Afaranwide

NEWSLETTER 13, July 20 2019

Dear , thanks for your interest in Afaranwide.

New life for old town: Next week we visit Al-Balad, the atmospheric old town in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This district was for many years the heart of the city, but fell into neglect when the petrodollars started to pour in. Its coral houses with their fine latticed woodwork balconies and shuttering were left to rot. But the good news is that work is underway to restore these wonderful old buildings

Mobile matters: In our post about blogging, 10 Things We Learned Making Our Website, we stressed the importance of making sure your site looks good on mobile phones. This is borne out by our Google Analytics figures, which show that half our readers view Afaranwide on mobile. The next biggest group of users view the site on a laptop or desktop, while 15 percent use tablets.

Moon mania: Some of our posts attract a lot of interest from specialist Facebook groups. With the current Moon mania – the Apollo 11 lunar module landed 50 years ago today – this is especially true of our piece on space flight. Colin mentioned in the post that he's had a lifelong interest in space travel, and here's the proof – his childhood scrapbooks! When we posted this photo of Facebook one space fan commented: "I so wish I had the old stuff..."

We've also been having fun with a virtual reality app called JFK Moonshot that lets you recreate the Apollo 11 mission anywhere – we launched the Saturn V rocket in our front room! The video generated lots of social media interest – watch it here.

Indian luxury, sickly snacks: This week we continued the rollout of our hotels and food coverage with pieces on the Oberoi Cecil, a luxury pile in Northern India, and a market in Beijing that sold edible scorpions, starfish and bugs.

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