Good afternoon, Kristen, and welcome to Tripatini! It's great to have you with us -- and we think you'll find our site productive as well as interesting and enjoyable.

To get the most out of Tripatini, we recommend you take a moment to join several of our many groups which you may find of particular use, such as Media Only, Washington State, Ireland, Norway, Eating/Drinking the World, Eco/Sustainable Tourism, Travel Photography, our French and Spanish language/culture clubs, and plenty of others covering many other topics and most destinations across the globe.

FYI, on your profile you'll see a green bar marked "Text Box," which you can turn into a box containing not just text but also photos and even videos about yourself, your travels, your writing/outlets, and more (feel free to include your blog URL in your profile).

Finally, if you would, please be so kind as to spread the word among your travel-interested friends, family, colleagues, associates, and audience. It's fast and easy to use our "INVITE" function above left on the navigation bar to enter e-mails (even your whole list at once!). We'd be happy to exchange links, and if you feel you might want to occasionally blog for us, rates/guidelines are available upon request. Finally, if you have a Facebook or Twitter account, please join our fan page and follow us (see front page info box), and tweet us! We'll be happy to follow you, as well.

Thanks much for joining us; we wish you an outstanding start to 2010, and it goes without saying that we look forward to seeing you online.

Cheers!