Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Easy Way to Book Hotels

Who does not want to travel? Travel broadens one's horizon, refreshes the mind and soothes the heart. Internet is a great place to research about travel. There are great travel blogs out there. Information about different countries and places to visit are described by individuals on each one's travel blog

Whether you are traveling to New York or to Rome, Barcelona or Prague, London or Dublin, finding good hotels is hard. Fortunately, there are a lot of good travel blogs out there that are of immense help. These travel blogs make it easy to book hotels even if you are going to a place like Prague.

Best hotel deals are not found on big sites; you have to find them by searching on the Internet. The best site that I found our for the cities I mentioned above is Easytobook.com

They make finding great and cheap hotels a breeze!

Thursday, August 23, 2007

International arts festival in Perth, Australia

Australia is both a country and a continent. Talk about Down Under and one's imagination starts getting wild about frontiers and unexplored lands. Of course, now Australia is a developed country but the mystique remains.

Perth is not the first city that comes to mind when one thinks of Australia. The Perth International Arts Festival is a big draw and is the oldest annual international multi-arts festival. It annually offers some of the world’s best theatre, music, film, visual arts, street arts, literature and free community events. No single art genre, concert, performance or exhibition series can cover the breadth of intellectual and imaginative territory of the Perth Festival, nor reach as broadly into the community. The hotels in Perth are nice and affordable. One can also find a lot of service apartments apart from hotels in Perth.


Hotels in Adelaide
are much better and affordable. They rank from grand five-star ones to swanky and affordable lower-priced alternatives. You have to look hard, preferably on good Internet site, to find the right hotel in Adelaide since they are not that many.

Melbourne is the home of a large cricket ground and is a beautiful city. Melbourne Accommodation choices range from service apartments to nice hotels. There is much to love about Melbourne. Just ask the locals. This sophisticated world city in the south-east corner of mainland Australia inspires a deep passion in those lucky enough to live here. They love its vibrant energy, staggering choice of restaurants, funky boutiques, café-filled laneways, cool bars, unbeatable galleries, luscious parks and village-like inner suburbs, each with its own special character. Look on the internet for good Melbourne accomadation

Cheap Hotels in South Africa


South Africa has always captured the traveler's imagination. Whether it is the Boer War or the stop over on the way to India to pick up spices, South Africa is seen as an exotic and wonderful destination. I got interested in South Africa by reading Wilbur Smith novel and longed to visit it for a long, long time.

South Africa is a blend of Europe and Africa - good infrastructure, European ambience combined with stark poverty and wonderful nature! The roads are good, the train system is awesome and distances are not great. There are good hotels in Johannesburg and other cities. Hotels in Cape Town and hotels in Sandton are also good and affordable.

I would recommend booking the hotels in Johannesburg in advance. Tourism is big here and the rooms get full especially in peak tourist seasons. Johannesburg is a wonderful place to visit year around. Cape Town is however more alluring - it was the stop on the way from Europe to India, the long awaited destination on a long and perilous journey. The hotels in Cape Town are not as good but you can find decent ones by searching on the web.

You might have not heard of Sandton. It is a very young municipality formed in 1969. Saxon Hotel is famous but the other hotels in Sandton are decent too. In any case, you should focus less on these things than in enjoying the myriad natural delights this country has so much in abundance.

Romance is not the same :(

Why, with increased affluence and leisure, has romance gone so downhill...and, so unromantic? Our cynical age has eroded the magic and allure of the most important emotion is human life. Who wants to be an old-fashioned romantic when one can be cool and score with a huge number of mindless bimbos?

Read this amazing New Yorker article by David Denby and weep.

A Great Travel Blog

Who does not want to travel? Travel broadens one's horizon, refreshes the mind and soothes the heart. Internet is a great place to research about travel. There are great travel blogs out there. Information about different countries and places to visit are described by individuals on each one's travel blog

Even my blog is a travel blog in some sense. I write about books, movies and travel regularly. The beauty about a travel blog is that the reader gets to know what other common people like him or her think about a place.

The hard part is to find a travel blog that is good and comprehensive. I particularly like Real Travel blog since it has a lot of interesting articles by great writers. It has motivated me to travel to a lot of the places that are featured on this travel blog

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Cheaper way to stay in UK hotels!

I have always wanted to visit UK. Who wouldn't? I am a huge anglophile and have been dreaming all my life about visiting the great historical cities like London, Edinburgh and Glasgow.



London was everything I dreamt it would be - except for the cost! A swinging nightlife and enough historical monuments to visit. Big Ben, Tower of London, Wimbledon are wonderful! I could stay here for months but the London hotels are too expensive. Fortunately, a friend had told me about a wonderful site where one can find all the top hotels at an unbelievable price. You should check it out if you want fantastic deals on any London Hotel




From London, we took a train to Edinburgh. Ah, Scotland! Walking the Royal Mile or visiting the Edinburgh Castle takes one back centuries. We stayed for a week and really enjoyed our visit! Edinburgh Hotels are not as expensive as London Hotels but hard to find and book. We, however, used the same great site to find good Edinburgh Hotels at unbelievable prices!



Off to Glasgow, Scotland's style capital, to round off a short but awesome UK holiday! Lot of great galleries and art museums to browse. Glasgow Hotels are smaller and nicer than London Hotels or Edinburgh Hotels and definitely more affordable. We checked out several Glasgow Hotels before choosing the one we finally stayed in - a nice little family-run place!

To sum up, a short and wonderful trip that gave us a glimpse of UK nightlife and culture - leaving us thirsting for more.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Good article on King Khan!

Interesting article on Shah Rukh:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/10/AR2007081000526.html

Tempted to get the book...though not sure if I should spend the money on Chak De instead

Personal opinion: Not sure I agree with words like globalization and consumerism being tagged for a movie actor...or Guha touting Hindi movies as a unifying influence in India

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Aging - Part 2

Saw "Nishabd" - the Amitabh, RGV movie that neither generated the controversy it should have nor did anything much at the box office!

All the reviews I read about this movie were uniformly negative - panned the story or criticized RGV for chickening out and making the movie as sexual as a children's cartoon

What no one talked about was Amitabh's amazing acting - probably one of his best movies to date. Yes, the story was not really believable, the other actors were lame, Jiah Khan was irritating...but where else can you see Amitabh is a serious role, playing his age and emoting with his eyes more than his baritone voice? RGV used him to great effect in "Sarkar" with extreme closeups of Amitabh's ravaged hands...here it is the bags under his eyes, the lined, weathered face that speaks volumes...Old age is a bitch and the great thespian shows you what it really is like

- Srini Anumolu

Aging

Wonderful article on aging by Atul Gawande in New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/30/070430fa_fact_gawande

First of all, Gawande is a wonderful writer...if you like this article, do buy his books

Amazing article about aging and how the body changes as we age!

What stuns me is the lack of concern for older people in US - everyone is aware that their mental needs are not met since they get shunted to old-age homes and are effectively cutoff from society...unlike in countries like India where they are part of a large family till they die

What is shocking is that even their health needs are not met in this great country that has so much wealth

- Srini Anumolu