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March 2012 LIVE CHAT! Announcing The Best City To Visit 2012 Tournament Brackets And Favorite (Plus Not-So-Favorite) Cities

by | Mar 1, 2012 | , , | 182

live chat bracketsWelcome everyone to this month’s live chat. March is the start of an exciting month around here and if you’ve entered or voted in The Best City To Visit 2012 Travel Tournament preliminary round, I’ve got the match ups ready just for you. Scroll down to the chat to get a glimpse of the brackets. I’ll be breaking down the competing cities plus giving my predictions along with Wandering Earl and Barry and Julia who write Turkey’s For Life.

Click here to jump right into the chat happening for the next 3 hours!

The Live Chat is only open from 2pm-5pm US EST; 7pm-midnight London GMT). Join me next month, Tuesday April 3rd!

They’ve both got entries in this year’s contest, Ljubljana, Slovenia and Fethiye, Turkey respectively and I can feel the competition building already. Manchester and London have already taken a few shots at each other and 3 countries are already facing off in the first round. Finally, I’ll be announcing a few changes to the chat format and more. Click here to jump into the chat!

The Best City To Visit Travel Tournament 2012: Preliminary Voting

by | Feb 28, 2012 | , | 17

best city to visit tournament 2012

You can vote for your favorite 10 cities below; voting ends this Wednesday, February 29th at 12pm US EST. Those of you reading through email and RSS will have to click-through to this page to vote.

This round of voting will not eliminate cities but it is what I use to order (seed) them in the tournament. The cities with the most votes will be matched up in the next round with the cities with the least votes in this round. In the past years of the tournament, those who did better here tended to advance further in the tournament. And, a little bit different this year, the cities with the top 25 votes in this round will automatically advance to the Round of 64.

ED: You’ll notice there are now two polls. The service I’m using was having trouble with the number of total answers in the original poll below so for a consistent list I’ll have to use two.

[polldaddy poll=5985844]

ED: You’ll notice there are now two polls. The service I’m using was having trouble with the number of total answers in the original poll above so for a consistent list I’ll have to use two. You can choose below 4 of the choices in addition to the 10 above.

[polldaddy poll=”5989399″]

The first elimination Round of 128 cities begins this Friday, March 2nd and I’ll be revealing the full brackets and breaking down my favorites with Wandering Earl in my upcoming live chat this Thursday (March 1st from 2pm-5pm US EST). You can also view a complete map of the competing cities on Google. Good luck!

The Legacy Of The World’s Largest: Palace Of The Parliament Building In Bucharest, Romania

by | Feb 24, 2012 | , | 10

palace of the parliament buildings bucharest

Typically dictators do their best to reinforce their legacy while they’re in power and once they’re deposed everyone else tries to forget them. Even looking back at last year (a bad one to be a dictator indeed), statues are demolished and metro stations renamed while governments changed. The manic rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu is one many Romanians would like to forget, and even 23 years now after his execution, the topic of the Communist era seems touchier here than other former bloc nations.

bucharest streets nightSymbols are easier to erase than memories which is why they’re usually the quickest to go following a revolution – except when they happen to take up 2.55 million cubic meters. That’s the approximate size of the Palace of the Parliament building (Palatul Parlamentului) in Bucharest. The Palace of the Parliament Building is the heaviest administrative building in the world with excesses tipping the scales. 3,500,000 kilos of its weight alone is in crystal (less than 1/10th of 1% the palace’s total), found in over 475 chandeliers throughout a building originally built to house Ceaușescu’s political and administrative power absolute.

It’s extravagance even extends out to the massive boulevard leading up to the Palace of the Parliament; the space made by demolishing most of Bucharest’s historic district. Ironically the building was short of completion right after the 1989 revolution but already too massive to be practically removed. Rather, it’s been re-purposed to house the offices of the presidency, parliament, and other government officials in over 1,100 rooms.

You’ll frequently hear in Bucharest that this is the second biggest building in the world; and when looking at it, that’s hardly unbelievable. Except that it’s not the second largest building, rather the second largest government building in the world, second only to the Pentagon in the United States. A gigantic as this building is (carpets had to be helicoptered in from the roof during construction), in terms of floor area the Palace of the Parliament is only the 60th biggest in the world. As for the largest, well, that title (in terms of floorspace) currently goes to the Abraj Al Bait Towers in Saudi Arabia.

Nominate Your Favorite To Win $300 In March: The Best City To Visit Travel Tournament 2012

by | Feb 23, 2012 | | 165

tournament brackets

This is probably the easiest travel contest and $300 dollars you’ll enter to win all year. The 4th year of The Best City To Visit Travel Tournament begins next week.

All you have to do to enter is name your favorite city in the comments of this post before next Monday, February 27th at 12:00pm US EST.

Clerigos Tower portoCities Already Taken

Since my newsletter subscribers got word of the contest yesterday (they’re always the first to find out but don’t feel left out) these cities are already taken. Each person can choose one city except these and any others listed in the comments section already.

That’s 16 spots taken and 112 remaining. Feel free to choose a second favorite if your city is already taken! Notice also that last year’s champion Porto hasn’t been selected so it’s up for grabs to whomever nominates it first.

Livraria Lello bookstore portoDates, Deadlines, And How The Tournament Works

By next Monday, February 27th 12:00pm US EST we’ll have 128 cities. The Best City To Visit Travel Tournament is a single-elimination tournament. Voting will begin Next Tuesday, February 28th to seed the cities (determining match-ups) and that Friday readers will begin voting that 128 group down to 64. Each week, through voting, the cities will be halved until there is only 1 remaining.

The person who originally picked that winning city will receive $300 from yours truly. And, as I did last year, I’ll visit the winning city before 2013 rolls around.

Voting will happen on these dates, so get your mouses ready!

  • Round of 128: Friday, March 2nd; Round of 64: Tuesday Mar. 6th; Round of 32: Friday, Mar. 9th
  • Sweet 16: Tuesday, March 13th
  • Elite 8: Friday, March 16th
  • Final Four: Tuesday, March 20th
  • Championship: Tuesday, March 27th

The winner will be announced on Tuesday, April 2nd and prize money sent out before the beginning of May.

Winners Come In All Sizes

In 2009 it was Sydney, Australia, in 2010 Zermatt, Switzerland, and last year Portugal’s Porto took the top prize. Those are cities with an average population of 1.9 million and none are in the top 15 of most visited cities in the world. That doesn’t mean that you all didn’t vote them the best and that your favorite doesn’t have a chance, no matter how big or small.

Remember, click here to the comments to nominate your favorite city before next Monday, February 27th at 12:00pm US EST. Good luck to you all!

Bonus: Sign up now for my RSS feed or daily email updates during the entire tournament month of March and win, I’ll add $50 to your prize.

I’m Taking My First Vacation, See You In Two Weeks

by | Feb 3, 2012 | | 32

fishing galata bridge istanbul

As I mentioned last week, I’ve decided to be a good boss to my blogging self and take about 6 weeks of annual vacation each year. So this confessed work-and-travelholic is going to take the next 2 weeks off somewhere in the world. I’ll be slow to respond to comments, most emails, and there won’t be any new posts until February 21rst when I’ll launch this year’s Best City To Visit 2012 Contest.

In the meantime you can check out my least and most popular posts of 2011, my travel gadget gift guide if you’ve got a birthday coming up (happy birthday by the way!), or wander around my travel photos. Want to see aliens in varying degrees of clothing? I’ve got you covered there too.

I look forward to getting back to you soon and hope these withdrawal symptoms subside or increase significantly – I want to see where these hallucinations go from here.

February 2012 LIVE CHAT! With Audrey Scott And Daniel Noll About Iran Plus 60 Other Countries In 4 Years On The Road

by | Feb 2, 2012 | | 83

shisha in cairo egyptHello everyone and welcome to today’s live chat! You’ll have me all to yourself in the first hour and have a treat for you in the second hour (6pm-8pm US EST). Joining us from Mexico will be guests Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott who write the popular travel blog Uncornered Market and have traveled to over 60 countries in the last 4 years.

Click here to jump right into the chat happening for the next 3 hours!

The Live Chat is only open from 5pm-8pm US EST; 10pm-1am London GMT; 7am-10am Tokyo JST).

Thanks for a wonderful chat everyone! My next chat will be Thursday, March 2nd; times to be determined.

Let’s talk travel – a few of you had questions about my upcoming vacation, my advice for new travel bloggers, and what camera gear I carry. Plus I’ve got the best comments from January for you too. We’ll keep the keyboards warm for Audrey and Dan.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a Dan and Audrey in person several times over the last few years. If you’ve ever been curious about traveling in Iran, Tajikistan, or why laundry service in Oaxaca, Mexico doesn’t accept underwear now’s your chance to find out… Click here to jump into the comments and join the chat!

About Anil Polat

foxnomad aboutHi, I'm Anil. foXnoMad is where I combine travel and tech to help you travel smarter. I'm on a journey to every country in the world and you're invited to join the adventure! Read More

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