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Up one level | To Tom Geller's writings | Home Website reviews for The Net: Travel Please note that the writing samples below were written around February 1996, and many of the sites reviewed have disappeared, moved, or changed. -- Tom Geller 007 Travel American Airlines ANZA Travel Boat To Bolivia Bridge China The Electronic Embassy Expotel France Travel Tourism Tours Festivals Studies The French Travel Gallery & Hotel Reservation Center GNN Travelers' Center American Borders GNN Travelers' Center Currency Converter GNN Travelers' Center Guyana Gateway Have Toothbrush Will Travel Healthy Flying InfoHub Travel Guide The Internet Guide to Travel Internet Way Life Following the Dead Mirage Resorts Preview Vacations Project Candide Rec.Travel Library: Worldwide Travel and Tourism Southwest Adventures Southwest Airlines Travel Source Travel Weekly U.S State Department Travel Warnings Walt Disney World Web Travel Review 007 Travel Lots of forms. Lots and lots and lots of forms. That's what you'll find at the 007 Travel site, which acts mainly as a device for a crafty travel agency to collect information on your travel plans. Want to know the lowest prices on flights to London? Fill out a form. Renting a car overseas? Fill out a form. Need to know where the 007 Travel agency is located? Sorry, you're out of luck: That information isn't available. You'll find some useful information here, such as a list of moderately priced international hotels and restaurants, but otherwise this is a mess of broken links, missing graphics, and mystery. WARNING: Never send your credit card number to a company that doesn't give its phone number or mailing address. Content: Good Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top American Airlines Now we know what all those flight attendants do when they're not serving drinks and emptying barf bags: They're writing HTML code. That's the only way American could have produced such a mammoth site, with pages on more than 50 subjects such as flight schedules, fleet composition, and corporate structure. Unfortunately, AA's most useful wing -- the online ticket-booking service known as Sabre -- isn't directly accessible via the Web site. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Excellent TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top ANZA Travel I'm a sucker for unusual travel. That's why I like places like ANZA: instead of the silly and overdone tedium of Dickens' London and New York Theater tours, they offer The Vintage Car Club of New Zealand Anniversary Tour and "The Soccer Holiday of a Lifetime." You won't find those at your travel agent's! The tone of the writing is relaxed, in the budget travel style, but note: these trips ain't cheap. Still, visiting the site makes me feel that Oceania is accessible -- even if I can't afford it. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Boat To Bolivia With a title like "Boat to Bolivia," I expected swashbuckling adventure -- or, at least, adventurous writing. Sad to say, Tracy Morris is no adventurer, and her writing is about as thrilling as your cousin's slide show. ("This is me in front of the house, this is me in back of the house.") She relates the story of two middle-class Brits making their way around the Americas, eventually to (you guessed it!) Bolivia. Expect a slow server and scanned postcards for graphics. The spelling and grammar are good, though. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Bridge Now that Monk magazine and its imitators have gotten some recognition, on-the-road writers are springing up all over the place. But how many of them get around on bicycles laden with 125 pounds of crap? That's what Holly Hughes and George MacLeod have done since 1993, covering more than 35,000 miles, carrying a message of community art to distant towns and writing, writing, writing about it. These folks have real heart, and that's what makes this site great. Be sure to check out Holly's statue/sculpture of Einstein, made of ballpoint pens, tennis balls and 5-1/4" floppy disks: It's great fun, and captures the site's spirit perfectly. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top China This site on China is much, much deeper than any other I've ever seen. Sponsored by the Council on East Asian Libraries, it's broken down into areas of interest, such as Art, History, Language, even Gender Issues! Some pages are chock-full of links (the "Art" area has several dozen), while other areas are a bit shallow. There are similar pages on other major East Asian countries, at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~felsing/ceal/welcome.html. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top The Electronic Embassy The Electronic Embassy reminds me of a bank lobby: lots of space, nice marble and brass fittings, and people in business clothes, but there isn't much you can do there. It's a program of TeleDiplomacy (a non-governmental organization) to serve the "diplomatic community" in Washington, D.C. As such, it has some good, basic information. But most pages eventually recommend that you call the appropriate parties. Like, by phone, man. But I'm glad it's here: it's an evenhanded and nonpolitical way of improving communication among governments. And that ain't bad. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Expotel Home Page Want to know about hotels in Zimbabwe? Check out Expotel, the world's largest hotel and mobile phone reservation system. Well-heeled travelers have quite a selection: seven high-quality tourist hotels in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, for example, with prices ranging from 87 to 290. But 87 to 290 what? This is a typical hole in the site: nowhere does it tell you that prices are in the local currency, in this case guilders. At the time of this writing, the site had lots of hotels listed, but lacked some key information. Keep an eye on it for improvements. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top France Travel Tourism Tours Festivals Studies Tourism is big business in France; that's why the French Tourism Board in the U.S. is actively promoting its country via all media, including the Internet. This site from that governmental body is full of the kind of language you'd expect from a P.R. firm. ("This region abounds with treasures..," etc.) That's not to discount it, though: there's tourism info (duh), stuff on studying in France, and legal information you'll need about visas and such. None of the areas is very deep, but they'll get you started. Beware the occasional ghastly color scheme. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top The French Travel Gallery & Hotel Reservation Center I have an affinity for any site that welcomes you in more than one language. The FTGHRC (gesundheit!) is one such site, offering menus in French, English, and Spanish. Hélas, such multilingualism fades away below the first level or two -- quelle dommage. What is there is nicely arranged, though: hotel reservations, boutiques, regional information, and, of course, the obligatory link to the Webmuseum. Unfortunately, the content isn't nearly as deep as it should be. And, as with most other hotel reservation systems, this one isn't good at finding rooms at less than $50/night. Sigh. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top GNN Travelers' Center American Borders Travelogues are like voyages themselves: they can be brilliant, witty adventures into unknown places or they can be hell, and the difference is often made by the quality of your traveling companions. I'm pleased to report that Carla King, author of GNN's serial "American Borders," has created a distinct travelogue of North America, as original as it is well-written. Making her way around the continent on a Russian motorcycle, she reflects on the foreignness of our country and writes up a storm. Lots of photos spice up the tales, but there are virtually no links, even within the text itself. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top GNN Travelers' Center Currency Converter Globetrotters often return home wondering where all their money went simply because they didn't understand the currency exchange. This clever page helps you out by showing the value of American dollars in the money of over 50 countries. You say you have Bulgarian leva and want to know their value in Mexican pesos? No problem! It would be useful to have the names of the currencies as well, but hey -- we can't have everything. From the same mind as gave the world the unofficial LEGO homepage at http://legowww.itek.norut.no/. Score two for David Koblas! Content: Good Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top GNN Travelers' Center Homepage The Travelers' Center doesn't look that rich at first: just a few links to articles and companies. But what makes it exciting is that the articles (actually, first-person travel accounts) are regularly updated, and the companies are off the beaten track. Want to go hiking in Africa? Here, you can book the trip and read stories to prepare you. A drawback: The site's organization requires you to click through several screens to find what you want. Don't overlook that link at the bottom, which leads to the "Travel" section of GNN's business pages, and more links. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Guyana Gateway Guyana is best known to U.S. residents for the religion-centered mass murders in what is commonly known as "Jonestown." But then again, we're not the best political/geography students in the world, are we? The Guyana Gateway is a good place to increase your I.Q. about this small Latin American country, located in a wedge between Venezuela, Brazil, Surinam and the Atlantic Ocean. It also sports one of the best uses of frames I've seen to date: visit it with a frame-capable browser, such as Netscape 2.0 or later (but try to ignore the ubiquitous "blink" tags, if you can). Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Have Toothbrush Will Travel If travel writer Rick Steves embodies the American spirit in traveling -- fun, easygoing, out for a respectful good time -- then Simon Rowe is his Australian counterpart. From him, you'll learn as much about Australian culture as you will about his his destinations. He's brash, opinionated, a bit obnoxious, and he writes a lot. The site has about a dozen tastes of his writing, but it mostly serves as a way for him to market his sixty-odd stories to interested publications: he also does travel photography which is, sadly, not displayed here. Content: Good Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Healthy Flying Flight discomfort is caused by more than just a fear of the plane crashing into the mountains and leaving your remains a charred, indistinguishable heap. Former flight attendant Diana Fairechild has documented why flying is uncomfortable in her book, Jet Smart, much of which is available in "quick tip" form via her Web page. There's a neat bit of animation on the first page, but the focus here is on the content -- be sure to read about the "Full utilization of air," and how pilots can change the amount of air passengers breathe. Scaaaary. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top InfoHub Travel Guide Hoo boy, yet another site proclaiming itself the "most comprehensive travel guide on the World Wide Web." Unlike self-serving travel agency sites, this one just might qualify. It's a plain-vanilla set of pages which lists links to other travel-related sites: very little information is at infohub.com. The links are arranged by country, with colorful image maps to guide you as you bop from continent to continent. I wish I had access to this site while traveling: maybe a cellular modem connected to a PowerBook and hooked directly into my brain. Bliss. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top The Internet Guide to Travel With a title like "The Internet Guide to Travel," I expected a heck of a lot more. Like, maybe, some information about traveling. But nooooo, all you get is a link to a hotel chain and an airline (apparently, the service's only paying customers so far), and a tiny bit of information about Hawaii and Los Angeles. Oh, wait: Neither of those links seem to work. So, I guess there's nothing here except for ugly banners, inconsistently done HTML, and an ad to get prospective hotels to pay for listings. Content: Poor Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top Internet Way It takes a few minutes of wandering to realize that Internet Way is an Internet Service Provider in France, offering access, Web design, and the usual blah blah blah. But there are a few unusual nuggets here of use to the traveler: Take a gander at the "Virtual Champs-Elysées," which lets you walk in the door of dozens of companies located along that famous street. There's lots of stuff here about France in general, although the depth of info in this section is disappointing when compared to the Champs-Elysées area. But all in all, c'est magnifique! Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Excellent TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Life Following the Dead I've had a fantasy of collecting all my old letters, souvenirs, photos, diaries and tape recordings to definitively archive my life on a Web site. A full life is perhaps too ambitious to fully document, but how about a road trip? That's what Joe Nickell has done, transcribing copious notes of his adventures riding a Magic Bus, following the Grateful Dead. What makes this site great is the minutiae he captured in sound and imagery. Example: You not only read, "Marty curses loudly," you also get to hear him. Awesome. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Mirage Resorts Las Vegas is a singularly American place: In a terrain where there's nothing of interest, attractions are invented and packaged. The Mirage Hotel is a perfect epitome of this, in that (fake) European food is served by a (fake) volcano while watching (real) tigers in their (fake) environment. And it's all available for downloading! Get the Mirage experience through pictures, sound bites, and QuickTime video clips -- or buy t-shirts and plush tigers via their Web site! You'll never have to leave the house. And isn't that what you want in a vacation? Content: Good Aesthetic: Excellent TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Preview Vacations Boy, this site is pretty: pretty like a stuffed peacock. There are over 500 colorful pages here, including destination information, photos, multimedia stuff, and "real-time transaction capabilities." But when you get down to the meat of things -- booking vacations -- you're stuck with the usual, boring, pedestrian vacation standbys. ("Would you like the $100-per-night room in Paris or London?") There are lots of clever forms and games to noodle with as well. Fill out the survey: doing so enters you in a monthly drawing for $1,000 worth of credit toward a Preview vacation. Content: Good Aesthetic: Excellent TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Project Candide Of all the "you are there" travel writing on the Internet, Project Candide is one of the most ambitious. Here's the plot: five yuppie-ish New Yorkers take off for Tanzania, to travel from Arusha to Zanzibar armed with little more than money, their wits, and some very expensive communications equipment. The result is.. well, some will find it fun and some will find it patently offensive. (Our moneyed friends sure do love those charming third-world natives!) If you don't have a frames-capable browser, forget it: it's a multi-frame, background-patterned, referential-URLed mess. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Rec.Travel Library: Worldwide Travel and Tourism Newsgroups often have stewards who are kind and organized enough to encapsulate community wisdom in a relevant FAQ file, but few boast the riches that Internet Solutions has archived for this Web-based rec.travel.* hierarchy. Besides the usual FAQs, it's chock-full of information on lodging, travel, places to go, and things to do. Unlike commercial travel sites, this one's not stingy when it comes to linking outside sources: Thousands of them are spread throughout literally hundreds of useful pages. If you don't find what you need there, check out the rec.travel.* newsgroup archives. And it's all searchable! For its friendliness and its depth, this is one of the best sites I've seen all year. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Southwest Adventures Does the thought of ice climbing appeal to you? How about mountain kayaking? These activities are the purview of Southwest Adventures, a Colorado firm that arranges outings for those sports which "can only be enjoyed in the high mountains." Its products and recommendations are described in exquisite detail, and links connect you to sites and newsgroups of interest to the rugged soul. Despite occasional misspellings (for example, "inable"), annoying blink tags, and naive page design, Southwest Adventures' site does a good job of bringing its offerings to the Net. Durango, ho! Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top Southwest Airlines Southwest Airlines is famous for having the funniest "hold" messages in the travel business: I once called, and heard, "If you have a touch-tone phone, press eight. It won't make us respond faster, but it'll make you feel better." Similarly, its home page has the same sort of small-company irreverence: How many corporate sites do you know of that feature a cartoon flight gate as its main interface? Click on the cash register, and you find ticket information; click on the wall map, and learn about the amenities at Southwest's home airports; click on the company president's photo, and you get, well, you get the photo. Fun and informative. What more could you want? Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Travel Source Travel guides are popping up all over the Web, each promising to be the biggest, best or otherwise most superlative. Travel Source is no different. This commercial collection of links is supposedly "The Internet's First Interactive Travel Guide." At first, it seems that its pioneerism has given Travel Source time to build quite a content base, but beneath the 35 categories of travel information (from Wine Tours to Yacht Charters), there are typically fewer than three links per category. Still, what is there is reasonably diverse and interesting, even if it paints an incomplete view of the wide world of travel options. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Travel Weekly Is this a commercial site, or just the work of some travel agents with too much time on their hands? The confusion stems from the fact that 1) it's really, really well done; 2) it's sponsored by a travel industry magazine; 3) you'll find no ads, and 4) it features fun, sometimes sarcastic writing. So what's to dislike? The site's accessibility, that's what. Several visits on two separate days brought up the "this server isn't accepting any more connections" message. Clearly, demand has outstripped supply. If you can get through, though, you'll find the biggest set of travel links around. If they'd fix a few links and beef up the server, this site would rock. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top U.S State Department Travel Warnings It may seem strange that the official repository of State Department information is at St. Olaf's College in Minnesota, but it makes sense when you consider that Travel Advisories have been available through this site since 1991, long before the Internet was used widely outside of universities. This site remains a prime source of information for international-minded citizens. If you're a regular traveler, you'll want to subscribe to the mailing list that started it all: simply send an e-mail message that says only "subscribe" to travel-advisories-request@stolaf.edu, and you'll get updates as they're released. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Walt Disney World If you know Disney, you know that everything it publishes is the epitome of advertising hyperbole. Here you'll find the Web version: clean graphics, professional (albeit vapid) copy writing, and endless superlatives, all leveraging the highly bankable images of Mickey Mouse and Pocahoozits. In keeping with Herr Disney's vision of a perfectly controlled universe, there are no -- count them, zero! -- external links. It's like visiting the Disney parks: a nightmare of grinning cartoon characters, shiny buildings, clean streets, and no way out. Stay in line, please. Children below this height will not be allowed on this ride. You will be assimilated. Have a nice day. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Web Travel Review Philip Greenspun offers a good deal more than a "we-went-here-and-we-did-this" report: There are travel tips, colorful photos, side stories -- like the fascinating tale of a criminal auto-repair shop -- and lots of downright good writing. In the end, that's what sets this site apart from other, more self-indulgent travelogues: The professional level of the text and photos makes this site a special, moving experience. But what's this guy doing studying artificial intelligence at MIT? Conde Nast, sign him up! Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Excellent TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top This page was last updated on Monday, February 09, 2004 at 3:06pm CST. All contents copyright 2005 by Tom Geller.