Travel Blog
Recommended Reading in Planes, Trains and Automobiles
by Michael Yessis | 02.12.10 | 10:52 AM ET
The Millions asks its contributors to recommend reading material suited to different modes of transportation. Sample recommendation for travel by train: “I like the Russians for train travel. When you’re watching the natural landscape—the largely uninhabited regions—of a country fly by in flashes, it just feels right to be reading stories that take place over the great land mass of Mother Russia.”
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzFacebook and America’s Social Geography
by Eva Holland | 02.09.10 | 12:45 PM ET
Here’s a fascinating map put together by PeteSearch, showing the regional connections between America’s Facebook users. The data creates some unexpected clusters and movement patterns: For instance, users in the northeastern states—dubbed “Stayathomia”—tend to have more local and fewer long-range connections, while users in the “Nomadic West” generally have more far-flung friendship networks. (Via Kottke)
‘Distance and Difference are the Secret Tonic of Creativity’
by Michael Yessis | 02.09.10 | 9:54 AM ET
Another welcome addition to the Why We Travel canon, this one from Jonah Lehrer. He recently wrote about the cognitive benefits of travel in the San Francisco Panorama:
Travel, in other words, is a basic human desire. We’re a migratory species, even if our migrations are powered by jet fuel and Chicken McNuggets. But here’s my question: is this collective urge to travel—to put some distance between ourselves and everything we know—still a worthwhile compulsion? Or is it like the taste for saturated fat, one of those instincts we should have left behind in the Pleistocene epoch? Because if travel is just about fun then I think the TSA killed it.
The good news, at least for those of you reading this while stuck on a tarmac eating stale pretzels, is that pleasure is not the only consolation of travel. In fact, several new science papers suggest that getting away—and it doesn’t even matter where you’re going—is an essential habit of effective thinking. It’s not about vacation, or relaxation, or sipping daiquiris on an unspoiled tropical beach: it’s about the tedious act itself, putting some miles between home and wherever you happen to spend the night.
Thanks for the tip, Todd.
Video: Saints Super Bowl Victory Party in New Orleans
by Eva Holland | 02.08.10 | 3:06 PM ET
I’m not much of a football fan, but as a traveler who got hooked on the Crescent City awhile back I can’t get enough of this video. From the music to the Magazine St. bars to the Mardi Gras-bead-wearing beat cops, it’s all NOLA.
(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates)
What We Loved This Week: ‘Point Omega,’ Vicarious Ramen and the Canadian Rockies
by World Hum | 02.05.10 | 5:21 PM ET
Photo by Kevin Fay Michael Yessis
Matt Gross’ story about eating his way through Tokyo’s “sprawling ramen ecosystem.” Made me long for a bowl of noodles—and another trip to Japan.
Men at Work Loses ‘Down Under’ Plagiarism Case
by Eva Holland | 02.05.10 | 2:29 PM ET
An Australian court has ruled that the flute section in the catchy travel song was lifted from “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree,” another Aussie classic that dates to the 1930s. Frontman Colin Hay has issued an emotional dissenting statement in response. Here’s the song in question:
New Travel Book: ‘China: Museums’
by Eva Holland | 02.05.10 | 12:21 PM ET
This illustrated guide to China’s many lesser-known museums is due out in April. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos has a thoughtful Q&A with co-author Miriam Clifford, on her favorite spots and the way China presents itself, to visitors and to its own citizens.
Museum Tags From Around the World
by Eva Holland | 02.04.10 | 11:39 AM ET
Fast Company takes a quick look at the origins and recent decline of the ubiquitous metal museum admission tag. Don’t miss the colorful accompanying infographic of museum pins from Zurich to Ontario.
Even Astronauts Want to be Travel Writers
by Michael Yessis | 02.03.10 | 1:19 PM ET
At least one well-known astronaut does: The one who happened to be stuck in the middle of the drive-non-stop-from-Houston-to-Orlando-allegedly-in-diapers love triangle. In reporting on the case, Florida Today notes that former astronaut William Oefelein and former Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman—she was the victim of a pepper spray attack by her rival—are currently running this travel writing website.
Welcome to the travelsphere, William and Colleen! Please note, however, that someone is already on the disposable underwear beat.
Repairs Begin at Machu Picchu
by Eva Holland | 02.03.10 | 10:22 AM ET
iStockPhoto With the last of the stranded tourists freshly evacuated from the flooded area around Machu Picchu, the question now is: When will the World Heritage site re-open to visitors? The AP reports that the damaged rail lines connecting the site to the outside world could take at least eight weeks to repair—in the meantime, many locals laid off from shuttered hotels and restaurants are headed to nearby Cuzco in search of work. The Sacramento Bee has a dramatic photo essay of the flooding, landslides and subsequent evacuations.
‘Up,’ ‘Up in the Air’ Go to the Oscars
by Eva Holland | 02.02.10 | 1:56 PM ET
As expected, a couple of the travel movies we’ve been following all year have landed some high-profile nods for the upcoming Academy Awards: “Up in the Air” has six nominations, while animated South American adventure “Up” has five; both are up for Best Picture.
Here’s the full list of nominees.
What We Loved This Week: Winter Carnival, El Cajon and ‘Bags Fly Free’
by World Hum | 01.29.10 | 5:55 PM ET
Douglas Mack
The Saint Paul Winter Carnival, which is one of my favorite things about living in the Twin Cities and a brilliantly counterintuitive celebration of one of Minnesota’s most infamous attributes. It supposedly began as a rebuttal to a New York reporter’s claim that Minnesota was “another Siberia, unfit for human habitation in the winter”—a view still held by plenty of people from warmer climes. But as I walked through Rice Park, marveling at the intricate ice sculptures and watching bundled-up kids (and adults) toss snowballs at each other, I couldn’t imagine why I’d want to be in some warmer, more boring place.
President Obama Says Yes to High-Speed Rail Plans
by Eva Holland | 01.29.10 | 3:46 PM ET
It’s not often that a major Presidential speech makes ears perk up in the travel media—but President Obama happily got our attention this week when he talked high-speed rail during his State of the Union address Wednesday. Here’s part of what Obama said:
[F]rom the first railroads to the Interstate Highway System, our nation has always been built to compete. There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains or the new factories that manufacture clean-energy products.
Then yesterday in Tampa he outlined where $8 billion in grants will go: A Tampa-Orlando-Miami route in Florida is first up, with projects in California, Illinois and elsewhere to follow. The Christian Science Monitor and NPR have more on the details.
And the response? Bruce Watson of Daily Finance is optimistic, pointing out that an improved rail network’s benefits go well beyond the employment created by the trains themselves. He writes:
For years, critics have argued that rail ticket sales don’t cover the cost of passenger service. However, the same could be said of America’s highway and airline infrastructure, both of which receive far more state and federal funding than Amtrak. The key point is that passenger rail’s profitability doesn’t accrue to the rail line—which will almost always operate at a deficit—but rather to the areas that it serves, where the influx of people will bring business opportunities, tourist dollars and other investment.
Time’s Bryan Walsh is more skeptical. He predicts that much of the money will likely be spent shoring up existing service rather than creating shiny new TGV-style lines, and adds, “America’s antiquated rail system will have to advance a long way just to make it to the present, let alone the future.”
Finally, Politico’s Josh Gerstein picks up on Obama’s recent quip about passengers keeping their shoes on when boarding passenger trains—and ponders why security is so different on trains and planes.
The Critics: Apple’s iPad and Travel
by Eva Holland | 01.28.10 | 6:15 PM ET
REUTERS/Kimberly White Apple’s latest gadget has inspired plenty of talk—and plenty of jokes—over the last couple of days, and among the travel media the big question has been: How will the iPad change the way we travel?
National Geographic’s Mary Anne Potts is enthused, calling the iPad “the ideal on-the-go device for work and play.” Martin Rivers of Cheapflights begs to differ, criticizing—among other things—the lack of USB ports and calling the gadget “a playback device that does very little unless you also happen to be carrying another machine.”
Over at Jaunted, they’ve posted two takes on the iPad—the first argues its merits for travelers, while the second points out its shortcomings. Blogger JetSetCD summarizes:
To put it simply, the iPad is all about media consumption and not creation. It’ll be great for reading eBooks, watching movies, surfing the web, referencing Google Maps and flipping through photos you have already transferred onto it from your regular laptop or desktop. That said, it is not a standalone device; you will need to travel with your laptop in order to upload pictures and video from your camera onto it and do anything on software that doesn’t work on the iPad (like Photoshop).
Finally, PhoCusWright Connect aims to get beyond the rehashing of the iPad’s specs and capabilities and look at the bigger picture for content producers—namely, “what does yesterday’s announcement mean to you and I, what should we do about it and what does the future hold for travelers interacting with our brand and content.”
R.I.P. J.D. Salinger
by Eva Holland | 01.28.10 | 2:07 PM ET
The famously reclusive novelist, best known for “The Catcher in the Rye,” has died at age 91. I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks of Salinger, and his “Catcher” protagonist Holden Caulfield, as being inextricably linked to New York City, and to Central Park in particular. Here’s a memorable passage from the novel:
I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.
World Hum contributor Beth Harpaz has a guide to Holden Caulfield’s New York City in USA Today.
