cool travel guide

Aleppo's labyrinthine souqs

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 01:11:00 PDT

Aleppo's labyrinthine medieval souq - or rather souqs within a souq - has long been one of our favorites in the Middle East, mainly because it has remained relatively untouched by tourism up until...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Access momentarily denied

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:31:00 PDT

My harmless little blog Cool Travel Guide has been blocked in Syria for a whole 24 hours - I was confronted with the dreaded "Access Denied" sign when I tried to update it yesterday. But, there's...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Blogging and Blogspot in Syria

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:16:00 PDT

A number of people have contacted me via the comments to my post below and on Twitter in response to my appeal for advice after my blog was momentarily blocked in Syria. Shukran jazeelan to everyone...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Postcript: blogging and Blogspot in Syria

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:33:00 PDT

Another postscript to my posts of a couple of weeks ago on blogging and Blogspot in Syria (see my last post and the postscript before it): after uploading the posts below, I received loads of emails...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Desk update from Abu Dhabi: month #45 on the road but whose counting?

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:57:00 PDT

We're back in the UAE and after a couple of days in Dubai (pictured*), we're chained to desks once again in Abu Dhabi - not our desks, but our friends', at their colossal home in the new part of the...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Envying a donkey his pace - the frenetic tempo of travel writing, part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:06:00 PDT

Our recent trip around the Middle East (see this post) wasn't meant to be that kind of trip. There was no guidebook to write. No insane photography commission for Terry to undertake. Just lots of...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Envying a donkey his pace - the frenetic tempo of travel writing, part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:35:00 PDT

So how, as travel writers, do we get ourselves into the situation I described in the last post? And is it possible to be a travel writer and avoid this frenzied pace of life? To answer the second...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

In print and online

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:13:00 PDT

It's been a busy period for Terry and I, as you've gathered from the dearth of blog posts these last months. And we've got a lot of work being published to prove it, from a small 'Up Next' piece on...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Behind-the-scenes in a Michelin-starred chef's kitchen and the kindness of chefs

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 03:15:00 PDT

Being able to spend a night in the restaurant kitchen of a Michelin-starred chef - in this case that of Pierre Gagnaire at Reflets, Dubai - is one of the delights of our job. It wasn't our first time...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Travel experts versus 'real' travellers

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:29:00 PDT

Travel 'experts', whether they are travel writers, guidebook authors, travel bloggers, tour guides, travel agents, hoteliers etc, are also 'real' travellers in my mind. Yet publishers and travel...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Travel insights from travel experts

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 01:02:00 PDT

I am probably suffering from chronic information overload - how about you? - but increasingly I'm finding myself wanting to read more informed opinions from people with experience and expertise in a...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Your worst hotel experience?

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:36:00 PDT

A recent hotel stay reminded us of just how bad they can occasionally be. We checked into a respectable five star city hotel in the early evening, did some work, then went out to dinner and checked...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

An update from the road

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:10:00 PST

I've been silent for some time, I know. We've been on the road again in the Middle East on commissions for a few in-flight and travel magazines, and our pace has been hectic to say the least - from...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Are you a once-in-a-lifetime traveller or a creature of habit?

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:45:00 PST

Are you a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ traveller? That is, every country you visit you consider it to be a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ experience and treat it as such? Do you go to a place thinking you may...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

The affection that comes with familiarity versus the energy of an unfamiliar destination

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:20:00 PST

Only two of the nine countries we visited in the last six months were new to us, places we hadn’t been before and were experiencing for the first time. Obviously, as travel writers, it’s inevitable...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

In print and online

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 06:49:00 PST

There's a reason I haven't been blogging much these last few months - or rather, lots of reasons. Terry and I have been busy travelling, mainly through the Middle East - to Syria, Qatar, Kuwait,...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

What is Cool Travel Guide?

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:26:00 PST

One of the reasons I began Cool Travel Guide was to write about the things I couldn't write about in the highly prescriptive guidebooks I made my living writing. My first post 'Aleppo: no...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Cool Travel Guide's Posting Policy

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:18:00 PST

While the vast majority of comments I get on Cool Travel Guide are wonderful and warmly welcomed, I've received a few comments over the last year that have caused me to reflect upon what Cool Travel...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Where travel writers stay when they go on holidays

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 05:52:00 PST

Which hotels do travel writers check into when they go on holidays? That's what Mark Hudson, a writer himself for The Sunday Times, among other publications, was keen to know, so he asked 50 of them...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Busy in Beirut, Bangkok, Bendigo, and now blogging the globe

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:14:00 PST

The posts I will be popping up on my poor neglected travel blog over the next few days have been a long time coming. Some I drafted back in Beirut in November, others I scribbled almost a month ago...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Burj Khalifa and How Bridges, Buildings and other Big Things Unite Nations

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:56:00 PST

I'm a fan of Twitter but I was on deadline and only half-following tweets a few nights ago as messages streamed in from people in the UAE at the inauguration of the world's tallest building Burj...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Grantourismo - 12 months, 24 destinations, countless experiences

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:31:00 PST

Finishing writing projects (books, stories, reviews) and planning our exciting new project called Grantourismo, a contemporary grand tour of sorts, has kept us busy throughout December and January,...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Grantourismo & how we came to be going on a grand tour in 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:31:00 PST

Terry and I have been dreaming about doing a grand tour of sorts for a few years - since way back when we wrote the Grantourismo blog for Charles and Marie. We started to seriously develop the idea...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

In print and online

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:51:00 PST

Life has been keeping us busy as usual with our Gran- tourismo project now well and truly under way; you can keep up with our travels and what we're doing here. We've had a few bits and pieces...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

An update from the road... we're on our grand tour and we're in Montenegro!

noreply@blogger.com (Lara Dunston) — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:03:00 PDT

This is the longest I've gone without posting on my poor neglected Cool Travel Guide. You want to know why? Drop by Grantourismo and you'll see that we've been a tad busy on our yearlong grand tour...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Links for 2007-09-24 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 00:00:00 PDT

Cool travel guide
Travel insights, reflections and other stuff you won't find in guidebooks: a perpetual globetrotter and professional travel writer muses about the things that are cool about travel and what inspires us to travel.