Travel Blog
Video You Must See: ‘Artificial’ in the London Underground
by Kevin Fay | 10.21.09 | 10:04 AM ET
Paul Bryan captures the artificial atmospheric conditions of the London Underground.
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Yahoo! Buzz‘But if You’re Worried About Bombs, Why are You Letting me Keep my Laptop Batteries?’
by Eva Holland | 10.20.09 | 4:31 PM ET
Webcomic XKCD tackles the absurdity of the airport security rigmarole. It’s funny because it’s true. (Via Boing Boing)
LIFE Magazine Opens up the Archives
by Eva Holland | 10.20.09 | 3:08 PM ET
Good news for all the travel photography junkies out there: Every issue from the very first in 1936 through to the end of 1972 is now freely accessible online. (Via Kottke)
The Case Against Bad Music in Public Spaces
by Michael Yessis | 10.20.09 | 2:05 PM ET
Peter Jon Lindberg makes a strong one in Travel + Leisure:
It would be revealing to compile an alternative history of Western music, focused solely on Songs Played in Hotel Lobbies and Cruise-Ship Corridors Through the Ages. You’d document a bizarro parallel universe, one where Michael McDonald is more popular than Led Zeppelin and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons trumps everything by Mozart. The Eagles would be more revered than Dylan; Jamiroquai bigger than Springsteen. And at the top of the pyramid, with her Nagel-print cheekbones, would sit Sade.
Lindberg also hammers resorts that “pump their newage right into the pool via underwater speakers.”
I’ll come clean here: The first and only time I heard music underwater in a hotel pool—Three Little Birds, Bob Marley—I liked it. Overwhelmingly, though, I’m with Lindberg: Keep Jamiroquai to yourself, world.
Photo You Must See: Burqas and a Baby in Kabul
by World Hum | 10.20.09 | 12:40 PM ET
REUTERS/Ahmad Masood Two Afghan women and a child walk down a set of mud stairs in Kabul.
Travel Song of the Day: ‘Déjalo Ir’ by Marta Gomez
by Jim Benning | 10.20.09 | 11:42 AM ET
Arthur Frommer on Mexico, Travel and ‘Irrational Fear’
by Eva Holland | 10.20.09 | 10:51 AM ET
Here’s some more good news for Mexico’s embattled tourism industry: Arthur Frommer has added his voice to the “No really, Mexico is safe for travelers” contingent. In a recent blog post, Frommer admits that hearing about his daughter’s planned trip to Mexico gave him a moment of fear and worry—but he goes on to explain why that fear was largely irrational, noting that she “returned singing the praises of Mexican vacationing and stressing the relative calm of the country.”
Of course, there could be more at work here than just knee-jerk concern about Mexico. After all, don’t parents—even guidebook-publishing parents of grown children—always worry when their kids travel overseas? As Rick Steves noted in our interview with him awhile back, “It’s natural for a parent to be nervous ... I just have to always reason with myself and think, I was 18 and my parents were freaking out and I was capable at the time.”
Video You Must See: Where Would You Want to Wake Up Tomorrow?
by Eva Holland | 10.20.09 | 9:56 AM ET
A film crew asks 50 people the same question on a Brooklyn street. (Via The Daily Dish)
Seth Stevenson: Innocents Aboard
by Eva Holland | 10.19.09 | 2:46 PM ET
Slate’s latest Well-Traveled series follows writer Seth Stevenson and three other novice sailors as they join the annual herd of “clueless” American boaters who “fly down to Tortola, rent enormous catamarans, float them out into the middle of the channel, and for the next seven days proceed to endanger every seaborne object they encounter.” It’s a good read so far.
‘Venice Doesn’t Smell’ and Other Things You Should Know
by Eva Holland | 10.19.09 | 1:54 PM ET
Over at WhyGo Italy, Jessica Spiegel offers some blunt myth-busting and advice about Venice. That infamously mediocre, overpriced food, for instance? It’s real but avoidable.
Photo You Must See: Wedding on the Great Wall
by World Hum | 10.19.09 | 1:07 PM ET
REUTERS/David Gray Actually, we’re not sure there was a wedding—but at the very least, a woman in a bridal gown poses for photos on a section of the Great Wall of China.
Fallows: ‘How I Survived China’
by Michael Yessis | 10.19.09 | 9:58 AM ET
The Atlantic’s former China correspondent reflects on the health issues he faced as an expat amid the “ochre skies and suspect sanitation of China.” The air quality there can be so bad, one doctor told Fallows, “I encourage people with children not to consider extended tours in China. Those little lungs.”
What will future air quality be like in China? In Beijing, at least, it’s already improving.
What We Loved This Week: The High Line, Kogi Tacos and a Ball of Twine
by World Hum | 10.16.09 | 4:43 PM ET
Photo by Frank Bures Eva Holland
I finally checked out the High Line, New York’s new(ish) elevated park, and I loved it. The creative-by-necessity use of space in this city, and the effort to sneak some greenery into any available corner, is one of my favorite things about it.
Travel and the National Book Award
by Eva Holland | 10.16.09 | 3:25 PM ET
The finalists for this year’s National Book Award have been announced, and there are a couple of familiar names on the list. Marcel Theroux—son of Paul, and a sometime travel journalist himself—is nominated in the fiction category for his novel, “Far North,” while Greg Grandin’s Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City landed on the nonfiction shortlist.
How the Waldseemüller Map Changed the Universe
by Michael Yessis | 10.16.09 | 2:43 PM ET
The Waldseemüller map was the first map to identify America, and as Toby Lester writes, it played a great role in Nicholas Copernicus’ argument that the earth revolves around the sun.
