Throughout the ages, religious orders have traditionally offered lodging and a bite to eat in return for a small donation. Although few were aware of it until very recently, this tradition continues today. Convents and monasteries around the globe supplement their income by offering cheap, clean, and safe accommodations for modern day pilgrims.
I first heard [...]
Archive for the ‘Travel writing’ category
Several months ago, author David Stanley offered to send me a copy of his guide book “Moon Fiji,” for which I wrote a glowing review. Since I was so impressed, Stanley offered to send me Moon Tahiti for review as well.
Travel guides, while unquestionably useful, are hardly the kind of books one chooses for an [...]
A Rotten Person Travels The Caribbean by Gary Buslik, is an hysterically funny, make you choke on laughter, make tears run down your cheeks, novel about a lifetime of Caribbean travel.
I actually met Gary Buslik – briefly – at a gathering of travel bloggers. For some unknown reason, he decided that I would be a [...]
Following two intense days at BlogHer 2009, I headed back into Chicago for Travel Blog Exchange ‘09, a one day event for travel bloggers sponsored by TravelBlogExchange.com. The website was founded just last year by Kim Mance, host of Galavanting.tv, and editor-in-chief of GoGalavanting.com, as a place for those who blog about travel to connect [...]
A while back I wrote that Hole In The Donut was featured on the Briefcase to Backpack website. The founders of the site, Michaela Potter and Sherry Ott, both took a mid-career break to travel around the world and in so doing discovered an interesting fact: although Brits, Aussies and many other cultures accept the [...]
If you have noticed the UpTake badge on my sidebar at the right, you may be wondering what that’s all about. UpTake.com is a travel search start-up company based in Palo Alto, CA. The company’s mission is to improve online travel searches by offering vacation information about where to go, what to do and where [...]
For the past two days I have been in Cincinnati, attending the first annual Writer’s Digest University Editors’ Intensive Event. For those of you who don’t know, Writer’s Digest is the definitive magazine for writers. It is published by FW Media, which also publishes Writer’sMarket and Guide to Literary Agents, the two writer’s bibles when [...]
Just a quick note of thanks here. My blog placed seventh in the travel category at DivineCaroline.com, due in large part to all the wonderful readers who voted for me. Please accept my heartfelt thanks. Writing this blog is my passion and it would be meaningless without you.
A few weeks ago, Hole In The Donut was nominated in the category of best travel blog over at Divine Caroline.com, a really great online woman’s magazine (I especially like them because they have a lot of content about travel). I excitedly emailed all my friends, and asked them to vote for me if they [...]
It is 5 p.m. on Sunday afternoon. The day’s last rays of sunshine are streaming through my apartment windows. It looks like it was a lovely day, but I can’t really know for sure because I’ve been sitting in the same spot for hours, plugging away at the computer. You see, the design of my [...]
After years of working 70 hours a week at jobs I detested, I felt like the proverbial "hole in the donut" - solid on the outside, but empty on the inside. Searching for meaning in my life, I abandoned my successful but unsatisfying career and set out on a six-month solo backpacking trip around the world to pursue my true passions of travel, writing, and photography. 
















