Friday five – My favourite travel reads this week

Today

Friday five - favourite reads
Photo credit: margolove

Just a quick Friday Five as things are rather hectic here in the middle of my workday as I gulp down lunch. I decided to put together a list of my favourite travel reads from this week:

5. Is it ever right to hide your nationality?

Andy from 501 places brings up the interesting question of whether it is a good idea to hide your nationality when travelling. He discusses the fear that travellers have of being blamed for their government’s actions and gives some interesting insight about his own experience of visiting a country that had previous conflict with his own.

4. Losing the wonder of travel

Nomadic Matt who is currently travelling around Europe talks about how continuously being on the road has caused him to lose that sense of wonder and excitement in travel. A difficult thing to admit to this is something that rings true for me and I often wonder what will happen when nothing is new or different any more and the experiences start to repeat one another. Whether it’s the ABCs (another bloody cathedral) or just being sick to teeth of museums its something anyone on the road has experienced at one time or another. Is there a way to overcome this and regain the sense of wonder? Perhaps that’s a topic for another post.

3. Embracing tourist season

Suzy Guese from Traveling with a redheaded temperament who is residing in Florence discusses the age old problem of tourists hating other tourists (or is it travellers hating tourists?). She has an interesting, refreshing take on why instead of loathing the crowded plazas and lines you should embrace the tourist season.

2. 9 Unorthodox travel heroes

Anil from foXnoMad pauses for a moment on some unlikely travel heroes that have inspired people to go out and explore the world. He has some interesting suggestions. In particular I had never considered Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek’s creator) to be a travel hero but then you consider the entire message of Star Trek is exploration and “to boldly go where no man has gone before”. For me Charles Darwin has always been a bit of a travel hero (well I am a scientist and all ). I love the message it ends with, that all of us RTWers that travel the world might be someone’s travel hero too.

1. Running of the sheep in New Zealand

Backpackingmatt is hanging out in the land of the long white cloud at the moment and came across this hilarious past time. His comparison of the running (or rather freaking out and stopping every few minutes) of the sheep in Te Kuiti to the running of the bulls in Pamplona had me chuckling. There is something inherently hilarious about sheep isn’t there? It’s a nice example of the great things you come across by accident when you are travelling.

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