Traveling with a boring guide book? Not happy with the restaurant listing of your Lonely Planet? Annoyed because there's no word on golf courses/spas/vintage clothes boutiques/ you name it in your TimeOut edition?

Brighter times are ahead.

Take an online trip to Viamigo, the brainchild of San Francisco based creative/journalist  jeff goldsmith, and pick from a vast menu of local guides that you don't have to lug around: living, breathing residents who are willing to put their arduously collected personal expertise at your disposal. Need a historian to explore the finer nuances of Sicilian baroque? Chances are you might find one on viamigo. Or maybe you feel like sharing your city wisdom with others? Sign up as a guide.

More on viamigo: 

VIAmigo.com helps global travelers find authentic, local experiences and insider adventures - by connecting them with personal tour guides from everywhere. We simply let independent tour guides tell everyone what travelers can see chez eux - and we let travelers rate guides. VIAmigo.com is, pardon the jargon, a one-to-one destination marketing platform. Go beyond the guidebook. Go everywhere. Get into everything.

tracie b. currently reports from Ischia

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by tracie b. 

One of the things that I love about Italy is the very short route that products take to travel from the source to the table. Many times it's as easy as reaching up to tree in your backyard to pick a ripe summer peach. Maybe you have a couple of eggplants growing in your garden or you just might know of a secret cove where mussels grow wild and can be scavenged at will.

In Italy, if you don't have the fortune of being so close to your produce, you will surely be able to profit from the tree of a neighbor or the knowledge of a retired fisherman.

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by anglofille

After living in London for almost a year, it’s obvious to me that as an American, I smile more than most of the native population here. I’ve noticed this phenomenon when I’ve visited other European countries as well. In general, I think Americans smile more and are friendlier than their European cousins.  There are regional variations when it comes to American friendliness, to be sure.  People in the Northeastern are much less friendly than people from other parts of the country, but in general it’s safe to say that Americans are a rather friendly bunch.

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by sabine behrmann

Since July is the month where most of Denmark is on holiday a closer look at Danish summer cottages may be in order.

They have been an important part of the Danish lifestyle for many years. First as a safe heaven for a very small group of affluent Copenhageners who wanted to escape the smelly summer air in the Danish capital. Later for people who felt that a primitive abode in a wood close to the sea was better than staying at home.

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by sabine behrmann

Danes prefer tourists to any other kind of foreigners: they admire the country, pay an awful lot of money for dubious services, and leave again rather quickly.

In a fit of anti-nationalism the Danish newspaper Politikenn has now pointed out ten reasons why people should not visit Denmark. They are:

1. Istedgade - former hallmarks: prostitution, pornography - there is still some of it left in the neighbourhood of the main station.
2. Tivoli - a must for tourists, getting gaudier and louder all the time.

Photo Credit: Limungo

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by anglofille

Now that it’s summer and London is mobbed with foreign tourists, the likelihood of seeing someone get hit by a taxi or a bus has increased dramatically.  I’ve seen way too many vehicles swerving to avoid hitting clueless tourists who step right out in front of them because they’re looking the wrong way. (And the obscenities such drivers often shout out the window certainly make the day brighter.)

These near-misses happen despite the fact that virtually every pedestrian crossing in London is painted with an important directive to visitors:

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The latest travel posts from members of the travel blog network at Blogads, a group of the best independent travel blogs on the web:

Women Talking Turkey (Womantraveler)
Episode 48 - San Diego, California (Amateur Traveler Podcast)
New York podcasts: museums, music and more (NewYorkology)
Greetings from Pescara, Italy (Travel Blogs)
Fashionism: Milan Fashion Week Hi Jinx (Shortcut)

Photo credit: Jagerjan 

by jared bibler

25 minutes' drive out of town on the main road heading north, through and past a town called Mossfellsbær, the city of Reykjavík resumes dominion to pick up a distant settlement. Grundarhverfi (116 Reykjavík to the post-code-savvy) is as much Reykjavík as a West Bank outpost is Jerusalem.

A few streets' worth of houses cling together for survival in a barren windswept plain with a craggy appendage of Esja looming above. There is a one-pump gas station, a bus shelter filled with snow, a couple of school buildings, and solitary horses dotting the snowy fields that lead down to the sea.

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A round of travel posts from the travel blog network at Blogads. This week, a visit to Poland and a podcast on the enticements of Spanish wine:

The Land of King Krak (Travel Blogs)
Notes from Spain podcast no. 41 - Spanish Wine (Notes from Spain)
London: Mad for the Soccer Wives (Shortcut)
Fog City Survival Kit (Womantraveler)
NY's best (affordable) membership privileges (NewYorkology)

Photo credit: Greggy 1 

by jared bibler 

Lucky visitors to Reykjavík and downtown-inclined natives know that, at 3 a.m. on a weekend night, the absolute best place to fill your greasy cravings is Iceland's sandwich mecca, Hlölla Bátar. (English translation is Hlölli's Boats, since the sub sandwiches purveyed there are referred to as "boats" in the local sub-shop parlance.)

Photo credit: Daquella Manera

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by katie lips

Amsterdam may not seem like a city by the sea, sure there's plenty of water in the canals but many visitors never make it as far as the beach; surprising as they're really no that far away.  If you can't make the half hour train journey to Zandvoort for example, head over to one of Amsterdam's new city beaches. It seems Amsterdammers have a sensible approach to relaxing on the beach; "if there's not one nearby, make a new one" and "a beach = a party".

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The weekly headlines from the group of independent blogs at the travel blog network at Blogads:

The ABC's of Biz Travel (Womantraveler)
Don't Flip the Fish: Rules of Etiquette at a Meal in China (Travel Blogs)
Copenhagen: Overweight and a Genius (Shortcut)
Macbeth at Delacorte Theatre in NYC - FREE (A Guy in New York)
Shake Shack's long line for burgers now on webcam (NewYorkology)

Photo credit: Fabio 

It's the weekly round up with headlines from the travel blog network at Blogads, a group of the best independent travel blogs on the web:

Episode 45 - Travel Photography (interview with Chris Marquart) (Amateur Traveler Podcast)
Mexican Migration: Between the Wall and the Sword (Travel Blogs)
Berlin: The Right Word for the Game (Shortcut)
Mom's Student Abroad Summer Primer (Womantraveler)
Tribute Center to open near Ground Zero in August (NewYorkology)

Photo credit: Dziga Vertov via Moviola 

by bowleserised 

What I Saw by Joseph Roth, as translated by Michael Hofmann, was my birthday present from Chenda this year and it's superb. Roth was a journalist and flâneur pacing the streets of Berlin between 1920 and 1933, hating what he saw and then describing it all in loving detail. You get the dive bars, the bathhouses, tales from the S-bahn and the tenements, nightclubs, cinemas and book burnings*.

If Beaman hasn't read it I'll eat my fancy hat; it's very tempting to want to do a parallel, 2006 version in a blog (though the Beaman-ster is doing his own thing, and very nicely too). Too much for me to quote here, though I'll type out a little.

I'm annoyed by the blurb on this edition which brays, "As if anticipating Christopher Isherwood, the book re-creates the tragi-comic world of 1920s Berlin...", as though Herr Issyvoo was the sole yardstick for anyone writing about Weimar Berlin.

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