Blog Posts
The posts are archived. Mainly from my site “Cool Travel Guide” where I wrote about our travels before 2010 when we started Grantourismo Travels.
Due to the age of these posts, some may be missing images…
Cool Travel Guide’s Posting Policy
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…
What is Cool Travel Guide?
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…
In print and online
There’s a reason I haven’t been blogging much these last few months – or rather, lots of reasons. Terence and I have been busy travelling, mainly through the Middle East…
The affection that comes with familiarity versus the energy of an unfamiliar destination
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…
Are you a once-in-a-lifetime traveller or a creature of habit?
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…
An update from the road
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…
Your worst hotel experience?
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,…
Travel insights from travel experts
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…
Travel experts versus ‘real’ travellers
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 sites are…
Behind-the-scenes in a Michelin-starred chef’s kitchen and the kindness of chefs
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…
In print and online
It’s been a busy period for Terence and I, as you’ve gathered from the dearth of blog posts these last months. And we’ve got a lot of travel work being…
Envying a donkey his pace – the frenetic tempo of travel writing, part 2
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…