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

lemon_house

lemon_sculpture1

lemons-sculpture2

Lemon_sculpture3

More photos from the festival on Flick here. My take on this is that the organizers really made this year’s festival viral – and I bet the bill is not that big. After all, they do have plenty of lemons & oranges :)

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.

Green Traveling Tips

We’ve heard much about green travel in the past few months, and people seem to have a positive reaction and encourage it as well. But   what is green travel after all, and how can we actually do that on our next trip? There seem to be various definitions, but the one for the Ecotourism is used the most as guidance:  “Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people.” (TIES, 1990).

Ok, so it’s about responsability and improvement. Hmm… that sounds nice, but why should we care? Well, one simple answer is that there are ~1 billion tourists traveling the world each year, and the number is growing. People and especially places will not stay like they are forever, and is very likely to suffer from the crowds passing by each day. Think about how much you love the places you went to, and the memories that you have – won’t it be nice if other people can see those places too? At first I thought that well, green traveling, like using bio products, will certainly be more expensive. But it actually isn’t, and it is very likely to give you a good feeling about the trip when you end it, and the people you met in each place you’ve been.

But how do we do you go green exactly? Is the travel agent really responsible towards the environment when he checks you to a 5 star hotel, or when the guide takes you to visit the crowded must see’s in city? Do you need to dramatically change your travel habits and give up the little pleasures? We’ve put together some small things that you can do to help improve the local communities and get a little bit more responsible in your next trip:

    • Turn off or unplug all appliances in your home: some appliances can pull up to 40 watts per hour even if turned off.
    • Turn off your water connection when leaving home.
    • Try to use public transportation as much as you can.
    • Leave your car at home, if possible, and opt for a rented one if you must at your destination.
    • Choose the train instead of the airplane (especially if you visit Europe).
    • Choose electronic tickets for your airline flights.
    • Try to book an eco-friendly hotel – some of them have special recycling programs, use solar power, have automatic turn off lights when the guests leave their rooms, and others.
    • Choose to reuse your towels, not change them every day (as most hotels do).
    • When leaving the room, turn off all lights and appliances, and turn down the heat or A/C.
    • Keep your showers short, and shut off the water while you’re brushing your teeth.
    • Buy local products instead of the ones you are used to from at home.
    • Ask your travel agent about the hotel, the guide/staff at the destination – try to choose a travel agent that works with locals and eco-friendly hotels.
    • Use the recycling trash bins used by the locals, and sort your trash accordingly.
    • Meet people! Learn a few words, and talk to the communities you visit. Learn about their environment problems and how they work them out, and spread the word when coming home.

      Looking at the list above and thinking of my latest trips I realize that, well, I’m not the most ungreen traveler, but there are many things to improve, that I could to better and still have my perfect vacation.

      TrippyDoo Open Beta

      Friends, after many weeks of hard work the TrippyDoo team is excited to announce that we have finally opened the doors to the whole world. This means that now everybody can become a member and bring their friends too, and that content (trips, posts, photos & videos) can be easily shared and discussed.

      We would like to thank the private beta testers that help us with going public today. Without your feedback it wouldn’t have been possible.

      The open beta version of TrippyDoo has many new features, but most importantly – we fixed bugs on the private beta release :)

      What you can now do on TrippyDoo:

      - Share your experiences from your trips with your friends, even with your friends from Facebook or Twitter, with just one click. We worked a simple inline edit mechanism, to save you time and hassle.
      - Also, you can easily import your photos from Facebook and Picasa – no need to do another upload from your computer
      - You can now add Tips to each of your trips, to let other know what’s not to miss!
      - Don’t forget to add reco’s for Places to stay & Places to eat! You’ll thank others for these when you’ll plan your next vacation, trust me
      - We’ve also placed a travel status bar in the homepage, where you can share your travel thoughts with everyone around & post it to your Twitter and Facebook accounts too.
      - And finally – you can now simply log in with you Facebook or Twitter account!

      We’re really happy to be finally open, because know we can share the love with you and together we can built the best place for travelers on the Internet. We can’t wait to hear what you think!

      In the mean time the team goes back to work, as we have a lot of cool stuff on our roadmap.

      10 most Interesting Buildings in the World

      This is our top pick for the 10 most interesting buildings from around the world. Criteria considered: strange, bizarre, unexpected architecture – buildings that make you stay, take a moment, and imagine their story.

      1. The Crooked House (Sopot, Poland)

      Bult in 2004, this crazy looking building is situated in Sopot, at Bohaterów Monte Cassino Street. The architecture of the  building is based on drawings by Jan Marcin Szancer and Per Dahlberg. It’s a popular tourist destination and inside are a number of pubs and restaurants, and it  is the most photographed building in Poland (no wonder).

      The Crooked House (Sopot, Poland)

      2. The Basket Building (Ohio, United States)

      The Longaberger Basket Company building in Newark, Ohio is 2nd most strangest building in the world ! The 180,000-square-foot building is a replica of the company’s famous market basket, cost $30 million and took two years to complete. I guess the CEO of the company who envisioned this building can now rest assure that all employees are ‘touched’ by the product.

      The Basket Building (Ohio, United States)

      3. Cubic Houses (Rotterdam, Netherlands)

      The original idea of these cubic houses came about in the 1970s. Piet Blom developed a couple of these cubic houses that were built in Helmond. The city of Rotterdam asked him to design housing on top of a pedestrian bridge and he decided to use the cubic houses idea. Blom’s vision was to create a kind of village. Now you can still see the shops on the ground floor, while upstairs families live in strange-shaped little homes.

      Cubic Houses (Rotterdam, Netherlands)

      4. Forest Spiral – Hundertwasser Building (Darmstadt, Germany)

      This building is called “Forest Spiral” and it’s located in Darmstadt, Germany. Its designer is Friedensreich Hundertwasser , and was built in  between 1998 and 2000.  The architect is renowned for his colorful designs which incorporate irregular, organic forms in an incomparable individualism. The structure of the altogether 12 floors has 105 apartments’. The roof is formed by a garden of beech, maple, and lime trees.

      Forest Spiral – Hundertwasser Building (Darmstadt, Germany)

      5. Dancing Building (Prague, Czech Republic)

      This interesting building was constructed between 1992-1996, and is somewhat of a rarity in Prague: a modern, glass building surrounded by historic architecture. Dancing House has daring, curvy outlines, which led its architects, Vlado Milunc and the American Frank O Gehry, to initially name it the “Astaire & Rogers Building”, after the legendary dance duo. Like-minded Czechs tend to call it The Dancing Building, while less appreciative viewers have names for it like: “terrible“ and “looks like a crushed can of Coke“ to name but a few. Ouch!

      Dancing Building (Prague, Czech Republic)

      6. Erwin Wurm: House Attack (Viena, Austria)

      On number 6 we have Erwin Wurm – House Attack; it was a temporary installation during the Erwin Wurm exhibition in the end of 2006. This building is an outdoor sculpture at the Museum Moderner Kunst (MuMoK) in Vienna. Architects: Ortner & Ortner, 1998–2001.

      houseattack-vienna

      7. Kansas City Public Library (Missouri, United States)

      The  impressive bookshelf covering the Kansas City Public Library parking garage is definitely our pick for number 7. The 480-car garage, at 10th Street and Baltimore Avenue, was completed in 2004. Its south façade looks like a giant’s book shelf, with 22 nearly 30-foot tall book spines sandwiched between glass-surrounded stairwells made to look like bookends. Designed for the people, for a real library experience. Nice!

      Kansas City Public Library (Missouri, United States)

      8. Hang Nga Guesthouse/ Crazy House (Vietnam)

      The famous attraction in Dalat, often called The Crazy House, is a bizarre network of caves, cubbyholes and hidden stairwells, with precarious bridges leading from one concrete tree house to another. It was designed by eccentric architect Hang Nga, also the daughter of former president Truong Chinh. Most tourists leave before dark, but if you like it you can rent a room there, and you may expect to go to sleep with the giant girafe’s red eyes on your window. BOOO!

      Hang Nga Guesthouse a.k.a Crazy House (Vietnam)

      9. Beijing National Stadium (Beijing, China)

      The Beijing National Stadium is a sports arena built to prepare for the 2008 Olympics. Because of its characteristic appearance, it is also known as the Bird’s Nest Stadium. The $423 million stadium (according to Wikipedia) is the world’s largest steel structure, as you probably already know. However, after the Olympics the stadium has not found significant use, and it seems that it will be transformed in a shopping-events area.

      Beijing National Stadium (Beijing, China)

      10. Nautilus House (Mexico City, Mexico)

      Built using mainly chicken wire & concrete, this quite unique home claims to not only be earthquake proof but also maintenance free. Inside, the Nautilus House is all about smooth surfaces & gleaming bathroom fixtures. Nautilus Shell House was build for a Mexico City couple by Javier Senosiain, and we could not end this list in more wacky way :)

      Nautilus House (Mexico City, Mexico)

      So people, how many of them have you seen up to now? What other wacky buildings do you know?

      8 Things You Should Not Forget when Going in a Trip

      image trip packHey there! Hope all’s well and you had some great trips lately. Just to make you’re next one easier, we thought to list the things we all should not leave home without. I tried to categories them, but you should definitely consider the place where you are going, the people that accompany you, the situations you expect to be in. Still, you should not leave out the door without checking the following trip list:

      1. Suitable clothes for the weather at your destination

      Forget the 30 degrees at home, your trip may take you to 10 degrees at your destination, and you may feel as if there is no chance that you’ll need a sweater when packing, but you’ll sure thank me when you get there! Don’t forget to take some comfortable shoes and clothes if you’re into sightseeing.

      2. Personal items

      Be sure to have with you (and I mean with you, not in the bags) your ID, passport, driver’s license, wallet, cards and keys.

      But wait, there’s more

      What do you think about our new 404 Error Page ?

      Ah, how time flies when you’re a young traveling startup! We’ve been very busy lately with development and stuff, and though we have already implemented some very useful features you may have seen, we still have a couple more that we’re working on right now (in stealth mode, of course).

      But anyhow, as we’re concentrating efforts in improving TrippyDoo’s usability and strive to make it less buggy (thanks for all your feedback by the way!), we though that, well, we should really have a nice little error page as the ones coming from the platform we are using are not actually that… friendly :-|

      So we really hope you’ll not see this page very often, but hell! We love it so much that we wanted to show it to you all:
      404As always, Max is the one to blame ;)

      Best 30 Roadtrip Songs Ever

      As I seem to make more and more road trips and I always forget to update my iPod with some really nice driving songs, I thought that it would be a good idea to make a play list and share it with you guys.

      It took me a while, but I’ve found some great tunes and I know I could have found many, many more  (just love their hit the road spirit),  but anyway here’s my 30 road trip inspiration playlist:

      1. Born to be wild -- Steppenwolf

      2. Highway to Hell -- AC/DC

      But wait, there’s more

      What is a trip, and why do we need posts?

      Talking to recent TrippyDoo members made me realize that… well…  we’ve been so busy with development and all that we forgot to explain how it works :-| But then again, this is why sites launch in private beta, and this is why we’re watching people interact: to understand what needs to be fixed, communicated, difficult to use, and so on.

      TrippyDoo was designed to be the place for experiential traveling, that is telling your stories from your trips, adding photos and videos, interact to help each other and of course, travel more.

      So what is a trip, but a collection of traveling experiences? Therefore, the Trip on TrippyDoo is only a title & location that you can easily introduce.

      Then each trip can have many posts, i.e. the experiences you gather in a trip somewhere (places you see, people you talked to, dreams you fulfilled).

      Photos & videos are uploaded for each post  to visually show people what you are talking about. They are visible  in the post page, but also in the trip page (which is like a folder for your experiences).

      For all you people that don’t have a TrippyDoo account (yet!:D) the trip looks like this:

      trippydoo-trip

      Please feel free to comment and tell us what you think. We’re giving T-shirts to people that help us with the feedback, however they are still in the design process…

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