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# Sunday, 13 January 2008

blogoftheweek_thumb This weeks Travel Blog of the Week is killing batteries written by Leif Pettersen. Leif is a freelance writer and is a regular contributor for Global Traveler magazine and Lonely Planet author for Romania and Moldova. Leif's blog contains a wealth of interesting article about his travels but what makes this blog special is his humorous style of writing. His most recent post is about a fly fishing trip whilst he was in Chile. The article charts Leif's first attempt at fly fishing and describes how he managed to learn the casting process without injuring either himself or his instructor Ricardo. Despite a disappointing start to the trip and secret thoughts about the trout attacking Ricardo, Leif eventually managed to catch a rather respectable haul of ten fish, not bad for a first attempt.

For me one of the most interesting sections on this blog is Leif's "Don't go There" series. As the name suggests the series is about places he has been and the reasons why he feels they should be avoided. The most recent post in this series is entitled Don't Go to Andorra la Vella talks about his experiences of the city which he sums up as an "ostensibly bottomless ravine of choking, duty-free despair". The article talks about his fruitless search for a grocery store among the towns endless offering of shops selling nothing but watches, cheap jewellery, perfume and other duty free goods. Leif sums this up nicely when he says "It was truly a duty-free nation. You can walk into just about any shop on the street and save a whopping 25% on your indispensable bottle of CK1. On the flip side, you have to ask directions and stalk back alleys to find someone who will sell you a fricking apple." Obviously his first impressions of Andorra La Vella are not great but he goes on to describe the extent of the air pollution in the town caused by exhaust fumes which left him gasping for breath and with burning eyes after only three hours of walking around the town. Other articles is this series include Don't go to Berlin and Don't go to Monaco.

Another interesting and equally humorous section of Leif's blog is entitled "What I've Learned". This section contains a lot of short but often very useful things that Leif has learnt on his travels. They range from little tips such as "Check to make sure that your very expensive digital camera with numerous delicate moving parts is not in your day-bag before you go to the beach" and "Even if you have a co-conspirator, even if you spill some, even if you’re celebrating something really awesome, three bottles of wine on a Tuesday night is too much wine."

This blog has so many good articles that it has been hard to pick just a few things to say about it. Its definitely worth a visit.