Destination: Europe
More Travels With Conan O’Brien
by Ben Keene | 02.26.07 | 8:12 AM ET
Travel certainly has its comedic moments, and yes, remembering to bring your sense of humor when visiting another city, state or country is almost always a good idea, but few people intentionally set out on a trip in search of slapstick. Not so with Conan O’Brien.
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Yahoo! BuzzOn the ‘Red Sauce Trail’ in Italy
by Sarah Schmelling | 02.21.07 | 1:02 PM ET
We’ve read a lot of great culinary travel tales, but this one in today’s New York Times takes the, well, sauce. Kim Severson recently became obsessed with tracking the source, or at least the ancestry, of her mother’s beloved spaghetti sauce. It’s a sauce that she’s been eating—and trying to measure up to in her own kitchen—her whole life. Her quest led her to the Italian village of Ateleta, where her maternal grandmother grew up and where she’s told she’s “luckier than Madonna” because, unlike the pop star, she was able to find distant Italian relatives—and perhaps the key to unlocking her own personal “spaghetti code.”
Caught in a Czech Funk
by David Farley | 02.21.07 | 5:57 AM ET
Photo courtesy of Czech Tourism. All David Farley wanted from the tourist information office in the tiny town of Nove Hrady was directions to the train station. Then he asked the young clerk a seemingly innocuous question: Was that funk booming from the speakers?
Stephen Colbert’s ‘Investigation’ into a Caribbean Resort
by Jim Benning | 02.16.07 | 6:25 PM ET
What will Stephen Colbert be doing on his week off? The Colbert Report host dead-panned to Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” Thursday night: “Jon, I’ll be launching an intense seven-day investigation into the Royal St. Barts Golf Club and Resort, the Caribbean’s ritziest retreat, so my travel agent would have me believe. But I’ll lay down for a one-on-one Swedish massage with a masseuse who isn’t even Swedish. And then, parasailing: Is it really the coolest thing ever? A grueling five-hour examination. Then, I’ll access one riding stable whose occupants live like animals. The Royal St. Barts Golf Club and Resort: It’s the one Stephen Colbert exclusive you can’t afford…boy, you can’t afford.”
Related on World Hum:
* Jon Stewart on the Zagat Prison Guide
* Jon Stewart on Osama bin Laden’s Latest Tape
Cycling the Silk Road
by Michael Yessis | 02.15.07 | 8:43 AM ET
Three college friends recently embarked on an epic ride from Turkey to China via the Silk Road, a trek being chronicled this week on Slate. Greg Grim wrote the first installment, and he outlined the trip’s goals: “Mikey, Cam, and I aimed to show these folks that not all Americans are fat, rich, Muslim-hating warmongers. Rather, we’re people just like them, with the same needs, questions, and desires. But diplomacy isn’t our sole mission: It doesn’t hurt that these lands are breathtaking in their beauty and baffling in their culture.” As usual with Slate’s travel coverage, a compelling slideshow accompanies the dispatches.
Related on World Hum:
* Lost City of the Silk Road
* Colin Thubron and the “Shadow of the Silk Road”
Vilanova i la Geltrú, Spain
by Ben Keene | 02.09.07 | 11:32 AM ET
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Interstate Highways, Hot Destinations and the Mile-High Club
by Michael Yessis | 02.09.07 | 8:34 AM ET
We’re going to France and we’re learning the language. Excellent. Other stops in this week’s Zeitgeist include Spain, Morocco, Cuba, Hawaii and Hot-lanta.
Most Popular Country for Travelers
Reuters/French Tourism Ministry (2006)
France
* 78 million people visited the country last year.
Top Travel and Adventure Audiobook
iTunes (current)
Fodor’s French for Travelers
Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
‘Significant Steps’ Taken in Quest for Morocco-Spain Tunnel
Best Place in the U.S. for a Value Vacation
Hotwire.com Travel Value Index (2007)
Atlanta, Georgia
* Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; Orlando-Daytona Beach, Florida; and Kansas City, Missouri round out the top five.
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (recent)
Interstate Highway System Simplified
* The U.S. Interstates rendered in the style of a metro-system map. Its designer calls it “map-porn.”
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
* We still like this book.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
In Cuba, Finding a Tiny Corner of Jewish Life
Most Popular Travel Story
Netscape (current)
How to ... Join the Mile-High Club
* The Guardian suggests this.
Most Read Weblog Category
World Hum (this week)
Planet Theme Park
* This story helped it rise to the top.
From Abbey Road to Arctic Monkeys: Mapping England’s Pop Music Heritage
by Michael Yessis | 02.08.07 | 9:20 AM ET
Judging from this Google image search and this Flickr cluster, not too many music fans visiting England haven’t walked in the footsteps of John, Paul, George and Ringo across Abbey Road. But England, of course, has a rich music heritage beyond the Beatles, and the country’s tourism agency wants to show it off. VisitBritain just released a map—and a sweet Web site—with more than 200 destinations associated with famous musicians. “For decades the done thing has been to bury Britain’s rock heritage rather than praise it,” writes Jeevan Vasagar in the Guardian. “Two of the country’s most famous music venues—the Cavern Club in Liverpool and Manchester’s Hacienda—ended their lives under a wrecking ball. But the era of official neglect is over.”
‘Significant Steps’ Taken in Quest for Morocco-Spain Tunnel
by Michael Yessis | 02.06.07 | 9:00 AM ET
Photo of Strait of Gibraltar by karynsig via flickr (Creative Commons).
Building a tunnel between Morocco and Spain has been on the “official drawing boards” of the countries’ governments for 25 years, according to the Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock, and perhaps on the minds of adventurers—and seasick ferry travelers—for much longer. Now, after rounds of geological tests and a set of blueprints developed by a Swiss firm, engineers say a tunnel underneath the Mediterranean Sea could materialize by 2025. “Government officials on both sides of the Mediterranean say the tunnel would give the economies of southern Europe and North Africa an enormous boost,” writes Whitlock. “But the project is being driven at least as much by intangible benefits: the prospect of uniting two continents that culturally and socially remain a world apart despite their geographic proximity.”
Alex Kapranos: ‘Sound Bites’ and Savory Food
by Frank Bures | 02.06.07 | 7:51 AM ET
Franz Ferdinand's singer has eaten mole in Mexico, mussels in Brussels and fishbrain bread in Finland. He talks to Frank Bures about his new book and his culinary adventures on the road.
Calcata: ‘This May Be the Grooviest Village in Italy’
by Michael Yessis | 01.29.07 | 8:25 AM ET
The fresco of Jimi Hendrix on the wall of an 18th-century building in Calcata helps give it away. Then there are the art galleries, aging hippies and, oh yeah, the Holy Foreskin. David Farley, a World Hum contributor, tells the tale of the one-of-a-kind Italian hill town in Sunday’s New York Times. “You could walk around here in your pajamas holding a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and no one is going to judge you because you(tm)re not tied to the proper Italian way of doing things,• restaurateur Pancho Garrison tells Farley. “That says a lot about the place.” So does Garrison’s restaurant: It serves nouvelle Italian food, writes Farley, and it resides in a mosaic-lined cave.
UK Guidebook Writers: ‘Readers are Getting a Poorer Experience’
by Michael Yessis | 01.24.07 | 8:33 AM ET
‘Paris Syndrome’: The New York City Strain?
by Michael Yessis | 01.23.07 | 1:00 PM ET
The New York Post had some fun with a recent story about Japanese tourists in France who succumb to Paris Syndrome. The paper titled its piece Paris Leaves Japanese French Fried. Now the New Yorker’s Lauren Collins is on the case, wondering if there’s a New York City version of the syndrome that leaves travelers to the City of Light overwhelmed and in need of psychological treatment. An officer at the Japanese Consulate “does not believe in the existence of Paris syndrome, or, for that matter, a New York strain,” Collins writes, but she does report that Japanese visitors to the Big Apple do have certain traits.
‘The Soccer People’: Heartbreak and Triumph in Clarkston, Georgia
by Michael Yessis | 01.22.07 | 8:47 AM ET
We write often about how soccer explains the world. Here’s another post, one that tells the story of an amazing soccer team based in a small town near Atlanta. Team name: The Fugees. “The Fugees are indeed all refugees, from the most troubled corners—Afghanistan, Bosnia, Burundi, Congo, Gambia, Iraq, Kosovo, Liberia, Somalia and Sudan,” writes Warren St. John in a front-page story in Sunday’s New York Times. “Some have endured unimaginable hardship to get here: squalor in refugee camps, separation from siblings and parents. One saw his father killed in their home.”
R.I.P. Art Buchwald
by Jim Benning | 01.18.07 | 12:08 PM ET
The famed humorist, who died Wednesday at the age of 81, got his start writing abroad. He once wrote a column called “Paris After Dark” that featured “scraps of offbeat information about Parisian nightlife” for the New York Herald Tribune. His goodbye video (“Hi, I’m Art Buchwald, and I just died”) is up on the New York Times website.