Travel Gear Reviews

The Best BPA-Free Water Bottles

Want to reduce the environmental impact of your next trip? Bring your own water bottle. Particularly if you are traveling to a tropical destination where you’d otherwise buy (and then later throw out) plastic water bottles.

Thailand alone is littered with up to a billion (with a B!) plastic water bottles according to some estimates. And water bottles are also an issue in the developed world. In the Washington DC area 1 in 5 single-use plastic water bottles sold end up in a public waterway. In London single-use water bottles became such a problem that their sales were banned.

In the face of that you wouldn’t think that you could make much difference. But let’s say you and a partner go on a two week tropical trip and each drink three bottles of water per day. If you each bring your own reusable water bottles that alone will prevent 84 disposable ones from clogging land fills or being strewn across the landscape. That’s enough water bottles that, were they placed end to end, would be higher than an eight story building!

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Travel Deals for the New Year

With a new year comes a new selection of travel deals. And a difficult choice: take to the snow of the mountains or escape to the warm waters of a tropical beach? Fortunately, we’ve found discount deals for both options.

To stay updated on our travel bargain finds you can . . .

• go directly to our travel hot deals page;

• or, get a Kindle subscription to our travel blog;

• or, perhaps best of all, subscribe to our RSS feed and get all of our travel posts delivered directly to your email inbox or to your RSS aggregator;

or—why not?—act on all three of those options.

Please note that all of the offers below are for a limited time. Happy high-value travel!

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Best of Spot Cool Stuff 2009: Travel Gear & Gadgets

What you bring on a trip can effect a travel experience almost as much as where you go. So over this past year Spot Cool Stuff has reviewed all manner of travel gear and gadgets from cameras to luggage to clothing. A look back on our favorite travel product review posts from the last 365 days:

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10 Superb Gifts For Travelers

Shopping for a traveler you really can’t stand? You should click on over to our collection of the worst travel gear. For everyone else—those of you hoping to, you know, find a present that will make a traveler happy—we offer you these 10 suggestions, a cross section of products that will appeal to a variety of travelers from geeks to frequent fliers to travlelers of the armchair variety. If none of these are appealing, you can always purchase some one gallon zip lock bags to help them get through security!

And remember—there’s no reason you can’t give any of these items to yourself too.

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The Best Cameras for Travel

The qualities that make for a superlative travel camera are all those that make for a superlative camera in general. Plus, the joy of travel photography is improved by a camera that’s small, light and has a longer battery life. Plus, a camera must be well built and, preferably, weatherized to withstand frequent travel. Plus, some cameras have features especially geared towards travelers such as self cleaning sensors and optional GPS devices that will record the exact location on the planet a particular photograph was taken. Whew!

Spot Cool Stuff considered all those factors when determining the best travel cameras and then divided our selections into these categories:

SLR Cameras:

Point-and-Shoot Cameras:

Click on the category that most interests you. Or, continue reading . . .

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November ’09 Travel Deals & Discounts

November marks the start of the high season for many of the world’s warm weather destinations. Travel to places like Thailand, Turkey and the Caribbean starts to get expensive. Meanwhile, the ski season in Europe and North America prepares to get into high gear. Fortunately, there are good travel deals and discounts to be found. Here’s a selection of a few of our favorites.

As always, you can stay updated on our latest travel deal posts by . . .

• going directly to our travel hot deals page;

• or, getting a Kindle subscription to our travel blog;

• or, perhaps best of all, subscribing to our RSS feed and getting all of our travel posts delivered directly to your email inbox or to your RSS aggregator;

or—why not?—act on all three of those options.

Please note that most of the offers below are for a limited time. And with that, here’s to happy, high-value travel!

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The Kindle Gets a Passport
spot cool stuff TRAVEL

Regular readers of the Spot Cool Stuff Tech blog know what huge fans we are of the Kindle. They also know that our Kindle enthusiasm comes despite harboring a few gripes about Amazon’s e-book reader.

Well, today that list of gripes grew shorter by one: The Amazon Kindle is now available in an international version.

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Spotting Late Sept & Early Oct ’09 Travel Deals

October is an odd time for travel booking. It is low season for cruises (check out our review of luxury cruise lines currently offering discounts) and for Europe and for Southeast Asia. The northern hemisphere ski season hasn’t started yet and the Caribbean is at the tail end of hurricane season. But all this means there are more travel bargains for you.

As always, you can stay updated on our latest travel deal posts by . . .

• going directly to our travel hot deals page;

• or, getting a Kindle subscription to our travel blog;

• or, perhaps best of all, subscribing to our RSS feed and getting all of our travel posts delivered directly to your email inbox or to your RSS aggregator;

or—why not?—act on all three of those options.

Please note that most of the offers below are for a limited time. And with that, here’s to happy, high-value travel!

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