Travel Writers Pick Their Favorite Airports
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 09.27.06 | 2:09 PM ET
USA Today’s Jayne Clark asks a handful of travel writers about their favorite airports in today’s edition. Among them: The Naked Tourist author Lawrence Osborne, who notes about his favorite, Wamena, Irian Jaya, on the island of New Guinea, “It’s the anti-airport. It has almost no staff. There is no glass in the windows, just naked men in pig fat jumping up and down.” Hmmm. Could be worth a trip just to see that.
Pico Iyer goes with Hong Kong. He writes: “Setting foot in Hong Kong’s new airport was the first time I felt I was stepping into the 21st century: The whole building is so airy and full of light, shaped like a vessel about to take off, that it speaks to me of the modern moment and the idea that a city itself can almost be a plane, made for people from everywhere on their way to everywhere else.”
The others surveyed are Lonely Planet co-founder Tony Wheeler, Donna McSherry of Sleeping in Airports fame and Greg Lindsay, who last year spent the better part of a month living in airports for an Advertising Age story.
Nobody picked Dubai, but USA Today also has an interesting story about its airport and how its built to be a destination unto itself. Terry Carter and Lara Dunston write: “Dubai Airport’s terminal area is the kind of oasis Versace might have imagined: Marble floors, towering live palm trees, gold decoration and beautiful mosaics make the airport an enormous, light-filled atrium.”