Here’s a link to our first Destinations issue.
Our subscriber base has grown so much since we first started ten years ago that most of you have missed all our earliest recommendations. The best of these are still valid and useful, so we’re trying out something new — Retro Recomendo. Once every 6 weeks, we’ll send out a throwback issue of evergreen recommendations focused on one theme from the past 10 years.
Walk across Bali
I just completed a six-day walk across the island of Bali. We carried only day packs and our luggage was forwarded each day. We walked roughly 77 km from Ubud, up to the volcanoes in the center of the island, and then finished on the north coast. We had two guides to lead the way through the rice terraces, and we slept in local villages, Balinese style along the way. I highly recommend the organizers, who charge only $500 for the whole trip, including all the vegetarian meals along the way. This is miles off the tourist, or even backpacker, tracks. The hosts, Astungkara Way, also offer a 10-day version which goes coast to coast. — KK
Walkable Neighborhoods map
Close.city is an interactive map designed to help you find neighborhoods in the United States that are within a short walking distance of amenities like supermarkets, public transportation, cafes, co-working spaces, bookstores, and other facilities. It's useful when searching for a hotel, Airbnb, or apartment that's near the kinds of places that are important to you — MF
Find a Moon Tree near you
I didn’t know about the tree seeds that flew around the Moon in 1971 and were planted upon return until I read this article in The Atlantic: We Almost Forgot About the Moon Trees. All of the locations of these Moon Trees are kept here and up-to-date, including the ones no longer alive. Visiting as many of these trees as possible is now on my travel bucket list. — CD
Offbeat attractions guide
Whenever I travel I search for my destination at the Atlas Obscura website. It will yield dozens of very obscure, very offbeat attractions in the area. How else can you find a nearby museum of parasites, or trail of doll heads, or a restaurant of robots, underground tunnels, or a store for time travel? — KK
360-degree videos from around the world
Visit AirPano to watch 360 videos of beautiful places on Earth, from Tokyo’s Shibuya Scramble pedestrian crossing (the busiest in the world), to a village of the Warao Indigenous people on the Orinoco River in Venezuela. My travel bucket list grew after watching some of these videos. — MF
Calendar of festivals
I try to coordinate my travel to exotic places with local festivals that occur at the same time. Trouble is, there’s been no easy way to find out which festivals are happening where. For example many traditional celebrations run on a lunar cycle. So I built a calendar that will show me all the festivals in Asia that are happening on a particular day. Or I can look at the map and see what festivals occur nearby and when. My site is called Festivo. It provides the local festivals of Asia—which are crammed with color, costumes, and traditions—in calendar format. It’s open and free to all, no ads. If enough people (besides myself) find it useful I will expand it to Europe, Africa, and the rest of the world. — KK
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Recomendo is an authentic, hand-crafted, human-written weekly newsletter that is free, but not cheap. Consider supporting our work with a paid option, now at the low price of $45 per year. Paid subs enable us to keep making it free for others. Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Books That Belong On Paper and Book Freak.