And since we want to be helpful, here are some pages you can check out for naturist travel ideas.
- Go naked in 2006
- Please take heed, because that headline is probably the best advice you’ll read all year. And the Times of London in this article lists (with permission) some of Lonely Planet‘s best ideas for places to shed your clothes — mostly a bit more interesting than just another place to get that all-over sunburn you really didn’t want to have. Places like San Francisco’s Bay to Breakers run in May, the Maslin Beach (Australia) Nude Olympics, and Berlin’s Tiergarten public park in the center of town.
- California nude beach guide [Links to new site]
- Betsy Malloy at the About.com California visitors’ site offers an extensive list of California nude beaches, grouped by region. [Although the original site is long gone, Betsy has copious details of many beaches at the new site, and also an extensive guide to California Nudist Resorts.]
- Nude Beaches 2005
- And speaking of California, we can’t fail to mention the San Francisco Bay Guardian’s venerable nude beach guide, now (2005) in its 31st year. A new guide comes out every year in June (or thereabouts), though recently it’s been only online, not in the print edition. (And that’s much more convenient, actually, than driving to the Bay Area at just the right time to snarf a copy.) The guide, which doesn’t really change that much from year to year, lists scores of places, mostly in the central part of the state, but as far east as Lake Tahoe. It’s more for the dedicated nude beacher living in California — or the intrepid visitor who wants to find something more out of the ordinary.
- Bonjour, please take off ze clothes…
- Pierre Rochiccioli at the South African site iafrica.com writes about France’s historic, fabled Ile du Levant — to which devout nudists have been making summer pilgrimages since the 1930s. Every naturist must go there at least one in each lifetime. For South African locals (or visitors) there’s also a link to information on Sandy Bay, the local nude beach.
- Extreme Nudity
- David Friedland in Outside Magazine writes about taking nudity to extremes, or at least to ten pretty interesting places to hike, snowshoe, fly-fish, snorkel, body-surf, or bird watch naked. His selections include several hot springs, assorted nude beaches around the world, and a waterfall in Tennessee that “emerges from a cave, shoots over a cliff, and plummets 110 feet before disappearing into another chasm.” (The adventure here is not the 11 story drop (not advised), but the six-hour hike to the site offering watery delights along the way for skinny-dipping.)
- Think naked
- Here’s a longer collection of brief write-ups from Outside about exotic places to go naked. Quoting from the introduction, “C’mon, admit it. If you reflect on some of your most exhilarating moments in the wild, you’ll almost certainly come up with at least one bracing skinny-dip or triumphant strip on a summit—moments that left you feeling more alive for facing nature the way you came into the world.”
- Top Topless Beaches 2006
- Sophia Banay at Forbes.com provides 10 expensive ideas for places where women can bare their boobs and males can enjoy the view. But be careful. Most of the recommended beaches are not especially tolerant of full nudity. And if anyone who takes Sophia’s advice is smart as well as rich, and wants to save their money, they won’t stay at the expensive hotels recommended in the listings. Finally, to avoid the really exasperating “slide show” that makes you look at four ads for each and every recommendation, click here for the whole list on one page.
Originally published March 2, 2006
