Trip Questions
1. What is this website?
That's a great question! Basically, it's my account (journal entries, photos, videos, and some related articles) of the European Adventurer tour I took with Contiki Travel in 2006. I traveled for forty days, through eighteen countries from August 15th to September 23nd of that year. And I had the time of my life!
1B. Exactly which 18 countries did you visit?
Here's the list, as close to in order as it's going to get: England, France, Monaco, Andorra, Spain, Italy, Vatican City, Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Bulgaria. We stopped for at least a few nights in each spot except for Andorra, Bulgaria and Belgium which we merely drove through to get to and from our destinations.
2. What advice could you give to others looking to take the same trip?
Well, at the time of posting this information, I haven't yet left for my trip. But I promise that the last journal entry that I post will let you in on my complete experience, final thoughts, and all the tips and tricks I learned along the way during my trip. Until that time, I highly recommend checking out Stephanie's Post-Tour Q&A. And if you're looking for some photos of other people's trips, I highly recommend these One, Two, Three Flickr photo sets.
3. What did you find useful when planning for the trip?
I found quite a few guides and books useful when planning for my trip, but I would first like to start out by saying that the most useful planning tool is simply taking the time to plan ahead. Set some time aside and look up and read other people's experiences, and find all the useful and relavent resources you can. I learned a LOT from googling "Contiki" and "European Adventurer" and just reading the blogs and checking out the photo galleries that popped up.
I personally found Frommer's Europe, MapEasy's Guidemaps, and MapEasy's City Walks very useful. Frommer's Europe is a great general guide with detailed information on hotels, restaurants, transportation, museums, and veneues in all European countries. Since my lodging and most of my food was taken care of, I found it most useful as a guide on transportation, and inforamtion on local attractions (with many tips on how to get cheaper tickets, easier addmitance, etc.).
MapEasy's Guidemaps were very deatailed city maps with great information on shops and restaurants - such as pricing, best time of day to visit, night scene info, etc. And, I really fell in love with the beautiful design and great use of MapEasy's City Walks. I bought these for London, Paris and Rome. And each one has about 50 "Adventures on Foot" you can take around the city to see different attractions. All of these were very useful! (To learn more about planning and packing for a trip abroad read my post-tour thoughts on the subject.)
Website Questions
4. How long did this website take to build?
In total this design took less than three weeks to photoshop, code, fill in content, and plug in the back-end. This design came together very quickly for only having a two-man team. I (Daniel Scrivner) handled the design and coding, and my brother Eric Scrivner handled the back-end and all of the php magic that takes place throughout the website.
5. What fonts are you using here?
For the logotype, as well as introduction text on the homepage banner, I used Adobe Jenson Pro (using various styles and weights). For the headers, page/section titles, buttons, and top navigation Avenir STD was employed using both images as well as sIFR to get the job done. And for the html body text, and the small headers, Verdana is used.
6. What content management system are you using?
For most of my projects I employ my brother to code a custom content management system, and this project is no different. My brother and I designed and coded the PHP and MySQL back-end in the few weeks leading up to the launch of this website. The back-end I'm using on this website helps accomplish three things: post and edit journal entries, display and sort content throughout the pages, and moderate comments/messages on the "Say Hello" page.
7. Who do you use or recommend for hosting?
I've been through my fair share of web hosts, both big and small, and have been unimpressed by many very popular hosting companies. But I eventually found and now host all my projects with Segpub. I'm extremely happy with their very prompt and friendly customer service, the technologies they support, and how easy it is to manage and modify domain names, subdomains, databases, users, etc.
They aren't the cheapest web host (when did cheap ever get you anything good anyway?), but they are by far the best I've ever had. And any web application, program, or back-end, I've ever found they've had the technology to install and run beautifully.
8. Who inspires you? (Inspirations & Shout Outs)
There are so many great creative minds and designers on the web. But my favorite and most inspiring are Shaun Inman the mind behind Mint and so many other great websites, Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain at 31Three, motion/photogaphy/audio superstar Impactist, Cameron Moll with the most beautiful portfolio site I've ever seen, 37Signals, Coudal Partners, and the team behind Purevolume.
Thanks for reading! If you have any other questions or comments, don't hesitate to shoot me an e-mail!