walki-talki.com Travel Blog

King James Bible + Proverbs + Psalms for your iPod

In my own travels as of late, I have noticed that fewer and fewer hotels store a copy of the Bible in the desk drawer. This development never bothered me, but there were at times a sense of unease. Nothing bad ever happened, of course, but it felt as if I was being cared for perhaps a bit less than in times past. If you have ever had this feeling, or if you ever feel it is necessary to have a copy of the Bible with you on your travels, follow the link above to take a copy of the King James Bible with you on your iPod along with our mp3 walking tours of Europe.

For a slightly higher price, you can order the Old Testament, too.

None of this should be construed as endorsements of any kind. Rather, these are merely links to satisfy any curiosities you may have had.

Payam

Top 10 Edinburgh festival hangouts | Travel | Guardian Unlimited

And, if you need a concise repository of the hippest things to do in Edinburgh, read the above article, or visit the Edinburgh pages of The Guardian’s brand new travel pages. The tips can be especially helpful.

La Biennale di Venezia: Cinema. August 29 – September 8, 2007 Director: Marco Müller

The most preeminent film festivals in the world are the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy (linked above). How do you decide which to attend?

Cannes is a beautiful beach town, but the festival has associated with it a media feeding frenzy that is perhaps unbearable to most. Park City offers a spectacular natural setting for a festival, and Robert Redford has transformed the movie industry by creating the Sundance Film Festival as a showcase for independent filmmakers. However, many claim that the festival has lost its “independent edge”, and that, for example, the Toronto Film Festival offers a better variety and quality of films in North America.

This leaves, of course, the Venice Film Festival as the festival of choice because, frankly, few complain about it. And, if the lack of complaints is not incentive enough to visit the Venice Film Festival, consider the following. The Venice Film Festival is part of La Biennale, the biennial (the namesake) art festival in Venice. La Biennale is the biggest art festival in the world. It takes place over several months, and it covers every aspect of art: fine arts, design, architecture, dance, music, and film. Although each genre is fested at a different time, you are assured some overlap (art exhibit is from June 10 through November 21, 2007) and a dreamy setting to cleanse your palate between movies.

And, this year, there is a tribute to The Conformist, Bernardo Bertolucci. You can decide if you like him better for edgy films like The Conformist, the sex-laden movies like The Dreamers or Last Tango in Paris, or sentimental movies like The Last Emperor. It may be fun just contemplating.

And, if all of this is still not enough, then grab the walki-talki.com mp3 walking tour of Venice, and see Venice this year. It is a good time to visit.

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The new Globe Theatre is stop number 8 on the walki-talki.com mp3 walking tour of London. The original Globe was, of course, host to the master works of the best known playwright in the world, William Shakespeare. From the stage of this theater, the Bard transformed British theater so completely that he came to define it. From this stage, he mocked the royalty, the Church and the laity alike with zest and eloquence unseen heretofore or hence. On this day, June 30, in 1613, the Globe burned down to the ground.

It took nearly 400 years, but a replica of the Bard’s stage has now been built, and it is open to the public. Even if you are not a Shakespeare fan, you will find the many activities offered in this venue to be a most welcome break from the mind-numbing array of temptations that London offers. So, if you’re not quite in the mood for anything else, the new Globe is a worthwhile visit.

Berlin Hotel Recreates East Germany | World Latest | Guardian Unlimited

The above Guardian article mentions perhaps the greatest treat for the cost-conscious traveler in Berlin: nostalgia, history and cheap prices. The Ostel in Berlin is a budget hotel that recreates the East German way of life. At nightly rates that are quite low compared to standard hotel rates in Berlin, guests stay in rooms decorated like the standard issue apartments of the communist era. (The beds and sheets, we are assured, are new.) For as little as $20 a night, you can bunk with other travelers in multi-occupancy rooms that harken to the Free German Youth summer camps of the former DDR.

Naturally, you will want to take the walki-talki.com mp3 walking tour of Berlin with you to get a better idea of why the Ostel hostel is so special.

The Ostel’s official web is www.ostel.eu.

You can find complete photo galleries here.

The self guided mp3 audio walking tours at walki-talki.com could have been the first travel application for the iPod, but William Bright beat us to it by creating iSubwayMaps. “Little Bill” created this site as soon as the photo-capable iPods were introduced. He surmised, quite correctly, that it would be useful to have subway maps on the iPod. So, he painstakingly adapted high resolution photos of various subway systems around the world to be used on the iPod.

Why painstakingly? Because the documents had to be broken up into pieces so that you could zoom in on a particular part of the system when you need to do so. The result is quite nice, and by now, the selection of maps is large enough that you are almost guaranteed to find the map you want.

But, just in case you can’t find the map you want, go to amadeus.net There you will almost certainly find the map you need. amadeus.net provides maps in pdf and Micro$oft Word formats, only. Therefore, you will have either to figure out how to view pdfs with your iPod or other media player or to take a printout with you.

In due time, I hope to cite enough resources to allow you to take everything you need on your iPod. For now, you have walking tours and subway maps, and that may suffice.

Payam

PS If you read the posts on the isubwaymaps.com home page, you will learn that New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority prohibited Bill from using the MTA’s official map. So, he had to create one from scratch in order to avoid their alleged copyright violation. Bill also had to change the name of the site because Apple objected to the word “iPod” in the site’s original name. It is always interesting how progress is achieved despite the best efforts of large business and big government. PNM