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Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

Published - Tuesday, May 13, 2008

This List for May 11, 2008

Travelpod.com | Fanny Pack Antics

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Are you geographically impaired? Can you find Madrid, Spain, on a map? Do you know which U.S. city is nicknamed Mission City?

TravelPod.com, which touts itself as the “Web’s original travel blog,” is a free Web site that allows travelers to share experiences, photos and videos about their getaways. My favorite section of the site tests my limited geographical knowledge.

Found under the Quick Links, a world map appears on the Traveler-IQ page, and when you’re ready to begin, you attempt to locate cities by clicking on the map. The quiz records how fast you answered and reveals the accuracy of your answer before challenging you with a new location. The faster and more accurate the answer, the more points you will receive. You need to earn a certain amount of points to advance to the next level.

If the world map challenge is too hard, other quizzes will your test knowledge about cities in the U.S., Europe or Asia. If you really want a challenge, try the world flag test.

The answer to the third question above is San Antonio, Texas. Now, can you find San Antonio on the map?

- Jennifer Weinlaeder, La Crosse Tribune

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Tourists. They wear fanny packs, take cliche pictures and generally stick out like sore thumbs.

But not only have many of us seen them, we've been them too, which is probably one of the reasons Fanny Pack Antics (fannypackantics.com) is so funny. The site is a humorous tourist blog that features pictures of, that's right, crazy tourists. Most of the pictures are funny, and things we can all probably relate to seeing, but some of them do flirt with being a little too mean. Many of the pictures come from tourist hot spots such as Washington, D.C., or Walt Disney World.

The pictures are user-contributed, so next time you’re out on vacation, take your camera off the landmarks for a second to do some people-watching. Maybe even turn the camera on yourself.

- Sally Dadisman, McClatchy Newspapers