Go Green Travel Green

You are browsing the archives of 2010.

Rotorua, New Zealand is the place to be for geothermal activity. There are more hot springs, thermal pools, sulphur spas, mud pools, and volcanic valleys than you can count. Determine whether Te Puia, Wai-o-Tapu, Waimangu, or Hells Gate is best for your trip.

We drove a Kea Campervan around New Zealand. Read our Kea Campers review to see what we liked, didn’t like, and what we’d do differently next time.

Hells Gate Rotorua Wai Ora Spa is one of New Zealand’s best geothermal parks. This post provides a review of the park, spa, and mud bath experience.

When backpacking in South America these are some of the best 5 activities to participate in. Be it hiking, surfing, or extreme mountain biking this post describes it all.

Hotel coupons aren’t quite as easy to come by as car rental coupon codes, but you can definitely snag some good deals. Hotels generally have two types of discount coupons and promotions. Discount coupons are actually coupons that you have to click through or know the code to redeem. Promotions are the deals that are [...]

These are the best car rental coupon codes and also the best ways to get a rental car (and coupon) for cheap or extremely discounted.

One fantastic thing about having a travel website is the number of emails we get with special travel coupons and discount codes. In the past we’ve shared some of these codes, like the Vayama International coupon code or our tips about Priceline Bidding. We’ve gotten some feedback on these posts thanking us for posting them. [...]

Review of Rainbow Springs plus pictures and information about the Kiwi bird in Roturoa, New Zealand. See photos of this noctural animal plus lots of other native birds.

Where were you on April 20, 2010?
Don’t remember? Me either. But perhaps we should have remembered where we were on April 20 when the BP oil rig exploded. The spill will impact our lives in the way many other infamous events have.
It would be easy to ignore the spill – treat it as something that [...]

Review of Kuru shoes including what makes them a good travel shoe. This review specifically is about the Kuru Halcyon shoe, but extends to what’s great about other Kuru shoes.

Eco firendly memory foam pillow review. We’ve reviewed and tested two memory foam pillows to determine which is best.

Check out this photo we captured of the hot pools in Hells Gate on our recent trip to New Zealand:

(Don’t worry, we’ll tell you more about Hells Gate in an upcoming post.)

If you write or publish photos anywhere online, I highly recommend you read this short post.
While doing a bit of Googling this evening I came across several sets of Go Green Travel Green photos attributed to both my name (1 set) and Kimberly’s name (2 sets) on a TripAdvisor site called TripWow.
It’s a bit odd [...]

Thanks to everyone who participated in our contest week by commenting on our posts about Stainless Steel Cookware, Green Luggage, and Shades of Green at Home.  We used a random number generator to pick the winners. Here they are:

 
Amazon.com Gift Card: Suzanne
Good Life Water Bottle: Brooke
Eco Vessel Water Bottle: Jessiev
 
Lexus Dark Ride [...]

Let’s face it, the GreenDexes in many Lonely Planet guides don’t contain everything you want to know about traveling green in a country. Luckily, Dorian Yates is to the rescue with her Green Earth Guide Series.  These are the first destination specific, green focused, travel guides ever to be in print. We were sent free [...]

Want to win a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate, a stainless steel water bottle, or a Lexus discount card?
Two weeks ago we hosted Contest Week. We have 13 prizes to give away. And so far we only have 13 entries. You don’t have to be a math major to realize that your chances of winning [...]

Best of our New Zealand Trip. Our favorite foods, sites, and more.

Everything you need to know about green luggage including bag reviews and the best green luggage features.

Reviews and ratings of stainless steel cookware sets. Nonstick pans can kill birds and are likely bad for human health. Replace your old pans with stainless steel — know which pan to buy with these reviews.

Some early posts at Go Green Travel Green were part of a series called shades of green travel. This post is about how to incorporate shades of green at home.

Just a quick note for those of you with websites, blogs, businesses or anyone generally interested in making money online. (This has nothing to do with traveling or environmental issues – so if you’re not interested in entrepreneurship please disregard this short post.)
I’ve previously written about my experience with an online marketing course called Project [...]

We are in such great moods after a wonderful trip to New Zealand (more stories and pictures coming soon) that this week at Go Green Travel Green is Contest Week. All you have to do is comment on any of our new posts this week. The more posts you comment on, the more likely you [...]

Coromandel Peninsula in pictures. Photos of our favorite sites in Coromandel including Hot Water Beach, Hahei Beach and Cathedral cove.

Tomorrow we travel to New Zealand.
We head from Minneapolis to Los Angeles (where we have a 3.5 hour layover) then switch airlines and board an Air New Zealand flight to Auckland. The flight from LAX to Auckland is 12 or 13 hours long and leaves LA at 10pm. I share this because numerous people [...]

Next week we’re headed to New Zealand - help us plan our trip!

On recent trips to from Minneapolis to Dallas and Chicago, I noticed Expert Traveler security lanes are cropping up at more airports. That’s great news for savvy travelers.
But be warned — these lanes are self-select so you don’t have to be a frequent traveler to use them. Don’t be surprised to find people there who [...]

Several companies have launched credit cards that focus on giving back to the environment. But until recently, I hadn’t found a card that focused on the green traveler’s needs as both an environmentalist and a traveler.
Earlier this year I was invited to beta test the ZYNC Card from American Express and I’ve been exploring its [...]

I think every April we should make eco-focused resolutions for making the world a greener place. I’m happy to say I have fulfilled all of last year’s 5 Earth Day Resolutions — except for part of one. Here’s an update on where I stand.

In a move that gives travelers a reason to keep faith in the airline industry, six U.S. airlines have refused to jump on the carry-on-fee bandwagon.
That’s good news for green travelers since we pack light and try to bring only what we can fit in a carry-on bag.
In case you missed it, Spirit Airlines announced [...]

The birds are chirping, the sun is shining, and the house is covered in a dull film of winter. It’s spring and it’s time to spruce up the home front with a good purge and scrub. As you dive into spring cleaning, be sure to follow these 8 simple steps to make your cleaning low-impact.

Walk into any REI and you’re bound to be overwhelmed by the number of backpack options. Should I choose medium or large? Unisex or women’s? Blue or black? With so many choices, it’s no wonder travelers struggle to find the perfect backpack, the most important piece of travel gear. But it’s not impossible. Here’s how to find the best backpack for you.

We get a lot of questions about stainless steel water bottles with filters, but until recently I hadn’t used one. The folks at Eco Vessel were kind enough to send us a filtration water bottle to try out. According to Eco Vessel, the blue water filtration bottle “removes up to 99.99% of pollutants.” It’s also [...]

In my quest to find the best travel shoes, KEEN was kind enough to send me a pair of Verona Mary Jane women’s shoes to review. They’re cute, comfortable, and make excellent travel shoes.

What I Like
Comfort and Arch Support
The Verona’s are extremely comfortable. They flex well and the arch support is better than average for [...]

Shift Your Habit: Easy Ways to Save Money, Simplify Your Life, and Save the Planet is a new book by Elizabeth Rogers geared at people who want “to live thriftier, healthier, and more effcient lives.”

I like Shift Your Habit because it employs a philosophy similar to that of Go Green Travel Green — living a greener life doesn’t have to expensive or impossible, and anyone can do it. The tips in the book include sections on saving money, saving the planet, and why it’s good for you.

With going green on the rise, cities across the world are attempting to become more sustainable. That’s great news for the green traveler because it means your options are constantly expanding. But it’s not always easy to tell if a city is really going green, or if it’s just for show.

Here are 7 things to consider when choosing a green travel destination.

This is a guest post by Brooke Lusk, who finds a great deal of joy in meeting new people and animals, enjoying good music, and traveling in her new home state of Oregon. Some of her favorite ways to stay environmentally friendly are testing homemade/natural beauty recipes, composting, and supporting local farmers and small businesses [...]

Are you look for the best dog food? This is a comparison of the best dog food brands including organic dog food options.

Even the most avid travelers among us have a place they call home. That’s why we’re launching the Green Travelers at Home series with occasional posts about greening your home life.
We’ll focus on everything from the best compost bins and green home repair to healthy pet and personal care products. The series launches today with [...]

In honor of the Olympics, here is our complete guide to Vancouver 2010 — from restaurants and things to do to green Vancouver and the Olympics.

Every four years, I let an obsession overcome me and I watch as much as I can take — the daring spins and throws of figure skating, the jumps of snowboarding, and the thrill of speed skating of the Winter Olympic Games. This year my obsession is even worse because the 2010 Olympics are in Vancouver, an eco-friendly city that I happen to love.

Falling icicles kill people all of the time — especially in Chicago and Russia. In fact, death by icicle goes back to at least 1776. Here are 10 chilling tales of people killed and injured by falling icicles, ice dams, and roof snow.

On our last hiking trip, we took our dog. It was quite a learning curve, because although we’d traveled with our dog many times, this was the first time we’d tried a green vacation with our dog. Here’s how we made our hiking trip fun for us and our dog, and low-impact for the environment.

As we celebrate the two year anniversary of Go Green Travel Green, we look back on how we’ve gotten where we are today. From packing light and hypermiling to travel photos and water bottles, here are some of our most popular posts from 2008 and 2009.

Two years ago tomorrow, we launched Go Green Travel Green with the goal of making environmentally friendly travel accessible to everyone. Since then, we’ve been featured on Newsweek, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, MSN Money, National Geographic, PC World, Kayak, and Lifehack. We were even named one of the [London] Times Online’s Top 100 Travel Sites for 2009.

A review of the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston, Massachusetts, from an environmentally friendly perspective. On our recent trip to Boston, Elizabeth and I were able to get an excellent rate at a gorgeous historic hotel, the Fairmont Copley Plaza. I don’t stay in hotels often, but when I do, I pay close attention to what hotels are doing to go green. Overall, I loved staying at the Copley Plaza. Here’s why, from an eco-friendly point of view.

Boston is an excellent destination for the green traveler, as we discovered on our recent trip. There’s fantastic public transportation provided by the T, Boston’s subway system; there’s a rich history; there’s cultural diversity.

But above all, there’s food: from Italian to Indian and ice cream to brunch, Boston provides an abundance of delicious local dining options. Here’s our food journey through the best restaurants in Boston, Massachusetts.