has lived on this block for over two decades in the same rent-controlled apartment, a holy grail for an artist in costly Manhattan, where so many have moved to Brooklyn or Queens or Harlem.

“Back then this was the big drug block,” he tells me. “This was in the early 1990s. Now it’s like ancient history, some fantasy world. Back then it was lined with 20 or 30 Colombian guys selling stuff. And these limousines would go by, Wall Streeters getting their cocaine.” There was a red door and blue door, one for soft drugs and one for hard drugs. The newly arrived Perrottet found the whole thing exotic – and the block was actually very safe because the Colombians didn’t want any trouble. But then the neighborhood association started making plans with the mayor and police to revamp 10th Street. In the end, the whole area was sealed off and a police car would drive back and forth all night. “The idea was to break the association that New Yorkers had with this block and drugs,” he says. “It worked. They all moved to 11th Street.”

No more than 100 yards from his apartment, we find an outdoor table at Tarallucci E Vino. As we sit, I catch a glimpse of the sugary pastries inside the café: buttery croissants, chocolate-tipped biscotti, mouth-watering miniature muffins. Perrottet strategically orders the check at the same time we request coffees. If not, he warns, it could be hours until our waitress drops in on us again. “This really is like visiting Rome because it’s totally incompetent,” he laughs. “It’s a complete mess. I like it.”

Today we’re here for the coffee, but Perrottet sometimes stops in around 6 for the aperitivo session. “For $6,” he tells me conspiratorially, “you can get this really nice glass of Lambrusco and they give you some little nibbles.” Any Manhattan writer worth his byline knows his neighborhood happy hours and it seems Perrottet is no exception.

But before we partake in one of our own, we need to pop into an East Village antique shop Perrottet frequents. Spirit and Matter is a tiny incense-heavy place stocked with tribal pieces ranging from war clubs to wooden jewelry to an intricately decorated paddle once used in courting rituals in Micronesia.

Perrottet, recognized by the bald, baritone owner, inquires if any erotic relics have recently arrived. He’s on the hunt for one for a TV show he’s involved with. The owner hasn’t got anything but suggests trying Obscura. “I hear they’ve got a mummified penis over there,” he says, as intriguing a lead as any.

It turns out Perrottet, who has stumbled upon many a story idea through casual conversations like this with locals, has already heard the rumor. And in fact he’s already seen just such an artifact.

“I’ve seen Napoleon’s.” He pauses while I consider the rather unpleasant mental image. “Allegedly.”

Still, one can never see too many mummified penises, so we push off for Obscura. The name still fits the shop’s content but not its character these days, since Obscura is the star of a Science Channel reality TV show called “Oddities.” Inside it’s a quirky collector’s dream, all statues and skeletons and strange souvenirs.

Obscura’s proprietor, like Spirit and Matter’s, knows Tony, and he knows why we’re here. He leads us into a cramped back room where the quested-for object is being housed in a shoe box-like container on packed shelves. If this was an action film starring Nicholas Cage, the thieves would have it all too easy.

The desiccated member is delicately wrapped in tissue paper. As we examine it, I comment on the small tragedy of a man’s most private parts being separated from the rest of his body. Perrottet tells me that women, too, have had pieces removed posthumously.

“The breast of Mary Magdalene is one of the great relics,” he says. “So is the heart of Joan of Arc.”

With our luckily still-beating hearts, and all appendages attached, we thank Obscura’s owner and head out. Perrottet wants to take me to Café Mogador, a Moroccan and Mediterranean restaurant where happy hour has just begun. He treats the friendly spot as his local diner, perfect for eating alone or with a visiting editor or friend. “It’s got space and excellent food and has been around forever,” he says. “The quality is amazing but it’s not expensive. And it’s very comfortable. In the East Village, there aren’t that many comfortable places. You don’t want a place filled with NYU students going nuts, which is basically what you’re fighting against.”

While we sit at the bar with tapas and white wine, a smiling waitress pops over to greet Perrottet. He apologizes on behalf of a boisterous friend he brought in last week, clearly wanting to make sure all is well in one of his chosen refuges. The waitress isn’t fussed in the slightest. “It’s all part of the job,” she says, and tells Perrottet it’s nice to see him.

We can’t stay for long, though. We’ve got a reservation at 6 and have been cautioned to be on time if we want to keep it. PDT, which stands for Please Don’t Tell, is our final stop on the Perrottet peregrinate. It’s the kind of secretive place you bring out-of-town visitors to prove Manhattan’s magic. We enter the small, dark cocktail lounge through a telephone booth. Inside, the nonstop noise of the East Village is muted entirely.

Perrottet likes the speakeasy feel here, the wide-eyed stuffed animals lining the walls, and the fact that you need a reservation. Most importantly, though, he likes the crowd control. “That’s what I’ll pay for,” he says, “a bit of elbow room, a bit of quiet.”

“They tried to get rid of me. We’re the riff raff now”

The payment at PDT comes in the form of expensive cocktails with cute names. Perrottet orders a Tompkins Square, so strong you can smell the whiskey rising off it when the bartender delivers it. I get a gin based drink called The C Cup, which feels like far too easy a joke for such a sophisticated place.

As we sip our concoctions, I ask how the East Village has changed since Perrottet first arrived.

“I’m not one of those nostalgic nuts who say it was always better years ago because there was a lot that was wrong,” he says. “But I like it because thanks to the rent control laws – it’s been gentrified obviously –it’s still like nowhere else in New York. They can’t get rid of all the old Polish guys and the Ukrainian women. They tried to get rid of me. We’re the riff raff now,” he laughs.

It’s as hard to imagine the affable Perrottet as riff raff as it is to picture him living anywhere other than the East Village. He seems not just to live in this neighborhood but to be actively part of it. It’s obvious that Perrottet would know where best to take you at 3 in the afternoon or 3 in the morning. And wherever you wound up, they would probably know him, too. There’s something comforting about realizing a person can be part of a small community in a massive city like New York. And Perrottet, an Australian ex-pat who arrived here one mild night in September some 20 years ago, most certainly has found his.

About This Wandering Writer:

Tony Perrottet is the author of four books – a collection of travel stories, “Off the Deep End: Travels in Forgotten Frontiers” (1997); “Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists” (2002); “The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Greek Games” (2004); and “Napoleon’s Privates: 2500 Years of History Unzipped” (2008). His travel stories have been widely anthologized and have been selected four times for the “Best American Travel Writing” series. He is also a regular television guest on the History Channel, where he has spoken about everything from the Crusades to the birth of disco.

[Photo Credits: Lesley Thalander and Rachel Friedman]

Airline Seatmates From Hell: One Man’s Story

Hot off of blogger/travel writer Kelsey Timmerman’s Twitter comes his shocking account of nearly getting thrown down by an “octegenarian” seatmate.

Timmerman, who states he never reclines his seat during flights out of deference to fellow passengers, apparently shifted his weight a tad too violently, provoking the elderly gentleman behind him to take action. After jabbing Timmerman in the arm and informing him that he was “hitting” the gentleman in question’s laptop, Timmerman politely explained that he was just sitting there. The response? “I’ll kick your ass!”

The scene soon escalated to the octegenarian assaulting Timmerman in the form of violently punching the back of his seat and threatening to “kick [Timmerman’s] f–king ass” when the plane landed. A flight attendant then stepped in to defuse the potentially lethal seatmate situation (things can get ugly when catheters and Pacemakers malfunction at 30,000 feet). For his part, Timmerman was just hoping the cantankerous passenger would settle down, so the plane wouldn’t be forced to make an emergency landing.

Timmerman ended up with a sore neck and some sort of inner ear trauma, along with an epiphany. “Flying can be frustrating. Flying is frustrating. I’d rather be punched in the face than be delayed.”

We’d love to hear your worst seatmate stories (Mine involves an aggressive elbow/armrest war with an elderly Chinese woman on an overseas flight that led to her sleeping on the floor in front of her seat. I swear I didn’t hurt her, and the funniest part neither of us every uttered a single word.).

Discuss amongst yourselves, and share.

[Photo credit: Flickr user Olivier.Asselin]

A Traveler In The Foreign Service: The Best Foreign Service Blogs

The World Wide Web is saturated with amateurish blogs created by people who’d be lucky to command the devoted readership of their immediate family members, let alone the wider public. There are scores of blogs managed by Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) and while many of them are worth reading, some are downright bizarre. This post will steer you toward some Foreign Service related blogs that are well worth your time.

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I started this series nine months ago to help people get a better understanding of what life in the U.S. Foreign Service is like. Many of the posts have been about my experiences but I’ve also introduced readers to an intrepid, single female diplomat fresh off of tours in Syria and Pakistan, a diplomatic courier, a USAID Foreign Service Officer currently serving in Afghanistan and others. But spend some time at the sites listed below to get a flavor of what it’s like to represent the U.S. Government in The Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Bolivia, Pakistan and dozens of other exotic locales.One major caveat here is that FSOs have to be careful what they write because free speech only takes you so far in the precarious, uber-cautious world of government service. Most FSOs have disclaimers on their sites warning that the views expressed are their own, but many still tend to steer clear of tackling political issues or anything controversial.

Peter Van Buren, a now retired diplomat who wrote “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People,” was effectively driven out of the Foreign Service partially because he posted a link to a cable on WikiLeaks and made some disparaging remarks, which he later apologized for, about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on his website.

There’s no doubt that his experience has had a chilling effect across the board, so visit the sites below to get the low-down on the Foreign Service lifestyle and the travel opportunities, not the dirty underbelly of how diplomacy plays out overseas.

Some of the blogs below contain little, if any biographical info, and I wasn’t able to read each one in its entirety, so my apologies in advance if my impressions of these blogs below miss the mark. That said, I would invite the authors of these fine sites to tell us more about themselves, if they dare, in the comments section.

Diplopundit

Domani Spero has no U.S. government connection and thus has the freedom to write about the world of diplomacy without having to worry about his career. Diplopundit is as close as you’ll find to one-stop shopping for a candid look at what’s going on in the Foreign Service community.

Adventures in Good Countries- Getting Along In The Foreign Service

I love this blog. The author, apparently a single female public diplomacy officer who, “doesn’t date outside the visa waiver program,” blogs with style and passion about life in Japan, Pakistan, Jordan and elsewhere, coping with Multiple Sclerosis and whatever else pops into her head. How can you not like a writer who offers advice to protesters on how to construct a good effigy? (“Don’t just throw something together with the rationale that you’re only going to burn it anyway – take some pride in your work.”)

We Meant Well

You might not agree with Peter Van Buren but you will want to read his blog, which is sometimes offensive but never boring.

Third Culture Children

This blog, which details the lives of a family of five living in Recife, Brazil, La Paz, Bolivia and elsewhere, is one of the very best Foreign Service related sites out there. It’s a particularly good resource for parents who are wondering what the overseas experience will be like for their children.

Amy Gottlieb’s Photography & Blog

Gottlieb is a doctor and a USAID FSO currently serving in South Africa. Her portraits from Jamaica, Nepal, Vietnam, South America, Africa and beyond are as good as any you’ll find anywhere.

Adventures Around the World- A Foreign Service Officer’s Tales of Life Abroad

The author of this refreshingly candid and well-written blog is currently in Kabul and has previously served in Iraq and Nepal. Here’s how she described the “honeymoon” period at a new post: “The honeymoon period is the time frame after moving to a foreign country where the excitement of being somewhere new overshadows certain harsh realities of living in a foreign country. People burning piles of trash in the street give the place ‘character’ and bargaining with a taxi driver is part of the ‘adventure.'”

Worldwide Availability

This is a stunning photo blog from an American diplomat who was born on a farm in China and is currently serving in South Korea. Visiting this site is the next best thing to booking a ticket to Seoul. Also, for those who are curious to know how long it takes to join the Foreign Service, take a look at his instructive personal timeline for some clues.

Wanderings of a Cheerful Stoic

Anyone who features a photo of themselves (I presume) with a Gambian poached rat on their homepage is all right by me. This is a blog from a FSO posted in Conakry, Guinea, a place where “you tend to find yourself without a really specific reason.”

The Slow Move East- Thoughts on Being an Expatriate

Hannah Draper, a FSO currently serving in Libya, might be a “Type-A bureaucrat who professionally pushes papers in the Middle East,” but her writing is compulsively readable.

Where in the World am I? Notes from the Streets of Hyderabad, India

A FSO in Hyderabad who previously served in Burundi blogs about food and life overseas with gusto.

Cross Words- A Blog About Writing and Anything Else That Comes to Mind

Ted Cross, a FSO currently living in Budapest who apparently just signed up for Facebook last week (Friend him!), tells us on his homepage that his “dream is to be a published author.” I like someone who isn’t afraid to tell the world what he wants. He’s into fantasy and science fiction, neither of which interests me, but his blog is unique and his writing is lucid.

Four Globetrotters- The (Most Likely) Incoherent Ramblings of a Sleep-Deprived Single Mother Living Overseas with her Trio of Kiddos

Anyone who can pull off being a single mom in the Foreign Service is someone I want to meet. This blog, written by a former Foreign Service brat, isn’t nearly as incoherent as advertised.

Beau Geste, Mon Ami- The Chronicle of my Journey to and through The Foreign Service

Even a quick breeze through this visually appealing blog will give you an idea of how varied and interesting life in the Foreign Service can be. If nothing else, do not miss the photos of the tribal warriors in Papua New Guinea.

Zvirdins at Large- Jamie and Andrew’s Excellent Adventures

If you want a slice of life from the Marshall Islands, this is the place to go. I love this blog but I couldn’t bring myself to click into the video entitled “Pig Shooting” in a post on “Pig Butchering.” Yikes.

Talesmag

This isn’t a FSO blog per se, but the site’s stories and “real post reports” on hundreds of cities around the globe are an invaluable resource for those seeking insights into the Foreign Service lifestyle.

Let me know in the comments section if you think I’ve missed any great FSO-related blogs and if you’re the author of ones of the sites mentioned above, tell us a bit about yourself.

Read more from “A Traveler in the Foreign Service” here.

(Photos courtesy of Amy Gottlieb)