Travel Blog
The (Frugal) Grand Tour
by Michael Yessis | 05.22.08 | 2:39 PM ET
Another year, another epic trip for New York Times Frugal Traveler Matt Gross. He just kicked off a modern version of the Grand Tour of Europe—on a budget. He’ll be filing blog posts, videos and stories for the next 12 weeks, more time away from home for the man with an intriguing outlook on home.
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Yahoo! BuzzDid ‘Easy Rider’ Get the South All Wrong?
by Eva Holland | 05.22.08 | 11:11 AM ET
I finally watched that seminal road movie Easy Rider for the first time. I’m always a sucker for a good road-trip flick, and, as expected, I loved the scenery, the music and the campfire-side musings about freedom. But as the credits rolled, I thought to myself: No wonder people in the South feel so hard done-by.
Foie Gras Returns To Chicago
by Eva Holland | 05.22.08 | 10:23 AM ET
It’s a victory for duck-liver lovers: the Chicago city council has overturned a ban on foie gras that was originally imposed two years ago at the urging of animal rights groups. Said one council member: “This is clearly a matter the council should stay out of and let the educated consumer and chefs make their own menu choices.” The repeal of the ban also means the end of another chapter in Chicago’s historic resistance to food-and-drink laws, as the illegal “duckeasies”—restaurants that had gone on serving foie gras without charging for it—will now return to the straight and narrow.
Related on World Hum:
* Sardines, Sushi and the Healthiest Diets on Earth
Trolling for Travel Stories in the ‘Sports Illustrated Vault’
by Michael Yessis | 05.22.08 | 9:55 AM ET
Sports Illustrated, a bastion of world-class magazine writing for 54 years, recently digitized its older content and opened a free archive called the SI Vault. What to read first? Five minutes of searching turned up some terrific travel-related stories: Wallace Stenger’s 1955 piece We Are Destroying Our National Parks, Tenzing Norgay’s four-part 1955 story Tenzing: Tiger Of Everest (pictured) and the classic I plan to devour first, The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch, George Plimpton’s 1985 April Fool’s hoax about a baseball player who visits Tibet to study to be a monk, wears a hiking boot on his right foot and throws a 150 mph fastball.
American Airlines Announces $15 Fee For Checking First Bag
by Michael Yessis | 05.21.08 | 6:33 PM ET
Christopher Elliott suspects other airlines will soon follow American’s lead, and the days of free checked luggage will likely go the way of free in-flight meals and sufficient leg room. Let the bitching begin. It’s justified.
Barbecue Goes Global
by Michael Yessis | 05.21.08 | 5:17 PM ET
Memphis in May’s World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, aka the Super Bowl of Swine, took place last weekend with some fresh blood: teams from Belgium, Norway and Estonia. How’d they do? Well, give ‘em a little something for the effort. “[I]t takes sheer guts to fly over from a part of the world where this way of cooking is fledgling at best and to try to speak the complicated language of barbecue with a French, Estonian or Norwegian accent,” writes the Washington Post’s Joe Yonan. “To then try as the Belgians did to win the whole-hog contest using the antithesis of barbecue—and a mere six hours—is like soccer star David Beckham jumping onto the field with the Patriots and the Giants and attempting to head a football pass.”
R.I.P. Diana Barnato Walker
by Eva Holland | 05.21.08 | 3:57 PM ET
Diana Barnato Walker, the first British woman to break the sound barrier, died last week at age 90. Walker got her start as a civilian pilot in Britain’s Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War, ferrying more than 240 Spitfires around the country. On August 26, 1963, she took her first flight at supersonic speeds, reaching a mind-boggling 2,030 kilometers per hour.
Rick Steves Blogs From Iran
by Jim Benning | 05.21.08 | 1:52 PM ET
He’s there to produce a TV show about travel in the country—and he’s on something of a mission. As he explained on the blog a couple of days ago:
New Travel Book: ‘Bar Flower’
by Frank Bures | 05.21.08 | 1:40 PM ET
Full title: “Bar Flower: My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess”
Author: Lea Jacobson
Released: April 15, 2008
Travel genre: Expats behaving badly
Territory covered: Japan
Hello Kitty Named Japan’s Tourism Ambassador to China
by Jim Benning | 05.21.08 | 1:00 PM ET
Congrats, Hello Kitty. You earned it. See, Tijuana? For your tourism mascot, you went with Xuani—frankly, an unknown quantity—and look at the mess you’re in now. I suggest following Japan’s lead. Think big. Think branded multilingual animated icon with global reach. Think of someone who’s not afraid to holler, “Vamanos!” Yes, Tijuana, I’m talking Dora the Explorer. Now that’s a mascot.
Related on World Hum:
* Eva Airways Harnesses the Power of Hello Kitty
Photo by antigone78 via Flickr, (Creative Commons)
Visiting Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul
by Jim Benning | 05.21.08 | 11:05 AM ET
Nobel Prize-winning writer Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City is “the perfect literary companion” for a visit to Istanbul, Ben Quinn observes in the Guardian. The memoir evokes 1950s and ‘60s Istanbul. Writes Quinn: “[F]or those seeking to avoid the tourism trail—revolving around the “old” city and the undoubted beauties of the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque—Pamuk reserves a special fondness for Istanbul’s lesser known quarters.”
Overanalyzing America’s Top 25 Tourist Sites
by Eva Holland | 05.21.08 | 10:51 AM ET
Forbes Traveler has put together a slide show of America’s 25 most visited tourist attractions, and—to this Canadian’s eye, at least—the list contained a few surprises. Or I guess I should say, the surprise was what didn’t make the cut: some of the most iconic “American” sites.
Commercial Air Service Has Disappeared From More Than 30 U.S. Cities
by Michael Yessis | 05.21.08 | 10:47 AM ET
Bad news for travelers looking to fly out of small and midsized cities. More than 400 airports have also seen the number of flights shrink, according to the New York Times. With rising fuel prices, we likely haven’t seen the end of the cuts.
Seasteading: The New Frontier
by Michael Yessis | 05.20.08 | 4:21 PM ET
From Wired: “If a small team of Silicon Valley millionaires get their way, in a few years, you could have a new option for global citizenship: A permanent, quasi-sovereign nation floating in international waters.”
San Diego’s Newest Tourist Attraction?
by Eva Holland | 05.20.08 | 4:01 PM ET
A recent cost-saving merger has resulted in the creation of an all-new tourist attraction in Southern California: the San Diego Maximum Security Zoological & Convict Reserve. According to its directer, the new facility constitutes “one of the largest collections of migratory birds, hoofed mammals, and hardened inmates in all of North America.” The Onion has all the details.
Photo by peasap via Flickr (Creative Commons)
