Travel & Entertainment
Hot to Trot and Wondering Where to Go?
January 6th, 2011 | Comments
Tags: Travel & Entertainment
Ready to take the plunge and get traveling again? Not sure where to go? What to see?
Check out the itineraries of the gold-plated tour companies like Backroads and Aberchrombie and Kent or fancy college alumni travel tours. Yes, we know they’re selling to the very rich, not anyone as righteous, cool, and intrepid as you. But they will have scoped out educational, sexy, and drop-dead gorgeous places. Exploit their research!
Thank God, the hotels they pick are usually too big and too pricy for our tastes (we like little— in hotels) but destination-wise, their brochures rock. For example, a recently listed 7-day trip through Croatia at over $7,000 (not including air) was out of our league, but they had figured out the perfect destinations in a country we were dying to see: Split to Dvar to Dubrovnik. And, for those of you with ADHD who can’t stand reading through an entire tour book for destinations of interest, we found key sites to visit on the itineraries: botanical garden, castles, wineries, old forts. That’s right, like we always tell you, find an editor to set the stage.
For more sage travel tips, like how to get airfare deals, great hotel pricing and bargain destinations, read the travel chapter in Bitches on a Budget: Sage Advice for Surviving Tough Times in Style.
1.1.11 Thrifty Travel Tips for the New Year
January 1st, 2011 | 1 Comment
Tags: Travel & Entertainment
Happy New Year B’s.
With the good, the bad, and the ugly of the holidays behind us, it’s time to get out in the world and have a little fun. Whether you’re in need of an immediate adventure or planning ahead for the spring and summer, over the next few weeks we’re going to fill you in on some of our secret travel tips.
1.1.11
Travel Tip #1:
Have You Considered Camping?
If you’re such a complete princess that you must have a hair dryer, hot running water, and a toilet in your room to be complete, then skip this part where we sagely tell you about opportunities to  visit some of the most beautiful places in the world on a shoestring so you get to spend the day in just your G-string.
Some of the most magnificent, unspoiled parts of the world are the least developed, and camping is the way to experience them. We know people who know people who go to Cinnamon Bay in St. John every year (now they refuse to talk to us because we let the secret out), a low-key affair right on one of the most sensational beaches in the Carribbean; you can’t go wrong. Experience the sublime warm aqua water, stay practically for free, and commune with nature on an island not nearly as touristy as the other Virgin Islands. Easy to get to: Simply fly to St. Thomas and take a ferry.*
Camping Resources:
National Park Service Camping Information
Appalachian Mountain Club
European Camping
*From the book Bitches on a Budget where we dedicate an entire chapter to ‘Getting out of Town’.
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A Low Resolution New Year
December 30th, 2010 | Comments
Tags: Food & Spirits, Health & Fitness, Travel & Entertainment
We hate to seem bitchy and unsentimental but, except for the pink bubbly, we don’t like New Year’s Eve.
To begin with, the whole resolution thing is more like a guilt-tripping-shame-festival than a positive self-esteem builder. Think about it, people looking to fix what they most hate about themselves by resolving to:
1. Lose weight
2. Quit smoking
3. Stop drinking
4. Be a nicer person
5. Spend less
Like at the stroke of midnight with a little magical thinking and a carefully crafted line item list of corrections they’re going to morph into a Shape cover girl or Mother Teresa, right?
And, who doesn’t dread the focused pressure to ‘celebrate’ New Year’s which inevitably leaves you feeling alienated and/or puts you into a position of spending more money than you bargained for (breaking resolution #5 before you begin)? How many times have you done the following?
A) Rather than feel like a loser with no ‘fun’ plans you’ve been the one to organize and hold a party.
B) Or, you head out to a restaurant with a ‘special’ menu and jacked up pricing that keeps you captive for longer than you want.
C) Or, you head out to a restaurant with a ‘special’ menu and jacked up pricing that throws you out on a schedule so they can squeeze in another seating of suckers.
4) Or, you take your life into your hands by driving home after midnight from a party you really didn’t want to attend. (Most people don’t follow through on resolution #3 .)
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The Earmuff Festival
December 8th, 2010 | 2 Comments
Tags: Shopping, simple pleasures, Travel & Entertainment
We just read about the Earmuff Festival in Farmington, Maine and are now obsessed with finding the perfect earmuffs. Apparently, a Mainiac named Chester Greenwood invented the earmuff in 1873 and the town comes out annually wearing earmuffs in his honor.
 We think these from Juicy Couture are pretty cute (hint, hint).
We’ve eaten our way through blueberry festivals, toe tapped at Bluegrass festivals, listened at storytelling festivals, but we’ve never been to an earmuff festival. It’s gotten us to thinking– what more could a stylish bitch on a budget ask for than a day of frosty free fun in celebration of the earmuff and Chester Greenwood?
It’s on our calendar for next year.
Spotting-All-The-Daily-Eater-Meal-Buzz-Tasty-Recipe-Beasts
November 12th, 2010 | 1 Comment
Tags: Food & Spirits, recipes, Travel & Entertainment
Just when we thought we’d found all the great cook-eater-review-food related spots that are worth wasting our time obsessing over, we stumble on a new one.
You know how it happens.
Going online can be like visiting Venice. You’re so happy. It’s so stimulating. On your way to a familiar cafe a glimpse of a colorful shop or the aroma from a bakery beckons, you take a right turn only to spy a fantastic building or stunning small bridge at the next corner. A series of distractions follows, you take another right and then a left and before you know it you’re lost. Not to mention you’ve totally forgotten where you were heading.
A few days ago we took our latest detour, which we want to share with you: The Daily Meal.* 
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Bridalplasty: Botox to the Brain
November 7th, 2010 | Comments
Tags: Health & Fitness, Travel & Entertainment
Is it possible that more than one Hollywood executive is injecting Botox to the brain?
This week E! launched the trailer for their new reality television series called Bridalplasty. The show will feature a bevy of brides competing for the grand prize of having an extreme plastic surgery makeover, which will be unveiled on their wedding day. Each week, the show will feature wedding related contests with the winner getting to choose a single procedure from her plastic surgery ‘wish list.’
The Hollywood Reporter described the show by saying, “One by one, the women are voted out by their competitors and, according to the show’s description, “possibly walking away with nothing and losing [their] chance to be the perfect bride.”
At first blush, the opportunities for amusement might seem great: A show where the loser gets eliminated and the winner gets knifed. Plus, it make gifts for the wedding party simple: breast implants for bridesmaids and phalloplasty for groomsmen. Once one gets beyond the initial wave of cutting humor, though, this show promises to be more bizarre and damaging than amusing. (more…)
Gender Gap in Gizmo Wear
November 5th, 2010 | Comments
Tags: Personal digital assistant, Shopping, Smartphone, Travel & Entertainment
We have a complaint.
Truth be told we have lots of complaints, but we’re on a bitching diet and are limiting ourselves to one really good bitch a day.
We’ll keep this one short and sweet.
There is a gender gap in gizmo gear and we’re sick of it.
Have you noticed how many gizmos, gadgets and whatnots (formerly known as phones) are conveniently made for pockets and belts.
We are not men.
We do not wear pants everyday.
When we wear pants we don’t necessarily wear a belt.
When we wear a belt, it is unseemly and uncomfortable to have a gizmo holder hanging off it. Men may be accustomed to appendages hanging below their waist. Us ladies, uh, not so much.
We do not typically wear button down shirts with pockets on the chest.
When we do wear them, we do not want lopsided chest enhancements- particularly ones that have not been provided by our friendly local plastic surgeon.
Think about it where are we to reliably pocket our PDAs?
A handbag you suggest. Tell us, wouldn’t you say putting our cells into a bag puts us at tremendous disadvantage? It isn’t fair that only men can use vibrators in inappropriate places. (Cell phone inappropriate places, we mean).
Men get to casually walk out of the house with all their what-nots attached to their bodies in the same usual and easy to reach spots each day.
Us ladies grab for our phones and throw them into the pocket of a dress, the back pocket of a pair of jeans, our handbag and rush off for the day. A single ring sends us into personal pat down mode or turns us into frantic dumpster divas.
We’re calling for gender equal gizmo placement. With all the talk of ‘smart phones’ isn’t it time for the technology world to partner with the fashion world to design, build and market gender-equal accessible phones and garb.
That is our bitch of the day.
Can we get an amen.
We originally published this in The Huffington Post:
Lucy Foley
November 3rd, 2010 | 1 Comment
Tags: lucy foley, music, Travel & Entertainment
Recently we heard Lucy Foley sing for the first time. It was stunning. We love her Irish poetic songwriting style and her gorgeous voice that evokes a feeling of stories kept secret from long ago. While she has worked hard at her craft for some time, she is just now receiving wider notice.
We reached out to her to ask questions about what it was like to take big risks, to have fear and to struggle in pursuit of her passions. Truth be told, we knew we liked her music, but when she wrote back quoting Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen the deal was sealed.
On being an artist:
“Iʼve always been a writer. I apparently wrote my first story some time after the age of three, and I have a distinct memory of writing it. The story was called Fluffy Toes, and itʼs still buried in a box in my parentsʼ attic somewhere. My father is a musician and composer.
The beauty of writing songs is the irrationality of it. Itʼs an uncanny process. I get a hint of something, a melody fragment or a lyric, and Iʼm chasing a rabbit down a hole as fast as I can go. These melodies seem to come from a sense of fun, a deeply curious sense of play. And I think you can hear that in my songs, this slightly wild sense of play in the melodies of my songs, while the lyrics are often filled with yearning and reckoning.”
On her journey:
“When I was living in Copenhagen I performed on the pedestrianised streets and sometimes at festivals, singing, playing guitar and telling stories. I translated Elvis Presleyʼs Hound Dog into Danish mostly for my own amusement, and also to see if I could get any humour out of the sombre, rush hour Danes. It was an education, mostly in getting over myself. You really canʼt be precious about yourself when youʼre standing and singing to waves of indifferent people, especially when thereʼs a huge crowd down the street staring at the guy with a boombox and a keen juggling ability. I was digging into a kind of dry truth-telling in my performances, beneath any attempt at crowd pleasing, digging into my own heart for what I had to say from there. I never got a huge crowd but I always got somebody interested. And when they were interested they were really interested. (more…)
Ghoulish and Free
October 26th, 2010 | 49 Comments
Tags: Health & Fitness, Travel & Entertainment
Unless you are an Ann Rice, Steven King or Stephenie Meyer fan on the hunt for your favorite vampire, you might be wondering what kind of twisted person cruises a cemetery for pleasure?
With Halloween fast approaching we thought it would be fun to find some ghoulish outdoor inspiration for a daily walk. And, of course, it had to be free.
In the old, old days cemeteries were dull and dreary places. Often adjacent to a church they were religious and serviceable final resting grounds. Graves were stacked high, unmarked, neglected– certainly not places of romantic inspiration let alone a destination worthy of a visit without morbid cause. Pere Lachaise Cemetery built in Paris in the early 1800’s changed the vision of cemeteries and what they could be. Planned around beautiful park like grounds, respecting the natural landscape, planted with beautiful specimens this first ‘rural or garden’ cemetery became a model for cemeteries all over the world.
Being rather picky and discerning we didn’t choose just any cemetery. We chose the most magnificent of the ‘garden or rural cemeteries’ for a perambulation: the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA. Originally built in 1831 it was the first in this country and according to the NPS even inspired the movement for public parks ! (more…)
Time to Travel? Go to China
October 24th, 2010 | Comments
Tags: china, Travel & Entertainment
 The Bund and Huangpo River at Night In the travel chapter of our book, Bitches on a Budget, we urge you to get your sense of adventure on and go to China. Trust us, there are few places we know where a bitch on a budget can get more bang for her travel buck.
Think about it. Five thousand years of unrivaled discovery and sophistication are roaring back after a measly few-hundred-year stall. Hell, we’re a little hiccup in history by comparison. Get over there and see it happening. See the contrasts between Old and New, East and West.
We speak Chinese and have been visiting China for years. In all honesty, we would have been screwed in the early days of our travels had we not spoken the language. That is no longer the case. No matter what your language, China is now accessible. (more…)
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