Travel Postcard Chicago Wrigley Field

Vintage 1940's linen postcard of Chicago's Wrigley Field Ballpark

I'm real tactile, so vintage linen post-cards like this are just too lovely, and you can see the linen texture from the scan. The back reads. "Wrigley Field bears the name of William Wrigley, founder of the famous gum manufacturing company. It is the home of the Cubs, Chicago's National League Baseball Club" Since I found it on ebay (price today was $10.00 - see lnk details below) it qualifies as a gift idea as well as a travel snapshot for this project - hint to kids.

Travel & Hotels: Going to Chicago?

• Find hotels in Chicago Illinois
• Find Hotels in all Cities in Illinois A-Z including Chicago / Joliet - Chicagoland.
• Find hotels near Airports in Illinois:
  • including Chicago O'hare Airport
  • Chicago Midway Airport
• Hotels near Amtrak Illinois including Chicago Union Station
• Find Hotels near Chicago Venues - (revised and updated version) including accommodations close by Wrigley Field and all ballpark hotels
• and see my Chicago Travel Guide at grand prix cities .com

Contribute: This is the third of the series: the travel postcards project. If you've got a cool travel destination postcard you want to share, please let me know via my hotels near contacts / social networks page. I'm also looking for travel destination souvenir ideas. What, for example, would be the perfect souvenir of Chicago?! Send me a pic or link.

Godspeed on all your travel adventures, Cvetko Ostroznik.

Source & References:

• This postcard image was found on ebay 7/21/09 If you do a search it might still be there. the seller is Lucastreet 
• You'll also find mounds of Chicago Vintage Potcards showing History and Architecture of old chicago  here: http://patsabin.com/illinois/

Travel Postcard Caracas Venezuela

Travel Postcard Caracas VeneZuela

Here's a postcard from Caracas Venezuela Dated 1902. I found it on Caracas based Fundacion de la Memoria Urbana Blog: the foundation helps to protect and celebrate the character and heritage of Venezuelan cities (links below)  and the postcard is part of their urban archives. The picture depicts in diagram - "Interior del Palacio Federal Caracas - Saudo de Venuezuela" (The Interior Gardens of the Federal Palace).

Going to Caracas Venuezuela? Find:

• Hotels in Caracas Venezuela District Federal, VEN
• Hotels in Cities in Venezuela + Caracas
• Hotels near Airports in Venezuela + Caracas Simon Bolivar International Airport CCS

Contribute: This is the second of the series: the travel postcards project. If you've got a cool travel destination postcard you want to share, please let me know via my hotels near contacts / social networks page. I'm also looking for travel destination souvenir ideas. What for example would be the perfect souvenir of Caracas or Venezuela! Send me a pic or link. 

Godspeed on all your travel adventures, Cvetko Ostroznik

RELATED LINKS:

• Pic Source: Fundacion de la Memoria Urbana Blog (Foundation for the Heritage of Venuezuelan Cities. From their Archives: http://fundamemoria.blogspot.com/
• Find FundaMemoria on Twitter
• Venuezuela - Cultural Institute Online - Instituto de Patrimonio Cultural - patrons of the Funda Memoria Project.

Travel Postcard Airport Honolulu Hawaii

 

Travel Postcard Airport Honolulu Hawaii

Here's a postcard from Hawaii dated 1950s. I found it on Aloha Airways page on twitpic with the caption. "At the John Rodgers terminal in Honolulu in the 1950's. Ahhh...nostalgia."

Going to Honolulu Hawaii? Find:

• Hotels in Cities in Hawaii + Honolulu
• Hotels near Airports in Hawaii + Honolulu HNL
• Hotels near Golf Courses - including Hawaii Pro Tour

Contribute: This is the first of a series: the travel postcards project. If you've got a cool travel destination postcard you want to share, please let me know via my hotels near contacts / social networks page. I'm also looking for travel destination souvenir ideas.

Godspeed on all your travel adventures, Cvetko Ostroznik

Source: Aloha Airlines on Twitpic: http://twitpic.com/9wxv7 

Also check out this awesome picture of the first first commercial flight to hawaii in 1935 at Pan-Am's posterous, showing a Sikorsky S-42 Pan American Clipper flying past the unfinished San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge! Very cool.

Ryobi Tek4 Digital Camera

Ryobi Tek4 4V 8MP Digital Camera

I was in one of those Home Warehouse Barns today, avoiding the work that needed to be done around the house, when I came across this  Ryobi Tek4 4V 8MP Digital Camera

Not only did it look cool enough, I thought, to be a fashion accessory, it also seemed to have the goods in terms of picture quality 8 mega pixels, battery life, using the TEK 4 rechargablbe battery and charger  (included, and rechargable up to 2000 times!), digital storage (boasts 800 high quality pictures, comes with 1MB SD, but upgradable to 4MB), size (it fit in my palm fine) and really durable feeing construction (rubber pads, clear switches, feels like a metal case, see product overview link below) and...big bonus... it's klutz proof being, obviously built sturdy like a power tool, it's impact proof, dust resistant, and water resistant. Water proof would be better since a klutz on land is a klutz on sea.

Buying into this line of proprietary technology gadgets seems a safer bet than going with AT&T just to use an iPhone (Have you seen the negative tweets about AT&T last few days? time for some heavy corporate brand maintenance) Besides the Tek4 series seems to have a bunch of related gadgets that share the fancy litheum ion battery 

Now that's what I call urban macho chic!

While it came with a USB cable and could shoot video, no one at the store (not one "expert") could tell me if I could hook it up to my computer and use it as a fancy webcam (so I would have an excuse to look at it on my desk). If you know if this is possible let me know. Or better still if you're reading this Ryobi, send me a review sample and I'll hook it up and work it out myself. :)

Retail this little beauty comes in at $199. It should be much cheaper by Christmas - note to number 1 son - the ungrateful one.

PS: I'm about to start a series on this blog of Cool Travel Souvenirs of the World if you've got any ideas, pics, tips, links, please feel free to contact me via any contact email / social network

Godspeed on all your home improvements avoding shopping trips, Cvetko Ostroznik

Related Links

Tek4 Product Cataloge Mini-website at RyobiTools.com http://www.ryobitools.com/tek4/#/home with a fancy digital video presentation and lovely music. You'll find the camera included here: http://www.ryobitools.com/tek4/#/durashot-8-mp-digital-camera With product specs.

PIC: Tek 4 Camera Overview:  Click for product official web - page.

 

Wait a Cotton Pickin' Minute - Bedding

My wife only redecorates (often) when I'm more than 500 miles from home (often). She knows how complicated things can get when I turn my mind to anything. I asked if I could do anything to help with the redec (being polite), she asked me to pick out a few designs for the bedding (being polite).

Thinking I'd finally impress her with some style sense, I stopped in on a Memphis suburban K-Mart. I wasn't going to buy anything but I was going to look. So that I could say I looked. And so I could check out a few garden pruner snipers while I was there. And if I found a real bargain, I justified, I could spend a little more on some of that fine Memphis Barbecue and in and around Beale Street later on Saturday night.

In the bedding section I found myself much more interested in department store floor-space politics than the bedding itself. I couldn't help but notice that a territorial war raging between Martha Stewart and Jaclyn Smith branded products. Got me thinking about the strange phenomenon that calls itself the American Dream, and those that profit from it. Hannah, Spongebob, Mizrahi.

These two ladies, God bless 'em both, were fortunate enough to be born into a time in history where they could put their respective names and smiling / scowling faces on a bedpan and actually make money for doing it. That's the kind of scam I'd like to get in on! They were born in a land that let them profit enormously from their notoriety/celebrity, and in this case, just by choosing objects and "endorsing" them. I have to assume they actually have a choice of what their name is associated with. Lucky ladies. God bless America.

In that store, Jackie seemed to be winning the border skirmish in the bedding department. As with any hostilities, my first thoughts are for the victims. And in this case the main victim seemed to be the U.S. Cotton Industry (not to mention local manufacturers of poly based fabrics). I couldn't find not one piece of branded stuff by either American Merchandising Diva that was actually MADE IN AMERICA or from AMERICAN raw materials.

Now, I hate to wag my finger (just being polite), specially since I couldn't put my money where my mouth is, but is that any way to repay the American Dream?

Godspeed on all your shopping and travel (& redecorating) adventures, Cvetko Ostroznik.

----------------

Related Links Research:

• U.S. Cotton Industry: http://www.cotton.org/
• Some Facts and Figures: U.S. Textiles: An Industry in Crisis  http://www.cotton.org/econ/textile-crisis.cfm
• Cotton Council International: U.S. Cotton http://www.cottonusa.org/

-----------------

Come say hi:

 twitter: @hotels_near

 facebook: @ hotels near

 myspace: @hotels_near 

Spring Gift Idea: Garden Clipper Ratchet Pruner

I got back to my hotel after a very nice day of discovering New Orleans just in time to watch "The Fashion Show" on Bravo TV. Within minutes I was struck with the need to think and my thoughts gracefully miandered in 2 directions. Firstly I wondered if you could toast a bagle on the hotel room's coffee maker hot plate. Second, I wondered if spring had finally sprung in my garden back home.

If it did then I was gonna have to do the cool new spring garden tools thing at the supply store and one of the gardening things I'd been promising myself all winter, apart from giving the slacker kid next door 10 bucks to clear my grass of doggy do,  was a couple of days in the warm sunshine clipping up the bushes and hedges around the house.

When you travel as much as I do, standing still is a dream!

A quick look online found me this gorgeous object, a Corona Garden Clipper Ratchet Pruner (pictured) , and for under $20.00 US! I found it at Ace Hardware online and they seemed to have loads of different ones. The perfect accessory for the Bionic Heavy Duty Garden Gloves I blogged about last July.

I'm not one for buying online because I like to touch feel and try things before I buy, but its a start. And if I find anything fancier or more appealing, I'll add a note to the blog. 

But how's that for a spring gift surprise gift for the lazy ass in the family? Make em work earn the bigger gifts and get those sprouting bushes pruned at the same time. Or perhaps a little treat for the consciencious green thumb in you?  There can be no shame in a small gift that can deliver such therapy.

I can think of a few reality competition show contestants (and judges) that could do with some calming down.

Godspeed on all your travel and gardening adventures, Cvetko Ostroznik

More Cool Tools: Ryobi Tek4 Digital Camera

_______________________________________

I'm getting real social: Add me to your social network links: Come say hi:

 facebook @ hotels near 

 Twitter: @hotels_near (feed on the right of this page)

 blip.fm: @hotels_near (can't get enough blipping)

last.fm - hnbtv_sports

 friendfeed: hotelsneartheairport