This is a frequent sight around neighborhoods in the Netherlands this time of year.

Hanging from the front of the house, usually somehow connected with a Dutch flag, is a backpack.

The really clever ones have artfully connected and arranged papers and books spilling out of them.

What is it?

A way to demonstrate that someone in that household has finished school.

Let the summer begin!

Do women get something more out of traveling without the boys? The girls over at Chickable think so. They argue that women traveling together naturally produce an atmosphere (and even, individually, stress-fighting hormones) that reduce stress and provide a healing environment.

I can sense you all jumping all over this proposition. I hear you. I’ve worked at fashion magazines where the staff was all women and the bitchiness and cat-fighting was monumental.

But Chickable isn’t claiming any and all women are good to travel with, just that traveling with a group of great girlfriends is a fulfilling travel experience all women should have, which is why they’ve set up a network and travel resource site for women. I should point out that the site isn’t just for chick groups, but is set up as a resource for women traveling without their significant others (I’m assuming this just means male spouses and partners), which in our extroverted world often means women traveling in a group together.

For me, I’d need a bit more convincing. I’m a loner, an introvert — my phalanx of ‘girlfriends’ involves three or four people, all of whom live in different countries. And I hate the beach. On the other hand, I have been in groups of women where what’s loosely termed ‘energy’ was gentle and lovely, the best that women can bring out of themselves. Does having a man around change this? Often. So if I were the sort of chick who was desperate to hang out with other like-minded chicks, away from my husband and son, I might be tempted to join a chick travel network.

I might. It’s hard to imagine oneself as a different person, in this case one who’s desperate to hang out with a group of people. Somehow I sense there’s a lot of introverts in our readers, too. What do you think?

As for traveling by myself, I do that enough anyway. And my husband has learned by now that, when we’re traveling together, my dumping him for a couple hours so I can tramp around on my own doesn’t mean I don’t love him.

Have you ever read a book and then started day dreaming about visiting the place where the characters are living?

Or imagined staying at the place or sit in a cafe where an author wrote a certain book?

I know I have.

On a recent trip to Madrid, I was hyped by the idea that I was able to sit and drink a beer in the same cafe that Hemingway once sat and wrote in. And that I could eat in the same restauarant (Cafe Botin) that was a favorite Hemmingway haunt and also the final meeting place of Jake and Brett in the last pages of The Sun Also Rises.

Being able to walk in the footsteps of authors and their characters is the focus of a new book published by National Geographic. Called Novel Destinations, it provides a guide to literary sites, festivals, and tours around the world. After all, not all places are as easily found or known about as Hemmingway’s Madrid.

Novel Destinations travels the world, focusing on classic writers such as the Bronte sisters, Steinbeck, Dostoevsky’s and the like. This is not a book for those looking for the Da Vinci Code.

The book has a companion website where you can find out more about the book and it’s authors.

You can also read an interview with the books authors over at Intelligent Travel.

With all the talk these days about having to pay for luggage and using cell phones inflight, I thought it would be interesting to revisit the early days of passenger air travel.

Back when air travel was in it’s infancy…

The less you weighed the more luggage you could take. Weight allowances were closely monitored. Passengers and their luggage were weighed together at the check in counter with the maximum weight allowance being a combination of person and luggage.

Stewardesses used to carry the luggage onboard and also pump the fuel. In the 1930’s stewardesses hired by Boeing Air Transport (now known as United Airlines) were all registered nurses who wore white uniforms onboard, dusted the plane, screwed down any loose seats, and even helped push planes into hangers.

Airlines used to provide flying gear. Because the early planes were unheated, passengers were often provided with flying togs with paper liners to insulate them from the cold, helmuts and gloves, and even hot water bottles.

Pilots used to pass messages about flight times etc by paper to the passengers. Planes were too noisy for conversation. Passengers often stuffed cotton wool in their ears to try and drown out the sound of the engines. It wasn’t until the 1930’s that cabins were soundproofed and a steward call button system introduced.

Early planes only flew during the day as night time flying was considered too risky. And many flights were suspended altogether in winter. Rather than fly during the night, the plane landed and passengers disembarked and were accommodated in a hotel. Night flying was seen as neither safe nor humane.

Flights often took days rather than hours. The first long distance flight in 1924 between Amsterdam and Jakerta took 55 days, averaging a speed of 75 mph. By 1929, the same flight took 12 days. It wasn’t until the 1940s that a flight from London to New York took under 24 hours.

Today’s air travel might not be perfect but you have to agree that it sure is an improvement over the early days of travel.

Welcome to Rome’s most interesting sight. No, it’s not the Colosseum, nor the Pantheon, nor the completely overrun and overcrowded Spanish Steps. These ruins are crowded by low-impact residents and humans are only allowed in once a day.

The Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary has got to be one of the coolest ideas I’ve ever heard of. Excavation in the early 1900s uncovered ruins of a sacred temple or two (who needs to be exact in Rome, the city that has pretty much stopped building anything because projects so frequently unearth ruins in need of protecting?), structures dating back to about 200 BC. These are the Sacred Ruins, supposedly the temple where Brutus stabbed Caesar.

Now they host an even older sacred being: the Cat Sanctuary is home to about 250 abandoned or ill cats who are fed, fixed, healed, and often sent out for adoption by two pretty visionary women. After all, it takes a lot to stand up to Rome’s stubborn government and demand that ruins be cut off from tourists and made to do something useful.

You can troop down the steps to visit the actual underground sanctuary any time during working hours, but you can only have a guided tour of the ruins once a day. The rest of the time, you can only look on enviously as some pretty happy cats enjoy sleeping on Caesar’s glories.

(Photos copyright Antonia Malchik 2008)