See the World Up Close! Great Walking Tours for Every Interest

Spring is finally here! Don't you want to shake off the dust of your shuttered home and get outside?

If you're taking a vacation, get out and see where you are - don't just sit in the back of a tour bus and watch through the windows.

If you're visiting a new city, include a walking tour - self-guided or escorted - to get the lay of the land. There are even self-guided walking tours you can download to your mp3 player - so you don't have to risk walking into lampposts when trying to read a guidebook while you walk!

You'll see things you can't see from a bus, it's great exercise, and you get to interact with the locals - exploring on foot is a much more intimate experience than a bus tour.

There are walking tours in cities all over the world, and each has a different focus. From food tasting tours in New York City and New Orleans to ghost tours in Savannah, there are walking tours to suit every taste.

You can learn photography (and photograph some great sights!) on a walking tour in New York or Cairo, Egypt.

You can hear scary stories on ghost tours in New Orleans or Savannah, or try to find Jack the Ripper in London.

While in London, you can see some of the places that inspired the Harry Potter novels. In Paris, follow the trail of the Da Vinci Code.

Culinary tours are popular all over the world, from chocolate tasting tours in New York and Paris, to wine and pasta tours in Italy - or San Francisco's North Beach!

But did you know there are also walking tours in the countryside? You don't literally walk across an entire country, but after being driven from one city or town to the next, you explore each destination on foot. These one to two-week escorted tours cover North America, Europe, Asia and North Africa.

Imagine walking through the vineyards of Tuscany, enjoying great food and wine along the way. Or experience the sights and sounds of Morocco, sleeping in desert tents or a restored palace and interacting with people of the Berber tribes. Walk the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal or nature trails in Chaing Mai, Thailand.

Don't see the world from the back of a bus - get out there and introduce yourself!

All of these experiences, and more, await you on a walking tour!

I am a home-based travel agent and have traveled extensively throughout the U.S. (including Hawaii) and Asia.

I focus on travel for women - girlfriend getaways, mother-daughter vacations, spas, craft retreats, culinary vacations, beaches and river cruises.

I am a Maui Specialist and a Grand River Cruise Specialist.

You can visit me at http://great-womens-vacations.com

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Graphic Tees and High Fashion? An Interesting Match-Up

The graphic tee has always been considered something of low to mid class fashion. People living in high rise apartments in the middle of New York City would never have been caught dead wearing a t-shirt plastered with a trendy silk screen printing. Yet, the more we look around the easier to notice that graphic tees are making a huge comeback into mainstream clothing trends and they have managed to work their way up to the level of high fashion. Famous celebrities such as Naomi Campbell have been photographed during their daily routines wearing these graphic tees. But where did this graphic tee movement come from and just how far are do its effects reach into society?

Fashion is much the proverbial revolving door; fashion trends from the 1920's will come back 80 years later in full force. Just a few years ago we had the flashback to a time where everyone wore bellbottoms and jeans ending in flares. The graphic tee; however, got its start in the 1970's and early 1980's due primarily to the increased interest in do-it-yourself t shirts (got to love hippies). The trend quickly blew out as fast as the hippie group did but it is once again in full swing on the streets and in the suburbs. If you go to stores such as Juice Couture, Armani Exchange, Express, and Banana Republic. These stores span mid to high fashion and each of these major fashion power-houses feature a number of graphic tees.

However it should be said now that the actual graphics featured on the tees tend to be different that the normal skulls and swirls found on the streets. These new graphic tees feature grunge-styled British and Scottish Coat-of-Arms of famous clans. They also use iconic figures such as crowns, crosses, gargoyles, and royal lions. Though still graphic tees, these companies try to set themselves apart by creating a new category of "high fashion graphic tees" If a person were to take a closer look, they would find that there is very little difference in quality among these graphic t shirts; and one could realize that these huge brand names are struggling to keep their luxury brands alive and are being reduced to participating in the main stream. This offers them a more lucrative market; however it manages to dilute the actual brand and could possibly hurt them in the long wrong.

Fred McCoy is a content writer and a print designer who strongly suggests R.A.G clothing as a great example of where to get affordable Preppy clothing in New York City. They have everything from graphic tees to Cheap Polo t Shirts. For more information about R.A.G, visit - http://www.ragnewyork.com

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