Destination: New Orleans
Five Hostels I Have Loved
by Eva Holland | 04.20.09 | 4:22 PM ET
Photo of Lizard Point by Eva Holland These days, there are more accommodation options than ever for the budget traveler: everything from house swaps to pod hotels to rock-bottom recession-era deals at more traditional travel digs.
But even with that abundance of choices—most of which I’ve sampled, and enjoyed—I think my shoestringer’s heart will always belong to the youth hostel. I love the hosteling community, I (sometimes) love the fiesta atmosphere, and—of course—I love the price. From grungy party pads to serene dorm-room retreats, here are five hostels I have loved:
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Yahoo! BuzzNew Orleans Rocks
by Barry Yeoman | 03.25.09 | 10:17 AM ET
Photo by Barry Yeoman With the famed Jazz & Heritage Festival approaching, Barry Yeoman explores the city's wide-ranging music scene
Is ‘One Week’ Canada’s ‘Into the Wild’?
by Eva Holland | 03.03.09 | 3:41 PM ET
For such a vast (and, like its neighbor, public-transportation-challenged) country, Canada hasn’t produced as many great road trip movies as you might expect. Sure, there’s the quirky Thunder Bay-to-New Orleans indie, Highway 61, but most of the action takes place south of the border. And Dan Aykroyd’s brief cameo in “Canadian Bacon” never gets old, but if you want to be a purist about it, that’s an American-made movie. So there’s a void waiting to be filled here—and this week, we may finally have a candidate to fill it.
One Week stars Joshua Jackson as the terminally ill Ben, who decides to give up the daily grind and ride a vintage motorcycle from Toronto to Tofino, British Columbia, visiting corny landmarks and touching random strangers’ lives in unexpected ways as he goes. (Sound familiar?) Throw in a few cameos from Canadian rockers, an inevitable hockey reference or two, and some stunning wide-angle shots of mountains and prairie, and you get—as the Globe and Mail’s Liam Lacey puts it—an “alarmingly life-affirming road movie.” The film opens across Canada this Friday. There’s no word yet on a U.S. release, but we’ll keep you posted; I’m betting the scenery alone will make this one worth seeking out. Check out the trailer and see for yourself:
Morning Links: Mexico Travel Alert, Mardi Gras Tips and More
by Michael Yessis | 02.23.09 | 9:46 AM ET
- A bomb exploded in Cairo’s Hussein Square, killing at least one tourist.
- China has closed Tibet to international travelers in preparation for the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s exile.
- The Washington Post says the latest State Department travel alert for Mexico “reads like the plot of a crime thriller.”
- USA Today/Gallup poll: 58 percent of Americans “will shrink their vacation spending this year—or just not go.”
- Here’s what not to do at Mardi Gras.
- Tom Haines follows the wind in North Dakota.
- World Hum contributor David Farley will be speaking tonight at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C.
- The Christian Science Monitor has more on Lucca’s ban of ethnic restaurants.
- Is a lost empire concealed in the Amazon?
- Has Atlantis been found by Google Ocean? Google says no.
- Two travel books made the pages of The New York Times Sunday Book Review: Magic Bus and The Way of Herodotus.
- Another day, another mix-up: A pass for Philly Beer Week features the skyline of New York City. Really, how could you mix ‘em up?
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Missing Mardi Gras
by Jenna Schnuer | 02.20.09 | 10:23 AM ET
There’s a gaping evil awful hole in my collection of travel experiences: not only have I never been to Mardi Gras, I’ve never even been to New Orleans. (OK, while I’m admitting to things, I’ve never seen “The Godfather” either but I guess that’s an issue for another website.)
While I won’t be able to correct the situation by this year’s Mardi Gras, I plan to right the wrong come 2010. In the meantime, I’ll continue to obsess from afar. With a piece of King Cake and a ridiculously tall plastic cup filled with some sort of soul-drenching beverage by my side, I’m going to read and watch as much as I can about both Mardi Gras and New Orleans. After the jump, some of the goodies in my from-afar primer.
Morning Links: The Belgian Flair for Comics, New Orleans Street Theater and More
by Michael Yessis | 02.16.09 | 8:46 AM ET
- The investigation of the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 reveals sudden erratic movements 26 seconds before impact.
- The state of the Velib bike program in Paris isn’t good.
- The New Yorker’s Katherine Boo investigates a Mumbai slum located on land owned by the Airports Authority of India. (subscribers only)
- David Lyon looks at the comics-character murals of Brussels. He writes: “The Belgian flair for comics is as inescapable as Manneken Pis.”
- Nora Roberts’ Inn BoonsBoro—an inn in Boonsboro, Maryland, that features rooms named after literary couples—opens tomorrow.
- Wayne Curtis says “New Orleans knows how to do street theater like no other American city.”
- Benji Lanyado visits a pay-what-you-want bar in Berlin.
- Video: A woman goes wild after missing her plane in Hong Kong and becomes a YouTube hit.
- The Costa Brava is not the Bahamas—except in an ad for the Costa Brava. I’d say, “oops,” but it looks like the people behind the ad planned using the image of the Bahamas as a stand in for the Spanish coast. (via Shore Trips)
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One Traveling Man’s Weak-Dollar Dating Survival Kit
by Rolf Potts | 02.13.09 | 10:09 AM ET
With superior dentistry and monolingual charm, you too can pick up women overseas. Rolf Potts gets all Maxim magazine.
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: Stilwell Road, the Delta Queen and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.05.09 | 8:14 AM ET
Photo by David Raterman - The amazing story of Stilwell Road— written by an anonymous Los Angeles Times writer.
- Robert Reid offers some suggestions for helping struggling travelers’ destinations. Among them: An alphabet throwing contest in Rila, Bulgaria.
- Passengers “run amok” on flight from England to Cuba.
- Christopher Elliott finds seven videos the airlines don’t want you to see.
- Gawker compiles video from a month of cruise ship disasters.
- P. J. O’Rourke on Disney’s “Innoventions Dream Home,” aka the House of the Future II.
- The Delta Queen: A new endangered historic site?
- Student abroad and accused murderer Amanda Knox was voted woman of the year in an Italian poll. Her trial begins later this month.
- The Cranky Flier remembers the airlines we lost in 2008.
- The New York Times discovers buzkashi in Afghanistan. We covered it in Tajikistan in 2002 and spelled it buskaschee. What is buzkashi/buskaschee? Goat-carcass polo.
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Café du Monde in New Orleans: ‘Nostalgia Can Make Even a Local Into a Tourist’
by Joanna Kakissis | 09.08.08 | 2:00 PM ET
‘When the Levee Breaks,’ Then and Now
by Eva Holland | 09.03.08 | 10:00 AM ET
New Orleanians are letting out a collective sigh of relief following Hurricane Gustav’s less-destructive-than-expected pass through the area. This time around, thankfully, the levees held—but as Wired reminds us in this look back at the much-covered blues classic When The Levee Breaks, flood anxiety along the Mississippi had been around for decades before Hurricane Katrina, and isn’t going away anytime soon.
New Orleans Keeps An Anxious Eye on Hurricane Gustav
by Eva Holland | 08.28.08 | 1:40 PM ET
Although the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina falls tomorrow, residents of New Orleans have another major storm on their minds. Hurricane Gustav, currently hovering around Cuba, is expected to pick up speed over the Gulf and could arrive in southern Louisiana and Mississippi by late Sunday or early Monday.
Museum of the American Cocktail Opening In New Orleans
by Eva Holland | 07.17.08 | 1:33 PM ET
I don’t know if I can agree with the interviewee in this story who argues that “New Orleans has always been the home of civilized drinking.” I suppose that depends on your definition of “civilized.”
New Orleans Tourism Almost Doubled in 2007
by Michael Yessis | 04.22.08 | 3:29 PM ET
New Orleans welcomed 7.1 million visitors last year, compared to 3.7 million in 2006. Both figures fall short of pre-Katrina levels—10.1 million people traveled to the Crescent City in 2004—but the growth is a great sign for one of the most interesting and historic cities in the U.S. Travelers are returning despite, as the AP puts it, “concerns about violent crime, misgivings about having a good time when people are still rebuilding their lives, and misperceptions that parts of the city are still under water.”
Related on World Hum:
* Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?
* In New Orleans, A Streetcar Returns
Photo by Michael Yessis.
‘Three Tourists Mugged in the Quarter? No Big Deal.’
by Eva Holland | 01.08.08 | 12:35 PM ET
I’ve been following Sarah Hepola’s Nerve.com column “Crying In Restaurants”—a series of essays about her romantic misadventures, most of which involve (you guessed it) crying in restaurants. The series’ finale has all the humor, insight and almost-uncomfortable honesty as the first five installments—and it’s also a travel story. Hepola writes about her violent mugging in post-Katrina New Orleans, which, amazingly, has a happy ending: the mugging leads her, by way of a friendly detective, a nasty defense lawyer, a couple of NYC-NOLA flights and a whole lot of long-distance phone calls, to an outcome so good she’s no longer (you guessed it again) crying in restaurants.
Photo by David Paul Ohmer via Flickr, (Creative Commons).