Globespin Blog
Win a $9,000 Kenya Safari with Your Best Shot
affiliate program Travel site iExplore is looking for fabulous travel photography from any trek you’ve taken anywhere in the world—the grand prize is a $9,000 Kenya safari. To enter, just register, upload your best photograph, and then spread the word. Use Facebook, Twitter and instant message to rack up the votes. Each week, 20 finalists [...]
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Prague’s Spontaneous Shrine to John Lennon
affiliate program By Betsa Marsh The 30th anniversary of John Lennon’s tragic murder will be commemorated all over the world, but especially at what many Czechs consider the first Lennon Memorial. The Lennon Wall in Prague’s Mala Strana (Lesser Town) sprang up spontaneously after the Dec. 8 shooting, and Praguers risked imprisonment to write on [...]
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Johnny X Gets an Angle on Cubist Prague
affiliate program By Betsa Marsh Johnny X, the SATW Traveling Teddy who globetrots for the third-grade class of Meredith Schroeder at St. Joseph Consolidated School in Hamilton, Ohio, recently toured Prague. He enjoyed walking the narrow, twisting paths of Old Town and The Jewish Quarter, exploring Prague’s unbroken millennium of architecture, but after a few [...]
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Always Halloween at Bone-Bedecked Chapel
By Betsa Marsh Human bones as decor? Yes, well, I’ve seen it in St. Emilion, France, and the cathedral in Lima, Peru, but the Ossuary (Kostnice) in Sedlec, Czech Republic may be the creepiest joint yet. Sedlec, southeast of Prague just outside the UNESCO city of Kutna Hora, had the first Cistercian abbey in Bohemia in [...]
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Ghosts Romp In Columbus’ Thurber House
By Betsa Marsh Like many a ghost story, James Thurber’s “The Night the Ghost Got In” rollicks with fear, confusion and absolutely no conclusion about the ghost itself. But because it’s Thurber, one of America’s great humorists, the story also has his unpredictable mother, his hapless brother and grandpa in the attic, his mind replaying [...]
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Spirits of Famous Germans Meet Traveling Teddy
Johnny X’s head is still spinning—globespinning—from all the famous spirits he met recently in Germany. Johnny X, the SATW Traveling Teddy who globetrots for the third-grade class of Meredith Schroeder at St. Joseph Consolidated School in Hamilton, Ohio, started by meeting Martin Luther and his wife, Katharina von Bora in Nimbschen. Katharina was a nun [...]
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Cincinnati–There’s An App for That!
Just out! Cincinnati Essentials is my new app that covers the waterfront from Cincinnati’s Ghost Subway to flying pigs and frying goetta. Designed for travelers and residents alike, Cincinnati Essentials uncovers the best of the quirky Queen City. The mobile guide for Apple iPhones, iPods and iPads is available for $2.99 on iTunes. All updates [...]
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Falling for Irresistible Thai Artists in a Big Way
Are you a mad shopaholic when you travel? I’m usually pretty resolute about just buying tiny trinkets for friends back home, but when I’m confronted with a darling 12-year-old art prodigy in Northern Thailand, well, I lose all control… Ashley the Traveling Teddy also had a big day at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center, and [...]
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Columbus Flowing with New Vodka, Wines
By Betsa Marsh Ryan Lang is a fourth-generation distiller and proud of it. Do the math and somebody in that family line must have run into the long governmental arm of Prohibition. “My grandmother Nellie was a rum runner and went to jail for a while,” Lang said of his family in Williamsburg, Pa. “They [...]
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Lawrence of Arabia Surprises at Horse Museum
The world is coming to Lexington for the 16-day Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, starting Sept. 25. While you’re watching some of the best horses and riders from around the globe, be sure to pop into the Kentucky Horse Park’s International Museum of the Horse to see “A Gift from the Desert” about the Arabian [...]
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