You'll want to bookmark/favorite this site. Image courtesy of BestTravelDeals.net

If you are always on the lookout for tips and bargains, love to travel, and love to tweet even more, you should definitely check out the Ultimate List of Twitter Travel Accounts just published at BestTravelDeals.net. This very comprehensive list shows the twitter user name for airlines, airports, trains, subways, rental cars, hotels, cruises, pet travel, booking sites, travel guides and reviews, travel tips, and travel blogs.

Great news! Devoted Hole In The Donut readers will never again have to worry about missing a post!

Look for the new “Get New Posts By Email” box on the very top of the right-hand sidebar. Enter your email address and click on the subscribe button. You will receive a confirmation email containing a link that must be clicked to verify your subscription. Once verified, you will receive an email notice each time I publish a post. Emails contains the title of the post, allowing you to decide if the content is something that would be of interest. You can also unsubscribe at any time by returning to the same box, entering your email address, and clicking on the unsubscribe button. Happy reading!

Thanks to Laura Lee over at Midlife Crisis Queen for her nomination of Hole In The Donut for a Splash Award!

The Splash is  given to alluring, amusing, bewitching, impressive, and inspiring blogs.

In the spirit of the pass-it-along quality of the award, I invite you to visit the following blogs which I am nominating because I have found them to be well worth following:

• Random Thoughts From The Beach
• The Fabulous Geezersisters
• Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site
• Travel Wonders of the World
• Briefcase To Backpack
• What A Trip!
• DuchessOmnium – Island to Island

Note to nominees: The rules for a Splash Award are as follows:

The Splash Award is given to alluring, amusing, bewitching, impressive, and inspiring blogs. When you receive this award, you should: 1. Put the logo on your blog (where do we find this logo to post?) 2. Nominate up to nine blogs that allure, amuse, bewitch, impress or inspire you 3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post 4. Let them know that they have been splashed by commenting on their blog 5. Remember to link to the person from whom you received your Splash award

I’ve added a new blog to my list of favorites – BriefcaseToBackpack.com.

Now, you might think that I’ve chosen it because the authors, Michaela Potter and Sherry Ott, recently published a feature article about me. And indeed, my initial introduction to BriefcaseToBackpacker occurred when Michaela contacted me about an interview. But from the moment I began surfing around it, I was hooked.

From left to right: Michael Bontempi (who accompanied Michaela on her career break), Michaela Potter, and Sherry Ott

The concept for Briefcase To Backpacker evolved as a result of Michaela and Sherry’s career breaks. Having worked for many years in the corporate world, Michaela needed a change. She left her job, strapped on a backpack, and hit the road for nine weeks. At the time, Sherry was well into her 16-month backpacking trip around the world. She, too, had grown tired of her corporate career and a fast-paced life in New York and hit the road. Then, fate intervened. During her travels, Sherry taught English for a month in India through the volunteer organization, Cross-Cultural Solutions. As a Program Manager at CCS, Michaela was made aware of Sherry’s trip and followed along on her travel blog.

Although their individual trips were different in many ways, they came away with similar realizations. They met people from a wide variety of countries and backgrounds, but very few Americans. In turn, most people were surprised that Read the rest of this entry »

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they write. The good writers are wide open. They don’t pull any punches. They’re honest about their feelings – sometimes to the point of being raw. They’re not afraid to integrate their lives, their feelings, and their experiences into what they write.

I am constantly appalled at the poor quality writing to be found on the Internet and in published materials. Conversely, I am always delighted when I discover well-written blogs that make me cry, wonder, sigh, gasp, ponder, or even laugh out loud. The following are a few of the later. I share them because I am sure you will enjoy them as much as I do: Read the rest of this entry »

I’m continually expanding my vocabulary. It’s never too late to learn. A couple of years ago I was introduced to the phrase, “my bad,” which apparently is a sorry excuse for an apology when you’ve made a mistake or done something wrong. Today I learned that I am “snarky.” But I am getting ahead of myself.

About ten days ago I was asked to participate in a survey of bloggers being conducted by Technorati, the Internet search engine that tracks blogs and monitors what is happening in the blogosphere. I was honored. The fact that I had been asked to participate must mean they have a high opinion of my blog. The online survey took a long time to complete, but I persevered because of the special distinction of being included in the survey. Everything went along swimmingly until one question asked me to describe my blog by checking all the boxes that applied: Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re like me (read “computer attached at the hip”) you not only use the computer for work and research, you also use it for entertainment. One of my favorite pastimes is reading other people’s blogs. Several are written by friends; I love being able to check in at any time and see what is going on in their lives. Others are blogs written by people I’ve never met, but whose lives I find interesting, or whose writing styles amuse and entertain me.

Occasionally I search for new bloggers and this is usually a difficult task. For instance, recently I was searching for good travel blogs. I tried Google’s regular search and their blog search, but it just referred to large commercial sites like Travelocity, Lonely Planet, and Boots ‘n All, rather than individual bloggers writing good posts about travel. Fortunately, when I found Alltop.com , my problem was solved.

Alltop is what is known as an aggregator – a web site that pulls in information from many other sites and puts it all in one place. In this case, Read the rest of this entry »