Monthly Archives: October 2011

For a Limited Time: Treat a Friend for Halloween!

Posted on by under Announcements, Community

At Vayable, we’re celebrating Halloween with a treat for our community! Book a Vayable experience before the clock strikes midnight on Monday, Oct 31, and bring a friend along for free!

We love holidays at Vayable. They remind us to break out of our day-to-day and explore something new. Halloween is about more than dressing up, it’s about breaking out of the ordinary and stepping into a new world and identity, for a night….or three. To keep the Halloween spirit alive, we’re inviting you to bring a friend along on your favorite Vayable experience, on us!

Whether it’s a treat for that special someone, a nice gesture for a friend, or a gift for the holidays, we’re sure that friends and family will appreciate the treat! All you have to do is book by midnight Monday, Oct. 31 for any future tour or activity.

It’s our little way of saying, thank-you for being so awesome and get out and enjoy the world around you!

Love,
Jamie, June & Shelly
(The VayaTeam)

.

Choose from any of the following Vayable favorites:

SF, $75 for 2

Tour SF on a Motorcycle

Experience life on the wild side and step into the fast-paced life of a Bay Area entrepreneur.

SF, $37 for 2

Scout for Street Art

Get to know the walls and sidewalks that are canvases for artists laboring under the cover of darkness as the rest of us sleep.

Sausalito, $15 for 2

Yoga on a Yacht

Escape from the city and rejuvenate to a new you by stepping into the lap of luxury with the glistening bay surrounding you.
Queens, $48 for 2

Queens Midnight Street Crawl

The streets of Queens awaken at night, as immigrant workers come home and amazing ethnic food is dished out. Experience something you’ve never even heard about.

NYC, $60 for 2

Photography Workshop Walk

Become a photographer for a day as you get trained - in the wild - in the art of photography!

NYC, $25 for 2

Build a Farmer’s Market Spread

Put on some overalls or a chef’s hat and learn how to eat local and fresh. Re-invent your diet and learn the secrets to nutritious foods… for the holidays!
Paris, $30 for 2

Picnic on the Seine Banks

Spend an afternoon à la a Manet painting on the banks of the Seine and dine on delectable culinary delights.

Paris, $35 for 2

Scout Montmarte Street Art

Get in the know with the art scene as you experience this ever-changing district.

Trust and Safety Features on Vayable

Posted on by under Announcements, New Features

At Vayable, we want to ensure the best experience for everyone and build a friendly, trustworthy community. We’ve actually been implementing these things from our side for a while, but we want to make it official and as transparent as possible for everyone!

For explorers. We are personally meeting each and every guide that lists an experience on Vayable either face-to-face, via a video call, or through a Vayable Ambassador. You can check to see if a guide is Vayable Vouched simply by clicking through to their profile page (example here) and looking for the stamp! Before experiences can be approved on Vayable, every guide has met one of our friendly team members.

For guides. Vouch calls are also a great way to get your questions answered and get some sweet tips on making your experience popular on Vayable. If you want us to help vouch explorers who are requesting reservations with you, please feel free to shoot an email to support@vayable.com. We’ll get them vouched in a jiffy! Sometimes we’ll call them to welcome them to Vayable regardless!

If you’re thinking of booking something, guiding an experience, or wanting a cool stamp on your profile, please feel free to set up a time to meet us!

After Dark, New Worlds. Jeffrey Orlick in the WSJ!

Posted on by under Ambassadors, Guide Stories, What Others are Saying

Our dear friend, Vayable Ambassador to New York City, and guide, Jeffrey Orlick‘s Queens Midnight Street Crawl was featured in the Wall Street Journal today! Love it!

The night began on a wary note: A bouncer relentlessly tried to kick an inebriated man out of a Mexican restaurant.

The group of eight cautiously eyed the man, patiently waiting for their al pastor tacos as two women worked the grill outside of Maravillas Restaurant. Inside, a man belted out songs in Spanish karaoke.

Most had never been to this part of Queens, where Jackson Heights blends into Elmhurst and the soundtrack is the consistent rumble of the elevated 7 train.

“For a minute I wondered if he was going to be our tour guide,” said Annie Maynard, somewhat jokingly, of the drunken man.

Ah, Roosevelt Avenue, a whole new world late at night when the streets awaken with immigrant workers, many returning home from shifts in the service industry.

Here’s a little secret: It’s at night when some of the best Mexican and Central American food is dished out, grilled and fried and sliced and diced in nocturnal food trucks and carts. The trucks are virtually full-service kitchens on wheels, with televisions blaring soccer games from back home.

Think you can’t get good Mexican food in New York? Think again.

“This is Mexican food made by Mexicans for Mexicans,” said Jeff Orlick, our real tour guide. “It’s the real thing.”

And so here we were: two Aussie tourists, six New Yorkers, a reporter, a Spanish translator and her 5-month-old baby and Mr. Orlick, a 29-year-old Woodside resident who has made it his mission to shed light on New York’s little-known culinary scene…. read more >>

“I want people to see something they’ve never even heard about,” he said, “to open their minds.”

Explorations in Culture: A Monthly Column

Posted on by under Explorations in Culture

by June Lin, community manager at Vayable.

Over the last couple of weeks, all of us at Vayable talked about starting our own monthly columns in the Vayablog, and I’m kicking mine off with this post! We thought about what personally motivates all of us to work on Vayable, and a common theme was “keeping culture alive.” That is at the heart of Vayable, and everyone had a travel experience that made them realize just how important that is.

Even though I experienced the effects that tourism has on culture before, my real wakeup call was when I went to Manuel Antonio in Costa Rica earlier this year. When I was there, it was almost like Disneyland. The city was sprinkled with hamburger stands, pizza joints, restaurants that were more like Red Lobster than anything else, and places that sold daiquiris on the beach. Whenever I spoke to someone in Spanish, they would most definitely respond in in English, and sometimes there wasn’t even a Spanish version of the menu at the places I went to.

To get a cheap and delicious gallo pinto or ceviche, you had to trek to the nearby town that wasn’t nearly as nice. It was so odd to me that you had to downgrade in order to get a better experience and eat more delicious food. In that town, I met a couple of locals that didn’t speak English but were trying to learn because, according to them, you have to fit in with the tourists to get a decent paying job in there. On Facebook I uploaded a bunch of gorgeous photos from my time there and called it “Manuel Antonio, a soulless dream.” There were rain forests that fed into the ocean and some of the most beautiful sunsets I’d ever seen in my life, but it didn’t have to be such a culturally vapid experience. Locals shouldn’t have to change in order to accomodate us.

As travelers, we want to be able to have access to amazing things but also preserve the integrity of local culture. We don’t want to trample on it. We want to tread lightly, respect the culture that exists, and experience it for ourselves. That is why we travel. I’m passionate about movements of people, the influences that the past has on the present, and how things came to be the way they are. From the Lower East Side of Manhattan to that tucked away village in Peru, each month I’ll profile one specific part of culture that is unseen from the surface yet leaves traces in the cities that we think we know well.

Stay tuned!

June’s Brief Handbook on San Francisco

Posted on by under City Handbooks

by June Lin, community manager at Vayable, based in San Francisco.

Hey everyone! I’m kicking off a series of personal handbooks that anyone who knows their city well can contribute! In writing these handbooks, there are no rights and wrongs because everything is essentially a matter of opinion. If you want to write one for your city or a city that you know well, please let me know at community@vayable.com!

I moved to San Francisco a couple of years ago from Austin, Texas in a post-college, headed off to the real world type of move. Over the course of my time here, I grew to love not only the glistening bay and rolling hills that you can see around every street corner but also the people and relaxed vibe. Of course there are downsides like the agonizingly unreliable public transit system and wantrepreneurs present at every party, but overall this is quite a charming town.

Districts

San Francisco has very distinct districts, but (for better or for worse) most tourists never venture outside of Union Square, Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown, and North Beach. Here’s a handy map to get you oriented.

Hayes Valley. This is where I’ve been fortunate enough to have a shoebox where I can store my stuff and my bed and occasionally stay at night. It’s a charming district filled with pretentious little boutiques, macaroon shops, and a store dedicated to only things you can bring on flights. Yeah, really. During the day, ladies that lunch and people with dogs come out in droves to Patricia’s Green so they can talk about which nearby coffee kiosk is better (Ritual or Blue Bottle) as they snack on their ice cream made in under a minute using some fancy liquid nitrogen machine. It’s a sunny paradise full of happy people and frolicking dogs that used to be shrouded under a highway until that huge earthquake in 1989.

The Mission. This is where I spend approximately 90% of my conscious time… when I’m working or playing. It’s actually kind of sad. All my tech nerd and hipster friends go here to gentrify the historically Hispanic hub with their cheese stores, pop up brunch restaurants, fixie-only bike shops, and establishments where bacon flows more freely than water. There are some outstanding eateries here and a park where grownups go to dance around in drum circles, play catch, and lick ice cream cones. The Mission is also the center for street art, vibrant street culture, and taquerias in San Francisco!

Continue reading →

Some Tips on Visiting Paris

Posted on by under Guest Posts

Paris on Demand helps you make the most of your trip to Paris. By suggesting workshops and designing custom-tailored itineraries according to your wishes and needs, it enables you to visit Paris with complete peace of mind. Here’s a guest post by the wonderful, Pierre, who runs the joint and offers tours on Vayable!

Thinking about your long-time dream trip to Paris? In order to avoid a strong cultural shock, here are some tips you may find helpful… When packing, some essential rules must be kept in mind in order to make your stay as pleasant as possible. To the astonishment of many tourists, Paris is a very small city compared to its European counterparts. It is about 8 times smaller than Berlin or 3.5 times smaller than London. Paris is thus a city made for walking. Don’t forget then to take sneakers you’re comfortable in as you may end up walking through Paris all the way down from Montmartre, its Northern boundary, to the Eiffel Tower with a stop at the Champs Elysees.

However, your sneakers won’t make you feel at ease in restaurants or any other places frequented by Parisians. Indeed, Parisians like fashion and style. Even though most of the designers at the helm of the top French-fashion institutions are no longer French, Paris remains the capital of fashion. Parisians like to be well-dressed and to make an impression wherever they go. High-heels are not mandatory but some elegant shoes may help you feel better. You may indeed get some dirty looks from “Parisiennes” who will take great pleasure in looking coldly and haughtily at you…

As you may have understood, Parisians will be an essential part of your Parisian experience… Dubbed as deeply arrogant and self-centered, a reputation that generally proves to be quite accurate, you may easily avoid them (unless it is the contrary…) but if you want to get in touch with them, it is better to learn the few essential words to make things easier… Parisians will indeed be happily surprised and feel compelled to answer you if you address them in French, even with a strong accent or grammatical mistakes. On the contrary, you will most certainly be ignored if your opening line is in English…

However, once you get used to Parisians’ lack of conviviality, you may actually find it fun to observe them. Their behavior seems to be an infinite source of inspiration for authors as they are the subject of an incredibly high number of books. Here is a selection of my favorite picks:

  • Stuff Parisians Like by Olivier Magny
  • Paris Revealed by Stephen Clarke
  • Talk to the Snail by Stephen Clarke

Spotlight on Russell, Vayable’s SF Street Art Guide!

Posted on by under Community, Guide Stories, Vayable Perspective

 

We met up with our guide, Russell, for lunch and he took us to CELLspace, an organization that provides affordable work space for artists. He showed us the mural he’s working on and talked about some of the other artists that got their start at the space! He uses the money that he earns from giving street art tours on Vayable to maintain and create the community murals at the space. It’s his life’s work!

Meet Our Vayable Ambassador to Paris, Johanna!

Posted on by under Ambassadors, Europe Tour

At Vayable, we’ve gotten the pleasure to get to know Johanna, one of our Vayable Ambassadors to Paris, during our Europe Tour and also with all those fancy tools you can use to communicate across the globe! She’s a friendly, passionate, and vibrant individual that absolutely loves our community and all things travel! She also offers a shopping tour in Paris! If you have any questions about creating an experience on Vayable, what to do in Paris, or just how to get involved with Vayable, please feel free to ask her!

What do you love most about Paris? What I love the most about Paris is getting lost and realizing once again that wherever you are in Paris it is still beautiful and full of lights (and love for the lucky ones). I love the Parisian passion that you can feel once you get to know the people who live there better.

What is your favorite restaurant in Paris (what’s good there)? Le Tribeca. It is great food and offers all types of meals (meat, fish, pasta, pizza, salads, deserts), plates are big and it is cheap. Last but not least, the service is fast and great, you can eat outside and it’s in a great area… I am very “too” often there!

You offer a shopping tour on Vayable. What is your favorite store at the moment? My favourite store of the year is a bag store. It offers super well designed and cut bags. They are all leather and of great quality and they cost from 10€ to 50€ at the most. On top of this all, this store has a range of bags of ALL colors and it is in Abbesses (close to Montmartre). Obviously, this store is a must-do, must-see, must-buy one and is part of my experience on Vayable.

How did you find out about Vayable? I guess I love traveling so much that I was looking for a blog on travels as always… and just loved Vayable at first sight!

Why do you think people should share their experiences on Vayable? To avoid people going to Paris and having a bad experience or just to help them make the most out of it through the eyes of a Parisian.

Why did you want to become a Vayable Ambassador? To travel, live and love without waiting and to share my Parisian craziness with others.

Vayable Goes to Milan

Posted on by under Europe Tour

Vayable was a featured startup at Social Media Week in Milan this year, where our founders, Shelly Roche and Jamie Wong, took center stage on a panel on women and the web at the Italian tech festival. They spent the week on multiple panels, chatting with their Italian counterparts about everything from security, to quality of life, to how to launch a startup. Together with friend and advisor, Justin Kan, founder and president of Justin.tv and its spinoff, Twitch.tv, the founders served as judges at Startup Weekend’s demo day, where aspiring Italian entrepreneurs pitched their ideas to a panel of VCs, lawyers and founders.