Comments on: Travvies 2007: Best Travel Blog Awards: open voor voting

By: Happy Hotelier » Blog Archive » New York City: Bike - Share Project: 42 years behind the Dutch!

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 16:31:04 +0000

[...] By coincidence (does coincidence really exist?) I noticed my fellow Travel Blogger Melissa Petri reported about City Bike Wien in her post Bike in Vienna for Europe String just last month….BTW Europe string was a finalist for the Travvies 2007in February of this year [...]

By: gje

gje — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:30:14 +0000

Hi Erik,

Thank you for stepping by and giving your view.

The reason for my comment is that I happened to click on the Rise up Sweet Island category only and by accident, because I did not find a quick and easy way to navigate around Notes from the Road. It has -to borrow a phrase from your good self- an objectionable bad accessibility.

From your comment I now learn to look further than just one item and that there is much more to find on your site. Thank you again and keep up the good work.

I hope you learn from this that maybe you could sacrifice the design of Notes from the Road a bit to easy access. A lot of good stuff about accessibility is written on the sites I’ll be listing on the side bar to the homepage under Web Design.

Regards,

gje

By: erikgauger

erikgauger — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 20:06:08 +0000

Hi, my name is Erik Gauger, I am the photographer, editor and designer of ‘Notes from the Road.’ I am truly honored to be a part of the great group of nominees at the 2007 Travvies, what a great idea.

I want to mention the notes that the Happy Hotelier put next to my blog stating that my travel photo blog is not a travel photo blog, but an anti-developer site.

I find this statement objectionable. Notes from the Road, while certainly nothing special, was one of the first travel photo blogs on the web, and has helped pave the way in many aspects for the genre.

In my photo blog articles, I have written and painted maps about hundreds of destinations. One of those hundreds of articles is a travel piece about an unethical developer in the Bahamas. Travel writing and travel photography does not exist simply to placate the travel industry; to write about blue margarita’s and happy hotel reviews. Rather, genuine travel photography and travel writing are the exact opposite – they can be funny, lighthearted, but honest too.

And when something really bad happens in the travel writer’s beat, ie, a development that threatens a marine environment, to write about that is to write travel. I strongly object to the notion that because one of my articles discusses a development, that my photo blog is reduced to an ‘anti-development site.’ I am rather pro-development, as many of us in the travel industry are. But I do believe in sustainable development; and in this world of modern travel, that is the most important buzzword for our time.