Travel Blog
Real Madrid: The Theme Park
by Eva Holland | 09.22.09 | 11:07 AM ET
According to Reuters, the big-name Spanish football club is planning a “Disney-style” theme park near Madrid’s Barajas airport. The only hint about the park-to-be’s attractions so far? They will reflect the club’s “history, legend and values.” Bring on the carnies in Cristiano Ronaldo masks, please.
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Yahoo! BuzzThe Decline of the Traveling ‘Food Anthropologist’
by Eva Holland | 09.22.09 | 10:01 AM ET
Over at the VQR blog, Michael Lukas offers a lament for the days when cookbook authors—instead of being celebrity chefs sharing their singular visions—were more like “food anthropologists”: “They visited home cooks and chefs in their kitchens, beat the pavement, and found recipes in dusty archives.” The last generation of food writers, he argues, “had an entire world to discover.” (Via The Book Bench)
The Times’ 20 Best Travel Books of the Past Century
by Eva Holland | 09.21.09 | 5:17 PM ET
The venerable London daily has an excellent roundup, with plenty of attention to some lesser-known (these days) names from several decades past. Wilfred Thesiger, Freya Stark, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, Paul Theroux and Jonathan Raban hold down the top five slots. As a bonus, each entry includes links to the original Times reviews, interviews, excerpts and other archived material.
William Dalrymple on Travel Writing, Past and Future
by Eva Holland | 09.21.09 | 4:02 PM ET
The author of “In Xanadu” and “City of Djinns”—which landed at number 16 on our list of the top 30 travel books—has a thoughtful, if fairly grim, essay in the Guardian on the changing state of travel writing. Dalrymple opens with the story of his visit, with Patrick Leigh Fermor, to the spot where Bruce Chatwin’s ashes had been scattered:
Inevitably, it was a melancholy visit. Not only were we there to honour the memory of the dead friend who had introduced us, but Leigh Fermor himself was not in great shape. At dinner that night, it was clear that the great writer and war hero, now in his mid-90s, was in very poor health. Over dinner we talked about how travel writing seemed to have faded from view since its great moment of acclaim in the late 1970s and 80s, when both Leigh Fermor and Chatwin had made their names and their reputations. It wasn’t just that publishers were not as receptive as they had once been to the genre, nor that the big bookshops had contracted their literary travel writing sections from prominent shelves at the front to little annexes at the back, usually lost under a great phalanx of Lonely Planet guidebooks. More seriously, and certainly more irreversibly, most of the great travel writers were either dead or dying.
He offers a little hope further in. The whole thing is worth reading.
Travel Song of the Day: ‘Road to Nowhere’ by David Byrne
by Jim Benning | 09.21.09 | 2:38 PM ET
China: 60 Years of the People’s Republic
by Eva Holland | 09.21.09 | 1:33 PM ET
The People’s Republic of China will celebrate its sixtieth anniversary on October 1. The Big Picture has yet another stellar photo essay of the elaborate preparations for the big day.
Video We Love: David Byrne Cycles Times Square
by Eva Holland | 09.21.09 | 12:41 PM ET
0:19—“Lady, if I was a truck you wouldn’t be doing that.”
1:31—“Times Square, crossroads of the world.”
2:27—“Sometimes when I tell people I ride around New York they think I’m crazy. That may be.”
3:52—“If this were a bike lane, there would be a truck from New Jersey in it.”
What are the 50 Greatest Foods in the World?
by Eva Holland | 09.21.09 | 11:30 AM ET
The Guardian thinks they have the answers in this mouthwatering list. It’s a bold claim even by the standards of the lists-making-bold-claims genre, but still worth a browse.
Julia Child, French Cuisine and the Empirical Method
by Eva Holland | 09.21.09 | 9:59 AM ET
There’s an interesting nugget in this New York Times story about the French cooking community’s views on Julia Child. One cookbook author, after calling Julia Child’s recipes “academic and bourgeois,” grudgingly admits that Child’s methodical American approach—she spent years carefully testing her recipes—has its advantages. “The French think that they are natural-born cooks; they prepare a dish off the top of their heads, without testing it,” she told the Times. “In France, we rush over explanations.” (Via The Book Bench)
What We Loved This Week: Old Souvenirs, ‘Moon Belize’ and Granta’s Chicago Issue
by World Hum | 09.18.09 | 10:24 PM ET
Michael Yessis
Granta’s Chicago issue. I got my hands on a copy last weekend at the Brooklyn Book Festival, and loved what I’ve been able read so far, including stories by Don DeLillo and Aleksander Hemon, and Roger Ebert’s online-only piece A Bar on North Avenue. Also pretty great: Chris Ware’s cover:
Travel Movie Watch: ‘Road, Movie’
by Eva Holland | 09.18.09 | 3:08 PM ET
The Indian flick, which premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend, follows a young man as he attempts to escape the family business, traveling Rajasthan in an old truck loaded with film projectors and movie reels. To judge by the trailer, it’s going to be a good one:
There’s no word on North American distribution plans beyond TIFF, but if “Road, Movie” makes a splash at the festival—and assuming last year’s “Slumdog Millionaire” explosion has left plenty of viewers wanting another taste of India—I’d bet it will turn up in select theaters before Christmas.
Photo We Love: Dhaka’s Street Kids in Close-Up
by World Hum | 09.18.09 | 2:14 PM ET
Photo by Joanna Kakissis Street kids crowd around the camera in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Jon Krakauer Talks Chris McCandless and Pat Tillman
by Eva Holland | 09.18.09 | 1:35 PM ET
In this Daily Beast interview, the “Into the Wild” author talks about his new book on the NFL star-turned-soldier, and what Tillman and McCandless had in common:
They were both uncommonly idealistic. They were both pretty hardass in their ideals and sticking to them. But they chose such different paths—McCandless dropped out of society, while Tillman was all about living in this world and doing your duty. They were both very similar and very different.
Krakauer also explains why “Into the Wild” is his favorite of his four books. (Via The Book Bench)
Travel Song of the Day: ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’ by Gladys Knight and the Pips
by Eva Holland | 09.18.09 | 12:32 PM ET
The Triumphant Return of the Trabant
by Eva Holland | 09.18.09 | 11:41 AM ET
Yep, it’s true. The much-mocked East German vehicle of choice, which has gained a nostalgic following (or should I say ostalgic?) since the fall of the Berlin Wall, is coming back on the market—as an electric car. Wired’s Autopia bloggers, apparently immune to nostalgia, are horrified.
