Travel Blog
Inside the ‘2008 Typo Hunt Across America’
by Michael Yessis | 04.07.08 | 12:27 PM ET
My first thought about this cross-country “outreach mission of the Typo Eradication Advancement League”: Brilliant idea. Second thought: “Hunt” might be too strong of a word, since any traveler with an eye for typos knows, they’re in plain sight everywhere. Of course, since project founder, Jeff Deck, and his fellow typo-seeking travelers began their road trip last month, they’ve chronicled hundreds of typos. They’ve also corrected many of them because, as the project manifesto states, “only through working together with vigilance and a love of correctness can we achieve the beauty of a typo-free society.”
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Yahoo! BuzzSkybus Goes Bust
by Jim Benning | 04.07.08 | 11:21 AM ET
Um, just guessing here, but perhaps the Columbus, Ohio-based low-cost carrier should have charged at least a little more than 10 bucks a seat. A bargain is great and all, but travelers understand that you gotta pay the bills.
World Hum’s Most Read: March 29-April 4
by World Hum | 04.04.08 | 4:29 PM ET
Our five most popular features and blog posts this week:
1) How to: Use a Squat Toilet
2) Rick Steves, Drug Policy Provocateur
3) Out of the Wild? Alaskan Town Considers Removing McCandless Bus
4) Black Gold and the Golden Rule
5) How To: Cross the Street in Rome (pictured)
Photo by stanrandom via Flickr, Creative Commons).
What We Loved This Week: Cherry Blossoms, Vegetarian Haggis and NOLA
by World Hum | 04.04.08 | 4:20 PM ET
World Hum contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Julia Ross
April in Washington, D.C., means two things: tourists and cherry blossoms. Like many locals, I avoid the picture-postcard Tidal Basin like the plague this time of year—it’s wall-to-wall people—in favor of a suburban Maryland neighborhood called Kenwood. The enclave of multi-million dollar homes is dense with Yoshino cherry trees, and the streets this week were framed with soft arcs of pink popcorn-like blossoms. Japanese tourists have long known about the neighborhood and arrive in droves on the weekend, Nikons at the ready, but on a weekday afternoon, there’s no better place to welcome springtime in Washington, relatively untrampled.
House Hearing Reveals ‘Startling Disclosures’ About Airline Safety
by Michael Yessis | 04.04.08 | 3:37 PM ET
The scary news out of yesterday’s House hearing: The “problems at Southwest were far more widespread than has previously been reported,” writes USA Today’s Alan Levin. Federal inspectors who tried to report safety issues, he reports, were “repeatedly thwarted by senior government officials from reporting critical problems that compromised the safety of passengers.”
Slow Travel Rewards the Traveler (and the Environment)
by Joanna Kakissis | 04.04.08 | 12:49 PM ET
That’s what Ed Gillespie discovered during his 381-day journey around the world. The London native traveled by ship, bicycle and camel through Europe, Mongolia, Japan, Australia, French Polynesia, Mexico and Central America. He’s now working on a “slow travel” manifesto that asks travelers to embrace the experience rather than focus on guidebook-recommended landmarks.
In Kolkata, the ‘Last Days of the Rickshaw’?
by Michael Yessis | 04.03.08 | 4:08 PM ET
Calvin Trillin’s look at the fate of hand-pulled rickshaws in Kolkata (aka Calcutta) leads a terrific package on the subject in National Geographic. “To Westerners, the conveyance most identified with Kolkata is not its modern subway—a facility whose spacious stations have art on the walls and cricket matches on television monitors—but the hand-pulled rickshaw,” he writes. “Stories and films celebrate a primitive-looking cart with high wooden wheels, pulled by someone who looks close to needing the succor of Mother Teresa.”
Naomi Campbell Creates Stir at Heathrow, Sky Harbor Airports
by Jim Benning | 04.03.08 | 4:07 PM ET
The supermodel was removed from a British Airways flight at Heathrow Airport in London today on suspicion of assaulting a police officer. Judging by the nearly blank stares of my fellow travelers watching news of the incident here at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, she might as well be from Mars.
Don George: A Q&A with Jeffrey Tayler
by Michael Yessis | 04.03.08 | 3:33 PM ET
The two travel-writing heavyweights talk about, among other things. expat life and “the meaning of it all” in the latest issue of Recce. In the World Hum archives, we’ve also got Q&As with Tayler and George. And, of course, Tayler wrote our latest dispatch.
FAA Safety Audit Triggers Investigations of Four Airlines
by Michael Yessis | 04.03.08 | 9:38 AM ET
Ever since Southwest grounded more than 40 planes last month, the safety practices of the entire U.S. airline industry have come under scrutiny. Flights have been delayed and canceled, as planes across the country have been pulled in for inspection. Yesterday, a federal audit revealed that four unnamed major U.S. airlines are under investigation for not complying with federal safety directives.
Mayflower Hotel Gift Shop Cashing in on Spitzer Scandal
by Michael Yessis | 04.03.08 | 8:23 AM ET
Coffee mugs are selling out. Mayflower mints are going by the case. And “[t]here has been a rush on the Mayflower’s luxuriously soft white terry-cloth bathrobes,” writes Ylan Q. Mui in the Washington Post. The price tag on those robes: $69.99. Ouch.
United Grounds Dozens of Planes, Cancels Flights
by Jim Benning | 04.02.08 | 1:50 PM ET
Bad day to be flying United. The airline is busy inspecting its fleet of Boeing 777s, which, according to Bloomberg, “make up about 11 percent of United’s 460-plane fleet.”
Hard Rock Park and the Led Zeppelin Roller Coaster
by Jim Benning | 04.02.08 | 1:10 PM ET
It’s been nearly a year since we noted the coming Myrtle Beach Hard Rock amusement park, and particularly its centerpiece roller coaster honoring Led Zeppelin. If he were dead, I wrote back then, Jimmy Page would be rolling over in his grave. Well, Jimmy Page is still with us, and the truth is, he not only picked out the song that plays on the ride, “Whole Lotta Love,” but he’s billed as being instrumental in the ride’s creation. (All that while also apparently gathering quite a collection of Pre-Raphaelite art.)
Doing the Shoddy-Journalism-Charge Tango*
by Jim Benning | 04.02.08 | 11:00 AM ET
The Argentine Post details similarities between a March 16 New York Times story about Buenos Aires’ expat scene and a Jan. 15, 2007 Newsweek piece.
* Updated, 11:52 a.m. ET: We should note that a Times editor has responded, saying there was “no plagiarism at work” while acknowledging problems with the article.
Travel Headline of the Day: ‘Kanye West Launches Travel Website’
by Jim Benning | 04.02.08 | 10:17 AM ET
Some celebrities have clothing lines, some dabble in perfume. Why not travel?
