Destination: Europe
Inside Amsterdam Central: 2,500 Bikes, Five Levels and Virtually No Helmets
by Terry Ward | 06.19.07 | 12:09 PM ET
Bikes might not be the first thing most travelers think of when they think of Holland, but perhaps they should be. After all, bicycles outnumber people—20 million bikes, 16 million humans—in this flat-as-a pool-table country. A few years ago, after visiting Holland for a friend’s wedding, I detailed the ins and outs of Dutch bike etiquette. So it was fun to see this slice-of-life piece in the Washington Post, the latest installment in the paper’s intriguing Time Zones series.
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Yahoo! BuzzBritish Airline Pilots’ Association: ‘Air Travel has Become a Scapegoat for Global Warming’
by Michael Yessis | 06.19.07 | 11:00 AM ET
So how does one reconcile that sentiment, which comes from a new report by the British Airline Pilots’ Association, with this and this and this and this. (Frankly, I can keep going with the links.) Well, Greenpeace doesn’t even make an attempt, calling the report “pure propaganda,” according to the BBC. BALPA, which says it represents 85 percent of Britain’s 10,000 airline pilots, claims trains and ships are also big sources of carbon dioxide, yet they don’t receive the scrutiny that airplanes do when it comes to emissions.
On the Road With Dad: ‘What Was He Doing Here?’
by Michael Yessis | 06.18.07 | 2:43 PM ET
Travelers’ Tales editor Larry Habegger was traveling through England when he looked in the mirror in a Stratford-upon-Avon hotel room and saw his father. The moment helped trigger a moving essay in the San Francisco Chronicle, which follows Habegger’s journey through the country and his realization that, with “every click of the wheels on the tracks,” he’s getting older. “Maybe it was the reading glasses, maybe the fatigue in my eyes,” he writes. “But there was no mistaking it: I resembled my father more than I wanted to admit, and my father isn’t young any more.”
Related on World Hum:
* Andrew Steves: Travels in Dad’s Footsteps
* Eulogy for a Traveler
* Gregory Hubbs: Remembering Transitions Abroad Founder Clay Hubbs
* ‘Wanderlust: On the Road with American Road Movies’
Longest Overland Tunnel Opens in Switzerland
by Terry Ward | 06.18.07 | 11:04 AM ET
Switzerland loves its tunnels nearly as much as its timepieces, so I wasn’t surprised to learn that the country crowned the world’s longest on Friday. The AP reports the 21-mile rail link will cut train travel between Germany and Italy from 3 1/2 hours to less than two. The opening of the $3.5 billion Loetschberg Tunnel after eight years of construction is good news for Swiss locals, who hope it will ease heavy truck traffic in their mountainous land.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: On the ‘B’ List
by Michael Yessis | 06.15.07 | 1:23 PM ET
This week we’ve got mountain bikers, the best beaches in the U.S., passport blunders and the return of Bill Bryson. Here’s the Zeitgiest.
Most Popular Travel Story
Netscape (this week)
Top 10 U.S. Beaches
* No. 1 on the list from “Dr. Beach”: Ocracoke Island, North Carolina (pictured)
“Hot This Week” Destination
Yahoo! (this week)
Hilo, Hawaii
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
Where Mountain Bikers Carved Their Dream Terrain
* Not Moab, Utah. Fruita, Colorado.
Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
U.S. Plans Temporary Waiver of Passport Policy*
Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
Diary of a Trip Through U.S. Passport Application Limbo
From the writer, travel editor Catharine Hamm: “A travel editor without a passport is like Paris Hilton without a party.”
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Hertz, Avis Add Hybrids to Fleets
* Each rental car company says it will have 1,000 Toyota Priuses in its fleet by the end of the month.
Top Travel and Adventure Audiobook
iTunes (current)
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
* Still unstoppable.
British Food in India: Fish and Chips With Turmeric and Chili Powder, Anyone?
by Terry Ward | 06.15.07 | 11:48 AM ET
When I visited London for the first time earlier this year, I was torn. For my first UK meal, would it be fish and chips in a pub or a bowl of curry on Brick Lane? Both meals are about as typically British as you can get. In fact, according to the”‘Curry factfile” on a UK Food Standards Agency Web site , there are more Indian restaurants in London than in Bombay and Delhi. Britain’s first curry house opened in 1809, and Indian food has since become a UK favorite, accounting for more than 40 percent of all ethnic food sales. The love affair, however, is decidedly one-sided. British cuisine—the term alone elicits snickers from food snobs worldwide—hasn’t exactly taken the Subcontinent by storm. But that’s a fact that one British celebrity chef is out to change.
Monastery Travel: ‘There Was, I Thought at the Time, no More Foreign Place I Could Visit’
by Michael Yessis | 06.14.07 | 11:05 AM ET
Slate’s latest Well-Traveled chronicles Inigo Thomas’s journey to Pluscarden Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in northern Scotland. Thomas doesn’t quite declare monastery travel a trend, but he writes that more people do it than one might think. “If monasticism isn’t thriving as it did in medieval Europe, neither is it dying,” he writes. “Going on retreats to monasteries, whether they are Christian or Buddhist or semimonastic institutions, seems more popular than ever.”
Rome’s Trevi Fountain Flows Despite Aqua Virgo Damage
by Michael Yessis | 06.14.07 | 10:44 AM ET
Aqua Virgo, a more than 2,000-year-old underground Roman aqueduct responsible for feeding the globally-famous, coin-filled Trevi Fountain (pictured), has been damaged during the construction of an underground garage. The accident caused the water to stop flowing to the fountain, but, according to the BBC, water from another aquduct has been “redirected to the Trevi to avoid the spectacle of it running dry.” Travelers to Rome, then, will be able to continue to throw their coins in the fountain to ensure a return trip to the Eternal City.
‘Rome Reborn’: Journey to the Eternal City, Circa 320 AD
by Michael Yessis | 06.13.07 | 11:15 AM ET
To June 21 of that year, to be exact. Earlier this week, the University of Virginia and its partner institutions unveiled Rome Reborn 1.0, a digital model of ancient Rome as it appeared during the time of emperor Constantine. It’s designed for scholars and virtual tourists, and early reports about the project sound impressive. The AP’s Ariel David writes: “When in virtual Rome, visitors will be able do to even more than ancient Romans did: They can crawl through the bowels of the Colosseum, filled with lion cages and primitive elevators, and fly up for a detailed look at bas-reliefs and inscriptions placed atop triumphal arches.”
The Woman in the Keffiyeh
by Jeffrey Tayler | 06.11.07 | 6:52 PM ET
Photo illustration by Jim Benning. In southernmost Turkey, women are known as the forbidden ones. So when a beautiful local invited Jeffrey Tayler for a ride on her horse-drawn cart and unmasked herself, he tried not to look. But he failed.
Globespotters: IHT’s Correspondents Blog Paris, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Beyond
by Julia Ross | 06.11.07 | 8:20 AM ET
When foreign correspondents aren’t chasing down insurgents or dissidents, they’re wandering the back streets of their adopted cities, ferreting out the best croissant in Paris or bike path in Rome. A new travel blog from the International Herald Tribune—dubbed Globespotters—taps into this collective wisdom via posts from reporters in six world cities. In IHT’s words, it’s “an online resource where IHT reporters and editors (and readers too) share up-to-the-minute tips and recommendations about the cities where we live and visit.” So far, it’s a lively mix of local color and tips on things to do. My favorite: Joyce Lau’s take on the expat bacchanal that passes as Dragon Boat Festival in Hong Kong.
Photo by Harris Graber via Flickr, (Creative Commons).The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: From the Great White North to the Land Down Under
by Michael Yessis | 06.08.07 | 12:49 PM ET
This week travelers trek the length of the globe, from Canada to California to Mexico to Costa Rica to Australia. There’s also the inevitable Paris Hilton vs. Hilton Paris match up. Here’s the Zeitgeist.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
In Napa, Wilderness Above the Wineries
* That’s Napa, pictured above.
Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
Paris Hilton accommodations vs. Hilton Paris
* Christopher Reynolds pits the two head-to-head.
Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
Mexico to (Miss) U.S.A.: Boooooo
* Readers have mixed feelings about the now-infamous boos.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
JetBlue Tries to Bounce Back From Storm of Trouble
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (recent)
Air Traffic Control System Command Center
Most Read Feature
World Hum (this week)
An Island in Costa Rica
Most Popular Travel Podcast
iTunes (current)
National Geographic’s Atmosphere
* Current podcast: Mount Everest Expedition
Out: Bad Hotel-Room Coffee. In: Gourmet Joe.
by Terry Ward | 06.05.07 | 4:37 PM ET
When checking in to my room at the Jury’s Inn in Limerick, Ireland recently, I noticed a coffee trolley labeled “Il Barista” in the lobby. It was adjacent to the reception desk and had a sleek espresso machine and mini-pastries. Mind you, there was no warm-blooded barista in sight. But my hotel, it seems, was latching on to an emerging trend. USA Today’s Roger Yu reports that access to quality coffee both inside guest rooms and in public hotel spaces is increasingly common.
Nicolas Bouvier: ‘Switzerland’s Answer to Jack Kerouac’
by Jim Benning | 06.05.07 | 1:53 PM ET
That’s some high praise, and it’s Rory MacLean’s take on the Swiss writer who died in 1998. An English translation of Bouvier’s book “The Way of the World,” about the 19 months the author spent traveling through Europe and Asia with a friend in a Fiat in the 1950s, has just been published in the UK.
Tenuta de Castelfalfi: Will the Tuscan Village Go the Way of Shangri-La?
by Michael Yessis | 06.05.07 | 10:41 AM ET
The besieged faux Shangri-La, that is. German tour operator TUI has purchased the Tuscan village of Tenuta de Castelfalfi—four square miles of land with a golf course and “scores of elegantly crumbling villas,” according to the Guardian—for €250 million. TUI plans to turn the village into an Italian retreat for up to 3,200 German tourists by 2009. The Guardian’s Kate Connolly writes that it’s a move that would “make the Tuscany-loving author EM Forster turn in his grave.”