I usually get contacted rather often with promoting emails of all kind of services, sites or apps. Not every one makes it through to my writing, but Pablo Grandinetti’s (co-founder of Urbita/Travel Videos) email did. Read why below…

Being the first search engine for travel videos organized using Urbita’s database of around 180,000 cities/towns, it sure did catch my attention fast. On top of that they also categorize the videos by location and add other information of interest like available tours, music festivals or sports events.

This approach is of course very useful for us travelers, gathering much of the info we want for our research for any city we plan to visit. Not only that, but the info we get is like insider-info, local knowledge of a place which is essential for any traveler that wish to plan the best holiday at that particular place.

I like the fact that I can get a search result with better videos than just searching for videos generally in different common video sites. Travideos.com is after all, specialized in travel videos, making it more suitable as a travel planning tool. Try it out!

©Lifecruiser Love Travel Videos
 

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To help mitigate this problem, The Economist developed the Big Mac Index, which measures whether currencies are at their “correct” level by comparing the cost of a Big Mac all around the world.

For example, a Big Mac might cost $4.50 in the U.S. and 90 INR in India; but, when you convert the Indian price from rupees to dollars, the Indian Big Mac actually costs about $1.50, which makes the Indian rupee undervalued by about 67 percent (because the Big Mac is about $3 cheaper).

When a currency is undervalued, you’ll actually get more for your money when you travel there. And, of course, when a currency is overvalued, you’ll get less for your money when you travel there.

The world of currency exchange can be pretty confusing, so to learn more about the Big Mac Index, watch the video below:

This guest post was provided by Jessica Edmondson who has traveled abroad to Mexico as well as England. Her latest adventure has taken her to move from Florida to Washington. You can follow her on Twitter @jsedmond.

Photo taken with my iPhone, not very good but you get the picture – how small it is (2.4 x 1.6 x 1.2 inches ), when you look at that suction cap in the front which is HUGE comparing to the mini video camera! The size is why we were interested in the first place.

As they say themselves at their website:

Wearable and gear mountable, waterproof to 197? (60m), capable of capturing professional full 170º wide angle 1080p video and 11 megapixel photos at a rate of 10 photos per second, the HD HERO2 is the world’s most versatile camera.

It can even handle under water filming though there seem to be a loss of sharpness with underwater images according what I’ve read on the internet about it. There is also another con: it’s difficult to aim without a LCD…

We’re not exactly sports-persons in the true meaning of that word, but we will nevertheless try on the Head Strap in some situations.

©Lifecruiser Love Europe Trip Preparations

Earlier post about Lifecruiser Europe Trip 2012:

Europe Trip Preparations: Double Trip Packing
Europe Trip Preparations: Camera Gears
Europe Trip Preparations: New Notebook PC
Another meetup for the Europe road trip
Europe Trip Preparations: Champagne Coolbox Snacks
New car for the Europe trip
Europe Trip 2012 Summery
Europe Trip Accommodations
Mapped Europe Roadtrip Route 2012 by Lifecruiser
Routes and stays booked for our Europe trip 2012
Planning our Europe trip 2012
 

Almost every popular boat builder of the last 40 years is represented in the Cruising Division. Sweden has 5 yachts participating. 4 of them in the Division I Cruising: Andriette, Ellen, Marta, Wind of Gothenburg and 1 in Division: V Open: S/Y Thindra.

We can’t help it, but we have a favorite among those: S/Y Thindra, a Swan 59. Why? We admit that the main reason is because a Swedish radio action reporter is aboard. He participated even in 2009 years ARC.

He is a long time favorite radio reporter of mine who is a really relaxed and very fun guy, just look at this video of how he did “practice” before this Atlantic cruise!

Though also because the crew at S/Y Thindra seem to be able to create such a great atmosphere for their passengers in their ordinary cruise business. I wish to go on one of their cruises one day!

As one of them wrote on the S/Y Thindra Yacht Blog: We avoided scolding.

“It was very crowded when more than 200 boats set off at once. A yacht from Croatia had a skipper who yelled at his crew when they did not get up the gennackern. He even left the wheel empty and ran on deck, shouting and complaining. We here at Thindra only shook our heads and thought about how much fun they will have”.

There were some worries the day before start because there were hardly any wind at all, but it seems like it all went well after all.

Now, they may have some motion of the sea and let’s hope they’ll not get any motion sickness – I wonder if I would, being on the yacht? I’d probably have to stay up on the deck all the time…

He reported Swedish Pyttipanna as the first dinner aboard, a great, easily eaten dish. Oh, and that the night were so chilly that they all had to wear long johns… *giggles*

In the 2009 years ARC, there were actually a Swedish yacht as the over all winner in Division I Cruising: Amoress II and other Swedish ones in the top 4 of Class A, so who knows what is going to be the end results this year?

They’ll reach their destination St Lucia, in the beginning of December. You can keep an eye on their and their competitors way there at the link below.

Live Adventure Tracking Atlantic Rally Cruisers 2010

Lifecruiser ♥ Cruise Yachts
 

On The Road To Travel Tool Application Homepage

Our regular readers know that we from time to time like to make reviews of different travel related things, this time another travel tool. Yes, it’s necessary to keep up to date what’s going on in the travel world.

Insider at the Olympics

One of the accredited journalist for Olympics, a Swiss journalist and blogger, Urs Berger, is blogging live from Vancouver for them at On The Road To new Olympics blog.

Special Olympics blog from Vancouver at On The Road

This means that his press pass will get him into places where regular visitors wouldn’t usually, so be sure to keep an eye on his writing for live experiences.

On The Road Main features

On The Road has a lot of features which I can’t go into in details, so I listed the most useful here.

Main features of the travel application are:
 
• Publication of articles together with photos and videos, accompanied by an exact GPS location
• Possibility to export the GPS coordinates directly to a navigation
• Google maps integration
• Google Latitude integration available
• Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed integration available
• Easy organization of trips, articles and comments
• Offline mode (phone app) – store travel adventures to the phone and upload them at once
• NearByMe feature (phone application) – Find cool places and events nearby at any time
• Subscribers – Track and organize the followers of a certain trip
• SMS, MMS, email article publishing available as well

I really like the interactive maps that more easily can let friends and family follow our location and see where we’re going next, but also the drag-and drop sorting is making everything more easy. Plus I don’t have to worry about compatibility since all image, video or audio format seem to work.

Seeing the local weather is another thing that comes in handy for us travelers. If creating a schedule, our TripBook will even keep a record of the weather on our trip – nice!

Friends and family can send comments on our created trips and photos and we’ll get an email notifications about it. If we reply to the comment, they will receive an email as well. They can also subscribe to the trip and get email notifications every time wel post something new.

One of the perhaps most useful features after a trip, is that you can make it available as a web widget on your blog, to show your articles from On The Road.

Of course there is also possible to share everything to different social networks: log in to account, go to “Share” and select your favorite social networks.

Phone application quick glance

Since everyone nowadays seem to be totally into iPhone or similar applications, I thought I would show some screenshots from the apps too.

On The Road To iPhone Screenshot of Articles and Trips

Don’t you just love how simple it looks? Despite that it has those really useful features, making it worth trying yet another travel tool.

On The Road To iPhone Screenshot of other features

Oh, and don’t miss On The Road To’s Video’s, if you want to learn more about how to use it!

Different from other travel apps?

Yes, it’s true, there are a lot of other travel applications that are similar – or travel tools that I prefer to call them – out there already, but are we really satisfied with them?

I would say most of us are not. There are still a lot to wish in all of them, but I think that this particular one is “On The Road To” some new ways of seeing things at least.

Let us hope for more interesting features to come, to really fill all our travel tools needs!

Lifecruiser ♥ Travel Tools
 

The festival were called Inti Raymi – The sun festival: “Everybody joined under the same sun”. This was the first time for this festival and such a multicultural performance which we never have seen before in Stockholm!

There were songs and dancing from all over South America including a very special cultural integration performance with the inka and dancing to the sun gods honor – among many other scenes.

Sitting there in this very Swedish park seeing this cultural event so far from our country did feel a bit unreal, but also very, very interesting!

It also gave me visions of South America and especially the Andes mountains. Suddenly this park scene felt not beautiful enough for these scenes.

It’s great that this cultural exchange between our countries has started and we all want to see this festival become an annual event.

Lifecruiser ♥ South America
 

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It started as early as in 1845 (!) with informal competitions that were organized by the owners of the horses carrying the fish and shellfish in the Bajo de Guía beach to local markets and nearby towns.

This race has carried on ever since in this spectacular place – along the Bajo de Guía beach every August. We heard about it last year when we were staying just a couple of minutes from Bajo de Guía in our friends casa.

The Jockeys looks like the ones in the Derby in England and the distances are 1500 and 1800 meters. Many big names within the racing world participate, so if you’re into racing, this would be an event to check out.

This year the Sanlúcar horse race is planned to the 1-3 August for the first stage and 17-19 Aug for the second stage. It all depends on the tides.

We will not be able to go there ourselves this year either, because we have another great trip to Southern France planned.

There has even been talk about starting a similar race in the neighboring Moroccan city of Tangiers, since tanger Bay is ideal for this type of event, but I have no idea what’s the status of it.

The Sanlúcar horse race association also has an own webpage worth to keep an eye on.

Nearest airports to get there are Jerez de la Frontera or Seville. If you have the opportunity, just go there, Sanlúcar town is really nice – great seafood and Manzanilla Bodegas.

Just be careful with the Manzanilla. It can give you a headache…

Lifecruiser ♥ Sanlúcar
 

Don’t miss our beautiful capital of Sweden, Stockholm, in the end of the video – or the Swedish girls before that… *giggles*

Both of us are born, raised and live in Stockholm right now. Maybe for the rest of our lives too or maybe not. We have been thinking of moving somewhere else. We’ll see when and if it happens.

Since we always are writing about how wonderful it is to travel and see other places, it might sound like we’re not fond of our home country or city. That’s not the fact, we love our home country and are very proud of it.

What we don’t love about it, is the long winters. Like today: it has been snowing all day, just when we thought that finally maybe the spring had arrived…

I wouldn’t want to trade away the summer in Sweden. Never.

Lifecruiser ♥ Sweden
 

I call it the Mad’s pathway! Tell me how many seconds you can stand to watch this without going: SH*T! Totally MAD!

Information about the video: “The construction of this walkway lasted 4 years and was finished in 1905. The walkway has now gone many years without maintenance, and is in a highly deteriorated and dangerous state. After a four people died in 2000 (and several prior) the local government closed the entrances. Adventurous tourists still find their way into the walkway”.

Also called the Desfiladero de los Gaintanes walkway and is suspended over a sheer drop of some 100 meters.

I was covered in sweat already after the first look down… as I always are when experiencing heights, one of my biggest fears.

According to the euro weekly news, the government is planning a restoration, but has estimated that it may be as long as 5 years before it’s finished, due to “difficulties with the terrain.”

Can you imagine what a work to restore this (and of those who built it from the beginning!) – or the cost of doing it…? *whistles*

Lifecruiser ♥ Mountains
 

I’m supporting Sweden in the wintergames by showing this simply hilarious video. This is catching the Swedish soul in a nutshell: fun, outgoing and surprising!

Swedish Ski destinations Åre and Östersund hopes to get the honor of organizing the Olympic Winter Games. They’ve already applied three times since 1986 without luck.

For travelers it would be a cool(d) opportunity to see the glory of Sweden in it’s winter dress.

Good luck Sweden!

Lifecruiser ♥ Sweden