Purple Roofs LGBT Travel Round-Up – January 13th

BAHRAIN:
King Fahd Causeway – Connecting Saudi and Bahrain (Keep Calm and Wander)
King Fahd Causeway in Manama is a structure that connects two countries by the Arabian Gulf—Saudi and Bahrain.
full story King-Fahd-Causeway-7-2-copy BARBADOS:
Caribbean Beaches Guide – Bathsheba Beach, Barbados (Go Girlfriend)
Northeast of Barbados’s Capital City, Bridgetown. Home to the international surfing sweet spot known as the “Soup Bowl,” you’ll find this beach on the bucket list of any competitive surfer, whether from Barbados or afar.
full story CUBA:
Is Cuba Safe for Gay Travellers? (Daily Xtra)
This year, the country’s tourism offices began offering LGBT-focused press trips, flying in journalists from mainstream gay travel magazines so they could see for themselves just how welcoming the country had become.
full story [caption id="attachment_39871" align="aligncenter" width="550"]Cuba - Sydney Photo by Sydney Coatsworth[/caption] EUROPE:
Calling All Snow Bunnies: Get Your European Gay Ski Week 2016 Deets Here (Gay Star News)
Better get your skates (or skis) on – this year’s European Gay Ski Week is just four months away.
full story SPAIN:
Smart & Sexy Locals Tell You Where To Hang Out In Madrid & Barcelona (Queerty)
Planning a trip to Spain in the new year? Let these savvy local experts guide you to their favorite hangouts in Madrid and Barcelona.
full story Lukas-Teixera SPAIN:
Photos: Beards Are An Absolute MUST At Madrid’s Biggest Bear Party (Gay Vities)
Bearbie is a weekly bear party that takes place every weekend in the heart of Plaza de Pedro Zerolo in Madrid.
full story Bearbie USA, FLORIDA:
Miami to Host First-Ever Gay8 Festival (Watermark)
On Jan. 17, Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood will host the first annual Gay8 (pronounced “GayOcho”) Festival, a Latino LGBT event with art, music and food.
full story Gay8 Festival USA, NEW MEXICO:
Experience Albuquerque & Santa Fe in One Trip (Sherman’s Travel)
It’s been a slow start to winter this year, but the temperatures are bound to dip at some point. When it does, it’ll be the perfect time to escape to the Southwestern U.S. and experience the region’s classics: beautiful red rocks and outdoor adventure, mountain cuisine and handmade crafts, Native American heritage, and organic Adobe architecture.
full story Old Town Albuquerque/Christine Wei]]>

Purple Roofs LGBT Travel Newsletter: January 10th

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!):

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Featured Articles: travel autoTRAVELING IN OUR FABULOUS GAY WORLD: Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Buses by Donald and Ray, the Gay Travelers In the United States, there are basically only four ways to travel and that is by plane, train, automobile and buses. They all have their advantages as well as disadvantages. We prefer traveling by automobile since we have the luxury of time. Living in the center of the country, it only takes a couple of days or at the most 3 days to travel to either coast. Plus we enjoy seeing the sights and sounds and meeting new and interesting people along the way. If you fly, you usually need to rent an automobile anyway. Plus when driving you can take more clothing with you and purchase more items to bring back home with you. Our theory is ‘getting to a destination can be half the fun’. However we fully understand if you do live on either coast or do not have a lot of time, you have no choice than to fly.

The Green BookBefore Purple Roofs, There Was The Green Book by Ana Swanson For African American travelers, much of the U.S. could be a hateful and dangerous place, even into the 1960’s. Jim Crow laws across the South mandated that restaurants, hotels, pool halls and parks strictly separate whites and blacks. Lynchings kept blacks in fear of mob violence. And there were thousands of so-called “sundown towns,” including in northern states like Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan, which barred blacks after dark, an unofficial rule reinforced by the threat of violence. So in 1936, a postal worker named Victor Green began publishing a guide to help African American travelers find friendly restaurants, auto shops and accommodations in far-off places. Green dubbed the guide after himself – the “Green Book” – and published it for decades. Green says he was inspired by the Jewish press, which had long published information on restricted places.

Kalbarri coastAUSTRALIA: Kalbarri & Geraldton by the Wandering Wives Breath taking coastal vistas and vibrant rock formations are the main stay of Kalbarri National Park in Western Australia. In land, the Murchinson River has carved out an 80 km gorge through striped ochre sandstone as it snakes its way to the ocean. Hikers and paddlers flock to the gorge to enjoy the wilderness. Coastal cliffs offer bracing walks high above the crashing waves below, with eagles soaring overhead. At least that’s what it says in the guide book. Google offers amazing pictures of the striking banded rocks and orange cliffs set against perfect blue skies. Having visited so many of the national parks in Australia, we were excited to find an adventure in Kalbarri. The day we visited the park the weather was not in our favour. The sky was grey, the wind was howling and the park did not quite measure up to our expectations.

Janet BeinMEXICO: Salt and Fresh Water Adventure in Yelapa by Janet Bein My third time visiting Yelapa was still a charm. This remote fishing village is located in the southernmost cove of the world’s seventh largest bay, Bahia de Banderas, in Jalisco, Mexico. You can stay overnight in a small hotel or rent a room or a house. You can also come here for a yoga retreat, which I bet would be wonderful. But so far, I’ve only come for one-day excursions while staying in Puerto Vallarta or Nuevo Vallarta. Yelapa is not an island, but for most practical purposes, it’s accessible only by boat. The first time that I went, I took a small water taxi from the Puerto Vallarta harbor. The other times, I chose to take excursions on more comfortable catamarans with Vallarta Adventures, which runs day trips starting in either Puerto Vallarta or Nuevo Vallarta. These trips include snorkeling and kayaking, a buffet lunch, and unlimited drinks, plus an optional hike through the village of Yelapa to a refreshing waterfall, and time to relax, swim, or eat some more at the Yelapa beach.

MarlboroughNEW ZEALAND: Marlborough is All About the Wine, Right? by Helen Redshaw Wrong! Marlborough is certainly famous for its sauvignon blanc. Yes we are by far the largest wine producing region in NZ and Marlborough sauvignon blanc in all its wonderful forms is lauded throughout the world. At Na Clachan we think Marlborough sauvignon blanc is so good we wrote a song and video extolling its virtues. It’s a tongue in cheek celebration of Marlborough’s best known export. But despite the dominance of vineyards in the Wairau and Awatere valleys let’s put the winemaking into perspective. We have about 25,000 hectares (62,500 acres) of grapes which is 250km2. Marlborough comes in at a whopping 12,484 km2 so only about 2% of Marlborough’s total land area is used for grapes. So we have plenty of space to fit in a range of activities and attractions. Take a few days in Marlborough and enjoy the wide variety of activities and attractions it has to offer.

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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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Atlanta – City Sundays

City Sundays Atlanta Hey all, Welcome to our weekly series on the blog and our Facebook travel groups – City Sundays. Each week we’ll select a different LGBT friendly city to talk about, and we’ll invite our innkeeper and travel agent/tour operator friends to come talk with us about it as well. Atlanta is a vibrant gay friendly city, home to CNN, their famous peach tea, and lots of beautiful guys and women with those amazing southern accents. It’s a very diverse city, set amongst the rolling hills of Northern Georgia. Have you ever been? What did you do while you were there? Do you wanna go? Let’s chat! Join the conversation here: Gay (Men) Travelers: Gay Travel Club Lesbian Travelers: Lesbian Travel Club Transgender Travelers: Transgender Travel Club Bisexual Travelers: Bi Travel Club LGBT Families: LGBT Families Travel Club Check out our Atlanta (Georgia) page here: https://www.purpleroofs.com/usa/georgia.html And our Atlanta articles on the blog here: https://www.purpleroofs.com/gay-travel-blog/?s=Atlanta]]>

Gay Crete in a Nutshell

Gay Crete Say “Greece” to the travelling LGBT community and chances are most of them will think of Mykonos or Lesvos (aka Lesbos), but Crete — birthplace of Zeus, home to the Minoan civilization and the largest of the Greek islands — has much to offer the gay and lesbian traveller. Whether one’s interest is archaeology, lazing on the beach or seeing the sights, Crete impresses the visitor with its sheer size and variety of landscapes. To put Crete in perspective: Mykonos, at approximately 100 square kilometres, is about 50 percent bigger than Manhattan; Lesvos, at 1,630 square kilometres, is about half the size of Rhode Island. Crete, at more than 8,000 square kilometres, is 80 times bigger than Mykonos and bigger than the state of Delaware, but without so many people: its population is slightly more than 600,000 people, although it has several million olive trees and there are quite a few goats. What should be clear from this is that Crete is a big island and you are not going to see it all in one day. Indeed, I have lived here for 10 years and came to Crete on holiday six times in the three years before that and I still haven’t seen everything. So what is there on Crete for the LGBT tourist?

By Tim Mitchell – Full Story at Xtra

Greece Gay Travel Resources

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