February 2012
3 posts
Writing and Photography Contest Winners-- February...
Photo: Camilla Mann We had another great batch of entries this week. Thanks to all who took the time to submit and congratulations to our winners:
Philadelphia History Contest (LINK)
Writing 1st Place: Regina Liu Entry: Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia, PA
Photography 1st Prize: Natalya Entry: Wissahickon Valley Park in Philadelphia, PA
Photography Honorable Mentions:Katie...
Winners Announced
Congrats to new writing and photo contest winners: Keely Herrick, Jacy Sequeira Brooks , Brendan McGuigan, Vanessa Kirkpatrick.
Photo by Jacy Sequeira Brooks
See the rest of the winners and enter this week’s contest here.
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Writing and Photography Contest Roundup--2/2/2012
We just posted the winners of our Winter Parks and Weekly Worldwide writing and photography contests. Thanks so much to everyone who entered, we really enjoyed seeing and reading about your cold-weather explorations (even the hardcore snow kiting and ice climbing—brr). If our furry oracle is correct, we’ll be looking forward to at least six more weeks of the underappreciated, ethereal...
January 2012
3 posts
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This Week's Writing and Photography Contests
California Wine Writing and Photography Contest
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Writing prize: 2-day hotel stay at the Tradewinds Carmel, 2 passports to the Carmel Wine Walk-by-the-Sea, and a $100 writing contract to cover Monterey County’s wine scene.
Photography prize: $150 at Restaurant 1833 in Monterey, CA
Weekly Worldwide Writing and Photography Contest
Photography Prize: $50 contract
Writing Prize: $50 contract
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Trazzler | Writing and Photography Contests →
This week’s contests are live
New: Weekly Writing and Photography Contests
We’re starting off the year with a redesign and a whole new series of weekly writing and photography contests. These are going to be fun, because our editors have been busily scouting out Trazzler-worthy places for you to write about and photograph. It’s a work in progress, so if you want to cover a place that’s not on our list, just shoot us an email at...
November 2011
1 post
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Writing Contests: East Coast Sandwiches and West...
Thanks to all who downloaded our iPhone app! We’re now working like crazy on the next big thing. It’s going to be much more participative every step of the way. Here’s what we’re thinking:
The check-in market is cornered. The world doesn’t need another Foursquare clone.
Unedited reviews: Sometimes useful, often faked or spammy, almost always demoralizing to wade...
October 2011
4 posts
Visit Philly Continues The Hoagie Celebrations... →
America, Sandwich Nation
View Slideshow
So many are fond of misguided generalizations, calling America a Christian nation, a zombie nation, a TV nation… but it was chef and food writer James Beard who hit the nail on the head: America is a sandwich nation.
Sandwiches are the food of the people—cheap, nutritious, easy to assemble in large quantities—what better vehicle for delivering the flavors...
The New Trazzler iPhone App: More Than 30,000...
Thanks so much to everyone who downloaded our free app, played with it, and provided brilliant feedback. We just posted an update to the App Store that will make it much easier for you to invite friends, share your personality, and find out what you have in common. Give the new version a try and let us know what you think. What’s next: a publishing game that allows you to go out on...
September 2011
1 post
Trazzler Travel Guide App for iPhone & iPod touch...
Los Angeles, CA September 27, 2011 The Trazzler App for iPhone and iPod touch is now available on the App Store. The places we go and the things we do are personal and meaningful—Trazzler’s new app goes far beyond a conventional travel guide or random collection of reviews. As you complete the quiz and explore the world with your iPhone or iPod touch, Trazzler gets to know you and your...
April 2011
3 posts
New Feature - Lists
We’re working on a new Lists feature and would love your feedback. Trazzler’s editors make a lot of lists based on different themes, now writers (and readers) can do the same. We think it will make browsing a lot more fun and personal—and may also give you a way to better showcase your work. Example: Best Junk Food It’s easy to build a list… just Save any trip on Trazzler,...
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Tipsy Travel: Wine Trails
Photographer: European Citizen »>Go to Slideshow: Wine Trails While the prospect of travel may inspire your inner Apollonian to fantasize, scheme, and dream, once on the ground, there is immense pleasure in letting a well-laid plan play itself out in a hedonistic, Dionysian fashion. A bit ahead of the now-trendy agritourism curve, wine trails developed as rural outposts of flavor and...
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Exploring America's State Parks
Photographer: Mike Nielsen »>Go to Slideshow: State ParksAmerica’s 58 national parks are expansive and glamorous, gracing calendars and inspiring countless cross-country road trips. In their shadow, over 3,675 state parks carry on in relative obscurity, hiding an almost unbelievable variety of landscapes, ecosystems, and wildlife habitats. The masses mostly head to the big-name...
March 2011
6 posts
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14 places where you can succumb to the fleeting...
Photographer: Fiordiligi0127 »>Go to Slideshow: Flower Travel It takes a special kind of traveler to plan a trip around a phenomenon as capricious and fragile as seasonal flowers. As spring arrives in Japan, many foreign tourists will stay away this year, but—despite the recent series of terrible tragedies—Japanese meteorologists are still tracking the “cherry blossom...
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Lit Nerd Travel: Exploring a Novel's "Chronotope"
Photographer: José Luis Ametller »Go to Slideshow: Settings for NovelsNovels make particularly good travel companions. They make even better travel guides. A well-written book is an envelope of space and time. Inspired by Einstein’s theory of relativity, the literary theorist M. M. Bakhtin called the fictional universe of well-conceived novels “‘chronotopes,’ the...
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Abandoned Mines in the West: Roadtripping...
Photographer: ConstantineD »Go to Slideshow: Abandoned Mines in the American WestAs early as the 1920s, roadtrippers headed “out west” to explore the ruins of America’s boom-and-bust 19th-century gold rush. Alongside successful mines, towns sprang up in the middle of nowhere in a matter of months and many crashed just as precipitously when the easy gold or silver was...
Trazzler Hotel Giveaway Entry
The winning Trazzler Hotel Giveaway entry is by @Ben_Abraham… he gets a free weekend At Melissa’s B&B in Delaware. The winning entry: http://twitter.com/#!/Ben_Abraham/status/40539223568162816
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Chicago Juxtapositions Writing Context Redux
Congratulations to all of the winners of our Juxtapositions Writing Contest and a big thanks to our sponsor, the City of Chicago, and all who took the time to enter and vote. Editors’ Choice Grand Prize: Falling Into a Book Lover’s Rabbit Hole in Detroit, Michigan Editors’ Choice Runners-Up Prizes: Going Pagan for Holy Week in Andalusia, Spain Discovering a Rocky Oasis in Las...
Contests and Freelance Assignments - Status Update...
Chicago Contest: Reading entries and verifying vote counts. Winners posted the week of March 7. Whitefish Adventure Assignment: Reading entries. Freelancer selected on March 4. Regional Gigs (Sonoma, Oregon Coast, Rehoboth & Dewey Beach…): Reading entries. Freelancers selected at the end of March. Hotel Weekend Giveaway: Reading entries. Winner selected on March 4.
February 2011
3 posts
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Places of Protest: Digging into the grassroots...
Photographer: Fritz Berlin Fan »Go to Slideshow: 11 “People’s History” PlacesHistorian and activist Howard Zinn died a little over a year ago and his voice is sorely missed. It’s tempting to wonder what he would have to say about the recent uprisings and movements in North Africa and the Middle East (and the US for that matter). His philosophy in a nutshell:...
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Breaking the box: 10 buildings from the past 15...
Photographer: Micha L. Rieser »Go to Slideshow: 10 Buildings that Break the Box“The straight line belongs to men, the curved one to God”—so said Antoni Gaudi, who in the late 1800s designed his mammoth stone church, the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, using a non-Euclidean geometry of hyperbolas, spirals, and curves. Over the course of the twentieth century, plenty of architects...
Writing Contests
Apply Now Chicago Writing Contest Ending Soon—Juxtapositions Prizes: $4,000 in writing contracts and 30 free hotel nights in Chicago Time is running out to enter our writing contest—get your entries in soon! Trazzler has teamed up with Explore Chicago set up our three editorial winners as writers in residence in the city’s most happening neighborhoods. The theme is...
January 2011
7 posts
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Crafty travel: 14 places around the world where...
View Slideshow As all kindergarten teachers know, few activities bring people together in a state of zen-like contentment like sitting in a circle making things with our own two hands. No matter how exotic the locale, when we travel, it is this kind of basic human moment that sticks with us the most. Over the past decade, savvy communities of artisans around the world have discovered that...
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January/February Freelance Assignments
Thank you to all who applied for our January/February round of weekend-getaway freelance writing assignments. There were so many high-quality pitches this time—more than ever before—that it was quite difficult (bordering on agonizing!) to narrow it down to just one person per region. Without further ado, here they are: Northern California (Lake Tahoe) Brigid Fuller Pacific Northwest...
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15 Hotels With a Macabre History
Hotels are places of transgression. While there doesn’t appear to be a medical term for people who suffer from a fear of hotels, there’s something about these transitional spaces, teeming with intimate human moments, that can make us feel a bit uneasy. Hitchcock knew this—his sketchy, rootless characters breezed in and out of hotels and boarding houses. In “Psycho”...
Winner of the Riviera Maya Giveaway
We teamed up with Yucatan Holidays to give away a three-day weekend at luxury Riviera Maya resort. The winning tweet by Adrianne Bee @Trazzlerwriter: “My mayan calendar says I’m free to travel until 12/21/12.” (Writing a Trazzler trip is not a requirement to win.) Try your luck in our next giveaway and win a weekend at any hotel, inn, B&B, or vacation rental in the Trazzler...
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Slideshow: Visionary Recycling
Quirky places where artists and dreamers turn trash into structural works of art View Slideshow Here“Some people say this is sculpture but I didn’t go to no expensive school to get these crazy notions,” observes John Milkovisch, a retired upholsterer for a railroad who saved and collected over 50,000 aluminum receptacles to create his shiny Houston masterpiece, the “Beer Can...
New Writing Contest - Chicago Writer-in-Residence
Whether it’s in art, nature, or society, nothing creates excitement and interest like an unexpected juxtaposition. Think of a quiet corner in the midst of urban chaos, a waterfall tucked into a suburban cul de sac, a modern Frank Lloyd Wright house on a southern plantation, a red-rock canyon desert winding out of a village in Provence, a rollicking Irish pub inserted into a former...
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J.R.R. Tolkien drank here: Literary watering holes
While a visit to the home of a famous literary figure offers a peek at an eerie, lifeless space suspended in time, seeking out the public places where a writer wrote, drank and caroused tends to be a messier proposition. Life marches on in bars and cafes. Regimes fall. Neighborhoods change. New people take over. If you are lucky enough to find the place still in operation, you can never be sure...
December 2010
8 posts
Fairmont Hotel Giveaway
Trazzler’s Fairmont Hotel Giveaway has a winner: @melaniewyne. The winning tweet: “Last time in Banff I offended the former Mayor. Must make amends. #trazzlerfairmont bit.ly/fPKatb” Have 30 seconds on your hands? Enter our Riviera Maya Giveaway to win a three-day weekend for two just south of Cancun at Yucatan Holidays’ luxury Riviera Maya resort, an eco-friendly retreat...
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Hell on earth: 15 gates to the underworld
The more curmudgeonly among us might call the holidays, to (mis)quote David Foster Wallace, “a sneaky keyhole view of hell.” These days, hell is whatever we want it to be: other people (Sartre), ourselves (Oscar Wilde), a half-filled auditorium (Robert Frost). So much of our idea of hell comes from literature, rather than religion—Dante’s and Milton’s allegories,...
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Unraveling the Real World of Sci-Fi Film Locations
The best sci fi landscapes are those that don’t seem to be anywhere at all—and yet there they are, fully plottable on a google map. Some day soon, these imagined places will likely be pure computer-generated fantasy, but for now, the Earth’s emptiest places still do the trick: A far-flung stretch of Utah desert is the home planet of Mr. Spock, Tunisia the stand-in for Tatooine,...
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Smart Travel Writing Contest Winners
A big thanks to everyone who entered our Smart Travel Writing Contest. This contest had more top contenders than usual, so our choice was not easy. In 2011, our two winners will be headed to Tonga for a Seacology eco-expedition aboard the Nai’a, exploring South Pacific islands and visiting one of the few areas in the world where humans can swim with whales. Here are the winning trips: ...
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Close Encounters With Primates in the Wild
View the Slideshow When our ancestors climbed down from the trees and set into motion an incessant wandering in search of greener pastures, most humans lost touch with our fellow primates. Perhaps this is why finding ourselves face to face with furry long-lost cousins can be so compelling. How could we not recognize ourselves in those faces, fingers, and familiar gestures? While homo sapiens...
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California Slideshows: Escape to Joshua Tree and...
Desert Dreaming: Escape to Joshua Tree With sunny highs in the 60s and bright blue winter skies, December and January are excellent months to hit the road and head to Joshua Tree National Park and the quirky area surrounding it. This brief respite from the blistering heat allows outdoorsy types to rock climb and take long hikes without risking heat exhaustion (though you’ll need...
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In Search of Alien Lifeforms: Mono Lake Road Trip
NASA’s big announcement will surely inspire many to head up to beautiful Mono Lake, peer into the blue water, and ponder just how little we know about our very own planet. The fact that these newly discovered microbial oddballs have been there all along shouldn’t stop us from trying to get to know their remarkable ecosystem better. The area around Mono Lake also happens to be...
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November/December Freelance Assignments
We have another round of freelance writing assignments up for grabs this month. Some are ending next week, so get your submissions in soon. Read more here: Northern California—Lake Tahoe Pacific Northwest—Willamette Valley and Mount Hood New England—Vermont winter destinations NYC/Tri-State—Vermont winter destinations Florida—Miami Southern California—Santa Barbara Any writers who applied...
November 2010
3 posts
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Off the Grid: a Thanksgiving Fantasy Slideshow
Off the Grid: 17 places where no one can find you What is a vacation? The word comes from the Latin verb vacare, an etymology that hints at emptiness—both physically vacating the premises and mentally clearing out the cluttered cupboards of your mind. The excesses of Thanksgiving—the airport groping, delayed overpriced flights, comfort food orgies, cataclysmic shopping days, intense...
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Trazzler on Salon: Urban Enigmas
As an avid (nearly fanatical) reader of Salon for over a decade, I am very excited to announce that we’ll be putting together weekly slideshows of our favorite Trazzler writing on Salon.com in the upcoming weeks. Over the years (really, it’s been years already?) as Trazzler’s editor, I’ve noticed many themes, leitmotifs, and odd commonalities among the thousands of...
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September/October Freelance Writing Assignments +...
We’ve been busily reading all of the excellent submissions for our first (we hope of many) weekend-getaway freelance writing assignments. There were so many high-quality pitches, in the end, it was quite difficult (bordering on agonizing!) to narrow it down to just one person per region. Here are the final six: Julio Martinez: Southern California—San Diego Kristi Wang: Northern...
October 2010
4 posts
Writing Contests →
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On the Road Writing Contest Winners
Congratulations to all of the winners of our On the Road Writing Contest and a big thanks to our sponsor, Fairmont Hotels, and all who took the time to enter and vote. The final editorial prize winners are: Editors’ Choice Grand Prize: Susan Offer Szafir Editors’ Choice Runners-Up Prizes: Peter Herring and Alexis Bohan Peschiera The editorial prize semifinalists are listed here....
Trazzler API
The Trazzler API lets developers leverage Trazzler trips in websites and applications. Trazzler trips are accessible on SimpleGeo, too. And it’s free!
August 2010
1 post
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The Many Faces of Mt. Rainier: Regional Writing...
We’ve launched a regional writing contest in Washington State—the Mt. Rainier Writing Contest—and the dramatic landscape of Mt. Rainier National Park is the star. Here, sample the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest: volcanoes in the Cascade Range, glaciers, waterfalls, old-growth forests, high-country meadows, lakes, hiking and snowshoe trails, and stellar views of majestic Mt. Rainier....
July 2010
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Guide To Trazzler's Writing Contests
Trazzler Writing Contests: An OverviewSurfing trips on Trazzler is like rummaging through a chest of treasure, it’s only a matter of time until you stumble upon that hidden gem—the ideal trip for you. Our writers zoom in on particular travel moments and experiences special to them, in places both well-trekked and off-the-radar. While we hire freelancers each month to write trips about weekend...
Trazzler Maps
We made significant improvements to Trazzler maps. Now we’re plotting every Trazzler trip on every map view. Check it out and please let us know what you think.
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On the Road Writing Contest--Sponsored by Fairmont...
15 Prizes totaling $6000 and 80 nights at luxury Fairmont Hotels and Resorts around the world (choose among 50+ locations). >Details Summer is upon us, which means a flurry of trip planning and happy escapism. We think a trip can be much more than a constellation of must-see places—isn’t travel really about the movement and momentum that it takes to connect the dots? Jack Kerouac...