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Rachel Heller
travel blogger, Rachel's Ruminations
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Member for 1 Year
Joined November 2022
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18 comments
Groningen, the Netherlands
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About me

I am a GenX/boomer writer and blogger, born and raised in the US and educated at Yale. Based in the Netherlands, I have Dutch citizenship, but write in English, my mother tongue. I left my career in teaching and teacher-training in 2019 to focus on travel and travel-blogging fulltime. My first love is history, so I'm particularly drawn to historical sites.

Rachel's Ruminations is a well-established travel blog focusing mostly on independent travel to historical and cultural sights/sites. Each article offers my honest personal perspective as well as useful information. The blog covers many locations, plus occasional travel advice articles and advice about expat life.

I've begun a new website as well, focused exclusively on tourism to UNESCO World Heritage sites. Many of my fellow travel bloggers have contributed to it. My goal is that eventually it will contain information about tourism to every one of the 1154 UNESCO sites worldwide.

Comments

  • Yes, that makes sense. I agree that it's hard not to be biased if the supplier is paying for it, though at least for me I don't find that a problem with affiliates. Sometimes I'll even say things like "I don't recommend driving here, but if you want to ... show more

  • Oh, I see. But is there a movement to do this? Or are you the only one? I've never heard of it. And thank you for the resources!

  • This has been a long-running discussion for me. I even presented about it once at a WITS conference. I did an (admittedly unscientific) survey of lots of travel bloggers, just asking them what they would do if they were sponsored for something - a hotel... show more

  • Yes, I agree. Sustaining a community is things like shopping at local shops instead of chains, or staying at locally-owned hotels. We as bloggers, I think, can help these enterprises by writing about them. I'm curious about smaller cruise ships. They te... show more

  • Yes, this is something I actively do. I don't bother writing about heavily touristed places - there's just no point, since I can't rank for "X things to do in Paris" etc. But I have sometimes written about lesser-known things to see within a popular des... show more

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