1. Make Clear Plans

Once you have a cause you want to follow, establish clear fundraising goals and set firm yet reachable deadlines. Determine an expense budget for the duration of the fundraising, till you achieve your goals. Set an end date – or else your fundraising activity will drag on forever.

2. Gather Inner Circle Support

The first place to start fundraising is your circle of family and friends. Set up a meeting and discuss your clear fundraising cause. Sign up supporters, and assign roles to each of them. Make sure everyone knows the objectives, and project deadlines.

3. Create A Fundraising Page

Do your research and choose a good fundraising website for individuals, and create your own page. Write an inspiring and honest description of your cause, letting people know what their donations will achieve. Post plenty of pictures and videos documenting your cause.

4. Set Up A Free Blog

Post quick updates and thorough articles on your cause and encourage contributions from your inner circle and readers. Post pictures and videos pertaining to your cause. Also list all donation updates and place a call-to-action button on every page, which links to your fundraiser page. Stay loyal to your cause, and work on gaining more supporters and fans.

5. Tap Your Social Network

Facebook has more than 1.1 billion subscribed users and growing. Leverage this fact and get everyone on your inner circle into your Facebook network. Create a Facebook Page for updates, and also a Facebook Group so that you can send direct messages to your supporters’ inboxes. Consider investing on Facebook ads to gain more followers who can help you spread the word about your fundraiser.

Photo credit Phillip Capper / Flickr

6. Use Facebook Tools To Obtain Donations

Apps such as Fundrazr and Crowdrise are available to help you raise funds within the Facebook network., that you can use to reach a wider Facebook audience. Look for influencers within your target demographic and try to build relationships with them.

7. Look For Sponsors

For individuals, their local community is the best place to start. Try your community center, the mayor’s office, your local church group, universities, restaurants, food chains and so on for donations and prizes. Anyone can be a sponsor / ambassador.

8. Offer Incentive Prizes

Offer incentive prizes to donors, to motivate them. Make sure that the prizes are relevant to your target demographic. It’s a good idea to offer early bird prizes, and also prizes for donors who’ve donated more than a certain amount and so on.

9. Approach Corporates

Most companies dedicate funds towards their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) endeavors. They will be happy to offer donations to your cause, so long as the cause is relevant to what they represent. Some companies will even agree to matched donations, as long as you achieve the primary sum.

10. Leverage Local Media

If your town has a local TV and radio station, approach them with your cause and ask for a 5 minute appeal spot. You can reach into several homes via these channels. Approach local celebrities to spend a few minutes talking about your cause on TV or radio.

Kathryn P is a freelance writer working for online fundraising website GoGetFunding.com

[Money photo credit - Quote photo credit]

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3. Announce A Major Decision Before Thinking It Through

At times, business can be, sadly, a game of trial and error. There will always be certain risks to take and leaps of faith to make, all in the name of progress or innovation. Some of such decisions will be simply terrible mistakes, but by the time you realize that, you’ve already announced it to the public and your shareholders.

Take for example Netflix. On September 18, 2011, Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO and Co-Founder, announced that DVD-by-mail service would be a separate service called Qwikster, claiming such move is aimed at concentrating on its online video-streaming.

Reed Hastings, Netflix. Photo by JD Lasica.

Since its inception in1997, Netflix has been renting DVDs by normal mail to its customers. In the digital age, Netflix started streaming movies and shows as well. As it turned out, the whole idea behind Qwikster was to conceal a 60% price hike decision with a schism of DVD and streaming services.

As time eclipsed, it was evident that Netflix’s master plan was really not thought through well, and just started to fall apart. For starter, the Twitter handle for Qwikster was owned by Jason Castillo, a marijuana-enthusiastic teenager who was not willing to sell.

Netflix’s subscribers affected by that decision (estimated to be over 12 million users) vented their anger for the inconvenience of having to use two different websites, and to pay for two services; streaming and DVD-rental. Wall Street followed suite and the Netflix stock lost 25% of its value in the 3 weeks that followed the announcement.

The final result was very messy that Netflix canceled the split after less than a month, and decided to keep everything under one roof. Shortly around the time of this controversy, Netflix lost the rights for Disney shows and movies. (Agreed, Qwikster may not have been the direct cause for losing the Disney rights, but it must have contributed somehow!)

Lesson learned: Think it over, thoroughly, then go ahead with it. If things go south, admit it, then start fixing it.

2. Overreacting to Statistics & Panicking About Them

Statistics are important, no doubt there. They can tell you what people prefer to buy, what businesses are more likely to fail, and the market rate for certain items. However, there are times when statistics can be disregarded, which normally blows up in the face of those who do so. Yet there are worse times, when some people overreact to statics and reports.

HP was really contested on what stance to take on tablet PCs. Statistics revealed that Apple sold more computers then HP. But how can that be when Microsoft Windows’ market share is more than 90%? Well, that’s because those statistics in particular considered iPads as computers. Yes, Apple sold more iPads than HP sold computers. Obviously, those stats got HP thinking that tablets are a game changer. After all, they outsold HP’s computers. So HP goes out and buys near-bankrupt Palm and their WebOS for a whopping $1.2 Billion. In doing so, HP doubles down on WebOS!

It made perfect sense at that time, right? HP was thought to have the advantage that Apple enjoyed. HP can control the OS and the hardware, just like Apple. Rest, as they say, is history. Things started going down hill as WebOS tanked and did not live up to its hyped expectations. Eventually, HP had to sell WebOS to LG for pocket money on Feb 25, 2013.

Lesson learned: What actually happened is that HP overreacted to figures showing Apple selling more tablets than they did PCs. HP tried to be like Apple and failed, which brings me on to point number 1.

1.Trying To Be A Company You’re Not

HP tried to be Apple and failed. That speaks well enough. If you want to stand out, your company should be a unique company. Your sandwich and coffee shop is not Starbucks, and that’s a good thing. Be your own company, not another one. HP clearly couldn’t be another Apple.

You don’t have millions upon millions of dollars to spend on your business, so you’re not likely going to be the next big chain store. What you can do however, is be your own company, think about what you can do to be innovative over other businesses in your category.

Lesson learned: Get to know what you own. Look at your statistics, ask your customers what they think. Develop your own image regardless if that’s handmade food or cheap clothing. Just find something unique and stick with it.

Liam Taylor is an independent Tech writer and programmer who can be found at liamtaylor.net

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Earlier this week, Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer announced the acquisition of social blogging site Tumblr. It’s a bit unusual considering two things; first of all, Yahoo hardly ever buys anything. Google has bought an average of 1 company per week since 2010 (Source). Yahoo has only bought 78 companies since 1995 (Source). Secondly, Marissa paid over a billion US dollars for Tumbler, which is an insane amount considering Yahoo only made an operating income of $556 million in 2012.

Marissa clearly has great plans in mind for Tumblr, as she made too much of an enormous investment in it for this to be a stab in the dark. But the question remains: what is Marissa planning next? News came out recently that Yahoo is bidding for Hulu as well.

Marissa has over 4 billion dollars under Yahoo’s disposal (Source), which she could possibly spend on further acquisitions. The story has really got me thinking on what could Marissa / Yahoo do next? These are the top 5 suggestions I’d like to see them happen:

1.Buy Jolla

Jolla is a relatively new company. Started in 2011 in Finland to design and develop smartphones. More recently they started working on a mobile Operating System that is based off a canceled OS by Nokia. Marissa is smart enough to know she can’t pass up the opportunity to buy Jolla and launch a line of direct Android-competing smart phones. It fits in well with the buyout of PlayerScale and can be a good platform for Yahoo to sell apps on.

Marissa will likely need to dig deep in her wallet for this one, Jolla is a private company so I haven’t found any information on what it might be worth. However, if HP paid 1.2 billion for Palm and Yahoo paid almost that much for a social blogging site, then you can imagine how much Marissa would be willing to spent on an actual OS.

And since Jolla has a lot of good things going on for them at the moment they’re not really looking to sell, I think Marissa would have to pay at least 1.4 billion for them and might even be willing to go for 2.5 billion at the most. If Marissa were to buy Jolla, imagine what the smartphone market will be like. It’ll be very different and would put Marissa’s company as a major player in it.

2. Make Tumblr More Social

Yahoo and Marissa need to be careful when tweaking Tumblr as you “Don’t fix what’s not broken.” they should however not be afraid to experiment. Some of you may remember Yahoo Meme. It was a Tumblr competitor.

I think Yahoo should reintroduce the API to Tumblr to allow developers to make Tumblr apps / plugins. Dig out the photo editing capability of JumpCut. How about relaunching Yahoo Buzz under the Tumblr brand? The possibilities are endless and Marissa has countless old products she could pull out and integrate for pennies, Marissa just needs to get creative.

3. Games And Apps Galore

Shortly after the Tumblr buyout, Marissa bought another start-up. It’s a very small game platform manger (somewhat like Apple’s game center) called PlayerScale. Its main functions include payment processing, chat, leaderboard, multiplayer matchmaking and statistic gathering. It’s a bit unusual that Yahoo bought this shortly after the Tumblr acquisition.

Yahoo already has some games available like Chess and Checkers. I’d personally like to see Marissa getting Yahoo to open up an App Store of some kind. That requires a hardware platform, or to repeat what Google did with Android’s acquisition.

Now the problem I see with this is that Marissa will need to make a large initial investment, and continue to pump money into it before it starts to make any serious money. Considering they need content and authentication servers to start with, depending on the content policy it enforces, Marissa will either need to employ full time moderators to review every app submitted like Apple does, or employ people to review apps with an high amount of reports like Google does.

And it won’t take off instantly. People will need to buy apps before Yahoo can take the 30% cut from the payment.

4. Double Down On Yahoo Messenger and Voice

Yahoo messenger and voice. For those who don’t know, Voice is basically Yahoo’s answer to Skype. Google seem to be pushing Google Hangout and I think Marissa is not going to let Google get one over on them. Yahoo Voice was shut down and retired shortly after a very embarrassing hack that leaked over 450,000 passwords.

Yahoo Messenger is mostly dead with all the chat rooms shut down. I think Yahoo should just completely shut down messenger and a month or two later reopen it with a new clean interface that doesn’t look like it was made by a 13 year old during the 90s. Marissa might need to staff up or move some of its clever engineers and developers to work full time on this.

5. Get a Cloud Storage Service

Google has Google Drive. Microsoft has SkyDrive. Apple Has iCloud. Yahoo has nothing, just a deal with Dropbox to be integrated with Yahoo Mail. This integration is aimed at keeping Yahoo email users from jumping ship. Dropbox is worth over $4 billion, making it a big and an expensive gamble for Yahoo to try to acquire.

But then there is Box, which started out in 2005 as a college business, and ended up getting $284 million from investors. Box is expanding left and right, opening international offices and going on a hiring spree. But on top of that, Box is available for mobile devices like iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone. This is in line with Yahoo decision to shift its attention to mobile devices.

Liam Taylor is an independent Tech writer and programmer who can be found at liamtaylor.net

There is an interesting discussion going on on Reddit about more ideas to keep Marissa busy. Worth reading.

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Different types of CAD drafting

Designing of any dream project can be done using different CAD systems. The fundamental type of CAD includes two dimension models. More complex projects can make use of 3-dimensional wire frame, 3-dimensional dumb solids, 3-dimensional parametric solid modeling, explicit modelers, and free-form surface modeling CAD programs.

2D CAD

It is a simple orthographic projection in which each aspect uses a two dimensional view in the X and Y axis. Lines, circles, ovals, slots and curves are mainly used to create 2D drafts. In addition to this, it has a good collection of geometric images and a skilled person can create flat drawings based on them. It is very useful for architects as they do not require in-depth knowledge about the structures.  AutoCAD, CADkey, CADDS 5, CATIA v4 and Medusa are some of the widely used 2D CAD.

2.5D or Two-and-a-half Dimensional

It also works on the basics of geometric objects and uses isometric projections to create pseudo 3D images. It can be used to obtain planometric, oblique and perspective views, which show all the three dimensions.

3D CAD

It creates virtual objects which can be rotated in 360 degrees around three different axes, and unlike the other two, 3D gives the true depth of a design. It can generate realistic models most accurately, enabling the designers to solve potential problems at the earlier stages of design itself, saving you from unwanted onsite costs. Autodesk Inventor, CoCreate Solid Designer, Pro/Engineer SolidEdge, SolidWorks, Unigraphics NX and VX CAD are some of the 3D CAD programs.

3D CAD and its different varieties:

- 3D Wireframe

It is outdated model, which can be considered as an extension of 2D drafting, and uses series of connected lines to represent objects.

- Surface Modeling

It is a rarely used model as it is difficult to incorporate much basic functionalities to the design. It is designed for the manipulation of real world objects. The 3D view is created by drawing surfaces to the objects.

- Solid Modeling

It uses the basic geometric forms, such as cones, cylinders, cuboids and prisms to generate 3D models. Future modification of an object directly relates to how it was originally created and it can calculate the dimension of the objects. Many sub-types of this exist and Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) is one of them that use the same basic logic of 2D CAD.

CAD is very user friendly and can produce the result in a breath taking 3D models. A drafter with good knowledge in building design and a little creativity can make outstanding blueprints using CAD drafting techniques.

[Image source]

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1. Book Accommodations In Advance

Booking accommodations when you fly to your destination is a no brainer. However, you may be surprised how many people skip this step when driving to destinations. The assumption is that you’ll be able to find a hotel once you get there, and often this is the case – for example, many coastal areas have virtually limitless hotel space. However, booking a room takes very little time and saves you the potential disaster of being unable to find a place to stay.

2. Have Your Car Tuned Up

One of the most important steps in any road trip vacation is to have your car checked before you depart. A basic check-up will involve testing your brakes, your tire tread, and all of your warning lights, as well as making sure your oil, batter, etc. are adequate. If any of these parts of your car are out of order and go unaddressed, you may be delayed or even stranded on the way to your destination.

3. Check Your Car Insurance

Additionally, you will want to check to make sure that your Aviva car insurance has you covered for any potential mishaps that may occur on the road. You may even want to look into specific travel insurance options, some of which can help you to make your way to your destination in the event that your car breaks down beyond immediate repair.

4. Maintain A Schedule

Maintaining a strict schedule for your road trip is essential if you want to maximize your vacation time. Of course, certain delays can be inevitable and unavoidable – traffic jams, accidents, bad weather, etc. However, many people are tempted to simply take their time with plenty of stops on the road, and the hours can add up quickly. If this is truly your preference, so be it, but just remember those 15 minutes you spend at a rest stop could be spent on the beach!

5. Vary Your Destinations

Finally, if you plan on frequent road trip vacations, try to vary your destinations. For many, it is tempting to find a great location and stick to it. However, road trips offer so much versatility that it’s a shame to limit yourself to a single spot. Take advantage of your flexibility and vary your destinations, and your weekend getaways will never get old.

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Social care may be a new development, but best practices for business social care are unfolding before our eyes. Here’s what we know so far:

1 – I’ll Leave a Message

Social media offers consumers an instant platform to voice their concern. Instead of waiting at the feet of companies that have let them down, users can post their complaint for their social circle to see. One of two actions follow: Users receive no reply, but feel vindicated because they protected their social circle from similar struggles, or companies respond and address their customers concern on a public forum.

In some ways, it takes the pressure off customer service representatives who are expected to disseminate a problem on moments notice, but that doesn’t mean businesses can take their sweet time. According to an Edison Research report, 42 percent of social care users expect a response within an hour. With such high expectation, businesses responded with technology of their own.

2 – Let Technology Guide Your Way

With such high demand, businesses have turned to social mention trackers, which detect mentions across the landscape. Free resources like socialmention.com search “across the universe” for mentions, so businesses can respond to concerns on less popular platforms along with Facebook and Twitter (which have user bases of more than 1 billion and 500 million, respectively). Smaller businesses can benefit by searching all mentions, while large business can narrow their searches to “(company name) problem” or “(company name) upset” to attend to disgruntled customers first.

3 – Be Nice, Everyone’s Watching

Social care’s public nature means customer service respondents won’t be able to get away with rude behavior the way they can on the phone. A helpful, respectful attitude will not only build favor with the customer, it will also promote your brand to his or her friends. Luckily for the grumpy customer service employee, it’s easier to put on a brave face online than it is on the phone. Depending on your business, the occasional smiley face emoticon can gain customer trust.

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Not all interns turn out to be good interns. Certain specific people either possess or learn to develop those essential ‘good intern’ qualities which will hold them in good stead in the job market. Here are 10 of those very qualities.

1. The quality of listening is much valued.
   A lot of people don’t know how to listen without interrupting or trying to show they know it all. An intern who can listen without argument is pure gold.
2. The quality of being unobtrusive when not needed is another prized quality in interns.
   No one likes an intern who’s constantly in other people’s faces. If you can efface yourself and observe silently, you’ll learn more and ensure that you don’t get in people’s way.
3. The quality of thinking before speaking helps the intern to reason facts out before popping out questions.
   This shows you’re willing to think, evaluate and analyze before bothering someone with your questions.
4. The quality of forbearance that allows you to smile despite stress is another valued attribute.
   It’s so easy to just blow up when you’re asked to get cups of coffee, but learn to be patient. Patience and humility are valuable lessons you learn as an intern.
5. The quality of being able to keep one’s thoughts to oneself is great to have.
   As an intern, you cannot go around telling your superiors and senior team members how to do their jobs. You also cannot share your personal details, or talk about your personal life with others.
6. The quality of discretion is another good one.
   No one likes a gossip, so keep whatever you see and hear under your hat. Discretion is a highly valued attribute in any organization. Watch, observe and listen, by all means, but keep quiet about it.
7. To quality of obedience doesn’t come easy –
   The youthful mind usually rebels against conforming to anyone. However, as an intern you’ll have to obey and do as you’re told, or else you will upset the balance of your team.
8. The quality of being able to follow orders correctly –
   Can’t stress this one enough. Sometimes you will be given multiple orders all at once during your business internship program, and it’s important to note them down and do them in the order specified. Hopeless if you are a scatterbrain, but worth its weight in gold if you are organized.
9. The quality of honesty is invaluable.
   It’s easy to lie about one’s background, or offer a million reasons for being late. An honest intern makes for an honest employee, something that’s much desired. However, know when not to speak out honestly – too much truth is not good at the workplace.
10. The quality of perseverance is valued above all. An intern who doesn’t easily give up on a task, but rather keeps trying till it gets done is a valuable intern. However, while being dogged, it’s necessary to know when to give up so that other tasks don’t get compromised.

[Image credit]

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Conversion Optimization:
Conversion rate optimization is a technique to get a higher percentage of the website visitor to take relevant action and become a lead or the customer. There are various reasons why conversion optimization is important for the eCommerce business

1. More Potential Customers
   In eCommerce business, the main focus is to sell the products or services. With the conversion optimization, the number of customers increases to a great extent who would buy these products and help you make more money.
2. Staying Ahead Of Your Competitors
   When you are making more profits than your competitors do, you can be sure that you are doing better business in the market. It is recommended to maintain your position and continue to stay ahead of your competitors.
3. Improved Conversion Rate
   With the appropriate conversion optimization for your eCommerce business, you will notice that the conversion rate has improved drastically. It is possible for you to take the right decision or take an action to attract the customers.
4. Reduction In The Bounce Rate
   The conversion optimization will reduce the chances of visitors coming to the eCommerce site and shutting it down within a few seconds.
5. Increase Revenue And Profits
   The major aim of an eCommerce business is to improve the earnings in terms of profits and return on investment(ROI). This can easily be achieved by conversion optimization.
6. Generate Repeat Business
   A happy customer would come back to buy your products or avail your services. This is possible if you give him more friendly interface and better actions to take.
7. Improves User’s Experience
   With CRO, the customer feels more valued when he visits your online stores. This is what you must be aiming at. The better options he has, the easier for you to get him converted from a visitor to a buyer.
8. Scalable Results And Findings
   An eCommerce owner can easily measure the progress of his campaigns through the conversion rate which might not be possible otherwise.
9. Long Term Benefits
   You would be selling the products through your online store and making the maximum benefits of CRO for years to come because visitors would keep coming back to your website.
10. Brand Recognition
    By performing CRO for your eCommerce website,the visitors may share, refer and bookmark the website which may eventually helps people recognize your brand.

If you want to earn more profits from your eCommerce business, you muct contact a qualified conversion optimization professional who is well versed with the latest techniques and tools.

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One of the main attractions, The Universal Orlando Studio, comprises of Universal Studios and the Universal Island of Adventure, two incredible theme parks. It’s also where you can experience the Wizard World of the most celebrated fiction magician, Harry Potter. Apart from these theme parks, Universal Studio Resort also has the most outstanding nightlife on CityWalk, a perky and vibrant strip.

The various attractions at Universal Studios include:

• Universal Studios Thrill Rides
  If you are up for some real thrill and adventure, these rides are for you with plenty that can actually scare you to your wits. One of the most thrilling rides is Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit, which records your ride on a video camera. You can actually see your expressions as you are thrown vertically or upside down during the ride!
• Harry Potter
  A stunning creation, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is not to be missed. The Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey rides are simply ‘out of this world’ experiences.
• Live Show at Universal Studio
  Witness the aspects involved behind making film scenes. One of the most hilarious shows is the Horror Makeup Show, which is not only outrageously hilarious but also very insightful.
• The Universal Island of Adventure
  Amazing roller coaster and other simulator rides in this park will keep you off your feet the whole day. Hulk Coaster, Spider Man, Dragon Challenge and Doctor Doom’s are some incredible must-experience rides.

Nightlife and Hotels

Providing never-ending entertainment, the studio has several bars, night clubs and even a few restaurants that have won rave reviews and awards for the scrumptious cuisines they offer. If you really want to experience the true Universal Studio spirit, it’s best to take up accommodation in any of the onsite hotels that cater to every requirement and budget. The three most prominent world class hotels within the studios are the Hard Rock Hotel, Loews Royal Pacific Resort, and Loews Portofino Bay Hotel.

Staying onsite comes with a host of privileges, apart from the sheer luxury that the hotels provide and the convenience of staying close to the parks.

• You get free water taxis to commute to and from the hotels to the theme parks.
• You are allowed to enter the parks an hour earlier than other ticket holders. This gives you additional time amid fewer crowds in the parks.
• You need not wait in endless queues, as you get the privilege of quicker queuing.

Tickets

You won’t want to miss out on either of the Universal Parks, so be sure to get Universal Orlando tickets that allow you access to both Island of Adventure and Universal Studio for as long as you stay there. There are many deals available that offer you unlimited admissions for specific period at a much lower price.

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Madrid

The Spanish capital has one of the most famous art galleries in the world.   The Prado has an amazing collection of Spanish art from the 11th-18th Centuries with masterpieces from artists like El Greco and Goya as well as works by artist such as Van Dyck and Rembrandt.

There are also private museums like the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum which has a broader, but no less spectacular, collection. Dali, Cezanne, Degas and Canaletto adorn the walls and there are often exhibitions which focus on a particular artist, school, subject or style.

Barcelona

With so many buildings designed by Gaudi, Barcelona is a beautiful city to just walk around.  The street scene is rich and vibrant, especially in the area around La Rambla, a tree line pedestrian mall.  You could easily take a holiday just in this area of Barcelona alone as it is close to the Maritime Museum in the area which housed the medieval Royal Dockyards.

In the same area are a large number of attractions, like the aquarium, restaurants and an IMAX theatre if you want to get indoors for a bit.

Cádiz

The coastal city has more history than almost any other in Europe, founded by the Phoenicians around 3,000 years ago and as you can imagine the sea plays a large part in the life of Cadiz.  Whether you relax on the beaches or spend your time sampling the incredible local (and very, very fresh) cuisine, you can have a wonderfully leisurely time.

The Doñana National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage site and you shouldn’t miss it if you are staying in the area.

Salamanca

Another Spanish city highlighted by UNESCO, this time with the entire city being labelled as a World Heritage Site, and for good reason. Salamanca University was the first University founded in Spain and the city is said to be the birthplace of the Castillian language.

It was attended by some of the most famous Spanish thinkers and writers and adventurers, like the Mathematician Pedro Nunes or Hernan Cortes, the Conquistador who destroyed the Aztec Empire.  Sitting at the crossroads of the old Roman route that linked north and south Spain, Salamanca and the surrounding area is less traveled by many, but it’s history and scenery that make it a fantastic option.

Link to a list of all the public holidays in Spain.

By: Peter Graham.

[Photo credit]

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