Get into the spirit of Yellow cabs and steaming man hole covers with entries from the blogs of Danny, a Lancastrian fellow hanging out on the east coast and Dave, who’s been embedding himself in The Big Apple.

Dave is accompanied in New York by Erin, who takes the liberty of assuming control of this post and giving us the NYC vibe in an instance:

“WOW what a day! My first subway ride, hula-hooping in Central Park, my first trip to Time Square and to finish..my first blog entry. Luckily Dave has been there to keep me from walking into traffic several times as I was too busy people watching or trying to take a picture.”

If only we all had a Dave to stop us being totalled by oncoming traffic as we stare at sky scrapers with our jaw on the floor. When not directing vehicles around a wandering Erin, Dave was able to post on the reason why we all love NYC - the shopping.

Danny has also been sampling the New York (Nuyorcian?) experience by following a ritual and taken part in the more cultural pursuits, including a visit to the The Met.

Away from NYC, Danny has visited Washington DC and Philadelphia, where he mooched and shopped for souveniers as well as checking in on a couple of the sights.

New STA Explorer Alison descirbes herself as an ‘organised, structured lass’. Good thing really, as she’s facing some serious upheaval as she moves from London back to her homeland Australia - and visits eight countries in four months along the way.

As she writes in On The Road Home, the blog she’s created to chronicle her experiences, the cornerstone of her trip planning has been The Spreadsheet, a colour-coded masterpiece ‘that lısted where and when I wanted to travel, which tours wıth which companies I’d chosen and how much İ thought it all would cost’. Deciding to plan and book her journey with STA Travel, Alison initially found sterling support from Beth in the Ealing Broadway branch, who

relentlessly worked on my itınerary, working and reworking the order of things to get me the best price on flights that she could find. She even took a moment wıth me to grieve the loss of Mongolia when that proved to be a country too far for my budget. She was there to have a little clap when İ paid for the trip and hold my hand through all manner of creative debit/credit card management.

However, she got an unwelcome shock when she returned to the branch to find that Beth had disappeared. Her laid-back successor Saxon has done his best to get to grips with her repeated questions and crises (such as her passport being held hostage by the Uzbekistan Embassy), and thankfully Alison’s organisation paid off as she’s ‘finally lıvıng The Damn Spreadsheet.’

Her first stop is beautiful Istanbul, where she is staying in a basic hostel but has loved the Topkapi Palace and Grand Bazaar. She’s moving onto central Asia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand and Malaysia over the next months, promising to review the many adventure tours she’s booked along the way with STA, and uploading photos onto her Flickr account. So follow her blog and get involved by leaving a comment. If it’s a thorough and as opinionated as her travel planning, you’d be mad to miss it.

Embarking on a travel adventure is a significant event in the lives of many who decide that treading far off paths is for them. StevO is feeling this and decided to literally mark his departure with something he’d never forget - a tattoo.

The one half of the Globetrotting Guys titled his post describing the experience I shouldn’t… but I did. I’d say not to worry StevO.  And as you, our readers, can see, the tattoo is neat, tidy and, even if I say so myself, rather fetching. There was thankfully no negative reaction from his folks and StevO has long wanted some ink work, so what better time than now.

Would you do the same? Have you done the same? Let us know. In fact, let StevO know…

Now, if you ever wanted to know the power of being an STA Explorer then look no further than the experiences of our Australian Adventurer.

Georgina begins her latest post, Neighbours Night in Melbourne, with these words:

“Best night ever. Let me cut a long story short…”

I’m going to cut it even shorter, because who am I to steal any Alan Fletcher aka Dr. Karl Kennedy related thunder!

The girls of Hip21 had, as of the 18^th, posted about their anticipation of the Neighbours Night which you can read here – make sure to take note of the ‘honking’ reference involving good ol’ Dr. K. Come the evening festivities, and Alan Fletcher or Dr. K (I don’t think he minds), is prepping the stage for his performance in his role as front man and driving force of indie band, Waiting Room. It was at this point he spoke to the gathering crowd:

“Where’s Claire? Who’s Claire that writes the Hip21 blog? Who saw me honking my horn today at Ramsey St?”

At this point the experience is far better described by Hip21 girls themselves; needless to say excitement ensued in epic proportions, but basically Dr. Karl had been reading Hip21, which is cool by any measurement! The joy continued as they were invited back stage afterward to talk Hip21, get signed albums, pose for pictures and discuss his Portsmouth University gig!? All in all they were left with only one conclusion:

“Dr K [is] fantastic! He really is hot stuff.”

Like many gap year travellers, Nick is determined to make a difference during his months in South America. His latest blog post describes his arrival in Uycho, where he has been teaching kids from the local orphanage and building a wall to defend the town’s local reservoir.

However, volunteering is more complicated and difficult than just crusading in like western knights in armour to sort out the problems of the poor. Nick describes their struggles to deal with hyperactive kids and adults who are, ironically, the opposite:

we were midway through the second week and we still hadn´t had any support from the locals. We were getting a bit tired of the whole ´si mañana´attitude

But with perseverance and a bit of imagination Nick and his fellow volunteers get the kids engaged and finally get going with the wall, learning how to work and play the Uycho way. He’s now headed to Lima and La Paz, so keep on top of his blog and don’t be afraid to leave comments and ask questions if you’re interested in a regular guy’s view of a South American adventure.

Our budding Buddhist, Isobel Jones, has brought us another update from her Nepal Weblog.

It is at it’s heart a traffic update of sorts, with Isobel letting us all know about the state of the Boudhanath Main Road. Nevertheless she does away with the formalities usually afforded with such reportage and I have to say it makes it all the better:

“The Boudha Main Road in Boudhanath is MAD!

“You walk around the Stupa and even though everything seems quite busy; with nuns, monks and pilgrims, kids coming home from school, shoppers, dogs, Buddhist music, the occasional (well actually one, very small) cow and even the odd car or motorbike, this is nothing but nothing compared to the Boudha Main Road.”

Isobel is able to give some details about the locale where she is staying, such as where the nearest cashpoint is and also mentions again before signing off that in case she didn’t say so before:

“It is MAD… “

There’s using social media and then there’s using social media. In a world where TMI just doesn’t exist, lifestreaming is the crack of choice for the true social media whore. Lifestreamer and blogger Mark Krynsky describes it as ’a chronological aggregated view of your life activities both online and offline’ - a way of displaying and sharing your activities and interests through social media, all in one place. It’s similar to lifecasting (think ED TV) but more subtle than just walking around with a camera on your head.

And Mark recently wrote this very interesting article about how lifestreaming can be adapted to the nomad-minded in the form of travelstreaming. He reports:

Alan Cheslow notified me last night of a new site project he is working on that he’s deemed a Travelstream[…]so that he could share his family road trip with his extended family and friends as well as providing a journal of his travels to reflect upon after his return.

His Travelstreaming site takes the Lifestreaming concept of aggregating social services data, but puts focus on a specific event. His site displays his vacation schedule, photos, blog posts, and several other GPS based activities. Alan has also provided details on many of the tools he used to build the site including several mobile client apps, Brightkite, Flickr, Yahoo Pipes, and more.

It’s basically what we’ve been advocating for ages - using the best tools at your disposal to record and share your travels - but very focused on each individual trip, an interesting twist on the concept and particularly useful if you take many shorter expeditions in the year.

Check out Alan’s site and get inspired to tailor a travelstreaming hub for your own trip.