Even if you are a seasoned international traveler, there are certainly times when you are at loss when away from home. This interesting infographic/quiz from the British travel agency Travelbag covers “50 things a traveler should know”. What kind of traveler are you? Tepid or Super Nomad?
It’s been a few years since I’ve been to Mexico, but it’s a rare week when I don’t have Mexican food. I challenge you to watch this terrific video and not crave Mexican food for dinner. The video is from the folks at the Perennial Plate. Visit their website to see more of the same. (The music is by MC, producer and activist Olmeca)
Painting courtesy of Bonnie Butler @ http://www.bonniebutlerart.com
The Peculiar Underworld of Rare-Book Thieves
What is the oldest book in the world?
The Library of Congress by the numbers.
What happens when Oxford’s Bodleian Library and the Biblioteca Vaticana collude?
designing metropolitan subway system maps to make them easily understood for both locals and visitors is a challenge for any graphic designer or cartographer. It’s equally challenging to create city transit maps that reflect a municipal identity.
Zero Per Zero, a Seoul, Korea-based graphic design studio has launched a project to incorporate symbolic elements of cities into transit maps while attempting to preserve cartographic clarity. Each of their maps starts with a symbol for the city—a tulip for Amsterdam, a heart for NYC, the Eiffel Tower for Paris.
If you want to see more maps, or buy maps or prints, visit the Zero Per Zero website.
On January 15th in Sarajevo, a new library opened to the public : the reborn Gazi Husrev Bey Library which is home to a priceless collection of rare books and manuscripts dating from 1106. The original library was established in 1537 by an Ottoman governor in Bosnia.
Over the centuries, the library grew to house a remarkable collection, including some of the first printed Islamic books, masterpieces of calligraphy and texts in Persian, Turkish, Arabic and Bosnian. During the Bosnian war in the early 1990s, as Sarajevo was under siege, a team of incredibly dedicated volunteers led by the library’s curator Mustafa Jahic smuggled tens of thousands of volumes from the collection to safe houses.
Now two decades later the historic collection has been brought back together for the first time in a new Gazi Husrev Bey Library, which was built with funding from the government of Qatar.
photos © Islamic Arts Magazine
Books I Love is a new social networking app for book lovers that allows readers to share their reading suggestions and critiques digitally with social contacts . The free iOS app lets users both send and receive book recommendations individually or to a list of contacts via email, Facebook or in app. The video below explains just how it works.
If you’ve been anywhere near a computer or television this week, you’ve probably seen a rash of hyperbolic stories about a ghost cruise ship full of “cannibal rats” supposedly heading for the British coast. Well, the part about the loose, drifting ship is true, but the preposterous “cannibal rat” theory came from Pim de Rhoodes , a Belgian ship salvager with no real knowledge of the MV Lyubov Orlova’s situation.
The ghost ship was built in 1976 as an ice-strengthened cruise ship. Until 2005 it carried tourists to the Arctic and Antarctica. It languished until last year when it was being towed from New Foundland, Canada to the Dominican Republic to be scrapped. Shortly after leaving St. John’s the tow cable either broke or was purposely released. Either way, the Orlova has been floating somewhere in the North Atlantic Gyre.
The U.K.’s maritime authorities are not concerned about an imminent landing, but if you’re interested you can follow the story at the blog Where is Lyubov Orlova.
It’s been way too long since I’ve visited Portugal and these marvelous travel posters have me checking-out airfares. The colorful work is all created by Porto-based artist Rui Ricardo. Along with these marvelous pieces, and other fantastic travel posters for European and Asian destinations, Ricardo has written graphic novels, animated films and designed music videos. You can see more of his travel art at his website and even buy some prints to brighten up your walls.
On Monday, London’s famed Wellcome Library released a dizzying collection of digitized images from its vast archive. The free, downloadable high resolution images are available to copy, distribute, manipulate or edit. The rich and unique collection is wide-ranging, from social history to medical science, from the sublime to the macabre. It includes anatomical illustrations, Tibetan Buddhist art, early photographs, paintings, drawings, advertising art, illuminated manuscripts, maps, and much more. But be prepared to spend hours clicking through the collection of 100,000 images.
Award-winning French advertising art director Thomas Jullien has put together this amazing stop-motion trip around the world using 852 Instagram photos posted by 852 different users. Crowd sourcing comes to video. You can follow Jullien’s many projects on his website I am Thomas Jullien . By the way, the music is Gold on the ceiling by the Black Keys.
Travel Between The Pages 