Tag: Why We Travel

Video: Matt Gross on ‘Big Think’

The New York Times' Frugal Traveler and World Hum contributor shares his thoughts on travel and home.

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An Ode to Hawaii’s Messy Reality

Over at Nerd’s Eye View, World Hum contributor and Hawaii enthusiast Pam Mandel ponders the typical expectations of visitors to the islands, and how they stack up against the reality she’s gotten to know and love. From the post:

It’s weird to have a long term relationship with a place that isn’t my home. I’m keen to the flaws but part of my heart remains in the islands… [O]n my last trip there, I watched a traveler open the envelope and take out that staged photo, and, then, respond with such disappointment at the real thing. How can a place stack up against such oppressive expectations? Why would Hawaii want to be our Shangri-La, our Atlantis, our Bali Hai? It’s so much work, too much makeup, the lighting and the filters and the fiction to make a place paradise belies what’s really there.

And I’m good with what’s really there.


Interview With Andrew Potter: Travel and the Search for Authenticity

Michael Yessis asks the author of "The Authenticity Hoax" if authentic travel experiences exist -- and about the cost of our search for them

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A Traveler at Dawn

A Traveler at Dawn Larry Clark

Larry Clark revels in the promise of the day's first light

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Daisann McLane: On Letting Go of the Places We Love

Her latest column in National Geographic Traveler is likely to resonate with most travel junkies:

[T]he villagers are no longer novel to me and I’m no longer a novelty to them. Dogs that used to bark and snarl when I passed now run up to me, tails wagging. All the signs are telling me: Move on. Still, the idea of packing up, leaving behind the dogs, the yoga on the beach, the chatty shopkeepers, and the spectacular sunrises puts my stomach in a knot. Even after thousands of miles and hundreds of trips, there is one thing that completely fazes me whenever I travel to a place: the leaving of it.


The Sweetness of Brazil

The Sweetness of Brazil iStockPhoto

In the World Heritage city of Ouro Preto, on Brazil's fine appreciation of life's everyday gifts

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Among the Cherry Blossoms in Washington, D.C.

Celebrating the arrival of spring and powerful words on a visit to the FDR Memorial

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Super Freaky in Havana

Super Freaky in Havana REUTERS

With some help from the locals (and Rick James), Lauren Quinn lets down her well-learned defenses

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Not-So-Flattering Views of Famous European Landmarks

Duomo Florence Italy Doug Mack

Doug Mack takes bad travel photos. And by bad we mean gritty and honest.

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On Becoming a Tour Guide

new orleans tilt shift Photo by Wayne Curtis

Not just any tour guide. Wayne Curtis passed the drug test and is now officially licensed in New Orleans. You are now required to believe everything he says -- even that bit about Brad Pitt.

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Paying Respect to Buddha in Boston

Paying Respect to Buddha in Boston iStockPhoto

At a Boston park, Shelley Miller learned that a little Cantonese will go a long way

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76-Second Travel Show: What Does Travel Teach Us?

Robert Reid poses his latest question to the experts at the New York Times Travel Show

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Beer Across Vancouver

Beer Across Vancouver iStockPhoto

Jeff Kaczmarczyk got a little lost in the British Columbia city. But maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.

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‘Distance and Difference are the Secret Tonic of Creativity’

Another welcome addition to the Why We Travel canon, this one from Jonah Lehrer. He recently wrote about the cognitive benefits of travel in the San Francisco Panorama:

Travel, in other words, is a basic human desire. We’re a migratory species, even if our migrations are powered by jet fuel and Chicken McNuggets. But here’s my question: is this collective urge to travel—to put some distance between ourselves and everything we know—still a worthwhile compulsion? Or is it like the taste for saturated fat, one of those instincts we should have left behind in the Pleistocene epoch? Because if travel is just about fun then I think the TSA killed it.

The good news, at least for those of you reading this while stuck on a tarmac eating stale pretzels, is that pleasure is not the only consolation of travel. In fact, several new science papers suggest that getting away—and it doesn’t even matter where you’re going—is an essential habit of effective thinking. It’s not about vacation, or relaxation, or sipping daiquiris on an unspoiled tropical beach: it’s about the tedious act itself, putting some miles between home and wherever you happen to spend the night.

Thanks for the tip, Todd.


76-Second Travel Show: A Valentine for Cold-Weather Travel

Robert Reid sends his love a few weeks early, with help from "cold expert" Eva Holland

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Nine Subversive Travel Novels

Thomas Kohnstamm celebrates fiction that uncovers deeper truths about travel and the world

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Resolutions for Travel in the New Year

On what he wants to do more of in 2010, from taking photos to embracing technology

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The Best Travel Videos of 2009

The Best Travel Videos of 2009 iStockPhoto

We watched a lot of travel videos this year to come up with these: the 12 most hilarious, moving and memorable

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Beyond Airworld

Beyond Airworld Photo by Jim Benning

"Up in the Air" illuminates the bittersweet challenge of the traveler's life. Rob Verger explains.

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Labor Day (Japanese Style)

On an ethereal November day in Kyoto

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