Colombia: South America’s most up and coming destination (part two)

Anna Maria Espsäter continues her exploration of Colombia, looking at the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, salsa capital Cali and the south, followed by the Colombian Amazon

The English seaside

Photographer Peter Williams celebrates the peculiar eccentricities and quintessential charms – from helter-skelters to lighthouses, pirates, palmists and Punch and Judy – of this cherished and rapidly changing English landscape

ABTA

From the website:

“Formed in 1950 by 22 leading travel companies, ABTA – The Travel Association – now represents over 5,000 travel agencies and more than 900 tour operations, throughout the British Isles. Our Members range from small, specialist tour operators and independent travel agencies through to publicly-listed companies and household names; from call centres to internet booking services to high street shops. All of them carry the ABTA logo, which means choice, value, and high levels of service. ”

Riding the Coast Starlight: part two

Adrian rides the rails with Amtrak. Read about his rail journey – arguably the best way to cover America’s huge distances – exclusively on CD-Traveller

I FEEL sLOVEnia

No the headline isn’t a typing error; this is the new slogan to entice us to travel to Slovenia. Will it work? Ask in a year’s time and we’ll find out. That’s a problem with finding quick pithy lines to help you remember. Australia came out with “where the bloody hell are you?” which certainly generated the publicity if not always the numbers.

Whatever slogan is chosen, about 2.2 million visitors have gone to Slovenia this year and, by year end, it looks as though overall tourism will have dropped by only about 1% making Slovenia a success story in many people’s eyes. The UK is the fifth largest provider of visitors but to the capital, Ljubljana, we are the third

Selling off Greek Islands

In Greece, there have been cries of outrage at the suggestion by some German parliamentarians that they sell off some of the Greek islands. The money raised from the sale, goes the suggestion, would reduce the large economic deficit that the country has. As there are about 6,000 Greek islands and only about 80 are inhabited, there remain a huge number which make no contribution to the Greek economy.
Is this such a bad idea?
There are islands in the Caribbean that have been sold and then developed for tourism. In the Maldives, islands are co-developed for tourism with the locals and the state receiving taxation. And there seems to be a ready market for people to buy islands so here is a slight alteration to the idea. The attraction of the Greek islands for tourists has existed for centuries.

Ticket to ride: part 2

With the rest of the world to explore, it’s easy to overlook what’s on your doorstep – Blighty! In the second part of our British cities series, we open our address books in Bristol, Cambridge and Southend