Destination: Czech Republic
Fall Foliage Around the World
by Alicia Imbody | 11.03.09 | 10:16 AM ET
From Osaka to Chicago, seven photos of turning leaves around the shrinking planet
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Yahoo! BuzzEuropean Flesh and the American Prude
by Rick Steves | 09.08.09 | 12:54 PM ET
Alexandra Beier/Reuters Exploring Europe, exploring travel as a political act
Skip the Colosseum? Give Prague a Pass?
by Eva Holland | 09.02.09 | 10:24 AM ET
Eva Holland sees an emerging trend in the world of travel advice, and she's not happy about it
Six Great Summer Music Festivals in Europe
by Ben Keene | 07.14.09 | 9:37 AM ET
REUTERS/Lucas Jackson Headed overseas this summer? Ben Keene surveys music festivals from Budapest to Stockholm.
The Last Bite and the Other Part of the Fish
by David Farley | 06.29.09 | 4:25 PM ET
Photo by David Farley Few people are lured to the Czech Republic for its cuisine, but I’m one of them. Actually, hearty Czech food is a taste acquired over time (accompanied by lots of pints of hoppy pilsner). Until recently the pub grub—rich goulash and pork made just about every way you can imagine—functioned more as stomach filler than actual taste bud pleasers. But things are slowly changing.
Given the Dire Economy, Should I Travel Overseas This Year?
by Rolf Potts | 04.20.09 | 10:12 AM ET
Vagabonding traveler Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel and the world
Searching for the Strudel Man of Zizkov
by David Farley | 03.06.09 | 10:39 AM ET
It might have looked that way, but my Czech friend Milos and I were not aimlessly wandering the hilly streets of Prague’s Zizkov (pronounced: Zheezh-kof) neighborhood. We had a destination in mind. A few minutes earlier, the excitable Milos suddenly got an idea: “Strudel,” he yelled out. “There’s a guy somewhere in Zizkov who’s been selling the best apple strudel in Prague from a tiny shop in his apartment building. We must find him. Now.”
My stomach, which had been rumbling just a few minutes earlier, agreed. Milos began accosting people on the street with the frantic demeanor of someone who’d just realized their child had gone missing. A mother and daughter carrying plastic shopping bags pointed down the hill. A few blocks later a sinewy bearded guy walking a dog pointed up the hill. A gypsy woman standing on the street corner, inexplicably holding a plate of sauerkraut, pointed in a completely different direction. Finally we were crossing Konevova street, the busy dark avenue that splits the valley in Zizkov.
Morning Links: Best Job in the World Finalists, ‘Narco-Tours’ and More
by Michael Yessis | 03.04.09 | 8:18 AM ET
- The 50-person short list for Tourism Queensland’s “best job in the world” includes a man who staged a musical on an Ontario street and Geek Brief’s Cali Lewis.
- The Tsunami Museum commemorating the victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami is open in Indonesia.
- China plans to open its earthquake ruins to tourists.
- Interesting essay by Alexei Tsvetkov on leaving Prague: “In the end some people here will probably miss me, but not many, not too much, and not for long.” (via The Rumpus)
- Ryan Adams: Travel writer? BlackBook has his take on Hollywood. Here are his musical takes on New York and Jacksonville.
- “Narco-tours” are on the rise in Mexico.
- Independent Traveler lists 10 reasons you should travel now.
- Esquire lists the 59 best breakfast places in America.
- Are you an, uh, anal traveler? (via BootsnAll Today)
- How great is this: John Wray will be giving a reading from his new book Lowboy while traveling on a Brooklyn-bound L train next week. Details in this video.
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Martha Stewart: Travel Writer
by Eva Holland | 03.03.09 | 1:11 PM ET
The homemaking maven will soon be penning an “occasional personal travel column” for Martha Stewart Living, Mediaweek reports. Said the acting editor-in-chief: “Martha has been blogging about her trips and gets tons of hits on her blogs.” The first column, covering Stewart’s recent trip to Prague, is due out in April; the shift is part of a larger effort to broaden the magazine’s editorial content and appeal to new advertisers. In this tough publishing climate, I suppose it’s a good thing.
Leave Home Without It
by Tom Swick | 02.19.09 | 10:07 AM ET
Contemplating and celebrating the world of travel
Cutting the Cord on Expensive Hotel Internet Service
by Alexander Basek | 02.05.09 | 4:01 PM ET
Thank you, Shangri-La Hotels, for breaking the cycle of expensive internet access. The hotel chain announced that it’s offering free Wi-Fi throughout its 60 properties as of, oh, right now. It’s about damn time—not at Shangri-La specifically, but for hotels in general to start offering this “service” for free, as it should be.
What’s galling is how the higher-end properties love to tack on this charge, while smaller one-off properties tend to give it away for free. It’s shortsighted and unrepresentative of how people travel: wouldn’t you prefer to have free internet access as opposed to free access to, say, Headline News? Not that we don’t all love Nancy Grace. Besides, I’m probably preaching to the internet choir here.
Still, it’s hard to forgo the internet when you work while you travel. I paid exorbitant internet fees many a time in 2008, and I’m sure it’ll happen again in ‘09. At the top of my list: a $15-a-day fee at the Grand Hotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. It’s a beautiful, historic hotel—James Bond even stayed there in Casino Royale—but it’s tough to feel as suave as Daniel Craig when you have to trudge downstairs for an ethernet cable first.
Morning Links: Flushing the French Quarter, Car-Rental Madness and More
by Michael Yessis | 02.02.09 | 8:30 AM ET
- Kurt Andersen talked to Pico Iyer about his life as an “outside man” in Japan. There’s also video.
- Spud Hilton calls place-dropping a “a subtle and often unnoticed art form.”
- Goodbye, street-flushing in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Hello, toxic stench?
- Travel with Spirit, a new magazine for “focusing exclusively on Christian travel,” debuted last week.
- Arthur Frommer has an idea to stimulate the U.S. economy: Induce more foreign tourists to visit.
- Dan Bilefsky investigates the battle for the Czech Republic’s Kingdom of Wallachia.
- The outlook for mobile-ticketing—using your cell phone as a boarding pass—is strong. (via Tripso)
- One upside of the down economy for travelers: Unexpected hotel room upgrades.
- Video: This guy was pushed a little too far at the car-rental counter.
- This is kind of creepy: Plane-crash simulation as team-building exercise.
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Morning Links: Museum of Broken Relationships, GlobalPost and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.12.09 | 8:27 AM ET
- GlobalPost begins its “bold journey to redefine international news for the digital age.”
- Two Japanese restaurants split the $100,000 bill on a bluefin tuna. Yumiko Ono says it tasted “smooth, succulent and a little on the light side.”
- Turns out cities impair our brains.
- More than 200 people are feared dead after a ferry sank off Indonesia’s Sulawesi island.
- During the last two years an estimated 1.5 billion passengers flew on U.S. airlines. Not one of them died as a result of a crash.
- The Los Angeles Times tried out Row44, “a soon-to-debut satellite Wi-Fi system” for airlines.
- Daisann McLaine tells why she always visits supermarkets when she travels.
- Kristen Wiig and Neil Patrick Harris played long-nailed air traffic controllers on Saturday Night Live.
- Alexandr Vondra, the Czech Deputy Prime Minister, says “art is to arouse emotions.” A map of European cliches and stereotypes commissioned by the Czech Republic is succeeding on that count.
- The Las Vegas Mob museum is stirring up controversy in Washington, D.C.
- The Museum of Broken Relationships—“an exhibition of the relics of failed love”—opened in Singapore last week. It’s perfect for anyone who wants to see “an axe used by a woman to break up her ex-girlfriend’s furniture, along with the broken furniture.”
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Where We’re Eating: New York, Czech Republic
by David Farley | 01.07.09 | 4:46 PM ET
Why should you care? Because we don’t want you to eat badly on the road. Based on recent visits, I heartily recommend:
- Seäsonal (New York, NY): The umlaut says it all: haute Austrian fare with—wait for it—seasonal ingredients. Curiously enough, for a cuisine that comes from a landlocked country, the best dishes on the menu are seafood, particularly the pumpkin seed-encrusted sea bass. Superb Austrian wine list.
- Reflections (Lake Placid, NY): Stupid name, but the meaty Adirondack-inspired dishes make up for it: poached wild salmon, tender lamb chops, steak. One of the better restaurants in a town largely devoid of good eating.
- Penzion Pod Zamkem (Jindrichuv Hradec, Czech Republic): If you find yourself in south Bohemia and starving for something other than beef goulash or 52 different kinds of pork dishes, this small hotel restaurant in the over-looked, castle town of Jindrichuv Hradec will hit the spot. Avoid the Meet (sic) Snails and go right for the steak cooked in a cognac and foie gras reduction.
The Rise and Fall and Rise of Beer in the U.S.
by David Farley | 12.22.08 | 6:52 PM ET
Hhmm…beer. It’s hard to believe now, but in 1873, there were 4,000 breweries in the United States. Brooklyn alone boasted 50. But Prohibition followed by industrialization wiped out nearly all the breweries. And by 1965 there were only a couple megalithic beer factories serving watered-down suds and just one craft beer maker in the country (Anchor Steam). This info comes to us from a recently published New Yorker piece by Burkhard Bilger on Dogfish Brewery.
Coincidentally, Czech beer buff and author of The Good Beer Guide Prague & The Czech Republic, Evan Rail, recently wrote about the numerous (and long-gone) breweries in 19th-century Prague. But let’s not start weeping in our pints of PBR just yet. According to Bilger there are now 1,500 breweries in the United States, and when I checked in with Evan Rail, he had this to say about brewing in the country that consumes more beer per capita than anywhere in the world: “When my book was published, there were about 102 (plus or minus) total breweries in the Czech Republic, counting brewpubs, micros and industrial brewers. Now it’s 122. That’s a gain of just under 20% in 18 months.”
We’ll most certainly toast to that.
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