Travel Blog
Travel Song of the Day: ‘Thompson Girl’ by The Tragically Hip
by Eva Holland | 10.26.09 | 12:03 PM ET
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Yahoo! BuzzWhat We Loved This Week: Discarded Neon, Hemingway in Idaho and ‘The Places in Between’
by World Hum | 10.23.09 | 4:43 PM ET
Pam Mandel
The Neon Boneyard: Two fenced lots north of the Las Vegas strip hold an amazing collection of decaying giant typography. The Neon Museum has big plans to restore a Googie-style clamshell building as their visitor’s center, but for now, the signs sit gathering dust and frustrating camera happy modernists for whom the one hour tour is way too short.
Photo You Must See: Flag-Waving in Montevideo, Uruguay
by World Hum | 10.23.09 | 3:56 PM ET
Suporters of Uruguayan party Frente Amplio fill the streets for a campaign rally in the capital, Montevideo.
Travel Song of the Day: ‘Paris’ By Yael Naim
by Jim Benning | 10.23.09 | 2:28 PM ET
What Does 66 Cents Buy You in Peru?
by Eva Holland | 10.23.09 | 12:19 PM ET
Over at Uncornered Market, Daniel and Audrey are contemplating value and relativity—by rounding up several 66-cent purchases.
Chinatown Face-off: Mandarin vs. Cantonese
by Michael Yessis | 10.23.09 | 9:59 AM ET
Until recently, Cantonese dominated the conversation in Chinatowns around North America. Now “Mandarin is pushing into Chinatown’s heart,” writes Kirk Semple. He writes:
The change can be heard in the neighborhood’s lively restaurants and solemn church services, in parks, street markets and language schools. It has been accelerated by Chinese-American parents, including many who speak Cantonese at home, as they press their children to learn Mandarin for the advantages it could bring as China’s influence grows in the world.
Video: Above the Clouds
by Eva Holland | 10.22.09 | 4:57 PM ET
Up in the Air director Jason Reitman just posted this short clip from cruising altitude. It’s lovely.
Is This a New Golden Age for Train Travel?
by Eva Holland | 10.22.09 | 3:43 PM ET
Tony Naylor doesn’t think so. In this piece in the Guardian, he argues that rail travel isn’t the comfortable, scenic, low-carbon alternative to to air travel that it’s cracked up to be. Here’s a taste:
Four years ago, I decided to limit the number of times I would fly each year to one transatlantic flight, or two within Europe… The idea of the train as a far more authentic and civilised—not to mention non-lethal—mode of travel was seductive.
The reality, however, is more complex. You see more of the world, for sure, but that is a mixed blessing.
The Man in Seat 61 responds here.
Travel Song of the Day: ‘Blue Canadian Rockies’ by The Byrds
by Michael Yessis | 10.22.09 | 2:39 PM ET
Video: Travel Experts Weigh in on Window vs. Aisle
by Eva Holland | 10.22.09 | 1:16 PM ET
The latest episode of Robert Reid’s 76-second Travel Show tackles the dilemma that’s as old as commercial air travel: Window or aisle? Our own Jim Benning is among the experts being polled.
Endless Travel Writing Ethics Debate Gets Gawkerized*
by Eva Holland | 10.22.09 | 12:12 PM ET
And here I thought only our little corner of the writing community cared about the ongoing press trip debate. Apparently not. Yesterday, Daily Finance outed New York Times contributor Mike Albo as a taker of press trips, describing Albo’s recent Jamaica junket as a “swag orgy.” Now Gawker’s gotten involved, too, pointing out to the Times’ higher-ups that one of their freelancers was in violation of their no-freebies policy. The Times has acknowledged that the paper has “concerns” about the trip.
As for Mike Albo? Here’s his latest tweet: “do you ever feel like you are a guppy who is being eaten by his mother?”
*Update 12:59 p.m. ET: We’re debating the issue on Twitter at #twethics.
New Travel Book: ‘Save the Deli’
by Eva Holland | 10.21.09 | 3:40 PM ET
Here’s one for traveling pastrami-lovers everywhere.
“Save the Deli” follows author David Sax around Europe and North America in search of a shrinking number of Jewish delicatessens—and, though the project was driven by fears for a declining institution, the result seems to be a hopeful one.
In a letter to potential readers posted on Amazon, Sax addresses the “heresy” of his search for the deli in such unlikely spots as Salt Lake City or Brussels:
Three years ago, when I began working on this book, I too had fallen prey to the misguided notion that great deli was only confined to New York and Montreal. Anything outside those cities had to be a pale imitation. I, like many Jewish deli lovers, was narrow-minded, could see and imagine no further than the local delicatessen I frequented…a village simpleton who knows nothing beyond his little shtetl and the salamis therein.
But as I hit the road, in search of the story of delicatessen in American and around the world, I tasted revelation after revelation.
Publishers Weekly describes these revelations as “joyful moments in this otherwise elegiac travelogue,” and notes that the book’s “well-crafted portraits don’t string together perfectly, but individual chapters shine.”
London’s Heathrow: The Worst Airport in the World?
by Eva Holland | 10.21.09 | 2:02 PM ET
Poor Heathrow. It’s taken the title in a passenger poll for the second year in a row. Charles de Gaulle, LAX, Frankfurt and Miami rounded out the bottom five.
Montreal vs. New York City: The Hotdog Showdown
by Eva Holland | 10.21.09 | 12:36 PM ET
Last year we blogged the great bagel debate. Now, Gadling weighs in on another staple.
Travel Song of the Day: ‘Maps’ by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
by Eva Holland | 10.21.09 | 10:58 AM ET
