Alisha Miranda

People always ask me, “What is your favorite destination?”  To be honest, I don’t have a specific answer. I cannot say just one place. One time. One trip.  Every place contains charm. Every place provides pleasure when exploring, and truthfully everyplace holds place in my heart. A memory. A moment.

But, (yes a but) some places seem to last longer in memory. Some places I dream of returning. And if I needed to make a list, I am sure I could.

One place on that list would definitely San Sebastian, Spain.

..the sun sets in Donostia-San Sebastián

So this Sunday, I’ll take you there for a Sunset Shot I took during my second trip to the Basque region culinary capital. After my afternoon of tasty pintxos and robust rioja on the streets of “Parte Vieja” I headed down to the sands to enjoy the sun setting overlooking La Concha’s bay .

I look forward to returning someday; it is the perfect place to finish my novel.

Stay Adventurous, Craig

Filed under: Food and Drink, North America, United States, Budget Travel

Free macarons in NYC on March 20 originally appeared on Gadling on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dvir is one half of a round the world couple. He and his wife, Loreen, have embarked on a year-long honeymoon adventure circling the globe. So far, they have been to more than 20 destinations, each time showcasing amazing photos of their travels on Sosauce.

Today’s photo essay is a tribute to Dvir’s famous “jumping” photos. He’s got a knack for jumping in just about every country he visits. Take a look:

Vietnam

South Africa

Zimbabwe

Tanzania

Peru

You + Photo = WOW

Upload your travel photos in hi-res, post to other sites, share and embed, and import from Flickr. Upgrade to a Sosauce PWR account and you’ll receive unlimited photo storage, discounts on photo prints, plus a new portfolio view! Get started at www.sosauce.com

Shared by Alisha
Uh can I do this?

Okay, so I know it’s only March and, for most of us, summer seems ever out of reach as winter moves on at a snail’s pace. But summer is actually on the way and it is never too early to start thinking about your plans. Will you wait tables at the local pizza place across from your university? Mow lawns? Work at your dad’s company?

Nah. Throw those ideas out the window and head to Europe. Seriously, there are plenty of summer jobs available for seasonal workers in Europe and it’s pretty easy for American students to find gigs working as au pairs, servers, bartenders and hostel staff for a short period in Europe.

Thanks to STA Travel, you won’t even have to iron out the details. STA has put together a few travel packages that get you a job placement, travel insurance and full room and board for 2 to 3 months over the summer.

Currently on offer, STA lists several destinations in Europe. Thanks to Lizelle’s informative article on the topic, we already know what an au pair job involves, and there are plenty of these on offer in Lyon, France, as well as Rome and southern Spain. Imagine hanging out with a cool European kid on the Mediterranean all summer? Sounds fantastic to me.

Most of the other jobs available through STA are hospitality jobs, which could be anything from working in a hostel or hotel to catering, restaurant work, bar tending or other service positions. You can chose from positions in the Loire Valley of France (that’s the West, for those keeping track), as well as half a dozen destinations all over coastal Spain.

What’s great about these packages is that you don’t have to go sans a plan. You’ll have a position already worked out before you arrive, you won’t have to waste precious hours searching for cheap housing and you’ll have all of it paid for up front. And while most of the positions are unpaid work placements, many offer cash bonuses and incentives and you’ll be getting the experience of a lifetime hanging out in Europe all summer, meeting new friends and tanning on the Mediterranean.

Who knows, maybe you’ll even have a European summer romance…

Very Talkative Man, Very Small Airplane by Haldun

Up close and personal. Nothing like being able to chat up the pilot, or better yet, rub shoulders. I wonder if they make you take off your shoes before boarding a flight like this.

Flying in a small propeller jet to a remote destination, exhilarating or excruciating?

Do more with your travel photos: print your favorite photos on Sosauce and show them off! Visit the Sosauce Store to get started.

How do you compare to the world’s most-traveled man?

According to last month’s article in The Guardian, Charles Veley is a “strong contender” for the world’s most-traveled man, visiting over 800 countries in the past decade.

“My philosophy for travel is this: always plan as if you are going to do a Japanese-style tour and every second is accounted for,” said Veley. “But on arrival, abandon all that and do whatever feels right.”

The article struck a chord with one of our Travel Geeks, The Mathematical Tourist aka Graeme Taylor. In a recent journal entry he responded to Veley’s “competitive traveling,” raising some key questions:

There are discrepancies over how many countries and destinations are legitimately recognized by Veley’s “Most Traveled People” database, the Traveler’s Century Club, and even the UN.

Which organization is the most accurate and how does one qualify as a competitive traveler?

What does it mean to “visit” a place?

As Graeme asked, “Is simply clearing the border enough? Is it enough to take photos? To eat local food? Should you stay until you have a story to tell, or have made a friend?”

According to Veley’s story, country hopping is easier when “there’s always a bar.” This leads Graeme to further question Veley’s real motivation for traveling. Read what else Graeme had to say in response to the world’s most-traveled man in his Sosauce Journal entry below:

What are your thoughts on the concept of “competitive traveling”?

Should one’s motivation to travel be more than to just collect passport stamps?

How do you stand with the Most Traveled People?


Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Really, what traveller doesn’t? It’s amazing how often travel and food intersect to produce your most lasting memories. With that in mind, veteran Lonely Planet author and editor Don George is putting together our latest anthology, A Moveable Feast: Life-Changing Food Encounters Around the World.

As Don says, ‘every traveller has some unforgettable food story – a larger-than-life feast, a mind-bending immersion in a rural market, the homemade, heart-opening treat shared by a stranger on a claptrap train, an adventure on the trail of an edible exotic. In all these tales, food is an agent of transformation, taking travellers to a deeper and more lasting understanding of and connection with a people, a place and a culture. And if they’re really lucky, it tastes good too!’

Already licking your lips and dusting off your laptop? Go to it! Don’s looking from submissions, and points out that our three previous anthologies – The Kindness of Strangers, By the Seat of My Pants, and Tales from Nowhere – all featured ‘a mix of authors spanning the spectrum from best-selling to never-been-published-before.’

All you need is a (true) tale of travel and food. We’re looking for original, unpublished pieces of exceptionally high literary quality. Length is from 1,000 to 3,000 words. Deadline is April 19.

If you have a great food story to tell, email it to Don at don.george@sbcglobal.net with Food Anthology in the subject line. All submissions are on speculation.

A Moveable Feast will be published this fall.

The Perfect Pint by Sean

In the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, I had to indulge and show one of my own photos, the pouring of the perfect pint of Guinness in Dublin. This truly is an art, made up of the glass, the angle, the pour, the head, and the top-off. You can read Brewmaster Fergal Murray’s detailed account of what the perfect pint entails. Though the Guinness here in America doesn’t come close to Ireland, as they say, “it just doesn’t travel well,” let’s raise a glass and celebrate the ol’ Irish!

Do more with your travel photos: print your favorite photos on Sosauce and show them off! Visit the Sosauce Store to get started.

Travel Talk is a new Sosauce blog series in which we chat with our favorite travel experts about celebrating the saucy side of travel. With such successful experiences in travel media, we want to highlight their journeys from turning a passion for wanderlust into a profession, their travel plans for 2010, and how they document and share their own travel experiences.

You can read our previous traveler spotlight interviews on Sosauce here.

This week we chatted with Travel Pod Community Manager, Louise Brown. Louise is a fierce traveler, having visited 18 countries and shared more than 2,700 travel photos, plus 345 entries on more than 50 travel blogs. If that doesn’t qualify you as a Travel Geek, then I don’t know what does. Read our interview with Louise below to find out what motivates her to keep on traveling, what it’s like to be a community manager for a top travel blog, and how she keeps her travels saucy.

Louise and dog in Iqaluit

How is 2010 treating you so far? What upcoming travel plans do you have in store this year?
Well! This year I want to go on an epic train journey. I’m competing in Off Track Planet’s Eurail contest, so I’m crossing my fingers and hoping to head to Europe for a train journey with my dad. Whether or not that works out, my dad and I are going to hop on Amtrak and do a big “upside down L” – west across the northern states to Seattle and south to California.

When did you begin sharing your travel experiences online?
I started my blog in November 2007, but I have entries from as far back as 1996, when I went to Mexico with Girl Guides. I tend to write my blogs on paper when I’m traveling, and then when I get back, just type them up. If you carry around a notebook, it’s amazing how much time you will find during the day. When you are traveling you’re always waiting around for something, whether you’re meeting a friend, catching  a bus, or ordering a meal. I always find time to write what I am thinking.

Recreate and share your travels with Sosauce! Create your own travel journals, upload hi-res photos, write destination reviews, and connect with other Travel Geeks. Join us at Sosauce.com

Any tips for aspiring travel bloggers?
Read lots and write lots. Use all five senses when you are doing it. Talk to people, take their pictures, tell them what you are doing. Make sure you give them your blog URL before you part ways, the people you write about in your blog will be your most dedicated readers in the future.

Looking to expand your travel writing portfolio? Become a guest Travel Geek blogger on Sosauce. More info can be found here.

“I try to impact the planet with the smallest footprint possible.”

You’re a big fan of being environmentally friendly and eating healthy. How are you able to keep these practices up when you’re traveling? Any tips for other like-minded travelers?

Ahhhhh, my vegetarianism usually goes right out the door when I travel. I have had some incredible veggie dishes all over the world, but I just can’t pass up the opportunity to try local and traditional meals just because there is meat in it. On top of this, I couchsurf a lot. When you are couchsurfing and/or accepting a meal at someone’s house, it’s a lot easier to graciously eat what they provide and steer the conversation away from militant vegetarian discussion. It might not be PC to operate that way, but I believe it facilitates a better relationship with your host.

To cut down on carbon emissions and pollution, I also use rideshare a lot and travel and local, land-based transportation. Two years ago, I broke down and bought a motorcycle because there were a lot of smaller towns nearby that I wanted to visit. I believe it was a compromise, because a motorcycle is A LOT more efficient than a car is. So, I’m trying to strike a balance between exploring the countryside and environmental friendliness. In addition to this, the dollars that I spend in the small towns I visit really need it, and I would not have ever gotten there had I not bought my bike.

“Types of people I enjoy: people who appreciate the journey more than the destination.”

What interested you in joining Travel Pod? How did you become Community Manager?

Couchsurfing! I was really active in our local group, in Ottawa Canada, and my boss posted the position in our group. I applied and that was that.

Your home base is currently Ottawa, Canada. Are there any other places you would like to live in?
Believe it or not, I’ve lived in Ottawa for 10 years! I’ve always wanted to live somewhere where transportation is a lot cheaper. A place like Toronto or Montreal would be ideal. On my last trip to Boston, I saved $100 on the Greyhound just because I left from Montreal rather than Ottawa. Amazing.

You’ve traveled quite a bit to attend music festivals and concerts. Who are some of your favorite musicians and what’s the sauciest experienced you’ve had at a concert?
My absolute favourite band is Smashing Pumpkins, and I saw them two years ago at Virgin Fest on Toronto Island when they were doing a double headline weekend with Bjork, The Killers, Interpol, M.I.A., K-Os, Kid Koala and tons more amazing bands. I guess I would call this a pretty saucy experience because I met my ex-boyfriend there. We’re both insane Smashing Pumpkins fans and even though we’ve since parted ways, I think meeting him really enhanced my life.

My absolute sauciest experience was crashing the artist after party at NXNE in Toronto two years ago. I found what I thought was a random flyer on the ground in a hotel for an after party. So I went bar hopping until the festival was over and when 2 a.m. rolled around, I checked out the after party that I had a flyer for in my pocket. What could it hurt, right? I walked by the venue twice, assuming the sign on the door saying “private party” was not meant for me. When I double checked the address, I noticed I was in the right place. I sat down beside the editor of Now Magazine, chatted him up and ordered a beer. When I didn’t have to pay for said beer, I realized where I was. I spent the rest of the night partying like a rockstar with up and coming indie bands like Hollerado and such. I didn’t get back to my friend’s place until well after the sun came up. It was stupidly crazy.

You feature top travel blogs daily on Travel Blog Sites. What is the purpose behind Travel Blog Sites and who have been some of your favorite bloggers to interview?
At TravelBlogSites.com, we want to showcase the best and the brightest of the web’s independent travel bloggers. There are a lot of great collaborative bloggers out there, but we want to shine a light on the DIY-ers, people doing it themselves. It’s a tough slog, and they deserve all the recognition they get, so we’re trying to give them what we can. So, we created a weekly top 100 list that breaks it down in what we think is a fair and accurate way, using Alexa and Compete.com information.

My favourite blogger to interview is a toughie! Everyone has such neat stories, but I’m gonna have to go with Corbin Fraser of ibackpackcanada.com. He has an incredible passion for my favourite country, and he just jumped right into the roadtrip lifestyle. Anyone who’s sold everything and driven across the Saskatchewan prairie gets tons of respect from me.

Read Travel Blog Sites’ feature on the Sosauce Travel Geek blog and learn to travel with a purpose.

Based on your travel experiences thus far, you’re a certified Travel Geek. What do you think makes you stand out as a Travel Geek?

I’m always looking at new ways to hack my travel. I recently used my Aeroplan points for a virtually free trip to Iqaluit, Nunavut. I had to spend about an hour calling back and forth between Aeroplan and the airline, but I finally managed a flight. They normally cost anywhere from $2,000-$3,000, but with a little bit of legwork, I got it free.

I’m also constantly checking airfarewatchdog.com and the rideshare section of Craigslist and Kijiji to find myself new and exciting cheapo weekend trips and destinations.

What is your dream destination and why?
It WAS Nunavut. As of last year, this was the only Canadian province/territory that I hadn’t visited yet. When I went there in September, it was literally a dream come true. I’m a patriotic Canadian so I feel very blessed to be able to traverse this giant country on my own. One hundred years ago, nothing like that would’ve been possible in such a short period of time, and with such ease. The diversity and harshness of the land is simply amazing. I’m constantly in awe of this place.

My new dream destination is California and Seattle, but also Portugal and Spain. Can you believe I’ve never been to California? I’m hopefully going to all four of them this summer with my dad on our giant train trip.

*All photos provided by Louise Brown.

Thanks to Louise for loving the Sosauce Travel Geeks and chatting with us about her saucy travel experiences. To get involved with Travel Pod or Travel Blog Sites, be sure to connect with their communities at TravelPod.com.

Build a better travel blog with Travel Blog Success. Join Sosauce in becoming an affiliate – explore premium membership options, read expert advice, and create action plans for your travel blog. Learn more here.

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I've been to what? Eighty, ninety countries?
I've seen a lot of things.
But no place has so utterly confounded me, intimidated, horrified, amazed, sickened, depressed, inspired, exhausted and shown me--with every passing hour--how wrong I was about everything I might have thought only an hour previous. This is a country, founded by freed slaves from America--and intended to be very much in our image-- but recently emerged from civil wars so brutal, so surrealistically violent as to defy imagining, where drugged gunmen in wedding gowns and wigs once shot hacked (and frequently cannibalized) their way into power. It is also a place where mothers and grandmothers stripped off their clothes and naked and unarmed, confronted those same gunmen mid-massacres, getting them to stop. It is now the first African nation with a woman president. It's a country where you find 28 year olds proudly graduating from high school--the school system having evaporated during the many years of conflict. There's a church on nearly every corner--but underneath it all, traditional "masked societies" still rule the hearts and minds and behaviors of many...

Almost nothing is left of the functioning (but deeply corrupt and unjust) society that once was. But peeking through the dust and the ruined buildings--there's something that looks very much like hope. It is a place where everywhere you look there are stories of incredible heroism and determination. Where nearly everyone must fight to live every day. It's also a place where one is reminded every day of the evil that men can do. And where vengeance..and even justice..are luxuries few can afford. Forgiveness--amazingly--seems the order of the day.
I am well aware that I am fundamentally inadaquate to the task of "explaining" Liberia. I do know that it's the most difficult show we've ever done.

It's hot here.
And by hot, I mean really, really, really hot. An absolutely pitiless sun beats down constantly, its skin peeling intensity in no way mitigated by the occasional cloud cover. If anything its rays are refracted--diffused--so somehow they envelop you from all sides. The air doesn't move. A puff of wind is an event. The ground is baking hot and the spaces--whether in crowded traffic of Monrovia or the dense vegetation of the bush--are close. Everybody--everybody--is covered with a thick sheen of sweat. On those rare occasions when your room does have an air conditioner or a slow moving fan, you will leave it and within moments find your clothes wringing wet as if you've just emerged from a pool.

Red dust from the roads mixes with the sweat, creating almost a paste around your collar and under your arms--clinging to everything. Even the cameras are covered with it. The air smells of burning palm fronds and I've been eating palm butter and food cooked in palm oil and drinking palm wine--and when people sweat around here--in the close quarters of the "palava hut" in Nimba Province, for instance: the whole village jammed together, or the airless scrabble club in Monrovia, or the markets, our sweat has the sharp, aromatic tang of palm oil.
In fact, I'm tasting palm now--as I crawl back from the bathroom for the 50th time--soon to return. I've spent the last 12 hours back and forth, never sure which end to point at the bowl first. Utter misery.

One is never so lonely as when sick to one's stomach and far from home. What I crave between moans and prayers to every known deity is someone I love to hold a cold washcloth to my forehead and tell me,
"It's alright, baby...everything's gonna be alright..." What I've got is one of our (much needed) ex-SAS security "consultants" , who gives me some antibiotics and an emergency number to call should my condition worsen.
He's got to accompany the crew into town to shoot B-roll--as personal safety is still very much......a concern. Hugs are not exactly his specialty in any case.

Later, still weak as the proverbial kitten, I'll drive down to Robertsport for a "surfing scene". I doubt I'll have the strength to paddle out--much less get up on a board. We've lost nearly two days shooting .

The NGO's and aid workers who've spent YEARS here are an amazement to me. Our new friend Dave, with a group called EQUIP, who build and maintain wells, train villagers in water purification and waste disposal, distribute mosquito nets (which save untold lives in and of themselves), provide shelters for rape victims and other vital services--has been here 25 YEARS. He's survived multiple bouts of malaria, hookworm, 2 wars, 4 mock executions--and still tears up thinking about how many kids he's saved.Still working hard every day--his family along side him. Me? I'm ready to fold after a week.

I don't know what kind of show we're going to come back with. The food, in a place where the majority survive on a diet of mostly cassava and the occasional bushmeat, is..dodgy, by Western standards. But you're going to see something. There's a story to tell for sure.
I just wonder if I'm the guy to tell it.

Shared by Alisha
she's too cute and therefore can do no wrong.

There is much to be said for Zooey Deschanel performing a choreographed dance routine throughout the halls of a high school, obviously. But, honestly, when the slow-motion hula-hooping kicks in, it feels like she's fucking with us just a little, doesn't it?

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