Happy middle of July, everyone!  I hope your summers are going swimmingly.  Personally, I feel like summer is zooming by way too fast.   Before I get to my weekly recommendations, I wanted to share a piece of discount travel news with you:  If you’re thinking about a last-minute summer getaway, Hostelbookers is having its Summer of Love sale, with lodging discounts of 20%-60% off regular prices at 200 properties in 28 destinations.  Must be booked by July 31 and travel must take place before September 30. Head on over to Hostelbookers.com to check it out.  Update: This sale has now been extended to August 31!

Are you ready for the Shiny?  Here goes:

Riddle me this:  When is a tourist trap not a tourist trap?  When the quality of the entertainment rises above its form.  Corey Taratuta of Irish Fireside describes his trepidation in attending An Evening at the Bunratty Castle Medieval Banquet and how the experience wasn’t at all what he expected.  I think this bears keeping in mind as we travel.  Sometimes, we shun things we expect to be cheesy tourist traps, but they wind up being really worth the effort and price to see.  You never know.

I recently met Jason Cochran of WalletPop (and AOL) on board the Norwegian Epic and have become a big fan of his videos.   When I saw his video interview with two brothers who work at Epcot (at Disney World), I was enchanted.  I’ve seen those brothers in Epcot, because I love the Mexico musicians.  They even answer my (unasked) question of how performers at Disney stay motivated when they have to repeat performances all day long. Good stuff.

Suzy Guese tells a personal story to illustrate the instincts solo female travelers need to cultivate in order to determine the motivations of people we meet on the road in Next stop…Bangladesh? Knowing the Sincere from the Sketchy as a Solo Female Traveler.

When we talk about The Gifts of Solo Travel, most of us generally talk about the intangibles we draw from the experience, the things we learn about ourselves, the people we meet, the life lessons learned. Sabina Lohr of Solo Female Traveler wrote this piece  to describe the mementos she has from past trips that remind her of the gift of friendship she has received from people she has met during her journeys.  Any of us might walk into her house and see these items and not at all understand the meaning behind them, but there’s a story to every one.  I liked thinking about that.  I bet we all have items in our lives like this.

This article from Gadling affected me deeply.  Interesting that it wasn’t the words of the travel writer, Jon Bowermaster, that had the impact on me, but the words of the fisherman whose letter he quotes.  But thank you, Jon, for bringing Michael Roberts’ words to us:  From the Shores of Louisiana: A letter from a Louisiana Fisherman. I complain a lot about the long, cold winters in Vermont, and about the lack of datable men here, and the lack of high-paying jobs for liberal arts majors.  But there is something very special about the landscape of Vermont, about the way the air smells here, and the cleanliness of our rivers and streams compared to most states.  If something happened to Vermont like what has happened in the Gulf, I know a lot of people who would be devastated, including me.  Something special is being lost now in Louisiana and along the Gulf Coast that can never be replaced.  And while the BP oil spill is huge in the media right now, we shouldn’t forget that “something special” is being lost every year from somewhere in the world–we just don’t always see it on the evening news, and maybe it happened more slowly than is happening right now because of the oil spill.