Travel Week in Review: Seattle, Salento, and Socially Responsible Resorts

In surfing through the new travel content this week, I was delighted to read about three locations I've never visited: Seattle, Southern Italy, and the Dominican Republic. These three spiffy submissions all convey a sense of place and a firsthand angle on travel.

First up is Nigel Dunn, whose gives us a $10 itinerary for an afternoon in Seattle. In Pike Place Market to Kubota Gardens, Nigel combines a brief downtown stop at the now world-famous market with a visit to a lesser-known botanical hideout and a pier-eye view of the city and the mountains. Though the piece is concise and practical, telling us how to stay cheap and giving us specific public transit directions, he weaves in what is clearly his delight in Seattle's natural beauty (the Kubota Gardens stop is clearly where his heart lies). At any rate, the result is a short but sound list of suggestions that also tells us something about the personality and interests of the writer.

Going from one west coast to another, we head from Seattle to Italy for Gary Picariello's thoughts on the west coast of Italy's heel. A retired Air Force officer who now lives in Italy with his family, Gary has first hand (or in this case, first-boot) knowledge of his many travel destinations. If you comb through his content on AC, you'll see lots of European travel content - Paris, Greece, Germany, and of course his new home base. In A Visit to Gallipoli's "Centro Storico" - Not Just Another Old Town, Gary paints a meandering portrait of the Salento region through a look at the port of Gallipoli. Blending some history with some practical tourist facts, he makes a case for this less familiar spot on the Italian peninsula and underscores it with five images that enrich the article's usefulness.

For our last stop this week, Content Producer Kathryn Lemmon takes us to Hispaniola in Hacienda Dominicus in the Dominican Republic. This article was a flowing pleasure to read because it's filled with memorable details and observations about a unique resort - and it's shared in come-along tone. Hacienda Dominicus is operated by Ibersotar Group, a company that, as Kathryn describes, goes to great lengths to conserve energy and minimize the negative environmental impact of tourism. I know that, even if I forget the name of the resort a year from now, the image of an old airplane recycled to create hotel furniture and the visual of a swan-graced outdoor wedding will both stick. The only thing missing was a bunch of pictures, but thanks to Google, I found some images of this socially responsible resort here at a photo-sharing site.

I hope to see more stellar user-driven travel next week. So until then...peace out, arrivederci, and adios.