Update: the winners have been announced here:

Best of 2013: Travel Blogs Worth Reading

I’ve done this the last two years, and it’s been really fun.  As much as I feel like I’ve got a good idea of who is out there, every single year I’m happily delighted to find new-to-me blogs that just kill it.  I love a certain kind of blog — it has to be personal, but not too personal, the photography should be great, the story should be interesting, and I should feel like despite where I am in the world, wow, I’d really like to be there, right now.

Last year, I tried to highlight newer blogs (under 1-year-old) because they always get missed in these kinds of lists.  I split the list in half, and I’ll probably do the same thing this year, so feel free to nominate anyone — including yourself — who has a great blog that’s related (in some way!) to travel.  I’ll take photography, food, parenting, lifestyle — any kind of blog — but it does have to have travel as a reoccurring theme.  That’s it, it’s pretty wide open!

Last year’s winners are here!  (They didn’t actually win anything, except my esteem and a little link on the footer of my blog for the year under “Blogs I Love”).

How it works

You enter your nominations as a comment below (please include the URL, my spam filter might catch you but I will watch that and fix it as we go).  I’ll collect all the responses, check out all the sites, and using my own very in-depth review system (I can’t reveal all the details, but it does involve naps) I’ll pick the winners and release the results in January.  There isn’t any voting, because voting is lame and isn’t it nice to just be recognized for having a cool blog and not have to beg people for votes?  So let’s do that.  Let’s recognize the awesome travel blogs that we love and while they won’t get a badge or a widget (again, omg, kill me now, who thinks up these things?) they do get little nod from us.  Yay!  Travel!

Get a free travel app!

Oh, I almost forgot.  The very talented people at TripRider, who designed a beautiful looking app for planning travel have given me five free downloads to give away.  Leave a comment to enter (you don’t have to nominate a blog, but that would be great too!).  I’ll pick five winners in a week using random.org.

UPDATE: Announcing the winners to the TripRider giveaway. Comments # 28, 26, 72, 105, 58 all win the app!  Was that you? Congrats!  I’ll be emailing you with the code to access your free app!