Perhaps I'm an anti-cosmopolitan snob but this low maintenance dude doesn't care for this is highly-polished, slick magazine with glossy pages and enough adds that make me believe that I'm the only dude without the stash to even place a deposit on any these "things'.

The magazine is full of ads and I find it's annoying trying to find something that might interest me. There's a plethora of ads, insets and double pages that make thumbing through the magazine nearly impossible. I find little pleasure reading this magazine as a source of travel information or as a photo magazine to thumb through and dream.

When I compare their travel pictures with those in the ads I note that the extremely high quality of a photographs I'm accustomed to in other travel magazine just isn't there.

We were subscribing to the magazine but now just purchase it if there's a particular article that interests us. The fact is we may pick up two per year now and that still saves money even though the magazine is an excellent deal at 12 issues for $12. Its cover price is $4.50. You can tell something must be paying for this magazine. It's the ads.

I thumbed through and at one point thought I saw an article on the Dominican Republic. We are visiting there our third time this coming April. I wanted to read what they had in those six pages. Alas! It was only an ad. Yes, six pages!!

The magazine has a number of regular departments including Word of Mouth that offers six to ten short articles of varied places each month discussing unheard of destinations within well known cities.

Stop Press presents news in travel each month. This month they discussed safe travel in North America as compared to problems rising in Asia and South America. Many of the articles pertained to air travel this month. Each month has different features. I read a thought provoking "altruism or voyeurism" article discussing tours of slums of the world. The guy Kevin Doyle raised some good questions.

This month there was an excellent article about the island of St John, USVI and how construction may turn it into another crowded island. I've visited there twice and because much is part of the US park system the private lands are being saturated with new construction. Locals are hoping to keep the influx of investors out.

Places and Prices discusses two or three new destinations each month giving both an overview and specific priceline for stays and dining. It's useful if going to that particular place.

Our World divides the world into six continents. It's here that destinations in each continent are discussed. These are interesting but I do not like to physically hold the magazine with all its ads while searching for these articles.

That said the magazine does have some fine contributors month to month and I do find enough Caribbean, Mexican and other North American destinations to fill my needs. Overall though, this magazine is too international for my travel interests and tastes. I am quite curious about the rest of the world but working my way through so many useless pages is more work that I am prepared to deal with.

This month's November issue has a feature the Reader's Choice Awards that too is useless to me again because it is world wide. There was no life to this piece either. Just stats.

In Closing

There are too many ads in this magazine to make it easy to thumb through or look for particulars. There's too much international info when I'm only interested in North America and the Caribbean where I have the time and money to travel. I also don't believe the photographs are up to par of other travel magazines. There are some excellent writers and interesting articles. They are just too buried under ads and more ads.


This is a contribution to Sleeper's Lean-n-mean VI and to kamel622's EpiWriMo Write-Off



Recommended: No