Travel Maven blog

Rick Steves, Budget Travel magazine win top Lowell Thomas awards

WELLINGTON, New Zealand

Rick Steves, one of America’s best-known travelers as a guidebook writer, blogger, twitterer and TV/radio host, is the Journalist of the Year in the 2011 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition.

Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel magazine, the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle win top honors as the best travel publications in North America.

National Geographic Traveler wins five awards, including best travel website and best cultural tourism article. Outside magazine also wins five awards, including best adventure travel and best investigative stories.

Traveling in New Zealand one day at a time

I am in New Zealand a week already and still don’t know what day it is. Every day I need help to find the answer.

The local paper indicates today is Wednesday, but my computer, which is on New York time, says today is Tuesday, election day. If today is Wednesday, how come I don’t know who won the elections?

Theroux travel book on my bedside table

"The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road" by Paul Theroux (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; $25).

Paul Theroux celebrates his decades of wandering the globe in his latest book by collecting the best writing about travel from others, whose work shaped him as both a reader and a traveler.
 

He writes of the essence of travel experiences, of places that peoples consider to be "the navel of the earth," odd items that famous travelers carried with them, the fears of legendary travelers, and the best imaginary journeys.

Theroux's essential Tao of travel:

Leave home, go alone, travel light, bring a map, go by land, walk across a national frontier, keep a journal, read a novel that has no relation to the place you're in. If you must bring a cell phone, avoid using it. Make a friend.

I might add, read Paul Theroux.

David Molyneaux is editor of TheTravelMavens.com

 

Actor McCarthy, Afar get top Lowell Thomas honors

Afar magazine, the Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle won top honors as the best travel publications in North America in the 2010 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition.

Travel Journalist of the Year is Andrew McCarthy, actor, director and now travel writer, who won the gold for his portfolio of articles in some of North America’s best travel magazines.

The awards were announced today in Leipzig at the annual conference of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW). As president of the SATW Foundation, which oversees the contest, I have the priviledge of announcing the winners.

Among other winners: