Travel Blog
Pomegranate Summers in Iran
by Eva Holland | 10.06.08 | 12:00 PM ET
Brittany Shahmehri takes a compelling look back at her childhood summers in Iran and Texas. “I was only 3 when my American mother and Iranian father gathered our few possessions and booked a one-way flight to Texas,” she writes in the Christian Science Monitor. “But once there, we continued to eat Persian food, with steaming saffron rice and fenugreek-laced stews, and, when we could find it, pomegranate.”
Photo by pizzodisevo via Flickr (Creative Commons)
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Yahoo! BuzzWorld Hum’s Most Read: Sept. 27-Oct. 3
by World Hum | 10.03.08 | 5:19 PM ET
Our five most popular features and blog posts for the week:
1) Q&A With Rolf Potts: Revelations from a Postmodern Travel Writer
2) Audio Slideshow: Promised Land Closed
3) Man Drives From New York City to Los Angeles in 31 Hours
4) South Africa: Three Great Books
5) The Long Descent: The $300 Surfboard Fee (pictured)
Photo by **spaceMonkey**, via Flickr (Creative Commons)
What We Loved This Week: ‘Tango,’ Cabrillo and ‘Encounters at the End of the World’
by World Hum | 10.03.08 | 4:23 PM ET
World Hum contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Michael Yessis
I spent Wednesday night at Washington D.C.‘s RFK stadium watching Mexico City’s Cruz Azul beat DC United in a CONCACAF Champions League match. A steady rain and second-team squads reduced the crowd to die hards, but the distilled experience of international soccer—chants! drums! capes!—made for a memorable night.
Xeni Jardin in Benin: ‘Do Not Taunt Happy-Fun Elephant’
by Michael Yessis | 10.03.08 | 3:57 PM ET
The latest installment of BBtv WORLD—“first-person glimpses of life around the globe”—centers on an “ambient exploration” of Benin’s Pendjari National Park. It’s not quite Battle at Kreuger, but an interesting “little experiment in trying to convey what this place feels like, first-person, without too many words,” writes Jardin.
Bee Colonies Thrive in Paris. Really, That’s a Good Thing.
by Valerie Conners | 10.03.08 | 12:33 PM ET
A French program to promote beekeeping in cities has yielded at least 300 bee colonies in Paris, some in the unlikeliest of places—like the roofs of hotels and the Paris Opera House.
A Traveler From Your Past Will Haunt You on Facebook
by Michael Yessis | 10.03.08 | 12:21 PM ET
And here’s what he’ll say:
‘Struggling Air Force One to Begin Selling Passenger Tickets’
by Jim Benning | 10.03.08 | 11:33 AM ET
If you believe The Onion, the next U.S. president will be traveling with, uh, the American people: “With oil prices hitting record levels, the United States Air Force announced today that it has begun selling passenger tickets on all flights operated by its Air Force One fleet in order to maintain the service as a ‘feasible enterprise.’”
Photo by http2007 via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
Venice Declares Victory in War on Pigeons
by Eva Holland | 10.03.08 | 11:30 AM ET
Good news from the Telegraph: since Venice’s pigeon-feeding ban came into effect this past spring, the pesky pigeon population in St. Mark’s Square has dropped from 20,000 to just 1000. City councilors are also reporting progress in the campaign against un-decorous tourists.
Photo by Il conte di Luna via Flickr (Creative Commons)
New Travel Book: ‘Indian Takeaway: One Man’s Attempt to Cook His Way Home’
by Eva Holland | 10.03.08 | 11:00 AM ET
In Indian Takeaway, author Hardeep Singh Kohli takes a foodie tour of the subcontinent, reflecting on the experience of being a British Indian while eating his way through countless local households and, bizarrely, rewarding his Indian hosts with some home-cooked British classics of his own—think toad in the hole and bangers and mash.
The World’s Greenest Museum?
by Joanna Kakissis | 10.03.08 | 10:06 AM ET
Renzo Piano’s design for the $488 million, 410,000-square-foot California Academy of Sciences is reaping accolades for its architecture (“an unusually rich, thoughtful and evocative building”), content (exhibits include a planetarium, rain forest and aquarium) and opening-weekend popularity (the entrance line was a mile long).
Scottish Hotel Puts Robert Burns’ Portrait on its Toilets
by Michael Yessis | 10.02.08 | 5:57 PM ET
His poem The Selkirk Grace also earned an honored spot on the lids. One of the owners of the hotel, the Selkirk Arms in Kirkcudbright, says he did it in tribute to Rabbie—the poet stayed in the hotel—and to “make customers smile.” Another point, but not one mentioned by the owners: It’s fine bathroom reading material.
Stretching Your Dollar (and Your Imagination) in Eastern Europe
by Joanna Kakissis | 10.02.08 | 5:13 PM ET
The Wall Street Journal offers the latest take on blooming tourism in once-forgotten cities such as Krakow, Ljubljana and Cesky Krumlov (pictured), which took years to attract as many visitors (and buzz) as Prague and Budapest. The upside: Discovering a beautiful new place without going bankrupt. The downside: Sometimes shaky infrastructure, young and crazy Britons on cheap beer-soaked weekends, and over-programmed package tours that make even the most mystic place “feel like a medieval Disneyland.”
Related on World Hum:
* Michael Palin: The New ‘New Europe’
Photo by Samuel Rufo via Flickr (Creative Commons).
Video: Award-Winning Film Shot in New York and Sydney—on a Cellphone
by Michael Yessis | 10.02.08 | 4:52 PM ET
Jason van Genderen’s “Mankind is no Island” won the top prize at the Tropfest NY short film festival last week with a street-level look at both cities. The film (see below) reminded me of sections of Helvetica—and opened my eyes again to the artistic possibilities of the cellphone, just like this film.
Playing With Maps: New Ways to See the World
by Jim Benning | 10.02.08 | 2:35 PM ET
The Telegraph has published an eye-opening series of world maps that re-work the size of nations to reflect various demographic and statistical truths about them. My favorite? This one (pictured, and much bigger here), in which the “size of each country indicates the proportion of international tourist trips made there.” Yes, Western Europe is huge. This one, in which India is giant, reflects rail travel. (Via Andrew Sullivan)
Travel Headline of the Day: Airlines’ On-Time Rates Up in August
by Jim Benning | 10.02.08 | 2:00 PM ET
Lest you think we only point out the bad air travel news. Baggage handling was better, too.
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