Blogs we Love: Traveling with Kids

Okay forgive us for being total chicks here, but how friggin' cute is this travel blog? The posts on Traveling with Elliot are pretty standards family-on-a-trip stuff, but the photos are so adorable that we haven't actually been doing much reading. In the past year, little Elliot has visited Amsterdam, Brussels, Cozumel, the US, Israel, Paris, Buenos Aires, Montevideo and has plans to check out Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore. Pretty soon, this pint-sized traveler will have racked up more frequent flier miles that The Lost Girls.

We should also take this opportunity to call your attention to another travel blog: Six in the World. This pack of a dad, mom and four little ones contacted us when we were back in Peru to ask our advice on starting a travel blog. The next time we checked in on them, they'd been profiled on Oprah. Yes, as in Winfrey. Way to go, Andrus family!

Their trip is done, but check out their archives for some serious inspiration and tips on traveling with your own little ones.

We've got a feed!

After months spent wondering what the term RSS stood for, we finally asked our web-savvy editor friend Paul B over at Jaunted.com what it was and how we could get our own. Turns out, RSS (Really Simple Syndication--duh!) can help blog lovers like yourselves to check out what their favorite bloggers are doing without the time-consuming task of actually typing in their web addresses.

Instead, these neat things called "feed aggregators" corral all of the recently updated posts from several blog in one spot, where you can read them easily while pretending to work before 11:00am. Here's a list of some of the most popular aggregators. Looks sorta confusing when you see them all put together, but we recommend starting with something cozy and familiar like MyYahoo! or Google Reader. So, if you're still interested in getting Lost (that's us, not the TV show), click on the orange chicklet:

Get the Lost Girls Feed

How to: Start Your Own Travel Blog

ADP: Gone are the days when travelers kept in touch with loved ones (and bragged about their overseas exploits!) through mass email. Now, backpackers, vagabonders and itinerant wanderers keep things organized by posting their adventures on a travel blog. The good news is, you don't even have to be technically savvy to do it—sites like this one make uploading text, photos and even video (almost) as easy as writing a journal entry.

Want to know more about how we created our own LG online travelogue? Check out this interview we did with the good folks at Budget Travel Online. In the Q&A, we share everything from the sites and equipment we used to the weirdest places we blogged from. Read on—then go start your own.

How to: Start Your Own Travel Blog
by The Lost Girls

1. What are some easy-to-use websites for starting your own travel blog?

Newbie travel bloggers will probably want to get started by using a site that offers a basic posting template, rather than creating their own. Look for one that offers a space for text, pictures, comments and a map showing the countries you'll be visiting. Ones we love: WorldNomads.com, PlanetRanger.com and TravelBlog.org, which all provide free set-up and maintenance as well as a built-in community of travelers writing about their own adventures.

More tech-savvy travelers searching for greater flexibility, better design features and the ability to use HTML code to personalize their site might want to sign up on Blogger.com, or pay to purchase a popular a blogging program called Word Press. You'll have the ability to load slide shows of your images, sort your entries by subject and add a handy "search" feature for your readers.

2. What steps are typically involved in setting up the blog?

If you select the pre-formatted sites listed above, all you need to do is provide sign-up information, enter the country or region you'll be visiting, choose a name for your adventure and send out an email alerting friends and family about your new URL (or address where your blog lives online). If you're using Blogger or Word Press, you can set up the basics, then use HTML codes to change the look and formatting of your blog.

Before you leave, post a few test blogs and report any glitches to the site's technical support staff. It's a lot easier to fix problems while you're still at home, rather than from an internet cafe overseas!

3. What do you know now about blogging that you wish you'd known when you started?

In the beginning, our audience consisted primarily of family and friends whom we'd personally emailed about the blog. It wasn't until a few months into the trip that we learned how bloggers can increase the number of people who view their site. By registering our URL on various traffic exchange sites (i.e. BlogExplosion.com) and blogging community forums (i.e. bloggerchicks.com), we gained hundreds of new readers who would post comments and offer us great advice about the places where we were headed.

4. What equipment do you take with you and how easy is it to access and update your blog while on the go?

We took a Panasonic Toughbook computer, one of the lightest and strongest notebooks available (just over two pounds). And because it's so slim, we can easily slip it into a purse and take it out again to blog on those long, overnight train and bus rides. We have two Olympus cameras--the 720SW (that's shock and waterproof) and the SP500 which has a10X optical zoom for really crisp portraits of locals and wildlife. Both cameras also take video, which allowed us to leave our camcorder at home and still capture spontaneous moments that can't be confined to a still image.

How does all of this come together to create a blog? Well, we'd be completely stuck without our three USB flash drives (one per girl). Wireless internet is still hard to access outside of major cities and prohibitively expensive on this kind of trip. We type our text, edit our videos and select our photos directly on the Panasonic, moving the nearly-finished entry onto the flash drive. From there, we hit the internet cafe and pay between 50 cents and $3 an hour to upload the entries into our blogging program.

Thanks to hosting programs like Slide.com, Flikr.com and YouTube.com we're able to upgrade what could be a text-only entry into a colorful, interactive experience for our friends, family and readers. Sure internet can be painfully slow (sometimes, we're talking 20 minutes to load a single picture) but even the tiniest towns in the farthest reaches of the planet have computers and some sort of web connection. Even travelers heading "off the map" can still post blogs once they get there.

5. While exploring, do you jot notes for future blog posts, do you blog on the spot, or do you blog from memory later on?

While we each maintain a personal journal, we mostly construct blogs from memory (our own and each others) and use the photos we've taken as a reference. For us, it's more important to construct a well thought-out entry (and wait until we have access to a high speed internet connection), so our postings are often a couple weeks behind our "real time" journey.

6. What are some of the oddest places you've blogged from?

Kiminini, Kenya: During our volunteer experience on a farm in rural West Kenya we went without running water, consistent electricity and of course, internet. As we'd craft our blogs inside concrete huts, eight and six-legged guests would creep up and the down the walls and the local schoolkids would barge inside, jump on the bed and try to distract us by "plaiting" our hair or commandeering the computer to watch the DVD cartoons we'd brought. Blogging took a lot longer than usual, and once we'd wrapped for the day, we'd have to cram ourselves into an already overstuffed matatu (a 14-seater van packed with two dozen riders) to take our entries into town and upload them on ancient, 1980's style computers. An adventure, to be sure!

Machu Picchu: After a grueling four-day, three night hike along the Inca Trail, we'd finally made it to The Lost City of the Incas--and the last thing on our minds was updating The Lost Girls blog. But once we'd revived with ice-cream and our first shower in almost a week, we realized that we couldn't head back to modern civilization without waxing poetic about the ancient one right before our eyes.

Yangon, Myanmar: It's hard to render us speechless, but when we learned that several websites (including our blogging program) were banned by the local government, our jaws hit the dusty floor. How would we go without posting for so long? Our shock turned to intrigue once we learned from other travelers that the truly savvy could get unrestricted access to the web--if they visited the "speakeasy" style internet cafes hidden down shadowy alleys off the main drag. "Psst..hey man--you got Blogger? You got Gmail?" we inquired in hushed tones, hoping we'd get the hook up without actually knowing the password. It took a couple days of hunting, but we found what we were looking for--and managed to sneak in a blog or two before the guys in uniform caught on.

7. What do you think makes a good travel blog post?

People definitely love photos and video. They're most interested in hearing about the real, unvarnished, down-and-dirty experiences about our lives in a particular country (what the bathrooms were like, cockroach infested train cars, a humorous encounter with a local). We try to skip poetic descriptions of landscapes and zero in on the little, Seinfeld-like moments that make traveling abroad so fascinating. Friends and readers write and tell us they're reading the blog from their desks in the middle of the workday with a blizzard raging outside their windows. The want to read something funny, out of the ordinary, something that takes them away from their own day-to-day routine.

8. Which posts tend to generate the most feedback?

The posts that generate the most responses are the ones where we invite readers to respond to a particular travel-related question or dilemma (Why are young American men so scarce on the road? Which Lost Girl should have to sleep closest to big hairy spider?). We've been surprised by the strong responses to more humorous posts, such as "Interviews with Each Other." Some readers were turned off that we "rated" the Peruvian men, which they felt was too judgmental. Readers also like more service-oriented posts (ie, finding travel shots on the cheap, how to stay safe on the road, etc) that help them plan their own trips.

9. What role do photographs play? And what should you keep in mind when snapping photos for a blog?

When blogging, you're building a story as much with photos and video as you are with your words. I'd say in some cases, pictures are even more important than the commentary (they're worth a 1000 words after all!). We try to snap photos that will help to construct a great visual tale--the punctured bike tire, the humorously misspelled sign, the 14-seater van carrying 28 passengers--rather than just photos of ourselves posed in front of monuments and scenery. Since we're not always in a place where we can take notes, we also snap images that will help us to remember details later.

10. How does blogging about a trip change the way that you experience it?

While blogging doesn't inhibit us from living in the moment, we've occasionally felt the need to compromise our spontaneity in order to schedule in some blogging time. Sometimes posting a simple entry can take half a day, which can be frustrating when you only have a few days to tour a city. On the upside, blogging can make you more optimistic....when something goes south on the road, we tend to cheer ourselves up by saying, "Well, at least this will make a great story for the blog!" We also find that we're more inspired to pursue cool experiences, to take out the camera and start snapping interesting scenes so we can post them later. The simple process of articulating a personal travel moment and sharing it with strangers all over the online world can make you more appreciative and grateful for the opportunity you had to take the trip in the first place.

It Takes a Village

As many of you know, Jen, Amanda and I volunteered in Kenya through a program called Village Volunteers, and this is a classroom at Pathfinder Academy, a school where we lived in huts and worked with the children.

Recent elections in Kenya have triggered violence between the different tribes, volunteers are being evacuated and many people are dying. So we’re posting this letter from Joshua, the headmaster of Pathfinder Academy and an amazing man who constantly works to better his community by housing orphans at his school, educating farmers on sustainable practices and more. We’re praying that the children at the school are protected, and that the violence can be stopped. Here is Joshua’s letter:


“Dear Friends and supporters,

My warm greetings from Kitale, Kenya. I have not been able to communicate because of so many reasons and so many people have asked how we are doing in the midst of the crisis. I know you have been watching the news about Kenya and may have received other e-mails about the situation, but I want to send this update.

We have been safe till Monday when unknown people set one of our volunteer huts on fire. I was outside my house at 7.30PM relaxing after hard work and no lunch when Alison Johnson, our 1st 2008 volunteer came running while yelling that the house was on fire. Security men were within the school compound. Someone had scrawled through the nearby cassava crop and tossed the fire on the hut next to net bathrooms. The hut was burnt but no one was hurt during the incidence. I think the person realized that it was difficult to enter the compound and this why he had to toss the fire to the house from the neighbors’ farm. We lost a chair, water tank and a few other items. God was on our side that the fire did not spread to the other houses and electricity line was not destroyed.

Neighbors, students and government who arrived at the scene assisted to put off the fire. In any case we are all in good health condition and we continue to take care of the children at Pathfinder Academy and in the villages.


Alison Johnson traveled to Nairobi safely as arranged to avoid rallies for Mass action to force President Kibaki to quit office. She will be flying out on 20th. It is not safe to be in Kenya at the moment with the rallies going on in major towns and cities.

Kiminini Division has 6, 000 kids displaced and are being accommodated by churches and school. These children are going to miss school according to the District Education office of Trans-Nzoia District. Pathfinder Academy has taken on some of these kids. The school has kids from Eldoret, Mt. Elgon, and Busia and within the district.

Over 20 of the CGP clients have had their homes burned and are without shelter or food. Some have moved to Nairobi and Eldoret Police station. Some of affected Pathfinder Academy students have nothing to rely on as most of them lost everything. Many of you have asked how you can help. If you can help, this would be great.

The best way to help is to provide funds for food for the kids, school supplies (writing materials, text books, blankets, mosquito nets and uniforms), food and materials for temporal housing for the kids at Pathfinder Academy and affected villagers at Sirisia Medical Center, where 10 children on average are dying each day.

If you want to help you can send a check to Village Volunteers. Designate it for “Kenya Crisis” and send it to: Village Volunteers; 5100 South Dawson Street, Suite 202; Seattle, WA 98118 USA; Phone: (206) 577-0515

Please pray with me – for peace to prevail in Kenya.

Joshua Machinga.”

Traveling the Globe on a Single Ticket

ADP: Often times, the most confusing part of planning a major international journey is figuring out what type of airline ticket (or tickets) you need to get.

Should you buy each leg separately, and on different airlines, to maximize flexibility? Save yourself the hassle of researching flights on the road by booking a standard RTW ticket? Join forces with an airline alliance? Turn to a ticket consolidator? Research those phantom "courier fares" that every guidebook references, but no real person one has actually received?

The options and permutations are so great that it's no wonder that we get a migraine just thinking about it. In the end, Holly, Jen and I choose to blend a few schools of RTW thought: we bought a round-trip ticket to South America ($600), a one-way ticket to India ($800), then used Airtreks, a ticket consolidator out of San Francisco, to help us string together a series of cheap flights between Kenya, Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Australia ($2300). The most expensive part was getting home: a ticket from Sydney to New York set us back nearly $1000. In the end we shelled out nearly $5000 carting ourselves across the planet. And that doesn't include the small puddle jumper flights we took within each continent. .

To all the Lost Guys and Girls currently organizing trips: we feel your pain. But you might feel a bit better after reading "Traveling the Globe on a Single Ticket" a well-researched article by Michelle of The New York Times. It's a great resource--and we're not just saying that because she quoted us in the last few paragraphs of the piece :-)

There's no doubt that flying can easily represent the largest single line item on any traveler's budget, but we swear its worth the cash. Feel free to email us (lostgirlsworld@gmail.com) with any specific RTW ticket questions you may have; we'll try to track down an answer.

La Dolce Vita!

No wonder Italians coined the phrase, “the sweet life:” They have plenty of time to pursue it with a whopping 28 paid vacation days plus 18 paid holidays (that’s more than nine weeks off a year!). Compare that to the measly 14 days American companies tend to offer. The law of the European Union says all workers must get at least four weeks off (while many European countries take six to seven weeks), but America has no law guaranteeing a minimum paid vacation. And while Italians actually take all of the days offered to them, it's estimated that Americans will give back about 438.9 million vacation days in 2007, according to Expedia.com’s latest Vacation Deprivation survey.

The Mediterranean diet isn’t the only reason Italians have lower rates of heart disease than their American counterparts: Time off not only busts stress, boosts social ties and lets you explore new hobbies, it also safeguards your ticker: Taking your two weeks may slash the risk of heart attack by 30 percent for men and 50 percent for women, according to the Framingham Heart study.

“Europeans work to live and Americans live to work,” says John de Graaf, founder of Take Back Your Time, a national movement fighting overwork and time poverty in America. “Even a two-week law validates as a society that vacation matters.” Amen to that!

So what can you do? First, back away from that computer, plan your vacation in advance so you're more likely to actually go and use all the days you’re allotted. Then log onto to timeday.org to join the fight for mandatory vacation time in the U.S. Hey, all work and no play makes for less productive employees, so you can always tell your boss you’re doing it for the good of the company.

Travel Gear: Downsizing your Life...in 3 oz or less

Lucky Magazine really isn't the first place we turn to learn about fabulous-yet-practical products for backpackers (they once ran a travel spread featuring $900 Marc Jacobs "trekking boots") but it was in the January issue that we first learned about our newest web obsession: www.Minimus.biz.

The site offers a deep selection of toiletries, pharmacy essentials, personal care items and even condiments in sizes that won't tick off the uniformed bulldogs at airport security. We love that we can snag trial sizes of our favorite John Frieda shampoo, Wisk laundry detergent and Skintimite shave get--then order some packets of Kraft light mayo and Knotts maple syrup while we're at it.

Of course, this is all great news for travelers, but the site offers kits for campers, military personal and parents who want to send their kids a care package at school. Since shipping is free on all orders over $20, doing your pre-trip shopping online really becomes a no-brainer.