Travel Blog

What We Loved This Week: ‘Up in the Air,’ Mariachi and ‘Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’

Eva Holland
I loved buying my first car. I’ve been plotting a trans-Canada road trip/relocation, from Ontario up to the Yukon, and now—with my tentative start date just 10 days away—I’ve got the wheels to make it happen.

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Video You Must See: From Denver to Singapore in Five Minutes

(Via Kottke)


Photo You Must See: Catching Air in Switzerland

Photo You Must See: Catching Air in Switzerland REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

A snowboarder performs a jump during a halfpipe event at the Snowboard World Cup in Saas Fee, Switzerland.


‘Ivory Coast = France = Japan’

That equation comes from a James Fallows post in the Atlantic, and he’s talking about language habits.

That is: in France and Japan, the deep-down assumption is that the language is pure and difficult, that foreigners can’t really learn it, and that one’s attitude toward their attempts is either French hauteur or the elaborately over-polite and therefore inevitably patronizing Japanese response to even a word or two in their language. “Nihongo jouzu! Your Japanese is so good!” 


Travel Song of the Day: ‘Lodi’ by Creedence Clearwater Revival


Travel Movie Watch: ‘Risk’

Travel Movie Watch: ‘Risk’ Photo by hellosputnik via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by hellosputnik via Flickr (Creative Commons)

News broke yesterday that a movie version of the classic board game is in the works, with Will Smith as a producer and possible star. Blogger Colin Boyd is excited about the project, but I’m not so sure.

My favorite thing about the game was always the board itself—if you haven’t guessed that I’m a map geek by now, you haven’t been paying attention—but I can’t imagine how a movie would capture that global sweep, the bird’s-eye view of people moving across the continents. I can only hope the producers care enough about that element of the game to try.


Photo You Must See: Yankee in Times Square

Photo You Must See: Yankee in Times Square REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

A New York Yankees fan in Times Square reacts to video of a play during game six of the World Series.


Photo You Must See: 32 Meters of Mao

Photo You Must See: 32 Meters of Mao REUTERS/China Daily
REUTERS/China Daily

A 32-meter (or 105-foot) statue of a youthful Chairman Mao is under construction in Hunan province, China.


The Best Movies of All Time, Mapped

Speaking of London Underground-style maps, here’s another good one: Hollywood classics, organized by genre along colored subway lines. Genius.


Shackleton’s Scotch: Coming to an Auction House Near You?

Two cases of the explorer’s drink of choice have been discovered under a hut at Cape Royds, apparently left behind after a failed 1909 polar expedition. The question now, of course: What will happen to the excavated bottles? If they do go to auction, maybe the lucky buyer will want to BYOB on Shackleton’s ship-turned-restaurant.


R.I.P. Claude Levi-Strauss

The famed structural anthropologist has died at 100. We blogged about his 100th birthday—and some of his travel-related accomplishments—just under a year ago:

Travel lit readers know him in part from his 1955 travel memoir of sorts, Tristes Tropiques, which begins with the memorable line, “I hate travelling and explorers.” More importantly, as NPR points out, Levi-Strauss “changed the world’s perception of so-called ‘primitive’ tribes in Asia, Africa and America.”


Photo You Must See: London’s Oxford Circus From Above

Photo You Must See: London’s Oxford Circus From Above REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth
REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth

Double-decker buses pass through the diagonal crossing at Oxford Circus in London. The new design was inspired by Tokyo’s Shibuya crossing.


Mapped: The U.S. Interstates, in the Style of the London Underground Map

See it in Senex Prime’s Flickr stream. (Via Coudal)


‘United Breaks Guitars’—And Loses Baggage

Dave Carroll, the musician behind the “United Breaks Guitars” protest songs, has been burned by United again. He wound up flying with the carrier from Regina to Denver last week—and, sure enough, he landed in Colorado without his bags. Fool me once ... (Via This Just In)


Travel Song of the Day: ‘Marching Bands of Manhattan’ by Death Cab for Cutie