Destination: Cuba
A Traveler’s 10 Best Musical Discoveries
by Tom Swick | 03.02.09 | 10:35 AM ET
Contemplating and celebrating the world of travel
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Yahoo! BuzzWhat We Loved This Week: Food Tours, Traveling Through the Harper’s Index and More
by World Hum | 02.27.09 | 5:03 PM ET
Bakhat Singh in the Moonlight Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Michael Yessis
The searchable Harper’s Index. The magazine has been delivering pithy factual tidbits since 1984, and now you can search through all of them online by topic. Here are the 90 matches in my search for items about travel. One of my favorites comes from 1990: “Amount the U.S. Air Force spent this year to study the effects of jet noise on pregnant horses: $100,000.”
Joanna Kakissis
I’ve always wanted to host my own YouTube cooking show, because doesn’t the whole world really want to see me make my secret baklava recipe to the beat of “Chains of Love” by Erasure? But I doubt my show would ever be as awesome as the sensational “Cooking With Clara,” which features Great Depression-era recipes by 93-year-old Sicilian-American Clara Cannucciari.
Leave Home Without It
by Tom Swick | 02.19.09 | 10:07 AM ET
Contemplating and celebrating the world of travel
Morning Links: Paul Theroux Spits From Trains, Swimsuit Issue Locales and More
by Jim Benning | 02.11.09 | 10:42 AM ET
- Paul Theroux likes to spit out the window of a moving train—and other interesting tidbits from one of our favorite writers.
- With the economy in the tank, are travelers looking for “recession chic”?
- Any chance the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act we noted yesterday will actually pass? “Conditions are good for it,” one expert says.
- Cross-border bi-national marriages are great—until they fall apart. The Economist explains. (Via NYT Ideas blog)
- Kate Chambers on paying the porters, Zimbabwe-style.
- The Louvre is planning The Funeral of Mona Lisa. Paris-bound? Wear black.
- Sports Illustrated photographers went to the Grenadines to shoot part of the new Swimsuit Issue. “[A] ho-hum choice since the Caribbean is a Swimsuit Issue go-to location,” says Jaunted. Yeah, Swimsuit Issue readers around the world will be soooo disappointed.
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Morning Links: Bill to End Cuba Travel Ban Introduced, Facebook ‘Flashmobs’ and More
by Jim Benning | 02.10.09 | 10:27 AM ET
- Nine representatives have introduced a House bill calling for an end to the ban on travel to Cuba. !Suerte!
- A new Mandarin Oriental hotel in Beijing—not yet occupied, thankfully—burned last night.
- The economy of air travel: Demand for international flights is “in freefall.”
- A Facebook “flashmob” organized by “Crazzy Eve” hits a London train station.
- New York Magazine: “Why Sully may be the last of his kind.”
- Travel photographer Peter Guttman has crammed his home with souvenirs.
- Hotels spent more than $9 million lobbying elected officials last year.
- You wanna be a YouTube travel star? Christopher Elliott has tips.
- Travel publishers are feeling the effects of the recession. But sales of Frommer’s “Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World” remain strong. Whew.
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Che: The Ronald McDonald of Revolution
by Rolf Potts | 01.27.09 | 10:00 AM ET
REUTERS/AIN/Justo Gonzalez Ortega Rolf Potts examines the clichés of the revolutionary's admirers and detractors
Morning Links: A New Way to See the Prado, Cuban Tourism and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.14.09 | 8:00 AM ET
El Tres De Mayo by Goya (via Wikipedia) - An American in Spain writes about studying Euskera, the “clearest sign of Basque identity.”
- Greenpeace buys land in effort to halt a third runway at Heathrow. It’s now the prime minister’s move.
- Here’s an interesting project: Masterpieces from the Prado on Google Earth.
- Jonathan Raban on the best presidential writers. He notes some of the travel bits of Barack Obama’s “Dreams From My Father.”
- Cuba reported huge tourism numbers in 2008. It could grow if Obama implements the policy outlined by Hillary Clinton.
- A steady flow of flights from Europe—and “tightened restrictions in Thailand and elsewhere in Asia”—are fueling sex tourism in Mombasa, Kenya.
- A couple of long-term travelers share ten lessons of the road. No. 2: Smile.
- The BBC offers some tips on landing that best job in the world.
- Lawlessness reigns at San Diego’s skate parks. Given the city’s financial shape, officials decided not to staff them. Skateboarders have flocked to the parks for the “[f]reedom to smoke while they skate, drink beer, bring dogs, ride minibikes amid the skateboards and scrawl graffiti.”
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Cuba’s Hemingway Museum Goes Digital
by Eva Holland | 01.05.09 | 2:58 PM ET
American Hemingway scholars don’t have to wait for a lifting of the Cuba travel embargo to gain more insight into the writer’s work: The island’s Hemingway Museum is digitizing large chunks of its invaluable collection, reports the Cuban News Agency.
When the author died in 1961, he left behind thousands of pages of manuscripts, maps, letters and photos at his farm outside Havana—all of which were apparently donated to the newly minted Cuban government by his wife. Government preservationists have already digitally reproduced more than 3,000 of the roughly 15,000 documents in the bequest.
(Via The Book Bench)
Cuban Exiles Recall Flights to U.S.
by Julia Ross | 12.29.08 | 3:32 PM ET
For the 265,000 Cubans who fled their homeland on U.S.-sponsored “Freedom Flights” from 1965 to 1973, the emotional 45-minute flight to a new life remains etched in memory. Now, a Miami Herald series on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution has given Cuban-Americans a chance to share photos and memories of their “Freedom Flight” experience, in conjunction with a database that makes names and arrival dates of refugees available to the public for the first time.
In reading through the online recollections submitted by exiles who were children at the time, I was struck by how many remember their first taste of the U.S.—a coke, a ham sandwich, a pack of Wrigley’s gum, many handed out in box lunches at Miami’s airport. Others recall the tense days leading up to their departure, and the clothes, jewelry, and dolls left behind.
With the recent publication of Rachel Kushner’s novel, Telex from Cuba, and Tom Gjelten’s Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause, along with the much-anticipated release of Steven Soderbergh’s Che next month, it seems Cuban history remains a hot topic in the U.S. Kudos to the Herald for rounding out that history with an important public record.
What do Afghanistan, Cuba, Liberia and Sudan All Have in Common?
by Eva Holland | 11.25.08 | 8:27 AM ET
They’re the four countries deemed so dangerous that they’re excluded from the holiday coverage offered by a major UK insurer, Direct Travel. As Simon Calder notes in this sarcasm-laden response, the news that Cuba is as risky as Kandahar or Darfur may come as a surprise to the 2 million tourists who visited the island this year.
Bienvenido a Cuba, 2 Millionth Tourist!
by Valerie Conners | 11.17.08 | 2:25 PM ET
“Strong mojitos” and a salsa band greeted Cuba’s two millionth tourist (albeit symbolically—they actually greeted the incoming plane holding number two mil), as the island celebrated what it hopes will be a record year for tourism. Despite the three crippling hurricanes that ripped through here earlier this year, Cuba expects to have had more than 2.3 million visitors in 2008.
Cuban Government: Gustav and Ike Damage ‘Worst Ever’
by Jim Benning | 09.16.08 | 5:29 PM ET
Somehow, amid the din of media reports about Galveston, lipstick on pigs and the U.S. financial mess, I missed this. The Cuban government has declared that the damage caused by hurricanes Gustav and Ike was “the worst ever” in the country’s history. Given that Cuba has been blasted by countless hurricanes over the years, the toll has to be massive. According to the BBC’s report, some 200,000 people lost their homes as a result of the storms.
Cuba Flights Coming to Airport ‘Within Minutes of Downtown Detroit’
by Jim Benning | 07.21.08 | 11:18 AM ET
How you Canadians tempt us poor Americans. Canada’s Sunwing Airlines has announced plans to offer flights to Cuba from Windsor, just across the border from Detroit. Company officials predict that half the passengers will be American, even though the embargo all but forbids U.S. citizens from visiting Cuba. A State Department spokesman tells The Detroit News that the trip is “risky.”
It’s Official: Guevara Children Embarrassed by Che T-Shirts
by Jim Benning | 06.09.08 | 10:20 AM ET
They’re not too hot on the Che image being used to sell vodka or cell phones, either, the AP reports. No word on their feelings about this.
Related on World Hum:
* Che Guevara: Revolutionary, Icon, ‘the Guy Who Intented Those Mojitos’?
* Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Che’: ‘Almost Unreleasable in its Current Form’
* Che and the Image Seen ‘Round the World
Che Guevara: Revolutionary, Icon, ‘the Guy Who Invented Those Mojitos’?
by Jim Benning | 06.02.08 | 12:13 PM ET
Uh, something like that. In Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, Ben Ehrenreich reflects on Che as pop icon, Steven Soderbergh’s Che and “Chevolution,” an intriguing new documentary about the famed Alberto Korda photo.