In a series of Lonely Planet blog posts that promises to be fascinating, LP writer Frances Linzee Gordon is publishing her experiences traveling as a single woman traveling in Saudi Arabia for an upcoming guide on the Arabian peninsula.

Only a month into the new year, people everywhere are staking out the nicely mnemonic date of 07/07/07 (and all those lucky sevens) for their own purposes.

What do jagged, post-punky rock music and the oft stuffy discipline of food writing have in common? Listen to Terry Gross interview Alex Kapranos, frontman of Scottish group Franz Ferdinand, about his gustatory adventures on the road, to find out.

A good guidebook can go a long way towards making or breaking a trip, but the best travel experiences still come with the thrill of discovery attached: secret spots known only to locals, with directions sketched out in hand-drawn maps.

The Travelistic Blog’s holiday reading is Daniel Kalder’s The Lost Cosmonaut, in which the author journeys to the hinterlands of the Russian Federation, regions so obscure, that I had to look them up to be sure it wasn’t fiction.