Destination: Europe
Morning Links: Bowie’s Clown Suit, Cute Penguin Overload and More
by Valerie Conners | 03.10.09 | 8:54 AM ET
- Take a gander at Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” clown suit, or Jarvis Cocker’s glasses at London’s new British Music Experience, documenting 60 years of Brit pop and rock.
- West Virginia’s governor makes it his mission to save the state’s image, and let you know W.V.‘s got more to offer tourists than the Road Kill Cook-Off.
- Intelligent Travel offers a Q&A with Chris Way, cofounder of Reality Tours and Travel, a company specializing in slum tourism in India.
- One woman is dead and six others are missing after a tourist boat capsizes off Thailand’s Similan Islands.
- Take a listen to Nine Road Trip Songs You Never Heard Before—a catchy mix of Asian travel songs. (via nerdseyeview)
- World Hum blogger Alexander Basek visits Nashville and returns full of excellent tips on where to hear live music and ... Goo-Goo Clusters.
- I’m getting a serious case of cute overload as Andrew Evans reveals the best places to see penguins.
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Yahoo! BuzzThe Bulimic Duck
by David Farley | 03.09.09 | 2:00 PM ET
The Fat Duck, located just outside of London, is one of the world’s most renowned restaurants. The chef and owner, Heston Blumenthal, has concocted a menu that revolves around molecular gastronomy. Imagine nitro-scrambled bacon and egg ice cream, Douglas fir puree and oyster passion fruit jelly, and you’ll get the idea.
For the unadventurous eater, those might sound like heave-inducing taste combinations, but that might not be the only reason for a good post-meal puking at the Fat Duck. In the last month, hundreds of eaters have followed their meals at this esteemed eatery with projectile vomiting and diarrhea, which is never a good sign if you’re a chef. As a result, Blumenthal has closed the restaurant until investigators can figure out what’s going on. So far, they haven’t found anything, only one expert has suspected something called “winter vomiting disease,” a reaction similar to the contagion of yawning, but this time its with ... well, vomiting.
‘Le Sandwich’ on the Rise in Paris
by Eva Holland | 03.09.09 | 12:45 PM ET
Good news for Paris-bound travelers on a budget: tough times mean the lowly sandwich—never a French staple—is becoming more and more readily available. Writes This Just In’s Meg Zimbeck: “The French are finding it increasingly difficult to justify the time and expense of a sit-down lunch. Restaurant groups say that the sit-down trade has plummeted by about 20 percent, while ‘le sandwich ne connait pas la crise’—the sandwich knows no crisis.” The blog post includes a list of tasty (pear-walnut-Roquefort sandwich, anyone?) and affordable bakeries where you can get your budget lunching started.
Confessions of an Introverted Traveler
by Sophia Dembling | 03.09.09 | 9:43 AM ET
Photo by Sophia Dembling Sophia Dembling has a different style of traveling, and she's tired of hiding it
Ryanair ‘Serious’ About Charging for Bathroom
by Rob Verger | 03.06.09 | 12:03 PM ET
The AP reports that the head of Dublin-based Ryanair is indeed “serious about making passengers pay for the right to relieve themselves on flights—and is flush with interest in the idea of mounting credit card-operated toilets.” Charging by credit card is logistically easier than charging by coin, as had been suggested earlier, which “wouldn’t work in part because Ryanair operates heavily in areas using both the euro and British pound.”
I’ve said it before about Ryanair (when they had some not-so-nice words about bloggers) and I’ll say it again now: oy vey.
What about someone who needs to go, but doesn’t have a credit card?
Morning Links: Paris Celebrates Voids, Favellywood, the Travel Bug and More
by Jim Benning | 03.06.09 | 11:03 AM ET
- Gotta love diplomatic pressure: Iranian officials say they’re going to free American freelance journalist and NPR contributor Roxana Saberi.
- Slate’s Jack Shaffer visits Africa a few times a week—thanks to the New York Times’ man in East Africa.
- Paris celebrates the art of the void at the Pompidou Centre.
- The Telegraph has put together a fine list of the 20 best travel books, including some fiction. Your assignment: Compare and contrast with our list of the best 30.
- Busted: Catalonia’s tourism officials, who used a photo of an Australian beach to represent Spain’s Costa Brava.
- Rio’s favelas + Hollywood film crews = Favellywood? One neighborhood where crews can “shoot without getting shot.” Ugh.
- Is San Diego the new super-yacht capital? I’m hanging with the wrong crowd.
- And finally, from the Travel Channel home offices in Chevy Chase, Maryland: Do you have the travel bug? Pay a visit to the Travel Bug Treatment Center. I was diagnosed a “Trailblazer.” What form does your bug take?
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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.
Athens, Greece
by World Hum | 03.05.09 | 1:35 PM ET
REUTERS/John Kolesidis A tourist takes pictures of his family in front of the closed ancient theater of Herod Atticus at Acropolis hill in Athens.
About Mr. Brown’s Carbon Footprint ...
by Joanna Kakissis | 03.05.09 | 12:25 PM ET
Promo Videos Gone Wrong: ‘Tourist’
by Eva Holland | 03.05.09 | 9:46 AM ET
OK, OK. So this isn’t precisely a promotional video from a hapless tourism board. But still, this hilariously dated trailer for a 1980 made-for-TV movie, Tourist—described as “an adventure-filled journey through the glamor capitals of Europe”—fits the bill and gets a chuckle or two, don’t you think?
Morning Links: Michael Lewis Asks About Bjork in Reykjavík, Yoko Ono’s Travel Daydreams and More
by Michael Yessis | 03.05.09 | 8:06 AM ET
Where are the Elegies to the World’s Troubled Landscapes?
by Joanna Kakissis | 03.04.09 | 4:02 PM ET
The Eagles were on to something in 1976, when they lamented the pillaging of the western American landscape in “The Last Resort.” As eco-awareness of global warming makes major headlines, and movie stars and scientists link hands to march against coal-fired power plants, I wonder: Where are the music videos? The equivalent of “We Are The World,” climate-change edition? Or at least a few elegies to the troubled landscapes of our world?
Then I came across “Uyan (Wake Up),” a song about the ravages of environmental irresponsibility released late last year by hunky Turkish pop star Tarkan and baglama viruoso Orhan Gencebay. It’s a fabulous tune, brimming with eastern Mediterranean soul and accompanied by a video (see below) featuring the sexier-than-thou Tarkan and the comfortably weathered Gencebay jamming in a cracked and desiccated land—likely a reference to the fact that great swathes of Turkey are in danger of desertification.
So, inspired by Tarkan and Orhan Gencebay, I compiled a short list of place-evoking environmental songs. I’d love to hear your picks—and if you think eco-songs can save fragile lands, or at least get people thinking that they should stop abusing them.
The Angelina Jolie of Olive Trees
by David Farley | 03.04.09 | 2:24 PM ET
If you have an extra $90 sitting around and a long-standing desire to tell people at cocktail parties that you own an olive tree in the Italian countryside (and, really, who doesn’t these days?) then this site is for you. For just under a hundred bucks per year, you can adopt an olive tree in Italy. There’s no word if the tree will send you letters telling you about its progress, but you will get some of its goods—two liters’ worth.
Skopje, Macedonia
by World Hum | 03.04.09 | 1:11 PM ET
REUTERS/Ognen Teofilovski A man looks for fish at Dojran Lake, 106 miles south of the Macedonian capital Skopje.
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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