Tourism on the Edge (TOTE) is a travel blog focused on “unusual traveling, unusual locations”. You can think of it as the go-to website for inspiration on unconventional places to visit and crazy things to do (from building your own igloo to attending a mud festival).

The story behind the blog begins in 2009, when Lavinia (admin) realized that the most fun and healthy way of getting to know this world is to experience it live, every step of the way. Back then, traveling looked like the best job out there and gathering ideas of places to go seemed legit. Not to mention cool, childish (read that “playful”) and easy to do. It didn’t take long before Tudor (admin) joined the research parade, adding an artistic and spiritual side to the game, now slowly becoming serious. A special mention goes out to Dennis, who encouraged the team when they needed the most and to Alexandra who just started blogging.

“Having seen some of the places we dared only blog about made us realize that the essence of traveling is reaching the essence. We would love to encourage our readers to travel fun, meaningful and responsibly”-stated the admins.

Traliving began in a dream. It may sound cliché but it’s what happened. Traviling founder Andrew Gold had been trying to think of a name for his travel website for a few days. But he had his ‘eureka’ moment at 5am as he awoke with the name rumbling in his brain. He wrote it down and went back to sleep. He later told the name to his housemate, who laughed and told him it was a really stupid name. And he may have been right! That is the story of Traliving’s name.

The idea for the website itself came a little earlier. Andrew was doing a night shift at The Sun newspaper where he worked for 1-2 years as a journalist. As the clock struck midnight, he celebrated his 24^th birthday in the most anti-climactic of fashions in the news organisation’s tepid office atmosphere. He was tired of living a dreary existence in his hometown of London. So he Googled ‘best climate in the world’. He found himself staring his future home in the face – Medellin, Colombia.

While conducting research, he found that most websites gave very factual information. But he wanted to get a general feel for the town, a sentiment that’s very hard to capture. And he found a lot of the information was compromised. For example: ‘Go to this restaurant because they paid us a bunch of money to say so.’ There were also many sites following one person around – but Andrew found those websites a little egocentric – even if some are pretty remarkable.

But what about a website where everybody could offer up real life stories about their time in a foreign space? Their own subjective experience and pictures.

Henceforth, Traliving was born!

Interest has steadily grown over the six months of Traliving’s short life. Andrew’s best friend Jack Franks, who he met working at a children’s camp in California, got involved after a month. Jack’s input ensured Traliving would still be going strong today. Together, the pair run Traliving as a hobby. They don’t expect to make any cash – at least not any time soon. For now, their only selfish benefit is being able to use the site as a platform for other projects. They generally allow their writers to benefit in the same way by adding links and plugging their own material – as long as it fits in with the philosophy of the website. (They get a lot of emails from marketing-spam people trying to trick them into publishing a story on car rentals or something absurd!)

They’re looking for real stories from real writers, so look them up!

Check out Traliving’s first video about Medellin, Colombia.

Nick Bowditch Travel is a travel blog written by Nick Bowditch. Rather than Nick the Globetrotter, he used to be Nick the copywriter.

Nick the copywriter didn’t take a lot of chances. He went to work every day and wrote about just about everything except for the things that he loved. Travel in particular was a passion he ignored for the sake of trying to convince people to use one kind of shampoo instead of another.

About a year ago, Nick alias the man who tries to keep calm and travel on, left his nine-to-five job, sold his nine-to-five car and started traveling the world. He is not saying that’s the road everybody should take, but it’s the road that took him from “that copywriter guy” to some pretty cool places on this planet.

He used to be afraid to take the leap. He used to make excuses. But he decided to ditch all of that (and use an awesome play on words with his surname) in pursuit of a life on the road.

Nickbowditchtravel.com is his  personal story about travel. Its focus is travel plain and simple and in it he covers a multitude of destinations, means of travel and enough tips and ideas to inspire all other globetrotter to make their own journey, wherever and whenever that might be. His audience consists of travellers from all over the world and Nick’s goal is to leave no stone unturned.

“Barcelona fun and frolics from someone old enough to know better…”

Under this slogan a dynamic and active travel blogger in his mid-thirties writes down his experiences in and some anecdotes, memories and information about Catalan’s beautiful capital Barcelona.

You would like to know who Gaudi really was? Whether he liked new shoes or was vegetarian? Here we go, an article about some of the strangest facts about Catalan’s amazing architect will broaden your horizon. Standing out on every party while showing off with those interesting fun facts is a nice side effect, too!

You have friends or family over but Barcelona is covered in rain. You have absolutely no idea what to do with them because the only thing you know is the beach? Help needed! No problem, Barcelona Freak will assist you finding your way out of bed and into the vibrant city life. Interesting comparisons of various activities will facilitate your decision and real insider tips make you look like a real Catalan.

But listen up! If you are rather interested in history or politics and want to get to know different perspectives – that’s what you will find as well. Profound discussions about the ongoing Catalan versus Spain topic will be found and many different opinions contribute to a lively dialogue.
The delightful freshness of his writing style and the fact that he does not mince matters makes even long and detailed articles enjoyable and striving for more.
Don’t hesitate to check out Barcelona Freak’s blog and get some new and interesting facts about the city!