There are all kinds of factors that can make driving dangerous, from bad road surfaces and slippery conditions caused by snow and ice, to other drivers and being distracted by things like mobile phones. However there are also places in the world where it is dangerous to drive at any time of the year, even for the most responsible and safety conscious of motorists. These are some of the top driving danger spots across the world, where you really want to have your mobile switched off before you get behind the wheel!

Italy – Stelvio Pass Road
This road is located deep in the Italian countryside, in the Eastern Alps area, home of truly breathtaking scenery – which makes it one of the most beautiful places in the world to potentially get yourself killed in. The road, which is a zig-zag, has no less than 48 hairpin bends for those looking to test their driving skills to negotiate, but if you fail to negotiate them successfully, you could end up in the sea. Most people will consider it lovely to view from a safe distance, but would prefer to fly from one side of the Alps to the other, rather than use the road.

Norway – Trollstigen
The name Trollstigen translates as ‘Troll’s Ladder’ and this extremely narrow road – so narrow that passing another motorist is very risky – also includes loads of hairpin bends, steep inclines and has a rocky mountain on one side, leaving you vulnerable to any falling ones. On the plus side, there is a stunning waterfall on one side of the mountain, but you can see waterfalls in other – less life endangering locations – such as Hawaii.

France – Col de Turini
The south of France is considered a desirable place to visit by more or less everyone, but this road – part of which is used in the Monte Carlo Rally – is probably not the way most tourists would choose to travel while they are there. It has 38 of the most difficult hairpin bends found on any road, making it perfect for race driving, but terrifying for those who just want to get from one place to another in one piece.

Travelling across to these places can be fun and exciting, but if you have been in an accident and you want to know more about holiday compensation then there are several places to go to find out more information. Hopefully you’ll never have an accident abroad, but in case you do, these solicitors can help in the aftermath.

Photos: vasile23, Damian Morys Foto

A guest post by BeersandBeans.com
Written by Randy Kalp & Photographs by Bethany Salvon

A typical vegetarian Moroccan Tagine.

I made the mistake of devouring our Morocco guidebook on the flight into Marrakech. By the time we touched down at the city’s airport, I felt pretty good. For once I was prepared—tipping, cultural traditions, greetings and, of course, eating and drinking—all my bases were covered.

On a whole the pre-trip preparation proved to be a valuable asset; unfortunately, it did have one side effect: I now knew too much, especially about dining precautions in Morocco. It took 72 hours for this parasitic knowledge to incubate, but when it hatched, I had the fear.

Beth and I spent the first few days of our five-day assignment with Low Cost Holidays at the Albatros Garden Hotel, a resort outside of Marrakech’s storied Medina. Staying in the resort was like being back in the womb. With several restaurants and bars, life inside the property was tranquil, unchallenging and quite conducive to our busy work schedule. In fact, the only time we ventured beyond the high resort walls was for a guided camel ride.

Spicy olives, figs, roasted eggplant & Clementines made for some of the best breakfasts we’ve ever had.

Jam crepes with fresh fruit – another tasty breakfast treat.

For three days everything we ate came from the hotel. To keep our costs down, we took advantage of the resort’s free breakfast buffet. Each morning we would fill up on a tasty selection of olives, cheeses, eggplant, yogurt, croissants, and then prepare another plate to take back to our room for lunch. At night we’d order two Margarita pizzas and a beer.

For good or bad, a resort is designed to be a destination within itself. We were in Marrakech, but could have easily been dining in Palm Springs, California. Indeed, we were sheltered from everything that makes third world countries amusement parks for adventurous foodies.

Biscuits and a glass of mint tea. Mint tea is THE essential Moroccan drink and it tastes amazing!

Following the Albatros, we relocated to our next property, Riad Barroko, located in the Medina. During check-in, we spoke to the hotel’s manager, Jawad, and he gave us some tips and suggestions for things to do in Marrakech. For the sake of our American stomachs, he said to stay clear of the juice carts and hot sauce from the food stalls at Djemaa el-Fna Square.

Having traveled extensively in Baja California as well as through Guatemala and Oaxaca Beth and I were no strangers to foods that may cause stomach issues. In the past, we’ve eaten at questionable restaurants and from suspect food carts without any major issues, but for some reason I gave more credence to his tip than I have to similar suggestions in the past.

A food tout tries to lure us into his stall.

At Djemaa el-Fna, a flavorful steam hung in the air from the recently assembled food stalls as petite sausages and other beefy delights sizzled over an open flame. Young men wearing long, white pharmacist coats paced the pavement in front of the establishments spewing witty lines to anything with a pulse and two legs.

“Ah, Starvin’ Marvin, you are too skinny, you must eat!” a barker at food stall 77 (numbers are used instead of names) yelled to me.

“No, I’m good. I just ate,” I explained, patting my stomach (a trick I learned from the guide book).

“OK, Ok, well later then,” he said pointing to the number above his head. “Remember, 77 will take you to heaven!”

The smokey, multii-lingual stalls are endlessly busy every single night.

This routine repeated itself at the next stall–just a few feet from Mr. 77–and then the next and so on. Overwhelmed, we retreated to one of the sit-down restaurants that lined the square to eat and escape from the marketplace hustle.

Shuffling from one menu stand to the next, we finally chose a fairly cheap joint with an authentic menu. The place mainly consisted of a bustling sidewalk patio and we took a seat at the front. All around us people dined happily on tagines and couscous plates, but I couldn’t shake the uneasiness that swirled inside of me; this idea that beyond the view of the customer, ill-food preparation was taking place, and silverware and dishes were being washed in parasitic water. And it just wasn’t this restaurant, it was everyplace. I had the fear and it was beginning to consume me.

The first restaurant where we ate our yummy couscous and tagine.

Crazy? Yes. The early stages of germaphobia? Probably. Over analyzing statements from the guidebook? Most definitely! I knew I was being irrational, but it made no difference. I ate my meal, a delicious meat tagine, with caution and sipped my Coca-Cola from its dirty, scratched bottle wondering if I would be better off pouring it into my water spotted glass. Beth, on the other hand, ate without fear. Taking a cue from the guidebook regarding the Djemaa el-Fna food stalls, she used her bread instead of utensils to eat her couscous.

Tasty veggie couscous & a Coca Cola.

Obviously, we had read the same passage about eating at the food stalls from our Lonely Planet guidebook: “Despite alarmist warnings, your stomach should be fine if you clean your hands before eating, use your bread instead of rinsed utensils and stick to your own bottled water.” Granted this was not a food stall (it was the next level up), but instead of creating a blanket of irrational fear for all restaurants, Beth used the guidebook’s suggestion rationally and to her advantage.

Stepping back into the happenings of the square after dinner Beth glowed with excitement, while I confronted my fears openly with her:

“I think I know too much,” I said. “I’m being overcautious and irrational, and I can’t shake it.”

The chefs at stall 32 cooking up a storm of sausages.

“We should go to stall 32,” she said with a smile referring to a recommendation we got from travel blogger Jodi Ettenberg of Legal Nomads, who had been in Marrakech a few weeks earlier. “We could hit it up later before going back to the Riad.”

“Yeah, possibly,” I said wearily.

For the next few hours we wandered through the souks and open spaces of the market, haggling, getting lost and sucking up the atmosphere. I felt better. No longer overwhelmed, my earlier weariness of the market scene had faded, and now it was time to get over my irrational food fear. It was time for stall 32.

The intensity around the stall rivaled a college bar at last call. Several men worked the grill, while another took orders from the quickly changing clientele, who sat shoulder to shoulder at the trio of picnic tables placed into a U around the grill.

An Arabic menu and plates of sausages and olives.

I did my best to dissect the hanging menu before sitting, but that did little good since the menu was in Arabic and French, and I don’t speak either. So as I sat down I looked around at the plates of the other diners and spotted some sausages that looked good, and pointed to those when the man came to take my order. Several minutes later a tin plate of sausages was placed in front of me along with several slices of bread, a glass bottle of Coca-Cola and a bowl of cherry tomato red hot sauce.

The tempting hot sauce at stall 32.

Before my irrational fears could take hold, I grabbed a piece of bread and swooped up a sausage into my mouth. “Jesus, this is really good,” I said to Beth. She smiled and then went back to taking pictures. One by one I gobbled up the sausages on the plate, each one as good as the last. As I got to my final sausage I knew I had to try a little bit of the hot sauce, which had been silently egging me on like the bungee jump crane at a county fair since we sat down.

Reaching out to dip, I looked at Beth and she gave me the go ahead nod. Putting just a little on the tip, I half expected my stomach to explode as I bit into the sausage. But, of course, nothing happened nor did anything happen later that night. In fact, the hot sauce itself was kind of flat and bland. And now looking back, I realize that maybe Mr. Roosevelt was on to something when he said, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Travelers taking in the scene as they stroll by the snail sellers at Djemaa el-Fna square.

This story was part of our collaboration with LowCostHolidays.com. If you are interested in traveling to Morocco be sure to check out their great holiday deals for to Marrakech.

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Bethany Salvon and Randy Kalp are a freewheelin’, 30-something couple with a 7lb hound named Chachy. Beth is a professional photographer and Randy is a professional journalist, and they blog about their adventures on their eclectic travel website Beers and Beans.  Their travel stories have also appeared in USA Today Travel Tips, the San Diego Reader, San Diego Uptown News, BootsnAll Travel Network and other travel websites. You can also find them on Facebook & Twitter.

The short answer is: I like earning money. I also like to hold onto it for longer than an hour or two, whenever possible, and consider it to be “money that belongs to me” rather than “money that is temporarily being kept in my pocket.”

The shorter answer is: I plan suck at gambling. Still with me? Let me try to explain:

I knew I would be rubbish at the craps table when, as a nerdy teenager playing Dungeons & Dragons (please don’t tell anyone I admitted to that, I am pulling this confession straight out of my shame hole) I actually had to create a character whose sole point of existence was meant to entertain, as it was clear to everyone at the table that I could not only not kill any monsters, but I could barely hit them. My horrible dice rolls were the stuff of legends among my nerd peers, and characters that I created stayed alive, I believe, simply because I turned my miserable rolls into comedic displays of ineptitude, which forced the Dungeon Master to keep me alive through other means, simply to keep the group entertained.

It’s no surprise, then, that whenever I happen on some Hollywood film where the main character is shooting dice at the craps table, laying everything on the line for one important roll, I have an involuntary reaction that sounds something like AAAAAAAAAAHHHOOONOOOODON’TDOTHATWHATAREYOUTHINKING! I’d sooner take my chances on the legendary roulette wheel than take my fortune in my own dice-holding hands.

There’s another issue that keeps me from gambling – that I would be addicted to it straight away – because blackjack? That stupid card game is super fun and way too easy to get into. Blackjack is the soccer of card games, in that the same way all you really need to play soccer is a ball and another person, all you need to start playing blackjack is a full deck of cards and a warm body. Anyone can learn it, and we all think we are experts after awhile. I got my first taste of losing money at it during our honeymoon cruise around the Mediterranean, playing digital blackjack and losing many nickels in the comforts of international waters.

You read that right. I didn’t even have the nerve to play with warm blooded humans. It was just me and a machine.

AND I LOVED IT. Way, way too much…

So that, in a long winded nutshell, is why I have always turned down offers from friends headed to Vegas or Atlantic City. While it always sounds like it will be a blast, I just think of my next tech toy that money could buy, or how booze makes me do silly things, like scratch myself in public or head purposefully for the roulette table.

Now, Monte Carlo, that’s a different story. Monaco, are you listening? I WILL SPEND MONEY INSIDE OF YOOur gambling institutions.

photo by Images of Money

A “century of cycling” could well be on its way to Britain as the president of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) called for “a step change in cycling” in the country over the next 25 years.

Peter Hendy gave a speech at the headquarters for Transport for London (TfL), for whom he is also the commissioner, at the first CILT Cycling Lecture in the city about the recent rise to prominence of cycling in Britain. He highlighted his desire to bring cycling to the streets of the UK as a front-running mode of transport in itself.

The rise in popularity in cycling has been evident not just in the capital but across the country, so the future of the activity in the UK looks positive. Part of this rise in popularity has been attributed to the tremendous success that British Olympic athletes enjoyed at the Beijing Olympics and are expected to have at next summer’s Games in the English capital.

“Cycling is a subject that is close to my heart in my dual roles not only as President of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, which enhances the careers of thousands of professionals in the transport sector, but also as this city’s Transport Commissioner with Transport for London and with a boss who is famously a cycling enthusiast.

“Wearing these two hats – two complementary roles – gives me, I believe, a fascinating and privileged perspective on the growing role of cycling as a 21st century solution within a broad range of public and private transport choices.”

The last few years have seen cycling initiatives set up in the capital that have been extremely popular amongst residents and visitors alike. The cycling push for the next 25 years is bound to attract more travelers and backpackers to choose bikes to get between their Kensington hotels, Kings Cross hotels and the destinations on their must-see list.

“I’d say that cycling has almost become ‘cool’ in the capital, and for some, like in Paris, Amsterdam, or Copenhagen, bicycles are an urban fashion statement of youth and freedom, fitness and vitality – whether on a mountain bike, a flash road-bike, a folding bicycle or a Barclays hire bike.”

Later in his speech, Mr Hendy outlined the ways in which the UK could become a much more cycling-centric country as far as transport is concerned. Safety, rather understandably, is one of the biggest concerns. He called for improved safety to the roads and cycle lanes as well as cycle awareness training for drivers of large vehicles.

Cycling has long term health benefits for the rider as well as the environment, which was one of the focal points of the recently released CILT report Vision 2035. Future visitors to the capital will be able to take advantage of increased availability of cycling in their travels through the city. In terms of London hotels West End accommodation is amongst the most central, so cycling is the perfect way to travel between the best sights in the city.

I am a particularly careful guy. Always have been. I have, thus far in my life, never had a broken bone, or so much as a cavity (though I could use a trip to the dentist to confirm this – it’s been a little too long). But at 35 years, my luck can only hold out for so much longer – especially since becoming a world traveler. My next story illustrates why a guy as careful as I am might want to consider purchasing a travel insurance policy.

About a year ago, I gashed my chin open, requiring my first ever stitches. The result of a bad moto driving decision on my part. I thought it would be a good idea to pass by someone on the right. She happened to decide to turn right at the same time. I barely felt anything as we headed to the ground – thankfully for everyone buy myself, I cushioned the impact for my wife and – brace yourselves – my infant son, who had been riding with us as well. Thankfully we all had our helmets on. I recall standing straight up (My wife had also, apparently bounced to a standing position) and immediately began attending to Cole, who had been sleeping, and showed no signs of being anything other than royally pissed off that we had woken him up in such an abrupt, insane manner.

It took about 30 seconds for an Englishman to come up saying “You’re cut pretty bad there, mate.” and found me a towel to place on my chin. With my nerves frazzled and being in no position to drive, we made it into a Tuk Tuk and headed back towards our apartment which was conveniently right by a Hospital.

Three stitches and 40 bucks later, and I walked out of the hospital, thanking the heavens that no one was hurt more badly (the driver of the other moto was untouched), and also that we were in South East Asia, where healthcare can be incredibly cheap, and in Thailand in particular, very high quality. Healthcare throughout much of the world is prohibitively expensive, and with our lifestyle, we still plan to see much, much more of it. It might be time to consider getting annual multi-trip travel insurance.

Even careful worriers like yours truly can’t avoid the occasional health scare. It is part of what comes with living as full and active a life as we dare to live. As I get older I dare more, and therefore risk more.

Except on a moto. I definitely am no longer taking more than the absolutely necessary risks on one of those things. My family’s safety means too much to me for that.

photo: crash by vtsr

Now more than ever, people are looking for a way to save money, whether you are talking about groceries, the electric bill or renting a car. One of the most common ways to save on rental car is to use an online aggregator like RentACarNow. But another less common way is to think about the cost of gas prices while renting a car.

There are several different aspects of saving money on gas for rental cars. The first one comes right at the rental car counter when the agent will try to get you to take the pre-paid gas option. That’s almost always a bad deal because you are paying for every drop of gas in the tank. Unless you plan to roll into the rental car lot with an empty tank running on fumes, it’s always a better deal to fill it up yourself. It only takes a few extra minutes and the savings can be significant.

Depending on the airport or rental car location, you might have dozens of choices for where to buy gas or just one or two. It’s a good idea when you drive off with the rental car to make a note of the cheapest gas station in the area so you know where to fill up on the way back. And remember that you can easily drive 25 miles or more after filing the tank without the needle moving, so you don’t have to buy gas at the closest station to the airport, which not coincidentally is often the most expensive. Just be sure that you do fill up, because some rental car companies charge as much as $9 per gallon if you return the car without a full tank of gas.

CC Burning Image

We all know that gas prices are high and not likely to come down anytime soon, so of course the best way to save money on gas is to use less of it. When it comes to rental cars, that means getting the smallest car that will comfortably fit the number of people and luggage for your trip. As a general rule, smaller cars are not only cheaper to rent, but they also get better gas mileage, and that one-two punch of savings can really add up.

Let’s say you decide to rent a full-size vehicle rather than a compact. The larger car might get 20 miles per gallon, while the compact will likely get something around 30 mpg. If you drive 500 miles over the course of the rental period, you are going to need almost 10 more gallons of gas for the larger car, which adds up to an additional $35 to $40. And of course that doesn’t even take into account the fact that larger cars almost always have a higher rental rate.

You also want to watch out for the “free upgrade” that you’ll sometimes be offered at the counter. If you reserved a compact car and the rental car company is running low on that class of car, they will sometimes offer to move you up a class or two at no cost. While that can seem enticing, you need to consider that the cost of fuel is going to be more. So you can decline the upgrade offer and ask for the car class you reserved, or if they are totally out of that class of car, ask for a discount even if they are giving you a larger car.

There’s no way to get around having some gas expense with a rental car, but with some of the tips outlined above you can at least minimize the cost.