We love a good voting contest, and the nastier and more competitive it is the better. Which is why we were happy to find out about the upcoming edition of our favorite board game, Monopoly. The "Here and Now: World Edition" is coming soon. Picking just 22 cities for the game is gonna get ugly.
Before the factories can start churning out the new Monopoly board, it's up to the general public to decide which world cities go on the board and where. The top 20 cities as voted on the website will be allocated to spots on the board according to their ranking on February 28. The final favorite city will get the most expensive spot. (After that, there are two wild-card spots available.)
So if you have a niche kind of city that's your favorite, head to the website and do a write-in vote for it. From February 29, there'll be one more voting stage to see which two write-in cities will win the cheapest spots on the board. And then we'll be able to throw the dice and head to jail all while we're doing a round-the-world trip.
We all love a good round-the-world journey but you'll be surprised to hear about just who's been making a 17,000-mile, 15-year trek from China, soon to arrive on the south-west beaches of England.
The big travelers are a bunch of rubber ducks. They fell off the back of a boat (literally) in 1992 and an obsessive oceanographer named Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been tracking them ever since. A few landed on Alaskan shores and now a big team of them are expected to wash up near Cornwall over the summer. Keep an eye out because the manufacturers are offering a £50 reward if you find one; although rumour has it collectors will pay 10 times that amount on E-bay.
Dreaming of a round the world trip and a year off from your normal life? Plenty of us think it's just not affordable, but let the Lost Girls convince you otherwise.
Their blog follows the round-the-world journey of three twenty-something American gals who decided a year spent bungee-jumping in New Zealand, volunteering in Kenya and learning yoga in India was better than sitting around at home. Journey nearly over, one of the girls (with a spreadsheet addiction) has calculated the budget of their trip. All expenses included, their year away came up to $18,000 per person: about the same as the rent they would've paid if they'd stayed home in NYC.
The Lost Girls also have a bunch of how-to posts, explaining how they chose their route, how they stay in touch and (the all important) how they gave notice to their bosses. Basically everything you need to know when you want to throw it all in and hit the road.
You can just go somewhere on holiday, have a good time and go home again, or you can be a Rogue Traveller. The BootsnAll site sponsors a few quirky journeys a year, as long as you have a sufficiently weird reason for giving up your day job and traveling long 'n' hard.
Our favorite rogue traveler is a guy named Kelsey Timmerman, who decided he'd trek 'round the world to find the places where his clothing was made, overcrowded garment factories and all. He's currently making himself famous in Bangladesh (the locals thought he was Tom Cruise) and you can read up on him at Where Am I Wearing?
And while Kelsey's trip at least has some kind of socially conscious slant, you have to congratulate Brianne and CJ, a couple who dreamt up the 1000 Wines trip. Right now they're drinking their way around Mediterranean Europe and plan to sample 1000 wines during their 16 month 'round-the-world journey. Hmm, social conscience holder or wine taster: which kind of traveler are you?
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by amandak
