The One and Only Morocco WWW

Ah, the mysteries of Morocco. Tangiers, with its connection to ex-pat authors like Bowles and Burroughs. Casablanca, made famous the world over by Humphrey Bogart. Fez, known as the source for shriner hats. While filling in information gaps about Morocco had every possibility of killing the mystique of the place, I had to know more. The One and Only Morocco WWW isn't the only Morocco guide on the Web, but it's probably the best one. I think the trick is not taking "one and only" for its literal meaning.

As a travel guide, it's not the most immediately practical. It doesn't have a complete listing of all the hotels throughout the country. There are no train schedules online. No restaurant listings. This is the kind of guide that tells you a lot about the country, and primarily whets your appetite for going there. It's also the perfect place for the virtual traveler. The virtual traveler might like to know what the restaurants are like, or see pictures of some of them, but a listing of all of them, with directions how to get there, is unnecessary. This site covers so much of the culture and what's in Morocco, and there are so many pages, you can get in pretty deep.

The site is littered with pictures of Morocco that illustrate the various sections. History, which goes back beyond Roman times, is covered. The site describes the flavor of 12 major Moroccan cities, and even has some of the most beautiful and useless maps. They have great graphics, but don't really show much detail as far as streets go. The Moroccan cooking section is probably my favorite, listing recipes for delicacies like Bastela and Couscous. But just knowing how to make the food isn't enough; the section on culture tells how to serve the food.

There actually is a section with practical travel information, but knowing how many kilometers of railways there are in Morocco doesn't exactly help me ride them. The whole site was created by two students, Nabil Zary and Mounir El Abridi, and the impression I get is that the site is a labor of love. Versions of the site exist in English, French, Swedish, and Spanish, so it's definitely got the World in World Wide Web covered.-WKC
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CHINA
This site on China is much, much deeper than any other I've ever seen. Sponsored by the Council on East Asian Libraries, it's broken down into areas of interest, such as Art, History, Language, even Gender Issues! Some pages are chock-full of links (the "Art" area has several dozen), while other areas are a bit shallow. There are similar pages on other major East Asian countries, at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~felsing/ceal/welcome.html.-TG
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Discover The Keys
A tourism site for the Florida keys, this site has extensive information about Key West, Key Largo, etc. Each set of Keys has its own section of accommodation and shopping listings, history, and various relevant information. Although this is a graphically inclined site, I didn't particularly care for the colors and backgrounds used. There are times when you're sorry you can view all the HTML extensions. The site could have also used maps of the Keys, as maps are one of the great pleasures of planning trips.-WKC
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Expotel Home Page
Want to know about hotels in Zimbabwe? Check out Expotel, the world's largest hotel and mobile phone reservation system. Well-heeled travelers have quite a selection: seven high-quality tourist hotels in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, for example, with prices ranging from 87 to 290. But 87 to 290 what? This is a typical hole in the site: nowhere does it tell you that prices are in the local currency, in this case guilders. At the time of this writing, the site had lots of hotels listed, but lacked some key information. Keep an eye on it for improvements.-TG
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France Travel Tourism Tours Festivals Studies
Tourism is big business in France; that's why the French Tourism Board in the U.S. is actively promoting its country via all media, including the Internet. This site from that governmental body is full of the kind of language you'd expect from a P.R. firm. ("This region abounds with treasures...,"etc.) That's not to discount it, though: there's tourism info (duh), stuff on studying in France, and legal information you'll need about visas and such. None of the areas is very deep, but they'll get you started. Beware the occasional ghastly color scheme. -TG
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GNN Travelers' Center Homepage
The Travelers' Center doesn't look that rich at first: just a few links to articles and companies. But what makes it exciting is that the articles (actually, first-person travel accounts) are regularly updated, and the companies are off the beaten track. Want to go hiking in Africa? Here, you can book the trip and read stories to prepare you. A drawback: The site's organization requires you to click through several screens to find what you want. Don't overlook that link at the bottom, which leads to the "Travel"section of GNN's business pages, and more links.-TG
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Guyana Gateway
Guyana is best known to U.S. residents for the religion-centered mass murders in what is commonly known as "Jonestown." But then again, we're not the best political/geography students in the world, are we? The Guyana Gateway is a good place to increase your I.Q. about this small Latin American country, located in a wedge between Venezuela, Brazil, Surname and the Atlantic Ocean. It also sports one of the best uses of frames I've seen to date: visit it with a frame-capable browser, such as Netscape 2.0 or later (but try to ignore the ubiquitous "blink" tags, if you can). -TG
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Hong Kong Home Page
This very complete guide to Hong Kong has a specific section for travel and tourism, but there's also plenty of other information for the virtual traveler, including history, government information, business and economy, etc. The tourism information is pretty good, including a section on shopping that lists the kinds of products you might want to buy in Hong Kong, along with advisories on shopping strategies.-WKC
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Internet Way Homepage
It takes a few minutes of wandering to realize that Internet Way is an Internet Service Provider in France, offering access, Web design, and the usual blah blah blah. But there are a few unusual nuggets here of use to the traveler: Take a gander at the "Virtual Champs-Elysees," which lets you walk in the door of dozens of companies located along that famous street. There's lots of stuff here about France in general, although the depth of info in this section is disappointing when compared to the Champs-Elysees area. But all in all, c'est magnifique!-TG
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Park Search
L.L. Bean sponsors this site, so it might be time to forgive it for trying to make the populace of this entire country look like it came from Maine. As a trip planner for you outdoorsy types, this is invaluable. The first page gives the option of searching by a park's name, which is good if you know where you want to go. Further in is a page to search by park activity, so if you need a place to go canoeing and horse riding, these can be your search criteria.-WKC
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Parks home page
An independent effort to provide information about a couple of parks in British Columbia, this site has content that's a little brief and a perspective that's too narrow, but the design is really good. The graphic design, at least. The site has a 211K GIF of Bowron Lake Park and a 207K GIF of Murtle Lake in Wells Gray Park, which are both a little unwieldy for my tiny computer screen. Strangely enough, certain parts of the site have German translation.-WKC
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Scotland Travel Guide
I think the term "guide" is pretty ambitious for this site. It's a fairly nice-looking site, and it was created by the Scottish Tourist Board, so it's got credentials, but it never get around to telling you what's there. No hotel, restaurant, or shopping listings. Nothing about the local cuisine, and I didn't even see anything about the Loch Ness Monster. There are neat, clickable maps that lead to poetic descriptions of the various regions of Scotland. The first improvement I would make would be to add a bagpipe soundtrack.-WKC
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SF Off the beaten trail
Ah, San Francisco, my favorite city. The home page suggests this is "An Alternative Guide For The San Francisco Tourist," so of course I have to inspect it, because I know The City. And, apparently the creator of this site does, too, although s/he hasn't done a very good job of communicating this knowledge via the Web. The neighborhood listings are unfortunately short and a little bit narrow in their view. The bar and club listings aren't very well contextualized, and most lack description.-WKC
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The Electronic Embassy
The Electronic Embassy reminds me of a bank lobby: lots of space, nice marble and brass fittings, and people in business clothes, but there isn't much you can do there. It's a program of TeleDiplomacy (a non-governmental organization) to serve the "diplomatic community" in Washington, D.C. As such, it has some good, basic information. But most pages eventually recommend that you call the appropriate parties. Like, by phone, man. But I'm glad it's here: it's an evenhanded and nonpolitical way of improving communication among governments. And that ain't bad.-TG
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The French Travel Gallery & Hotel Reservation Center
I have an affinity for any site that welcomes you in more than one language. The FTGHRC (gesundheit!) is one such site, offering menus in French, English, and Spanish. Helas, such multilingualism fades away below the first level or two -- quelle dommage. What is there is nicely arranged, though: hotel reservations, boutiques, regional information, and, of course, the obligatory link to the Webmuseum. Unfortunately, the content isn't nearly as deep as it should be. And, as with most other hotel reservation systems, this one isn't good at finding rooms at less than $50/night. Sigh.-TG
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The Internet Guide to Travel
With a title like "The Internet Guide to Travel," I expected a heck of a lot more. Like, maybe, some information about traveling. But nooooo, all you get is a link to a hotel chain and an airline (apparently, the service's only paying customers so far), and a tiny bit of information about Hawaii and Los Angeles. Oh, wait: Neither of those links seem to work. So, I guess there's nothing here except for ugly banners, inconsistently done HTML, and an ad to get prospective hotels to pay for listings. -TG
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The New V3
The New V3 is the redesigned site for the city of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and it is huge. I clicked and I clicked until I was tired of clicking. There's stuff all over, from British Columbia ferry information, to a whole mini-site about Buchart Gardens, a large, private park in Victoria. Unfortunately, it's not very well-organized as a travel site. There are some maps of the area, but they are in the ferry section, and the museum information is pretty sketchy.-WKC
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U.S State Department Travel Warnings
It may seem strange that the official repository of State Department information is at St. Olaf's College in Minnesota, but it makes sense when you consider that Travel Advisories have been available through this site since 1991, long before the Internet was used outside of universities. This site remains a prime source of information for international-minded citizens. If you're a regular traveler, you'll want to subscribe to the mailing list that started it all: simply send an e-mail message that says only "subscribe"to travel-advisories-request@stolaf.edu, and you'll get updates as they're released.-TG
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