501 Places

One of my top places in the world to visit, the west of the United States is rich with natural wonders and well-managed national parks. I have raved on about the American national parks in this area in a recent post so will spare you my words and just share a few of the favourite [...]

We see an item in the market that really grabs our interest. It has no price and so we ask the vendor how much it costs. All the while he is sizing us up. He looks at how we are dressed, what camera we are carrying, and very importantly where we come from. He wants [...]

The latest guest post on 501 Places is by Jerry Kubica. Jerry was born in Poland but during his early childhood had to survive the horrors of the war and deportation before arriving and settling in England. He set up the Our Roots Trust project to explore the roots of those imprisoned and killed in [...]

Among my hundreds of photos from a trip I seem to have relatively few of people. I still can’t get over that discomfort of asking someone for a photo, even when they seem happy about it, and often stand back when others are clicking away. As a result there are a number of people we [...]

In my first post last week I described a fictional journey from London up to the beautiful north west tip of Scotland. It was great to receive many suggestions of places I had missed, and also much doubt as to whether this intense itinerary would be possible to complete in one week. I have to [...]

This was the title of last night’s debate organised by CIMTIG and held in central London. I was keen to hear this discussion and went in to the event dubious as to the value of the high street travel agent in the wired world. I wrote in an earlier 501 Places post how I had [...]

We have probably all met at least one person who has cheated death in some way. Someone who, if they had been in a certain place a moment sooner or a moment later, or if they had made that connecting flight that they just missed, would not be with us to tell their story. And [...]

I’m going to what promises to be an interesting discussion tomorrow evening. It is organised by CIMTIG (Chartered Institute of Marketing Travel Industry Group) and is a panel debate on the subject “Travel Agents – Are They Past Their Sell-By Date?” I’ll write about the debate in the next few days, but wanted to share [...]

There’s an old stereotype of the British customer sitting at a restaurant. He complains bitterly to his partner about the meal. The service is slow, the waiter is rude, the food is awful. Halfway through the meal the waiter comes over and asks if everything is ok, and he chirps up “Yes thank you, it’s [...]

When our United Airlines flight from San Francisco touched down at Heathrow, 9 weeks after we had departed for Singapore, we had completed a full circuit of the globe. We had explored many exciting places, and returned home from the opposite direction. An epic journey for us, but we are among millions who have made [...]