It's always interesting to find out how destinations developed, and it turns out we Brits had a hand in shaping the Allgäu region of Bavaria.
There are two phases to the area's recent history, which locals call the 'Blaue Allgäu' (Blue Allgäu) and the 'Grune Allgäu' (Green Allgäu).
The blue colour came from flax, which they grew to make linen. The Allgäu was getting along just fine as textile country until Britain's industrial revolution, which flooded the market with cheaper cotton goods.
Instead the people of the Allgäu turned to dairy farming, allowing land once used for crops to be reclaimed by grass - which helped make it as green and pleasant as it is today.
That helped pave the way for a (mainly domestic) tourism market that really got going when railways arrived in the late 1800s (the industrial revolution wasn't all bad).
You're never far from an instance of that history influencing tourism. Anne Riedler from Oberstdorf Tourism tells me one of the peak times for visitors is in September, when farmers begin fetching their herds down from the foothills of the mountains (the Almabtrieb, Viehscheid). Each town does it on a different date, and uses it as an opportunity to throw a party.
In Oberstdorf, one of the towns we stayed in, the event will take place on September 11-12.
Elsewhere, we met cheesemaker Georg Grundl, who also runs a cheese-making school for tourists, and farmer-hotelier Klaus Hauber, who uses hay and herbs from his own land both in the hotel's spa treatments and to decorate and fragrance the rooms.
Hauber is also an example of how the 'Grune Allgäu' helped bring in the golf dollar. His guests can walk straight onto the Golfplatz Oberstaufen, several holes of which are on his land.
He observes that superb grass comes naturally to the region - and I'm sure the climate means courses are less resource-hungry than in hotter, drier destinations (even if the golfers themselves have to deal with less reliable weather...).
I've posted a few times from Allgau - hit the link to read them all.
On Saturday our group took a short wander down from the summit of the Nebelhorn, accessible via cable car from Oberstdorf town (we're still in the Allgau region of Bavaria, by the way).
It'll take you about 15-20 minutes and three separate cars to reach the top, some 2,224m up. The small party at the bottom of the pic are celebrating the cable car reopening - it had been closed for maintenance for a few months.
The Nebelhorn stayed true to its name (Nebel = fog), leaving us with a non-existent view of the 400 or so peaks visible from the top (they count them all, even the little ones).
We walked from the summit to the Nebelhorn Höfatsblick station at 1932m, using trails that become popular ski runs in the winter months.
At high altitude and with visibility low there was initially little to look at, but as we descended the mud gave way to grass, and white, blue and yellow alpine flowers began to appear between the rocks.
Reaching our destination somewhat chillier and damper than we set out (the fog was wet enough to leave tiny ice crystals on the seams of my jacket) we indulged in one of those stout Alpine lunches beloved of skiers: pretzels, sausages, mustard and beer.
You're looking at weisswurst, a white sausage made with veal, pork, herbs and spices, then boiled. You fish it out of a water bath, skin it and eat it with a great sweet mustard, a pretzel, and of course a beer (also weiss). It's all a bit of a ritual, and the better for it.
So in spite of the weather, this was a great excursion - a bit of discomfort, but only enough to inspire camaraderie.
Fog and rain are in any case kinds of adveristy with which hikers are perfectly comfortable (indeed, intimate), and hikers are your key market here. It is great, great walking country.
Geologically, the Breitachklamm gorge* is a fairly familiar drill: limestone, fast-flowing water, Bob's your uncle. But it's an impressive example - noisy, deep and narrow, with plenty of waterfalls and overhanging rock faces, and a history of spectacular-sounding floods.
It has sturdy, well-maintained paths to boot. Even novice walkers will be able to tackle it, given waterproof shoes and the stomach for a short steep section at either end.
If you're at the top, you've just crossed into Austria. It isn't obvious, but look down the road behind the hotel for proof...
You'll find it near the village of Oberstdorf, about two hours' drive south (and a little bit west) of Munich Airport.
* A tautology, by the way - the Breitach is the river, and Klamm means gorge.
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Istria's lovely, but get going before the Euro kicks in - that's more or less' Budget Travel's message to its US readers...
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UK summer highlights, jazzed up with flickr and Google Maps. Travel Guardian, you spoil us...
This comes from former TWgroup editor-in-chief Penny Wilson, who was in Ethiopia a few weeks back - not strictly a blog post, but I think it fits here.
The parched earth cries for rain in Ethiopia's northern territories. It will fall in great torrents from next week, damping the dust and filling bone-dry rivers - including the Blue Nile - that snake across a vast and impressive country, fast ripening for tourism.
Pictured: Fasilides' palace, Gondar.
Under communist rule from the seventies to the nineties, now this democracy bristles with the green shoots of free enterprise. Construction of new hotels and smart housing jostle for space along what will become a well-worn historic route north of the capital, Addis Ababa, which boasts a spanking new InterContinental, Hilton and Sheraton. Others are about to open too, I'm told.
Here the few signs of communist dictatorship include a surplus of bright blue Lada taxis and a huge university in the former palace of Emperor Haile Selassie, overthrown in 1974.
Selassie's legacy includes his donation of a province down South to Rastafarians after they proclaimed him a messianic figure or "God incarnate" in the sixties. Still revered by Ethiopians, he never publicly accepted the role, but the province remains a Rastafarians' mecca.
Tonight at time of writing, I share barbecued goat (delicious) with a group of UK agents and tour operators on the terrace of the state-run Roha hotel in Lalibela (meaning "eat honey"). We are in the midst of Ethiopia's historic route, which drips with ancient history and monolithic churches dating to the 12th century.
Our educational trip all has been funded by Ethiopian Airlines, which criss-crosses Africa, flies to 53 destinations worldwide and soon takes delivery of 10 new Boeing 787 Dreamliners. It is pouring resources into raising Ethiopia's profile, and as an Ethiopian Airlines' group invited to taste the country's travel potential, we agree Ethiopia deserves a place on the UK tourism map.
It is not geared for the masses, and probably shouldn't ever be. Part of its charm is that it has never been colonised - the only African country alongside Liberia to remain free of European bounty hunters. It's a far cry from the unsafe, war-torn, famine-ridden country much of the world perceives it as. Well worth investigating.
I went ballooning in Cappadocia just last month, and on the day I flew there were nearly 40 other balloons in the sky. I don't have sufficient frame of reference to say whether that is a lot, but it is more than it used to be - the operator I flew with told me the number of balloons that rise up over the valleys of Cappadocia each morning has grown over the years.
Either way, it caused no problems on that occasion. The pilot of our balloon was in radio contact with other pilots to keep track of where we were in relation to other balloons. They would often radio to check that there was no balloon above us before we ascended.
Nor is it unusual for a number of balloons to take off in the same airspace - take a look at photos from the many festivals all over the world, such as the famous one in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Suffice to say that the incident in Cappadocia is as out of the ordinary as it is tragic. We will have to wait for more information from Explore and from the Turkish authorities before we know exactly what lay behind it.
Despite its name it has nothing to do with the sea; however, its strangely shaped nuts were washed up on faraway beaches and those who found them thought they were some exotic marine plant.
Every Coco de Mer palm has a gender. Unsurprisingly, this one is male.
Even more uncanny is the female. On the tree, the nuts may look innocuous enough.
But once the outer husk is stripped away, the seed is revealed, rather resembling a shapely female bottom.
This symbol is everywhere in the Seychelles, even on the stamp you get in your passport.
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