Travel Blog
Travel in 2017: Start Learning Chinese and Changing Your Eating Habits
by Michael Yessis | 10.18.07 | 2:59 PM ET
The Freakonomics guys aren’t the only ones this week with an eye on the future of travel. Forbes delivered a special report about “The Future,” which features some provocative speculation on travel in the year 2017 from World Hum contributor Elisabeth Eaves. Among her predictions:
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Yahoo! BuzzSearching for Authenticity In Florence
by Joanna Kakissis | 10.18.07 | 8:51 AM ET
When the gesticulating Italian selling printed artifacts said “baper” instead of “paper,” Shashi Tharoor couldn’t resist asking the follow-up question: “Where are you from?” “Florence,” the Italian replied defensively. “But before that?” pressed Tharoor. “Jordan,” the salesman replied. “Originally.” Tharoor, an author and former under-secretary general of the United Nations, explored authenticity in the age of globalization in a clever essay in Financial Times. He traveled to the historic Renaissance city—“with its self-conscious air of serving as a citadel of centuries of Italian civilization”—to find a Jordanian man selling traditional Florentine handicraft, a couple of Bangladeshi waiters who spoke Italian with a Sylheti accent, and a Japanese woman who worked at the fabled Farmacia of Santa Maria Novella. “Perhaps our sense of what is and is not authentic needs to change as well in our mixed-up world,” Tharoor writes.
The Freakonomics Quorum on Air Travel
by Michael Yessis | 10.18.07 | 8:37 AM ET
As the summer of our air travel discontent gives way to the fall of our air travel discontent, the Freakonomics guys pose a question to five airline industry heavyweights on their New York Times blog: What Will U.S. Air Travel Look Like in Ten Years? More specifically, Stephen J. Dubner asks:
Thomas Swick Takes On Agra Station
by Eva Holland | 10.18.07 | 7:59 AM ET
In his latest column in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Thomas Swick describes his arrival at the station in Agra, the former capital of the Mughal Empire and home of the Taj Mahal. Foreign train stations, Swick writes, “have always held a certain terror for me.” But Agra’s was even more intimidating than most: “I stepped over sleeping bodies on the sidewalk and rolled my suitcase into a human maze. Crowds engulfed the platform, grudgingly making way for porters, machinery, luggage, new arrivals. There was no visible information, though every once in a while a woman’s voice—soothing in this predominantly male world—descended from the PA system. I couldn’t understand a word.”
Venice Launches Locals-Only Vaporetto
by Eva Holland | 10.18.07 | 7:37 AM ET
The Mayor of Venice announced that a new route, Line 3, will be added to the existing vaporetto system. The addition to the city’s water buses will follow the Grand Canal from Piazzale Roma to Piazza San Marco—mirroring the existing Line 1, but open only to residents and, at one euro per ride, costing six times less than a regular fare.
Dreaming of Extreme Golf in Kabul
by Joanna Kakissis | 10.17.07 | 12:39 PM ET
If Mohammad Afzal Abdul was Kevin Coster, the Kabul Golf Club would be his Field of Dreams. Never mind that the nine-hole course in Afghanistan is a barren patch of earth and the greens are actually “browns”—a mixture of firmly packed sand and oil. And forget that most golfing vacations are usually in the beachy lands of glossy travel brochures instead of war-torn countries. As Mr. Abdul’s website states, this is “extreme golf with attitude.”
New Immigration Museum in Paris Confronts, Celebrates a Changing French Society
by Eva Holland | 10.17.07 | 11:55 AM ET
The Museum of Immigration History in Paris seeks to tackle one of the most incendiary subjects in France, and, according to a story in The Globe and Mail, its creators certainly don’t see themselves in an impartial role. “Ever since the word ‘immigrant’ appeared in our vocabulary in the late 19th century, it has had a negative connotation—connoting a menace, an inassimilable foreigner, a potential criminal, a polygamist and now a terrorist,” Gérard Noiriel, one of the curators, told the Globe. “Our job is to change that point of view.”
FAA Taking Hands-Off Approach to Space Travel
by Michael Yessis | 10.17.07 | 10:09 AM ET
From a USA Today story by Robert Davis: “In the latest space race—to lift paying customers out of Earth’s atmosphere—aviation safety regulators occupy a new niche: They are promoting an industry expected to suffer deadly accidents instead of applying strict safety rules.” It’s a function of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, which, according to Davis, treats the industry “more like an adventure business than an air carrier.”
Tony Wheeler on What’s Next for Burma Travel
by Michael Yessis | 10.17.07 | 9:45 AM ET
Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler writes in the Guardian that his travel contacts within Burma are reeling from the recent protests and the ensuing crackdown. However, he adds, boycotts and isolation are not the best response to recent events; he continues to be an advocate for travel to the country.
Is Colombia the New New Zealand?
by Eva Holland | 10.16.07 | 2:11 PM ET
We’ve been tracking Colombia’s rise from narcotics netherworld to “hipster tropical destination du jour” for some time now, and it looks like an upcoming potential blockbuster movie could help complete the transition. “Love in the Time of Cholera,” based on the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, hits North American theaters in November. Last week Jaunted predicted an accompanying movie-tourism explosion. Amandak writes: “If you haven’t read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s fantastic book Love in the Time of Cholera you should, now. It’s about to become for Colombia what Lord of the Rings was for New Zealand: a major tourism generator. The nice part is that Garcia Marquez really did set his book in Colombia, whereas the whole Lord of the Rings thing was kind of a scam, really.”
Bill Bryson Reveals the Value of a Good Travel Guide
by Michael Yessis | 10.16.07 | 1:31 PM ET
Yeah, I’m talking about the same Bill Bryson who famously took to the Appalachian Trail accompanied by his college friend, the “big soft flabby baby” Stephen Katz. Bryson admits in the first line of this piece in the Guardian that “Anyone who has read my books will know that I don’t tend to use guides when I am travelling.” Yet he was asked to help judge the Paul Morrison/Wanderlust Guide Awards, and the experience caused him to reflect on times he did use a guide and how important guides can be to a travel experience.
Monet, Twombly and the Price of Art Vandalism
by Eva Holland | 10.16.07 | 9:03 AM ET
Talk about an art lover. A woman who kissed a Cy Twombly painting worth close to $3 million—leaving a red lipstick smear that restorers have been unable to remove—went on trial in Avignon last week, charged with “voluntarily damaging a work of art.” The defendant, who described the kiss as an “act of love,” faces a hefty fine and a mandatory class on good citizenship.
Airlines, DOT Schedule Summit on Flight Delays
by Michael Yessis | 10.15.07 | 3:47 PM ET
Last month President George W. Bush asked airlines to meet with Department of Transportation officials to attempt to resolve chronic flight delays. Those meetings have been set for Oct. 23-24 at JFK Airport in New York, according to the AP.
Travel Headline of the Day: ‘Man Arrested For Watching Crap Film on iPhone’
by Michael Yessis | 10.15.07 | 3:37 PM ET
Too hilarious to be completely true, unfortunately. A passenger apparently was watching a movie on an iPhone—“I Know What You Did Last Summer”—on an ATA flight to Hawaii. Casey, as the passenger identified himself or herself in a rambling letter to The Consumerist, was using an iPhone in “airplane mode,” a setting that apparently disables all of the device’s wireless capabilities and, thus, adheres to FAA rules against using cell phones in flight. It didn’t matter to the ATA flight attendant, apparently, and a ruckus ensued.
China’s Three Gorges: As Environmental Catastrophe Looms, Beauty Lingers
by Joanna Kakissis | 10.15.07 | 10:17 AM ET
We’ve been reading for some time that China is choking on epic pollution produced by its push for fast growth. One of the victims, of course, is the Three Gorges, the once-beautiful, mist-filled river passage through tall limestone and sandstone crags. Since 2003, China has dammed the Yangtze, the country’s largest river, to create a reservoir that is expected to fill by 2009. The dam is expected to produce 20 times as much electricity as the Hoover Dam and reduce China’s reliance on polluting coal—hopefully reducing the smog that regularly blots out the sun. Already more than 1,000 towns and villages are underwater, and an iconic landscape has changed. But it’s still a beautiful place of rain-slicked trees and bamboo bushes and slender waterfalls churning into a jade-colored river, writes Mary Beth Sheridan in The Washington Post.
