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Travel Photo Thursday: Silhouette Shots

Travel Photo Thursday

When taking photos as a kid using the family’s Kodak “Brownie” box camera, I was told to always stand with the sun coming over my shoulder.  By doing so, the sunlight would bounce off of the subject of the photo—often a friend or relative—back through the camera’s lens and onto the film. The result: Brightly [...]

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Booking Yosemite for Summer or Fall

Destination Updates
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Computer: “We’re Sorry.” “We apologize. There are no available rooms for your desired dates. Please modify your dates or number of guests.” That’s the error message I got on Monday when I tried to book a week’s stay in Yosemite National Park for this June using the park concessionaire’s online reservation system.  It didn’t surprise [...]

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Destination Update: India

Destination Updates
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Eco-gram from Charming Chandigarh, The City Beautiful (via EcoLocalizer) Chandigarh, a city in northern India is called The City Beautiful, but I could as well call it The City Green. The city is nestled in the foothills of the evergreen Shivalik hills, and ever since its foundation in 1952, the streets of this well-planned city [...]

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Destination Update: Sweden

Destination Updates
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6 Gorgeous Small Rustic Cottages: Sweden’s Urnatur (via sustainablog) As soon as I discovered this collection of small houses, I was taken. Wow! These rustic cabins with green roofs, treehouses, and small homes are located at Urnatur, in Sweden, an eco lodge and retreat center. Urnatur is a family-owned retreat and tree house hotel, with private [...]

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It’s YouTube Travel Movie Weekend!

YouTube Travel Movie Weekend
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You can be virtually transported to anywhere in the world by watching travel videos broadcast on YouTube Channels. But finding time during your busy work week to tune in for even a couple of minutes at a shot can be difficult, if not impossible! Now it’s “YouTube Travel Movie Weekend” on Tales Told From The [...]

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The Ultimate “Green” Rental Car

Travel Tips
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Interested in reducing the carbon footprint of your travels? One solution: Drive a “Green” rental car. Whose Got A “Green” Fleet? Hertz has a Green Collection which it says made up of “fuel efficient, environmentally-friendly cars that are both easy on the wallet and good for the environment” like the Ford Fusion, “smart fortwo,” the [...]

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Travel Photo Thursday: Building “Bites” and “Slices”

Travel Photo Thursday
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Two months ago in “Travel Photo Thursday: Sweating the Small Stuff” I said: “Sometimes getting ‘The Big Picture’ just isn’t going to happen when you are shooting photos. If you move back far enough to ‘get it all in’ you end up getting a lot of junk into the frame. This is particularly true when [...]

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In Vegas, a New Cure for Monster Hangovers

Destination Updates
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In Vegas, a new cure for monster hangovers (via AFP) It’s Sunday lunchtime in Las Vegas and Justin looks like he wants to curl up and die. He has a monster hangover after drinking for two days solid. But help, he hopes, is at hand. The 38-year-old from Seattle is among the first customers trying [...]

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Roll Over (in Your Grave) Beethoven!

Travel Essays
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You remember Beethoven (aka “Ludwig Van Beethoven”), right? He’s the guy that practically invented “Classical Music” way back in the day—beginning around the time George Washington became the first U.S. President. And we still listen to his stuff today. A least I do, sometimes. Unfortunately, about the time that Washington was stepping down and John [...]

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Don’t Travel Without Knowing Credit Card Basics

Travel Tips
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Don’t Travel Without Knowing Credit Card Basics (via Credit.com) However, consumers who are planning a vacation should get familiar with the terms and conditions of their credit card accounts so that there are no surprises on their bills when they get back, according to a report from the Arizona Republic. In many cases, a credit [...]

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It’s “Super Moon Night” Tonight!

Other Stuff
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No, the Moon isn’t going to crash into the Earth tonight at 8:35 pm PDT (11:35 pm EDT). But when the “Super Moon” rises in the sky 32 minutes earlier, and keeps growing bigger and bigger as it ascends, you might think you’re living through an event as scary as that in the sci-fi movie [...]

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Travel Print Publications Get “Tagged”

App Reviews
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Photos in a newspaper or magazine travel story can inspire you to travel to a destination, but an video embedded in a story posted on a travel Website can instantly “transport” you there. Now there is an easy way for “print” to take you on such “virtual journeys” using Microsoft “Tags.”

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Travel Photo Thursday: A Sense of Place

Travel Photo Thursday
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Capturing A “Sense of Place” Through Words The phrase “a sense of place” can be defined in many ways. Here’s what an article in Wikipedia says about its importance: “Understanding how sense of place develops and changes is relevant to understanding how people interact with their environment…” In order to write A Sense of Place: [...]

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At The Movies: A Perplexing “Personnel Problem”

Movie Reviews
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The Human Resources Manager (2011) does not examine the skills of those who work in corporate personnel offices.  But the film’s premise is a “True/False” test of sorts. True: One character is a human resource manager. False: The person the movie is all about appears “in the flesh” on-screen. True: The employer is a corporation. [...]

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Travel Memoir: Remembering Budapest

Travel Essays
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“Hey, John!” “Hey, Dick!” “What’s up?” “On the run. Leaving for Budapest tomorrow.  Haven’t packed yet.” So went less than a minute of conversation with one of my travel writing mentors, John Flinn, former Travel Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. Like friends walking down the street in opposite directions, we had just enough time [...]

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Tales Told From The Road “Top Rated” by Gogobot

Other Stuff
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Dick Jordan and Tales Told From The Road have been “Top Rated” by the social travel Website Gogobot. Dick is a Gogobot “Featured Blogger” and Gogobot lists Tales Told From The Road as one of its “Blogs We Love.” Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Dick Jordan

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Travel By Movie: “The Sound of Revolution”

Travel By Movie
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Why do we go to “The Movies”? To be entertained, to be thrilled, to be frightened out our wits! And, of course, to be transported visually to places we’ve never seen before, or those where some of our fondest memories of life were born. But what about the “pre-show” stuff that we must sit through [...]

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