In praise of virtual travel writing

Nice story here about underpaid author Thomas Kohnstamm, who wrote his Lonely planet guide without going to Columbia. (Or did he go there and have to deal coke to survive? LD is characteristically confused.) Guidebooks are so superficial, and information online so plentiful, that there’s actually no reason now why they shouldn’t be written from…

Some more sun goddesses

The other day I did a libertarian Raval tour with a particularly dangerous Californian sociologist, and we got onto Orwell’s apparent incapacity to see the most recent civil war as anything but a class conflict betrayed. This despite ethnic-based stuff like the vicious mini-civil war between Catalan fascists associated with Estat Català and self-described communist…

Top 10 Catalan cities

An example of the complete bollocks with which travel sites think you’ll be satisfied is to be found on Travelcreek, which tells us that: Gerona is the second largest city in the province of Catalunya after Barcelona and is dissected by the Onyar river. Leaving aside the fact that Catalonia isn’t a province, Girona hasn’t…