Where digital meets travel + lifestyle … A collection of can’t-miss news from this week. Sign up to get the TURNER Weekly Download in your inbox every Friday.
Pretty much every traveler makes use of his or her smartphone to document a vacation. But are you going beyond the cameraphone? “Between various apps and social media platforms, you can preserve experiences of your travels beyond the sights you see,” said Dennis Crowley, the co-founder and executive chairman of Foursquare. He’s got some handy tips – including making a Spotify playlist of the songs you hear during your travels; logging your stops via Foursquare Swarm to keep track of (and share) the places you’ve gone; and using your Twitter feed to ask for suggestions. Do you have any app travel tips? Tweet us @turnerpr.
Traveling isn’t just good for the soul. Studies show it makes you smarter, too. Forbes’ Jordan Bishop says that experiencing new places and other cultures “throws our old conception of reality out the window and replaces it with an updated, more complex one. And it’s precisely this confusion, combined with our brain’s response to it, that pushes us to shift and grow in such unique ways.” This exposure to other perspectives allows us to hold multiple, sometimes conflicting viewpoints in our minds, increasing our ability to engage with complex topics. So book that next vacation – your brain will thank you.
The solo travel trend is here to stay – especially for women. For Kristy McNiff, the reason is simple: she gets to make all the decisions. Solo travel is more flexible, in case you want to throw another destination onto your itinerary. It allows you to try out specific niche interests that friends and family might not be into. You can go at your own pace. According to Travel + Leisure, “last year a majority of travel agents said more of their female clients are now traveling alone compared to 10 years ago.” What do think – are you ready to go it alone?
But what if you’re lonely on your during your solo adventure? One Belgian hotel has a unique solution. The Hotel Charleroi near Brussels is offering to rent its guests a fish for just €3.50 a night. “We started a few years ago,” manager David Dillen told the Independent. “The idea was to surprise our guests, as we always try to do. It’s brilliant to see how people react to it. They smile, they take pictures to put on social media. We rent a few fish per week.” Are these fish good conversationalists, though?
Never mind Stonehenge. Check out an incredible timelapse video of weather, stars, and the eclipse at the Carhenge roadside attraction in Nebraska.