| The travel brochure; reinvented online
The first rule of travel should be: Fear the Brochure. Those horrible glossy mini-magazines with the creepy couples and their Colgate smiles. They walk hand in hand on some deserted beach apparently in the heart of bustling (insert somewhere hot here). And I love the European ones that reduce great cities or monuments to a sentence or two, calling up images from National Lampoon's European Vacation. Charming. Thankfully, the Web has something for the discerning traveller.
Most travel photos show the Netherlands inhabited solely by tulips, cheese and clogs. That may be nice for Gran, but there's more to the top city, Amsterdam, than that – and 360thecity.com proves it. A site that caters to Broadband users (it may take a day or two to load), it impresses with clever movie clips of what most brochures won't show you. Tours of the canals? Sure. Oh, and the fetish shop, the annual gay pride parade down those same canals, disco taxi (think karaoke), dinner at the Supperclub and someone getting their lip pierced.
If you just want to check out some great architecture, then book on over to soh.nsw.gov.au – the official site of the Sydney Opera House. This site is enormous, with Flash cutaway maps and panoramic Quicktime photos – it's eerily like actually being there. Not only can you spend hours doing the virtual tour, you can peruse upcoming events, look over the menu at one of the on-site restaurants or find out the latest venture in the corporate business report. You can even book your concert tickets online with the aid of a seating map.
*Colgate smile not included. |
