• Columns,  Sue Katz,  Travel,  Travel Time

    Travel Time: Amsterdam and Utrecht Travelogue, by Sue Katz

    Reprinted with permission from Sue Katz’s Consenting Adult Blog

    By Sue Katz
    All photos courtesy of Sue Katz

    May 19

    The taxi driver at the Amsterdam Centraal Station tries to rip me off. That’ll be €20, he says. What? says I. No way. Oh, says he, I meant to say €10. Turn on the machine, I suggest. Too late, he says.

    The delightful flat where we’re staying is up two narrow steep flights of steps and luckily my friend Sue has already arrived and comes to help me wrestle my modest suitcase up. The problem is that the width of the first flight is cut in half by the rails of a Stairmaster. And it is also missing a bannister. Bannisters are essential to anyone who does not bounce up stairs with athletic buoyancy and tightrope walker balance.

  • LGBTSR,  Travel,  Travel Time

    Gay Travelers Magazine: Provincetown – Where LGBTQ+ Can Be Themselves

    Reprinted with permission from Gay Travelers Magazine

    By Steven Skelley and Thomas Routzong

    Provincetown, Massachusetts stands out in history as not only the first place where the Pilgrims landed, it is constantly evolving to accept those who seek refuge, a place to be free and a place to be themselves. We asked locals to give us the inside scoop on the past, present and future of LGBTQ+ Provincetown.

    How would you describe Provincetown in one sentence?

    From Tony Fuccillo, Director of Tourism:

    Provincetown is a place where you feel you can truly be proud of being gay; all LGBTQ+, yes everyone is welcome in Ptown and can be themselves when they are here without any judgment from anyone.

  • LGBTSR,  Travel,  Travel Time

    Travel Time: What Venice Taught Me, by Sandra de Helen

    Sandra de Helen, photo by Bev Standish

    Travel Time is a regular feature at LGBTSr, highlighting destinations, travel suggestions and travelogues for the LGBTQ traveler.

    What Venice Taught Me
    By Sandra de Helen

    The only place outside the United States my mom dreamed of visiting was Venice, Italy. She was entranced by this city built on water. As for me, I wanted to go everywhere, see everything. But we were working class poor, living in rural Missouri. We became even poorer when my father died at age forty-two leaving my mom who was nine years younger with two little girls, one of who wasn’t quite two years old. I was the other daughter, and I was seven. Any traveling we did was through reading. Every book offered another world. I spent my childhood dreaming of those worlds.

    My first trip out of state was to New Orleans. I was eighteen. At twenty-one, I flew to Alaska and stayed for two months. Later that year I moved to Texas. Over the next decade, I lived in Alaska, Kansas, Arizona, and Missouri again. By the age of thirty-two, I had visited seventeen states. I was ready to go to Europe. When my credit union offered a chartered trip to Seefeld, Austria for only five hundred dollars for eight days, I placed a down payment and invited a friend to join me.

  • Latest,  Travel,  Travel Time

    ‘Travel Time’ Feature Added to LGBTSr

    Have a tip? Share a trip? Email me at Editor @lgbtsr.org, I’d love to spread the word.- Mark/Editor

    It’s spring. It’s travel time, let’s get out that sunblock, the rain poncho, our Google map apps, and a book bag stuffed with all the reading that brings us joy.

    I’ve added a Travel Time feature to the site, as if the menu could get any tastier! It will also be included with The Weekly Readlines, listing three or four good travel articles each week. I might have to get a second image for the colder months, but let’s get started now with Bears En La Playa Bed & Breakfast, Chelem, Yucatan, Mexico.

  • On the Map,  Travel,  Travel Time

    Travel Time: Bears En La Playa Bed & Breakfast, Chelem, Yucatan, Mexico

    Travel Time joins Q Audiobooks as a regular feature at LGBTSr, highlighting (in this case) destinations and travel suggestions for the LGBTQ traveler.

    Hat tip to reader John H. for referring this fabulous B & B.

    About Bears En La Playa

    Bears En La Playa, located in Chelem, is a small bed and breakfast right on the beach. Chelem, Yucatan is a small fishing village just outside the port town of Progreso. We are 30 minutes from Merida, a city of about 1 million people. A better description might be that we are three and a half hours from Cancun.

  • Gay Travelers Magazine,  Latest,  LGBTravel,  Travel

    Gay Travelers Magazine: Philadelphia Hotspots

    Photo by Steven Skelley

    Reprinted with permission from Gay Travelers Magazine

    Philadelphia LGBT Hotspots

    By Steven Skelley and Thomas Routzong

    Where could a traveler go to find unique, revolutionary, historical significance, one of the most influential, big cities of the New World, and some of the best LGBT hotspots in the USA? According to VISIT PHILADELPHIA, all this and more is available in the city of brotherly love.

  • Columns,  Gay Travelers Magazine,  LGBTravel,  Travel

    Gay Travelers Magazine: Vinales Valley, Cuba – Touring the UNESCO World Heritage Site

    This article first appeared at Gay Travelers Magazine, reprinted with Permission

    By Steven Skelley and Thomas Routzong

    On our second trip to explore Cuba, we decided to venture outside Havana to the amazing Vinales Valley. We booked an 11 hour tour called “The Vinales Valley – A UNESCO World Heritage Site” and we discovered a Cuban treasure.

    The Vinales National Park is a Cuban National Monument. More than 90 percent of the property is in the hands of private owners. Thirty percent is owned by individual farmers and another 62 percent is owned by the National Association of Small Farmers. If you want to see the real Cuba, this is the place.