Win a trip!

TrippyDoo searched and found 5 travel contests that have your name written on them. Here they are below – best of luck!

1. Win a trip for 4 to Tuscany! Celebrate Francesco Rinaldi’s 30th anniversary by visiting the lovely Tuscany.

ENTER BY: December 31, 2010

PRIZE: 6 night accommodations in Tuscany in a 2 bedroom apartment at 4 star La Fattoria, 6 day manual shift car rental with unlimited mileage, and a wine tasting tour at a 14th century sastle and $1,000 in spending money.

ENTER HERE

2. Win a trip to Ireland with Frommer’s!

ENTER BY: July 31, 2010

PRIZE: Roundtrip transportation to Ireland on Aer Lingus, two nights at Adare Manor in Limerick, two nights in Ashford Castle in Mayo, two nights in Ritz-Carlton Powerscourt in Wicklow, Mercedes 200E rental for the week with unlimited mileage, full Irish breakfast daily.

ENTER HERE.

3. Win a trip for 2 to Rome with Frommer’s!

ENTER BY: July 31, 2010

PRIZE: Round trip economy-class airfare for two from a major airport near winner’s home to Rome, Italy and four nights’ hotel accommodations for two at a participating Delta Vacations hotel in Rome.

ENTER HERE.

4. Win a student trip with S Trip!

ENTER BY: continuous.

PRIZE: Various trips in the Caribbean or Mexico.

ENTER HERE.

5. Win a trip to Sweden with Stieg Larsson!

ENTER BY: July 31, 2010

PRIZE: Roundtrip air transportation for two from an airport near winner’s home to the closest SAS gateway, roundtrip coach airfare for winner and one travel companion to Stockholm on Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) from one of SAS’s gateways, hotel stay in the Sheraton Stockholm Hotel for 3 nights, hotel stay at Seglarhotellet in Sandhamn for 1 night, Stockholm cards for both travels allowing free admission to many Stockholm attractions.

ENTER HERE.

A change of perspective and major updates

Dear friends, after a few months since we’ve launched TrippyDoo we have learned from the way you use our website several things:

  • as much as you like to share you experiences, you just don’t have that much time to actually cover in detail your trip through posts (which means writing a lot);
  • even if you do have time to write, you may forget to cover the things others need to make a decision of visiting a place or not.

So in order to make TrippyDoo more useful for you we’ve changed the perspective – from just covering your travel experiences, to recommending a destination you’ve visited to your friends and other travelers like you.

This change of perspective had significant implications in the way we’ve built TrippyDoo as far as structure and possibilities we’ve given you to participate in the community we want to get together. To be more clear, we have updated TrippyDoo with the following:

  • Create/edit a trip – you can now edit every field inline, in the same page, without having to open that editor we had for the posts;
  • Second – there are no more posts (yay!:D), but a simple inline trip format with the following components: name of the trip, location, recommendations (i.e. adventure, beach, sightseeing), things you liked/things you didn’t like, budget (how much you spent there), photo & video gallery (import from Facebook/Picasa), Places to eat and Places to stay (just add the name of the rest/hotel, we’ll find you a relevant photo, and you simply type a short review), and Notes – free field where you can add the trip’s story we so much want to read about.
  • We’ve also removed the Groups for now because we felt the need to rethink them and make them better and more useful for you.

All in all, this is how a new trip is looking right now: Naples, Italy trip. Please go log in and check out your trips and your friends’ trips as well, as we had to restructure them in their new format.

Again, these changes are meant to make TrippyDoo more useful for you when you plan a trip to say Naples, and not just to add your travel stories. Please send us you thoughts, complaints, bugs and the like directly to hello [at] trippydoo.com to solve them asap.

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Off the beaten track – Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

This is the first from a series of guest posts from travelers we know and love from around the world. Today Dia is telling us about Veliko Tarnovo, an off the beaten track city in Bulgaria. Follow Dia’s travel adventures and wanders on her blog (Romanian).

Veliko Tarnovo is a breath of fresh air. Is easy to get there from Bucharest or even from Sofia. From Bucharest it’s something like a 3 hour drive with at least a short break included. And From Sofia.. I think it’s like a 4 hour drive. And from Sofia you can also take the bus from “Centralna avtogara”.

veliko tarnovo

Veliko Tarnovo

For Romanians is like a second Sighisoara closer to home. Veliko Tarnovo or the city of the tsars as it’s sometimes called is a medieval city, dating back since the first Bulgarian Empire. But I won’t go all historical on you, there are books for that.

Let’s start with a few recommendations.

Where to Stay

This has never been a problem in V.T. It’s easy to find a nice deal in a small hotel or in a B&B, or even an apartment (most of the times they are the best deal, especially if your booking for a 4+ group). I can recommend with all my heart the hotel Stambolov.

Where to Eat:

Best place in town is Shtastlivetsa. It’s the classiest restaurant with an awesome view of the city and of Gurko Street. They serve the best pizza ever! But be careful! The big pizza is really quite big, for at least 2 people.

And there are also the Ego restaurants. They also have very good food and I am happy to say that also fast service. You will surely not regret entering there. There are 3-4 restaurants around town.

And also don’t forget to try the Ice cream from Raffy. You will mostly find them on the street. But they are the best you can find in Bulgaria. I know that normally you can find this near the Post Office, near to Square “Maika Balgaria”.

Veliko Tarnovo

Veliko Tarnovo

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Top 10 Castles to Stay in Europe

Ever fancied having your own castle and pretending you are a princess or Sir Lancelot? Well, you can have that dream fulfilled and actually rent or buy a beautiful castle in Europe, and at affordable prices (or so the property experts say). For the rest of us we’ve put together a list with our top 10 castle hotels in Europe, and a little bit about each to ease your decision if you consider booking a room, or why not – plan a wedding:

1. Amberley Castle, England

amberley castle

http://www.amberleycastle.co.uk/

The lovely 900-year-old medieval castle in England is perfect for a slow vacation. The castle has a legendary history, including ownership by Queen Elizabeth I from 1588 to 1603; visits from Charles II; and a bout in the civil war, when Cromwell attacked its walls. Nowadays the 19 rooms are luxurious and enchanting, boasting elegant four-poster beds, rich wall hangings and carpets, antique frills, and a few modern additions like en-suite jacuzzi, TVs and VCRs. A standard B&B double room can be your for about 440 EUR.

2. La Bourdasiere Castle – Val de Loire

la bourdasiere castle

http://www.labourdaisiere.com/

Constructed in the 15th century for the royal mistress of King François I, the castle today is a popular honeymoon destination (for officially married couples). Located less than an hour from Paris, and surrounded by 140 acres of enchanted woodlands, Château de la Bourdaisière lets guests live like royalty, with 11 luxurious rooms (and three apartments), outdoor heated swimming pool, tennis courts, and more.  Price of a standard room: 142 EUR.

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Traveling with your dog this summer?

Friends, we’ve been asked recently about how someone should prepare if he wants to travel with the pet. And though we’re mostly into sheep, we’ve put together some quick travel tips to help you when you’re planning a road trip with your precious:

- Be sure to pack all his things he’d normally use when at home – food, water, bowls, snacks, leash, collar, medicine, toys, bedding;

- Besides the essentials, you should have with you the dog’s ID & health certificate, paper towels, stain remover and some anti-diarrhea and car sick pills;

- Plan longer breaks while driving, and keep the dog in the back seat; consider some sedatives if he is very active, but be sure to check it with the vet first; (more…)

Chicago card from Nick

I just picked up from my mail box a lovely card from Nick Hawkins‘ hometown, Chicago :) I’ve been watching Nick’s blog and his TWT/FB traveling stuff for a while now, and I must say he’s one of my fav travelers. Not just because he’s traveled the world so many times, but because he tells the stories in his own personal style.

Here’s the card below. Thanks Nick & promise to visit your town sometime soon.

chicago

Dear friends, we just wanted to tell you…

trippy-easter(2)

The Lemon & Orange Dinosaur

The Lemon Festival (“Fete du Citron“) in Menton this year had a really interesting way to celebrate the lemons and oranges – thousands of fruits were used to create several creative sculptures and mosaics, all having as theme the cinema. The festival takes place during Feb 5th – Mar 3rd, and it is supported by the local tourism office to encourage visits to the city. We’ve gathered below some pictures from the festival to understand what made us write about it:

fete-du-citron

Lemon Dinosaur
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Two small updates to ease your way on TrippyDoo

Hi guys! This is a quick one – just wanted to let you know that we made a couple of small fixes to help you navigate and share your traveling experiences through photos & videos:

1. You can now add a small description to each of your photos. If you have ~50 photos from your latest trip in Paris, you can tell us what you did & how you felt the city by adding a Post, then simply add a small text to the photos you want to give more explanations, like “this is me with my friend having the best coffee ever” :)

2. We’ve added some titles & links to help you navigate when viewing the photo gallery of a trip. Nothing fancy, just “back to trip/back to post/back to profile”.

Go login & tell us what you think!

The World’s First Flying Hotel

Visionary concept, the world’s frst flying hotel introduced by design company Seymourpowell and called “Aircruse“. The hotel will have low passenger numbers and huge internal spaces offering room for living, dining and relaxing, as well as scope for dramatic and inspirational public spaces, as the company states in the press release.

Furthermore, the giant kite-shaped hotel is eco-friendly:  the Aircruise combines solar power with a primary hydrogen drive for a cruising speed of around 90mph, while transporting 100 people from London to New York.

Samsung Construction and Trading already showed interest in building this machine, and they estimated 2015 as the year when it will fly for the first time. Well, if this is the future of luxury traveling, we might witness a strong competition for the sea cruises operators.

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