Hey, everybody, I hoped you missed this column, because it’s baaa-ack.  I came home from two intense trips (one to the Travel Blog Exchange Conference in New York City, aka TBEX, and a press trip aboard the new Norwegian Epic cruise ship the next weekend).  I had a lot of catching up to do when I returned home, including a ton of travel-related reading. So let’s launch into my shiny choices for the week, shall we?

The first post I read after I got back from my cruise was a gorgeously-written, intensely personal piece by Jeannie Mark of NomadicChick on Why I Travel.  There’s not much more I can say, except Read It.

My friend Jason Hussong of Jasons-Travels.com recently visited Rwanda on a press trip and had an experience most of us won’t ever have:  Despite his reservations about the ethics of it, he went on a gorilla trek and got to see gorillas in their native habitat.  His article on this experience, Gorilla Trekking in the Virungas, is just terrific.

Loved this suggestion from Joel at the Freedonia Post about why the Travel Channel should pick up the rights for the Tour De France.  As Joel argues,”there is an opportunity to pull in people who aren’t currently watching by taking advantage of all of the event’s other compelling qualities: travel, food, drama, human interest and competition.”  Yes!  I mean, really, if the Travel Channel can spend countless hours showing the World Series of Poker (which never travels anywhere, except from one poker hand to another), why can’t they show something more relevant to traveling like this?

Thanks to Barbara Wiebel at Hole in the Donut Travels for sharing the new Mexico Tourism Campaign video, which is breathtaking.  If there are awards (and there probably are) for best tourism videos, this one has got to win. The music and cinematography are a perfect blend to inspire the urge to travel.  If anything can overcome the negative publicity Mexico has gotten over the past year, this might just be it.

During TBEX10, the travel bloggers’ conference I attended in New York City at the end of June, I met and spent time with a lovely young woman named Cherie who writes a travel blog called Flight of the Deaf Travelbee, wherein she writes about traveling as a deaf person.  Meeting and speaking with her, as well as reading through her blog has made me stop and think about all the ways in which the travel industry could be more accommodating to deaf people but isn’t.  For instance: Wouldn’t it be nice if, in addition to audio announcements about flights taking off at airports (or which stop a train is arriving at), they ran a text  ticker with the same announcement all over the airport (or in each train car) for deaf travelers?  How hard would that be?  (And to be honest with you, as garbled as those announcements tend to be, I think a text announcement would be helpful for most of us, not just the deaf.)  Deaf Travelbee Takes Flight Pre-TBEX demonstrates all the ways in which a deaf traveler has to take extra steps when traveling via air that most of us don’t have to take.  Thanks, Cherie, for educating the rest of us.

Photo credit:  Tall Shiny Buildings by bensonkua.