Purple Roofs Newsletter. Every day, our LGBT Travel Blog brings you featured LGBT travel articles, as well as tons of news and helpful travel tips, which we summarize here for you every few weeks. And you can also join our Facebook Travel Clubs for our daily discussions and your travel questions (it’s free!):
Just the Best! Vermont Gay Owned/Operated Inn: The Williams River House bed and breakfast has established itself as one of the most beautiful and charming gay owned country inns in Vermont. Built in 1780 this historic guesthouse is set on 46 secluded and private acres conveniently located in southern/central Vermont. The perfect getaway! Come relax and be yourself. You’ll come back again and again, we promise.
Featured Articles:
TRAVELING IN OUR FABULOUS GAY WORLD: Traveling With Pets
by Donald and Ray – The Gay Travelers
When making travel decisions, choose what is safest and most comfortable to you pet. For instance, unless you’ll be able to spend a lot of time with your dog, he’ll probably be happier at home than tagging along on your trip. As a rule, cats are almost always better off in their own home. But if you have decided it’s best to bring your pet along, follow our tips for a safe and low-stress trip. The safest way for your dog to travel in the car is in a crate that has been anchored to the vehicle using a seatbelt or other secure means. Dog restraints or seat belts are useful for preventing your dog from roaming around the car and being a distraction to the driver, but they haven’t been reliably shown to protect dogs during a crash. Most cats aren’t comfortable traveling in cars, so for their safety as well as yours, keep them in a carrier. It’s important to restrain these carriers in the car so that they don’t bounce around and hurt your cat. Do this by securing a seat belt around the front of the carrier.
AUSTRALIA: Wandering Wives – Kangaroo Spotting
by the Wandering Wives
Driving north on a day trip from Perth, there are two outstanding national parks well worth a visit. Both of the naturally beautiful parks are great places to relax and visitors should easily manage to spot a Kangaroo or two. If you set off early enough, you could see them both in one day. Nambung national park is around two hours’ drive from Perth and Yanchep national park is less than hour from the city. It is hard to believe the equally stunning parks are so close to each other as they are set in very different environments. Yanchep feels like a Victorian country park with historic buildings, gardens and a boating lake. We spent a day strolling around the lush green lawns and enjoying the beauty of the park. To us, it felt a lot like the parks in England, except of course for the Koala board-walk and the kangaroos.
COLOMBIA: Cartenega
by Dani – Globetrotter Girls
I made it to Colombia! I can’t believe that after all these years, I’m finally here. To give you a bit more background: when I (we) started traveling in 2010, I started in the U.S. and made my way south through Mexico and Central America. The goal was to go all the way down to Tierra del Fuego, taking a catamaran from Panama to Colombia via the San Blas Islands, which is supposed to be a beautiful trip (proven by the photos I’ve linked to!). However, by the time we made it to Panama, we had been traveling through Latin America for 9 months and were ready for a change of scenery & culture. So we hopped on a plane to Europe instead of a catamaran. When we returned to South America, we timed it so that we’d be in Argentina and Chile for their summer and flew into Buenos Aires. And never made it further north than Peru.
INDONESIA: Gay Life in Indonesia
by Stefan Arestis – Nomadic Boys
“OMG careful you don’t get caned for being gay over there you two!” We did of course point out to our concerned friends and family back home that Sharia Law is only in place in one small part of Indonesia in the Northern Aceh province. If the rainbow flag gets out of control in Aceh, you risk being convicted by the Sharia police to 10-150 lashes in public for being gay. And yes, this now applies to foreigners too! But we don’t go around waving rainbow flags. Nor do we have any interest in getting publicly canned in Aceh (our caning adventures at the Komodo National Park were more then enough).
ITALY: Femminiello Pride
by Danielle Oteri
Irpinia contradicts everything you expect about Southern Italy. The rainy climate and green mountains have more in common with the Pacific Northwest than the Amalfi Coast, just 40 miles away. Instead of Roman ruins like those at Pompeii, stones remain from the Osci, the native Campanian tribe known for their salacious festivals. The spiritual center of the region is the famously hard-to-reach church at Montevergine. Pilgrims arrive after long bus rides over highways that span seemingly bottomless gorges. Irpinia’s landscape is foreboding, which is why the Montevergine pilgrimage has always required strong and focused devotion. The thin air is hard to breathe. The damp stone from the mountain’s peaks perfume the air with ancient minerals.
MEXICO: ¡Hola, De Puerto Vallarta
by Dolly Goolsby
Now I must switch to English. I have exhausted my Spanish vocabulary. Frank and I decided we needed another vacation; therefore, we flew down to Puerto Vallarta on Friday. We arrived at our hotel around 6:00 p.m., after spending almost 2 hours going through Immigration and Customs. The lines were long, but progressed smoothly. No one seemed to be upset or angry. Eventually, we retrieved our bags, ran the gauntlet through time share salesmen and found our taxi. We arrived here, at Club Regina, in time for Happy Hour. Our timing is impeccable. The hotel sits among lush green gardens, palm trees and swimming pools. At the western edge of the property is the Pacific Ocean. The setting is so peaceful and relaxing, although the buildings are painted white with bubble-gum pink accents, interspersed with bright yellow accents. I think that design is to keep the guests from getting too bored.
SWEDEN: Affordable Stockholm – Lesbian Travel
by Andre Landeros Michel
It is a well-known fact that Stockholm is an open-minded and progressive city but some say that Stockholm is also expensive. What is lesser known is that the city offers an abundance of gems that provide great value for your money. With the strong US dollar and with the low-cost carrier Norwegian adding Las Vegas to their growing repertoire of gateways, there has never been a better time to visit the Swedish capital. That is why a number of American travel agents and journalists set out to discover the hidden treasures of tolerant Stockholm. Over the course of four days, the travelers got to experience many sides of Sweden – from the traditional to the new and modern. Between hotel inspections and museum visits, there was plenty of time to shop innovative Swedish design and experience a traditional Lucia celebration.
USA, FLORIDA: What’s New in Palm Beach
by Jimmy Im
In Palm Beach, Florida, there is a relatively new adage that’s defined the destination for more than a decade: “Palm Beach is like the gay 90s: all the women are 90 and all the men are gay.” It’s not entirely untrue considering more than half the residents are over 65 years old, many businesses are gay owned, gossip among locals is better than a season of Real Housewives, and a typical night out is a fabulous dinner party in a million-dollar home. Sprawling a short 17 miles, Palm Beach (about an hour north of Miami) has always served as a rather exclusive stomping ground for old-money tycoons and wealthy entrepreneurs who only dabble with the finer things in life. The skyscraper-free town is chockablock with fancy restaurants where dinner jackets are still often required, luxury name-brand retailers like Gucci and Neiman Marcus are ubiquitous, and members-only country clubs are decades strong. It’s not unusual to see locals dressed to the nines for a trip to the bank or parking lots packed with only Bentleys and Porsches. There’s an air of sophistication, and a touch of harmless elitism, you’re hard-pressed to find in other parts of Florida–the local Publix even has valet parking.
That’s it for this edition of the Purple Roofs Gay Travel Newsletter! –Mark & Scott Purple Roofs – https://www.purpleroofs.com
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What is available in Mayaguez?
Please in what issues do YOU talk about places in AFRICA?