New Browser - Chrome from Google
September 3rd, 2008 | Posted by Pauline
I downloaded it yesterday and I like it! The download and install is quick and easy (and free). Happy to say that all my websites work with it.
Sunset Magazine - Insider Tips for Santa Fe
August 23rd, 2008 | Posted by Pauline
The September issue of the Southwest edition of Sunset Magazine (New Mexico and Arizona) has a short interview with me about traveling in Santa Fe and the Southwest.
Sunset Magazine, Southwest Insider Tips, “Ask the Expert - Pauline Kenny”, by Jennica Peterson, photo by Jen Judge.
“The founder of slowtrav.com shares her slow travel tips to help you enjoy towns like Ouray and Santa Fe.”
Read more online - Ask the Experts.
See my article about Santa Fe on Slow Travel.
When I did the interview they told me they would mention the new site, Slow Europe, but it got cut out. In the photo (which I like!) I am sitting on our portal by the front door (on the bench where the cat usually sleeps). Here is my earlier blog post about the article - Slow Europe in Sunset Magazine.
Vacation Like a European - Summer in Italy
August 8th, 2008 | Posted by Pauline
This month for the “Vacation Like a European” series, I have written about Summer in Italy, an agency based in Italy, run by Italians, but serving mostly English-speaking clients. Most of their rentals are in southern Italy, on the popular Amalfi Coast (Sorrento, Capri, Positano, Praiano, Amalfi) and further south on the less well known and less expensive Cilento Coast - perfect destinations for a fabulous seaside vacation. They serve other popular parts of Italy as well - Rome, Lazio, Tuscany, Umbria, Lake Como, Venice.
This is small, personal agency, who care about their clients and provide a range of beautiful vacation rentals from budget to luxury. I have known Luca Trotta, the General Manager, since he started the agency and I highly recommend them.
Summer in Italy (Spring, Fall and Winter too!)
The vacation rental agency Summer in Italy is a family affair, lead by Gioconda Trotta. Gioconda and her family started in the business almost by accident, renting out their summer home on the Cilento Coast, a beautiful “off the beaten track” area south of the Amalfi coast. Their century-old summer house originally belonged to her husband’s grandfather Pietro.
There was so much demand for their vacation rental that they started to work with other family members and friends to make their summer homes available to tourists. Many of these homes were left empty for much of the year, so everyone benefited by turning them into vacation rentals: extra income for the owners and lovely places to stay for the tourists. After a few years the Trotta family decided to take the next step and become a vacation rental agency. Summer in Italy was launched in 2001.
Now they have a staff of seven (many are in the Trotta family), offices in Italy (Salerno) and Switzerland (Lugano – near Lake Como in Italy), and over 500 properties throughout Italy. Summer in Italy is a good local vacation rental company that selects vacation rental properties carefully and offers personalized service.
Luca Trotta, Gioconda’s son, is the General Manager (see my interview with him at the end of this article). He is fluent in English and even understands our “American ways” because he spent a year in the US as an exchange student, living with an American family in the Washington D.C. area. “It was an incredible experience” says Luca, “and English is just a fraction of what I learnt during that year.” Now Luca is in his mid-thirties, married with a four year old and a new baby on the way.
Luca’s wife Mara maintains the property listings on the website, writing the descriptions and checking with the owners to be sure everything is accurately represented.
Valentina, Luca’s sister, covers the phones taking rental inquiries and talking to property owners. She has visited every vacation rental they have listed. It is Valentina’s cell number that clients are given to call any time of the day or night in case of emergency.
Andrea, Valentina’s husband’s brother, is called “Crazy Horse” because he likes to work long hours and goes online in the middle of the night to answer emails. So if you get a response in the late afternoon when you know everyone in Italy is asleep, it is Andrea burning the midnight oil. Andrea publishes a weekly booklet - Things to Do on the Amalfi Coast - that is distributed at Tourist Offices and hotels in the area.
Everyone at Summer in Italy speaks English and is used to dealing with American visitors. They have clients from 77 countries, from Albania to Zimbabwe, but the majority is from English-speaking countries: Americans (30%), Brits (20%), Australians (10%), Canadians (7%) and Irish (4%).
Expedia to buy hotel booking site Venere
August 5th, 2008 | Posted by Pauline
On July 15 Venere announced on their blog that Expedia is buying Venere. Venere is an online booking website for hotels worldwide, with a large number of hotels in Italy. Expedia is a large online travel company running Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, TripAdvisor.com and other travel sites.
Venere started out in 1995 as an Italian company. In 2006, the private equity firm Advent International acquired 60% of Venere (a controlling stake in the company).
Earlier this year, Venere acquired WorldBy.com. WorldBy.com runs several destination sites (Tuscany.net, RomeBy.com, FlorenceBy.com) that represent hotels and vacation rentals (villas). Venere has always had vacation rental/villa rental listings as well as hotels. With the acquisition of WorldBy, they are heading more into the villa rentals market.
My old website, Slow Travel, was a Venere affilate since 2003. In 2006, when Venere introduced their “popup girl” (see screensnap above), I decided to change from Venere to A Hotel in Italy (for Italy hotels) and Booking.com (for the rest of Europe). Did Venere think that graphic would appeal to the people who book hotels? I don’t see her on the site now - maybe she has been removed (good idea!).
New logos for Slow Europe and Cotswolder!
July 29th, 2008 | Posted by Pauline
A new logo for Slow Europe! We don’t plan to launch Slow Europe until the fall, but I found a graphic artist whose work I really liked, so I thought I would get a logo for the site now. The logo has the spiral for “slow”, surrounded by the elements of water, sun and earth.
The logo designer, Ginés Valera, lives in Spain. I explained to him what the Slow Europe site will be about - finding vacation/villa/holiday rentals in Europe - and showed him the Slow Food and Slow Travel logos with their snail and spiral logos. This is his representation of our idea. I love this logo - I think it will look good on a baseball cap! :)
A new logo for Cotswolder! Cotswolder will be launched in August. Part of the site is available now and the last section, Towns & Villages of the Cotswolds, is almost ready.
The new logo for Cotswolder is a spiral of bluebells. My favorite time of year in the Cotswolds is the spring when the woods are filled with Bluebells and Ransoms Ramsons (also called Garlic Flowers). I sent Ginés some of my spring flower photos and this is what he came up with for our logo. I love the spiral and the colors and being reminded of spring in the Cotswolds.
These logos were designed by Ginés Valera (www.mediacomm.es and www.lumina.es (under construction) - email: info@mediacomm.es). Ginés is Lumina on FeaturePics, a great site for buying graphics and photos to use on your websites.
Both sites will be redesigned over the next few weeks to incorporate the new logos.
Mad Men Season 2 starts tonight!
July 27th, 2008 | Posted by Pauline
AMC has started season 2 of Mad Men, a great TV series about life in New York City in the 1960s. Back when men were men, and women made the coffee. And everyone smoked!
On a recent BBC radio show that we were listening to on a Podcast they were talking about all the great TV from the US lately. I always love TV in England, but dismiss the US shows. But they have a point - there has been some great TV in the US the last few years. HBO - The Wire, Six Feet Under, Sopranos, Deadwood. Showtime - Californication, Dexter, Weeds, The Tudors. AMC - Mad Men.
And my personal favorite: SciFi Channel - Battlestar Galactica (not only because the planet they came from is my old university, Simon Fraser in Vancouver - but because it is just an incredible plot with great characters).
Now they are getting rid of in-flight magazines
July 21st, 2008 | Posted by Pauline
Emirates to do away with paper to cut weight, GulfNews.com, July 20, 2008. They will save over 4 pounds (2 kilograms) per seat (2,000 pounds per plane) by getting rid of the in-flight magazines. 4 pounds of in-flight magazines per seat - those are heavy magazines!
I guess it makes sense to get rid of some of the extras to make the flight lighter, but I think we are getting close to the border of ridiculous. Won’t passengers carryon more reading material if they know the in-flight magazines are gone? Or are in-flight magazines never read and this is just a good excuse to ditch them? (I never read the in-flight magazines.) Let’s see if other airlines follow Emirates on this one.
Pauline in Switzerland (Interhome Blog)
July 20th, 2008 | Posted by Pauline
Many vacation rental agencies realize that they need to provide good travel information to their clients and that a blog is a good way to do that.
Interhome, a large US and Europe based vacation rental agency, is doing that on their Interhome Blog. They asked me to write about some of my travel in Switzerland. I worked with their blog-master Eli and we decided to do a journal from the trip Steve and I did last summer to Leysin, in the Vaud Alps near Lake Geneva. My series of blogs starts with Two Weeks in the Swiss Alps and continues with a journal Pauline in Switzerland - Days 1 through 12.
July is the perfect month in the Swiss Alps. You can get some rain (mountain weather is unpredictable), but you also get sunny beautiful days with fields filled with colorful wildflowers. It was fun to go back through my travel journal and remember what a great time Steve and I had in Leysin last summer. Eli used many of my photos on the blog, but I also posted on Slow Europe some longer photo essays for our favorite hikes.
Sitting here in July, on the edge of the Rocky Mountains, I am having a great summer, but I would love to be up in those Swiss Alps right now.
Slow Europe Photos
Are You Twittering?
July 10th, 2008 | Posted by Pauline
Twitter - it’s the latest social networking thing! (Okay, it was the latest thing last year, but I just found out about it.) Twitter is a new type of social networking site based on micro-blogging. Sign up, set up your profile, find your “friends”, and do short 140 character maximum posts. It is strangely captivating.
Twitter was founded by Evan Williams who created Blogger (now owned by Google) and Biz Stone (also worked on Blogger and has written two good books about blogging). Their company is Obvious Corp.
So, follow me on Twitter! You will find some other Slow Travelers there: danamac, divinacucina, dreamofitaly.
More About Open Skies (new airline owned by British Airways)
July 9th, 2008 | Posted by Pauline
Last month I posted about a new airline - Open Skies starts flying New York to Paris. The travel blog “Gadling” sent one of their writers on an Open Skies flight and he writes in detail about the experience - Gadling flies Open Skies.
