Travel Blog
Travel Song of the Day: ‘Night Train’ by James Brown
by Eva Holland | 07.21.09 | 4:38 PM ET
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Yahoo! BuzzTravel Movie Watch: ‘Julie and Julia’
by Eva Holland | 07.21.09 | 2:19 PM ET
Here’s a promising one. “Julie and Julia” tells the story of Julia Child’s years as a Parisian expat, when she first tackled French cuisine, alongside the story of New York City blogger Julie Powell, who spent a year attempting every recipe in Child’s classic, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Meryl Streep plays Child—who was recently included in our list of ten inspirational women travelers—while Amy Adams takes on Powell. On top of the promising cast, Nora Ephron wrote and directed—cue the jokes about a recipe for success.
A Beach Book Bounty for Travelers
by Michael Yessis | 07.21.09 | 12:53 PM ET
Some consider this beach reading. Most people, though, want something a little fluffier. A little something, as NPR puts it, “enthralling enough to inoculate vacation-goers against the vagaries of missed flights and bad weather.” To find the best beach books ever, NPR has put it to a vote. They’ve narrowed down the list of nominees to 200. You can vote for 10 books.
You can’t go wrong, by the way, by casting one of your votes for Carl Hiaasen’s Florida romp, Sick Puppy.
Gadling, too, is in the mood for a beach read. Katie Hammel’s six great beach reads for travelers includes books from Bill Bryson, Rolf Potts and Eric Weiner.
How America Learned to Fear the Roundabout
by Eva Holland | 07.21.09 | 12:02 PM ET
Interesting tidbit from this Slate article calling for American city planners to embrace the roundabout. Turns out, our collective roundabout anxiety can probably be blamed on our European vacations:
Mentioning roundabouts seems to invoke some form of the famous “availability bias,” which leads people make judgments based on the memories that can be brought most easily to mind. And so, the American who may have driven as a tourist in France or Greece a number of years back will shudder with recognition, associating the roundabout with terror and near misses. But motorists with such memories often fail to consider that they were driving as tourists in unfamiliar climes, perhaps only for a few days. Roundabouts, like the language, the signage, the food, and just about everything else, were strange and novel, and so the tourist driver, already probably feeling a bit wigged out—for a roundabout in Italy is filled with Italian drivers—felt a heightened level of stress and thereafter consigned the roundabout to the dustbin of terrible ideas—or things that might be good for Europe (like socialized medicine) but don’t translate.
Arthur Frommer Rediscovers Small-Town America
by Eva Holland | 07.21.09 | 11:15 AM ET
The guidebook publisher who made his name in Europe has just returned to his boyhood home of Jefferson City for the first time in decades—and the result is an infectiously enthusiastic blog post on the joys of small-town America. Frommer writes: “Now I won’t claim that a visit to Jeff City is a big touristic opportunity. But to me at the time it was Athens, London, and Paris all rolled into one—and would you believe?—it lived up to every memory I had of it.”
Missouri road trip, anyone?
Mapped: Literary San Francisco
by Michael Yessis | 07.21.09 | 10:28 AM ET
The San Francisco Chronicle commissioned a beautiful map of San Francisco “composed of some of the very words—from novels, poems and essays—that animate our city.” It’s “loosely inspired” by the literary map of St. Petersburg, Russia, we linked to in February. (via @roncharles)
The Colony of LAX Parking Lot B
by Michael Yessis | 07.20.09 | 4:21 PM ET
Great story in the Los Angeles Times about a community of pilots and other airline workers that lives in trailers and motor homes in a parking lot at Los Angeles International Airport. Dan Weikel writes:
For several years, clusters of RVs were scattered around the airport’s parking lots until LAX officials decided to consolidate them in Lot B. Now operating as an organized camp overseen by the airport, it has an unofficial mayor, a code of conduct and residency requirements, including background checks, regular vehicle inspections and proof of employment at an air carrier.
The constant noise of the airplanes flying overhead would drive me nuts, but the residents of the colony don’t seem to mind. Or maybe they just have good white noise machines, like one of the three residents profiled in the terrific accompanying audio slideshow.
Vintage Postcards Get Invaded
by Eva Holland | 07.20.09 | 3:42 PM ET
Daily Dish blogger Chris Bodenner points the way to a fun Flickr gallery of vintage postcards—complete with photoshopped alien invasions.
This Summer’s Must-See Musical Has-Beens
by Eva Holland | 07.20.09 | 2:58 PM ET
Can’t make it to any of our favorite European summer music festivals? Never fear: Matador Nights rounds up the best of the has-been rock bands (plus one has-been boy band) that are on tour this season—and somehow, I don’t think they’ll all be selling out.
Farewell, Crocs?
by Eva Holland | 07.20.09 | 2:02 PM ET
Ah, cruel fashion. The Washington Post reports that the company behind the, er, distinctive foam shoes is in major financial trouble—and Crocs, so recently a hot item, could be on their way out. Fine by me. Now, any chance that a few other staples of the ugly tourist uniform—fanny packs, anyone?—could be vanishing, too? (Via Andrew Sullivan)
Travel Song of the Day: ‘Space Oddity’ by David Bowie
by Michael Yessis | 07.20.09 | 1:06 PM ET
Thanks, Eli.
Famous Underwear Displayed as Fine Art in Belgium
by Alicia Imbody | 07.20.09 | 12:23 PM ET
Belgian artist Jan Bucquoy has just opened the “Musee du Slip,” or underpants museum, a destination sure to appeal to those visitors already flocking to the nearby Brussels landmark Manneken-Pis. Bucquoy told Reuters that the framed underwear, donated mostly by Belgian artists, singers and politicians, represents a utopian longing for an equal society: “If you are scared of someone, just imagine them in their underpants. The hierarchy will fall and you will see that this is a guy like any other. We are all equal, all brothers.”
If you can’t make it to Belgium to see the aforementioned unmentionables, Bucquoy is planning a fall exhibition in Paris where he hopes to showcase underwear from Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni, and perhaps long shots like the Pope or Iranian President Ahmadinejad, articles he’s sure tourists would line up to see.
Rory Stewart on our ‘Dystopian Vision’ of Afghanistan
by Eva Holland | 07.20.09 | 11:25 AM ET
In a long piece on the future of Afghanistan, Rory Stewart makes a point about the country’s usual image in the media:
“We are accustomed to seeing Afghans through bars, or smeared windows, or the sight of a rifle: turbaned men carrying rockets, praying in unison, or lying in pools of blood; boys squabbling in an empty swimming-pool; women in burn wards, or begging in burqas,” he writes. “Kabul is a South Asian city of millions. Bollywood music blares out in its crowded spice markets and flower gardens, but it seems that images conveying colour and humour are reserved for Rajasthan.”
It’s not the first time the author of “The Places in Between” has spoken out on the subject. (Via Andrew Sullivan)
R.I.P. Frank McCourt
by Eva Holland | 07.20.09 | 10:29 AM ET
The author of “Angela’s Ashes,” the Pulitzer-winning memoir about his impoverished Irish childhood, has died at 78. The Limerick Leader looks back at McCourt’s last visit to his childhood home, when he tagged along on the “Angela’s Ashes” walking tour, while Book Bencher Cressida Leyshon remembers editing the first excerpts of the unpublished manuscript for The New Yorker.
What We Loved This Week: Cat Cafes, Robert Service and ‘Transsiberian’
by World Hum | 07.17.09 | 4:02 PM ET
Photo by Lisa Gay Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Eva Holland
I visited the Robert Service Cabin in Dawson City, Yukon, last weekend—it’s a two-room log house where Service lived for three years writing poetry, now maintained as part of a National Historic Site—and I loved seeing an enthusiastic performer tell us about the life and work of the “Bard of the Yukon.” Here’s one of the poems I heard during the performance: Goodbye, Little Cabin, a farewell verse Service wrote before leaving Dawson for good in 1912, to serve as a war correspondent in Europe.
