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The judges have had their say and the votes have been counted! The winner of December’s My World First travel writing competition has been decided. Find out who bagged themselves a Kindle and read the winning entry now.
December might be a busy month, but we still received plenty of entries into our monthly travel writing competition, My World First. Just like last month, there’s no shortage of rousing reads and the overall standard of writing is great. Thank you to everyone who entered. Our judging panel are about to get to work and the winner will be announced in our newsletter shortly. You can sign up at www.world-first.co.uk.
Forgot to enter last month? All is not lost!
My World First is a competition that rolls from month to month and we’ve already been sent the first few entries for January’s competition. Best of all, we’ve got another Kindle to give away to the author who best dazzles our judges with their literary flair.
So if you fancy being able to carry up 1,400 books in your bag for reading on the run, now’s the time to start reminiscing about your most memorable travel experiences. We want to hear your world firsts. It could be the first time you flew, the first time you went snorkelling with your daughter or the first time you celebrated New Year abroad. Anything. It’s up to you! Entering is really easy too. All it takes is 400 words and a couple of clicks. Ready to get started?
Mention festival season and you might think of long summer days lazing around in fields dried from the sun. But festival season in the northern hemisphere isn’t just a warm weather summer love-in, as these ski and snowboard parties show.
With line ups as good as their summer counterparts and all encompassing tickets to get you there, put you up and get you on the slopes, these winter festivals are a hedonist’s dream. You have the beauty of the mountains, the daytime thrill of the piste and sparkling night-time parties to give you a fantastically fun – but no doubt very tiring – winter break. Pack winter sports travel insurance from World First and you’ll have everything you need for the trip of a lifetime.
What more could you ask for? Here are five of the best winter festivals in the northern hemisphere.
Christmas in the UK isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Top of some people’s Christmas list is heading to one of Europe’s most fantastically festive cities and soaking up the yuletide spirit of starry-skied, mulled wine scented outdoor Christmas markets. Others crave a chance to escape from the cold, commercialised Christmas of the UK while taking it easy somewhere nice and hot for a week or so.
If you’re one of the thousands of Britons jetting off this Christmas, you’ll have probably started a mental checklist of things to remember. After all, forgetting the presents would be a nightmare! But forgetting the travel insurance could be even worse. Here’s why.
This Wednesday (30th November), thousands of UK Border Agency (UKBA) staff will be absent from the UK’s ports and airports as part of a nationwide public sector strike. With 60,000 travellers passing through immigration each day at Heathrow alone, it’s hard to overstate the scale of disruption that looks set to be caused. What happens if you are affected? Can you seek compensation? What’s covered by your travel insurance?
Here’s some help and advice.
At World First we insure thousands of medical conditions. Some rare, some common. Some serious, some less so. One of the conditions we cover is gastro-oesophageal reflux. We issue a policy covering it on an almost daily basis. But many of our customers aren’t aware they even need to cover reflux until they go through our medical screening. Maybe that’s because, in our experience, people don’t feel the need to declare conditions that they think are relatively minor.
So do they?
At World First we take the medical benefits of our travel insurance very seriously. Every single one of our customers receives £5 million worth of cover for medical costs. That covers treatment, replacing medication and repatriation to the UK if you need to be treated here.
You might think £5 million sounds like a lot.
It is. But we don’t want to risk our customers getting caught out. The cost of foreign medical care can very rapidly get out of control. Way out of control. And if you haven’t got travel insurance cover, you’ll have to find a way to pay the costs yourself. Not having a policy is not an excuse.
Take a look at this short viral from the Foreign Office. Could you afford to lose out in the same position?
To see what other policy benefits you get with World First, or to get a quick online quote visit www.world-first.co.uk.
Want to comment on this post? Got something to say? Get in touch.
Last week we wrote a blog post to let you know about our plans to raise some dough for Children In Need with our office cake sale. Well, the event was a big success! After a day of delightfully delicious indulgence we made £450 for the charity. Fantastic!
As well as the cake sale, we held a dress down day for the office staff. Although, as you can see from the photo below, our Managing Partner Martin Rothwell’s interpretation of the words ‘dress down’ turned out to be bananas. Literally.
Find out more about what we got up to here.
UK cancer support charity Macmillan has released new figures that help reveal cancer survival rates in the UK. The results are generally very encouraging: survival rates of many cancers – including colon cancer, breast cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma – show major improvement. But lung cancer represents one of the concerning anomalies. It’s a finding made especially significant given that November is lung cancer awareness month.
Here’s a rundown of some important facts and figures, the early signs and symptoms that we should all be aware of, and some suggestions if you would like to know more about lung cancer awareness month.
Welcome to another World First Wander, a regular write-up of the travel articles, sites and content with our very own social media man, Tristan Rothwell. It’s a super-speedy way to catch up on your travel reading, so take five minutes out to sit down with a coffee and relax. Today Tristan’s talking street art.
Over to you, Tristan!
Greetings travelling friends! It’s been a busy week here at World First. The phone have been ringing off the hook and we’ve all be in our corners organising this year’s secret Santa and reading The World First Travel Insurance Review
As many of our regular readers will know I am a keen photographer. I am also a fan of graffiti, although these days lots of people prefer to call it “street art”. Perhaps it makes it seem more upmarket!
When I lived in London I could often be found in the Leake Street tunnels photographing the graffiti there. You had to be quick because the pieces changed daily.
Cape Town in South Africa was another prime location for street art. In some parts of the city I had to make a few hit and run ‘Kodak attacks’. It wasn’t sensible to be there for long. Fortunately, my then wife was from Cape Town and every time I heard her say something about a part of town being dangerous I knew there were photos to be taken. It went like this: see art, stop car, out of car, shoot, in car, gone !
Street art has come a long way – in fact some of it is now big business – so I thought I would have a look at some recent blog posts from around the globe. Most are travel based so if you are heading off and want to get the lowdown on the local street art then read on………..
I am going to start off close to home with one of my favourite photographers, @VivecaKohPhotog The UK is home to some of the best street art and and Viveca’s photographs of Phlegm prove it. Check out
Procession By Viveca Koh and his Urban Exploration page
Next we’re off to Legoland. Well amost. This is absolutely amazing lego street art They have a great blog and you can follow them on twitter too
I was going to suggest Amsterdam next, but then I spotted……. Taiwan. Perhaps not the first place you’d think of for graffiti but one click of this link will change all that for ever, I just need to get some sunglasses like Tooya. This is all from Off Track Planet which may well be my favourite new travel blog. Find them on Twitter then here
Toronto is quite well know within the graffiti world for housing a lot of talent and the post from @GlbetrotterGrls proves it - Street Art Special – Oh Canada
Anybody who has ever been to Paris will know that the Parisians love graffiti, I think this goes hand in hand with their love of Hip Hop, France, in case you didn’t know, is the second largest buyer of hip hop in the world. Twitter’s @Andiperullo knows just how much the French love it. Check out in search of street art in Paris
Is no surprise that graffiti has become an acceptable art form. But how so? Here’s a quick history lesson - this is a link to an article published in the New York Times back in July 1971 about Taki 183
OK. On with the show. Graffiti is in illegal, so how about doing it with a torch ?
Check out this amazing little vid:
Light writing guide from PIPSlab on Vimeo.
Travels of Adam recently headed for Vienna and found some art. Read about it here in Street Art and Graffiti in pretty Vienna
In some cities it is possible to take a tour to see the best. The Indie Travel Podcast guys took a tour in Buenos Aires
That’s it for now. Enjoy.
Until next week, stay safe.
Tristan
