About Us

TRIPATINI is a fun, free social network and blog where travelers and travel experts from across the planet hang out, share and learn how to travel better and smarter.

Tripatini is, to quote the New York Post, "Facebook for travelers."
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WHO WE ARE

Tripatini Founder, CEO and Editor-in-Chief David Paul Appell is a longtime travel writer and
editor, an alum of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. He has edited travel for HarperCollins' guidebook division, Hearst Magazines' Diversion, and ShermansTravel.com, as well as served as Executive Editor of Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel and Caribbean Travel & Life.

David has also written for a respectable chunk of the travel media, as well as general interest newspapers, magazines, and Web sites. Just a sampling: Boston Herald, Brides.com, GQ, HuffingtonPost.com, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Men's Fitness, MSNBC.com, Miami Herald, National Geographic Traveler, New York Post, and Travel+Leisure. He has also written travel guides, most recently Pauline Frommer's Costa Rica, and co-founded CubaEnLinea.net, a social network for Cubans both in Cuba and around the world.

David, who speaks six languages, currently lives in Miami, Florida, but lived for years in New York City, Spain, Russia, and the Czech Republic, as well as visited more than 50 countries.
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Co-Founder and President José Balido, an alumnus of Georgetown University's School of Languages and Linguistics, has written for both travel and entertainment media since 1987.

On the travel side, he has worked primarily with Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel and Diversion magazines, both of which have also published his photography, as well as the New York Post.

On the entertainment side, he has written scripts for daytime television programs such as All My Children, Ryan's Hope, One Life to Live, and ECTV's European soap, Riviera. More recently, he executive-produced and wrote the story for Sony Pictures Mexico's acclaimed box-office hit Niñas Mal.

Truly bilingual in English and Spanish, José also speaks French and Italian fluently, communicates in Czech, can wiggle his way through German and Portuguese, and after all these years can still startle the staff at Chinese restaurants with his Mandarin.

Currently he is president of Tripatini.com, a position uniquely suited to his diverse talents, abilities, and interests.
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Executive Editor Ed Wetschler, former editor-in-chief of Diversion, Hearst's leisure magazine for physicians, has written for The New York Times, Delta Sky, Caribbean Travel & Life, the Pennsylvania Travel Guide, EverettPotter.com, and other major media. He has contributed to custom and business publications for companies like Wachovia Bank and Ford Motor Company.

Ed has also served as associate editor of Caribbean Escapes and acting editor for Milford Magazine. At present he is the associate editor of EverettPotter.com and the president of the New York Travel Writers Association. In addition, he does pro bono public relations for non-profit organizations.

His dog is not impressed by any of this.
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