The Purple Passport for Private Air

ExpediaI’m pleased to reveal that my first magazine article of 2014 has now been published.

It’s a profile piece on The Purple Passport for Private Air Magazine.

I interviewed the founders of TPP, Jennifer Garcia-Alonso and Emily C. Brands, to find out what makes these ultra-stylish, luxury travel guides different from all of the others.

You can find out what they had to say in this extract from the latest issue of PA.

As well as this article, my World Words writers contiributed several more pieces for the January-February issue of Private Air Magazine. You can read them all on the WW site.

City Vacation Guides for Expedia

ExpediaWe have some exciting news, and it has been a long time coming! Our city vacation guide for Christchurch in New Zealand, which was written back in July, has finally been published on the Expedia website. You can read the overview by clicking on this here link, or check out one of the POIs, Lyttelton Harbour, here.

In fact, Christchurch is just the latest of several city vacation guides we have created for Expedia. We’ve previously written about city destinations in more than a dozen countries right around the world, including Albuquerque (USA), Friedrichshafen (Germany), Hua Hin (Thailand), Rarotonga (The Cook Islands), Edmonton (Canada), and Hong Kong.

You’ll find a selection of our completed guides in Projects. Or click here to see all Expedia’s guides in one place.

The Express Guide to Venice

Earlier this year, The Express and Monarch Airlines teamed up with the clear aim of creating a series of European city guides for their respective readers. And I am now delighted to confirm that I, along with my team at WorldWORDS, was selected to create the first six in their portfolio. All of these guides were recently published on The Express website, and you can find links to them below. I hope they come in handy. Happy travels!

THE EXPRESS GUIDE TO VENICE by Joseph Reaney (that’s yours truly!)

THE EXPRESS GUIDE TO BARCELONA | THE EXPRESS GUIDE TO ROME | THE EXPRESS GUIDE TO VERONA | THE EXPRESS GUIDE TO PALMA | THE EXPRESS GUIDE TO DUBROVNIK by Mandy (a WorldWORDS writer)

The New London Correspondent for Forbes

At the beginning of January, I took on a brand new position as the London Correspondent for Forbes Travel Guide. The role involves contributing a monthly selection of Q&As on the British capital, ranging from handy hints like best city bars to cultural insights like quirkiest local customs, as well as writing two blog posts on London-centric topics during the month. With my latest blog published today, here are the four I have completed so far.

Feast On These Ways To Celebrate Pancake Day … (11th February)
Taking a Fashion Tour of London … (8th February)
The Most Promising West End Musicals of 2013 … (29th January)
Where Are The Best Views of London? … (17th January)

I will be contributing content on London every month for the foreseeable future, so you can can keep track of all my Q&A contributions on my Forbes biography page and watch out for my twice-monthly posts on the blog homepage.

Contributing to Vertu Select

I have been contributing short articles to the luxury digital publication Vertu Select for more than a year now, but there has been such a backlog that it has taken a very long time to see any of them published – and even longer to get my mitts on the prints! But now, they have kindly supplied me with the few of my articles that have made it to public consumption. The first, published in May, starts like this:

“The 20th century was a trying period for Ukrainian art. After a promisingly avant-garde start to the 1900s, during which many popular contemporary movements like Futurism, Constructionism and Cubism swept through the streets of Kiev, everything came to a very sudden (and very prolonged) halt in 1922 with the foundation of the Soviet Union. However, since the parting of the Iron Curtain in 1991, Ukrainian art has enjoyed a stuttering resurgence – and it’s set for an enormous boost this summer with the opening of Kiev’s first ever Biennale…”

You can read the rest of ‘Kiev Arsenale 2012’ by clicking on the image to the left. Or you can read my latest one about Eastern European cruises. Here’s the intro:

“Medieval hilltop castles, high gold-domed churches and ancient Mediterranean ports… Eastern Europe has a wealth of treasures just waiting to be discovered. As there’s no finer way to acquaint yourself with a city than with a late night excursion on the water, here are five of the East’s favourite evening cruises…”

You can read the whole article by clicking this here link (it’s external, you know).

If you’ve noticed a theme emerging, it’s that I specialise in Central and European destinations for Vertu. Hopefully, the remaining dozen-or-so articles covering this area, plus the few elsewhere, will appear in my travel journalism portfolio shortly.

Europe’s Best Cemeteries #3

Père-Lachaise – Paris, France

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Everyone loves a celebrity corpse, and there are quite literally piles of them in Père-Lachaise. Renowned as the final resting place of Jim Morrison, this enormous Parisian landmark is also home to Oscar Wilde, Frédéric Chopin, Molière, Marcel Proust and Édith Piaf (three guesses what’s written on her tombstone. Wrong: there’s nothing.)

But it’s not all about the famous cadavers: come for the dead, stay for the décor. Père-Lachaise’s ornate memorials, leafy walkways and lovely smoke-free follies help create a calm oasis in the frantic French capital.

You can read the whole article – Killing Time in Europe’s Best Cemeteries – in the August edition of stalkingElk

Europe’s Best Cemeteries #2

Old Jewish Cemetery – Prague, Czech Republic

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The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague is, rather predictably, a cemetery for old Jews: specifically, those who snuffed it between 1439 and 1787. During this time the Jewish community was kettled into a tiny ghetto, having to stuff their stiffs into a 60-metre-square graveyard, and so over three centuries it was crammed with around 100,000 bodies. Which explains why it has Europe’s highest concentration of tombstones.

FUN FACT!!! Prague’s famous cemetery only survived Nazi occupation because Hitler wanted to preserve it as ‘a museum to an extinct race’.

You can read the whole article – Killing Time in Europe’s Best Cemeteries – in the August edition of stalkingElk

Europe’s Best Cemeteries #1

Cross Bones – London, England

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The most famous resting place in London is, without doubt, the wonderfully gothic Highgate: the eternal residence of everyone from Karl ‘Commie’ Marx to Douglas ‘Galaxy’ Adams; Michael ‘Benzene’ Faraday to Jeremy ‘Withered’ Beadle. The capital’s most interesting cemetery, on the other hand, is Cross Bones.

An unconsecrated necropolis for so-called ‘Winchester Geese’ – medieval prostitutes who were licenced by the Bishop of Winchester to work within Southwark – it is simply a mass grave for those deemed unfit for a Christian burial: the outcast dead. Now it’s most famous for a cracking Halloween procession.

You can read the whole article – Killing Time in Europe’s Best Cemeteries – in the August edition of stalkingElk