Travel Blog
The Detroit Dilemma
by Sophia Dembling | 02.26.09 | 9:32 PM ET
A number of years ago, I worked with a woman who was originally from Detroit. She loved her hometown and missed it terribly. I can’t remember her name, but I vividly remember the glow on her face when she talked about the city she’d left behind and to which she vowed to return someday.
I know, right? Hard to believe.
Yet Detroit has a draw, even if it’s a sort of pity vote. Friend and fellow writer Margaret Littman, also has a passion for the city. She says, “I love Detroit’s architecture and public art and wide boulevards. But more than that, I love that Detroit is such a microcosm of America: boomed thanks to ingenuity and innovative and now struggling with what to do next. Plus, I’m a sucker for an underdog.”
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Yahoo! BuzzThis Just In: Britain Doesn’t Have to be Expensive
by Eva Holland | 02.26.09 | 4:27 PM ET
Sure, London can be one of the world’s most expensive cities, and the pound has offered a punishing exchange rate with most other currencies over the past few years. But, having done the “starving student” thing there in my grad school days, I’ve always believed that the U.K. remains a prime destination for travelers on a budget. For every pricey West End stage production there’s a free, world-class museum, and for every swank celebrity-helmed restaurant there’s a tasty meal in a cozy pub. Don’t believe me? Here’s proof: 10 free cultural gems, courtesy of the Guardian, and, from the Independent, the country’s 50 best cheap eats. Both are good lists—the Guardian’s in particular gets bonus points for avoiding the best-known London freebies, like the Tate Modern, in favor of more obscure (and more geographically diverse) cultural institutions.
Playing Chicken in San Francisco
by David Farley | 02.26.09 | 3:25 PM ET
Chickens for pets and meat? Civil Eats checks out the “urban hen” trend happening in San Francisco. Like most people, I’d have a hard time killing something I’ve been taking care of for a while, but at the same time, knowing where your meat (and eggs) are coming from is a good thing. I once got flack from animal-rights people over a story I wrote about taking part of a pig killing in the Czech hinterlands. It’s true: it wasn’t pretty, but my critics missed the main point: raising your own animal and killing it yourself seems a lot more ethical than supporting factory-farming.
‘World’s Brainiest Tour Operator’ Now (Sort of) Affordable
by Eva Holland | 02.26.09 | 2:36 PM ET
For all the high culture addicts out there, good news from Arthur Frommer: British tour operator Martin Randall Travel has been spotted advertising in Harper’s, which means, as Frommer writes, “that tours with profound intellectual content will henceforth be marketed to the American public; the ‘dumbing down’ of travel may be significantly slowed through this effort.” The guidebook mogul figures the shifting exchange rate, which has made Britain much more affordable for Americans in recent months, is behind the unprecedented stateside marketing effort. The tours still aren’t for shoestringers—the all-inclusive packages hover around 300 pounds per person per day—but, as Frommer notes, they’re cheaper than comparable college alumni tours, and thanks to the sliding pound they’re within easier reach than ever.
The Iditarod: Worth the Work It Takes to Follow It
by Jenna Schnuer | 02.26.09 | 1:13 PM ET
Photo by Jenna Schnuer. For spectators, dog mushing is a hard sport. There’s no loop de loop on a race track. There’s no back and forth on a court. Once the dogs go by…they’re pretty much gone. Dog mushing as spectator sport takes patience, dedication, and a lot of reading (internet and newspaper updates of days-long races are key). But just one dose of a race, one chance to watch it in person, to see the connection between the mushers and the dogs and, quite simply, you’re sunk. It gets in you.
Agatha Christie’s Holiday Home: Now Open for Business
by Eva Holland | 02.26.09 | 11:48 AM ET
Britain’s National Trust will open the novelist’s beloved Devonshire summer holiday home, Greenway, to the public for the first time this weekend. The property was donated to the trust in 2000 and has undergone a 5.4 million pound restoration, with the aim of re-creating the house as it was when Christie spent her summers there in the 1940s and 50s.
Said Christie’s grandson: “What I wish most is that the people who visit it feel some of the magic and sense of place that I felt when my family and I spent so much time there ... If they do then our gift of Greenway will be worthwhile.” (Via The Book Bench)
In Taiwan, A Toilet Too Far
by Julia Ross | 02.26.09 | 10:57 AM ET
My great affection for the Taiwanese notwithstanding, sometimes I’m just plain baffled by the trends that take hold on the island. Case in point: toilet-themed restaurants. Yes, a chain called Modern Toilet now has nine outposts in Taiwan, and is apparently a hit among teens and college students. GlobalPost describes the fad this way:
“Here, customers sit on toilets and eat on covered washbasins. The most popular dishes are chocolate ice cream or curry chicken, served in a mini-toilet. Why? ‘It looks like poo-poo,’ explained Jary Wei, assistant manager at the chain’s Taipei branch. ‘The customers think it’s funny.’”
Charming.
Airplane, prison and hospital-themed restaurants have also caught on in Taiwan—more evidence that the island takes its cultural cues from Japan, which pioneered the trend—but, really, toilets?
In defense of Taiwanese college students, I’ll just say that I advised a number of them while I was living on the island and found them to be exceedingly bright and cosmopolitan. Then again, they’re under a lot of academic pressure, so maybe a visit to Modern Toilet yields some, uh, relief.
The Hutton Hotel: A Green Hotel Frenzy, Southern-Style!
by Alexander Basek | 02.26.09 | 10:17 AM ET
Currently in a soft-opening phase—the property just opened its doors last week—downtown Nashville’s Hutton Hotel is one of the most eco-friendly properties in the Southeast. Unlike a lot of other ostensibly green hotels with a program where they don’t change your sheets very often and that’s all they do for the environment, the Hutton bristles with technology that makes it greener and more efficient for the hotel. (In other words, it saves them money so, presumably, there’s oopmh behind it).
Inside, the Hutton is awash in bamboo—a highly renewable wood—on the floors and on the walls. The hotel even has a program in place to reduce waste from tiny plastic bottles for bathroom amenities, as well as dual-flush toilets. There’s also sexier amenities like media hubs for your electronics, digital controls for the shower so you can set a specific temperature and television displays in the lobby that turn into mirrors when they’re switched off. The hotel’s worth checking out because it cleverly slots into the Nashville hotel market; less upmarket than the deluxe Hermitage, but without the swarms of conventioneers that overrun Opryland every weekend. I, for one, wouldn’t mind digital shower controls of my very own, though I’d settle for real water pressure in my apartment as a close second.
Morning Links: A Wordy Map of St. Petersburg, the Joy of L.A. Traffic and More
by Michael Yessis | 02.26.09 | 9:38 AM ET
- New Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says yes to body scanners.
- World Hum contributor Tim Patterson chronicles the struggle of the Kachin people of Myanmar.
- USA Today looks at “what might be the most endangered airline in the USA.”
- NPR has an interview with the world-traveling ethnographers from The Linguists.
- Happy 450th birthday Pensacola, Florida.
- Matthew Polly goes to St. Petersburg, Russia, in Slate’s latest Well-Traveled.
- This map of literary St. Petersburg was created using lines from Russian writers about St. Petersburg. (Via The Book Bench)
- Daniel Fox aims to shoot more than 100,000 digital images from around the world for the Wild Image Project.
- The Freakonomics blog is in the midst of a six-part series about the facts and fiction of Los Angeles Transportation. I find it compelling, though maybe I’m just looking at the gray skies here in D.C., waiting for winter to end, daydreaming about my upcoming trip back home.
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India: Three Great Books
by Eva Holland | 02.25.09 | 6:32 PM ET
The literature about India is as vast and diverse as the subcontinent that inspired it. In 60 years of independence, the country has produced a truly intimidating list of award-winning writers, from Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth to Rohinton Mistry and Arundhati Roy, R.K. Narayan or Anita Desai. Faced with the impossibility of choosing just three novels from an endless list of great post-colonial reads, I’ve decided instead to go back further in time, to the days of the British Empire. The colonial period produced a few classics of its own, and since then, with the passing of time, new books have started to arrive that capture the colorful lifestyles, the dark patches of history, and the many oddities and implausibilities of the British Raj. Three great books:
The Worst Airline PR Ever?
by Rob Verger | 02.25.09 | 3:51 PM ET
Oh my. Sometimes, it’s hard to know where to start with a story as weird as this one.
Here’s what happened: Jason Roe, an Irish freelance web designer and blogger, posted an item on his website where he claimed he had found a quirky way to make the prices on Ryanair’s booking system drop down to zero. He followed up on the same post: “I did not claim to complete the booking process for a free flight. I found a bug that showed a 0.00 price listed beside flights. Orders could not go past the passenger details page.” (Whether the original posting implied that a free flight could actually be purchased is debatable.)
Tweeting for Kimchi Tacos
by Julia Ross | 02.25.09 | 2:43 PM ET
I’ve always envied the whole L.A. taco truck subculture; if I lived out there, I think I’d probably overdose on all the spicy goodness. Now that I’ve heard the story of the Kogi taco truck, I’m really jealous. Launched in November, the truck has gained an avid following for its fusion of Korean barbecue and traditional taco/burrito fare (imagine topping juicy carne asada with soy-sesame chili). But what’s really making news is the owners’ unusual marketing approach, which involves Tweeting the truck’s expected location a couple hours ahead of arrival, setting off a taco-minded flash mob.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the operation has become a “social networking juggernaut,” drawing between 300 and 800 people at each stop, with waits of up to two hours (Kogi staff play Japanese reggaeton to soothe the crowds). Even more interesting, it’s a bicoastal effort: Kogi’s public relations maven, Alice Shin, writes the Twitter feed and blogs about the truck’s doings all the way from New York. There’s a Flickr photostream, as well.
All I can say is: cool. I’d fly to the left coast just to check this out. Meantime, I think we need to send a certain World Hum coeditor up to L.A. on special assignment. Jim?
A Roundup of Airlines Fees
by Rob Verger | 02.25.09 | 1:37 PM ET
Airline a la carte pricing can drive you crazy. It can be hard to keep track of which carrier is charging for what. So, many thanks to the good folks at The Middle Seat Terminal for summarizing some of the fees different U.S. airlines are charging in a simple chart. Of the 10 major American airlines listed, all but three—Alaska, JetBlue and Southwest—are not charging for a first checked bag. For the others listed, each airline charges $15 one-way for the first checked bag.
Also, it’s getting more expensive to travel with pets.
In other fee-related news, US Airways has announced that as of March 1, it won’t charge for soft drinks and water anymore on flights. Thank you.
Here’s some more good news: prices to travel by air this summer are far lower than last summer, the AP reports. That’s partly to do with lower fuel prices and thus lower fuel surcharges. “Airlines added fuel surcharges last year as fuel rose to an all-time high in July” the article reports. “Since then, however, fuel prices have fallen about two-thirds, and many carriers have reduced or eliminated the fees.”
It seems to me, though—and I’m just thinking aloud here—that we shouldn’t get too used to these lower fuel prices.
The Agritourists and Locavores Will Love This
by Joanna Kakissis | 02.25.09 | 12:30 PM ET
Because it would be very satisfying to eat the vegetables you picked at that small and lovely pesticide-free farm during your vacation in, say, Crete or France or Spain and think that maybe you did a tiny little bit to save the planet from global warming.
Organic farms got a big eco-shout-out last week from the European Union’s commissioner for agriculture and rural development, Mariann Fischer Boel, who lauded them as “ammunition against the problem of climate change.” As The New York Times’ James Kanter noted, organic farming often produces fewer emissions than conventional agriculture because it uses fewer fertilizers and leaves soil more stable and better able to hold water.
I’m wondering if organic farms that double as eco-vacations spots may see an awesome branding opportunity here.
Pork on the Pali: Prohibited
by Pam Mandel | 02.25.09 | 11:30 AM ET
It’s a top tourist destination on Oahu; don’t blow it by traveling with the wrong meat.
There’s a Hawaiian superstition that says it’s forbidden to take pork across the Nu’uana Pali. Your rental car will die, you’ll fall off the edge, maybe you’ll be chased by bees or rocks will fall on you. Who knows what bad luck you’ll encounter if you don’t leave your bacon on the Honolulu side. Here’s the story from Wikipedia, though it checks out with a bunch of other sources, too:
According to legend, the Hawaiian volcano goddess Pele and the demigod Kamapua’a (a half-man-half-pig) had a turbulent relationship, and the two agreed not to visit each other. If one takes pork over the Pali, the legend goes, one is symbolically taking a piece of Kamapua’a from one side to the other, and it is said that Pele would stop that from happening.
Still unexplained? How Spam is transported from the harbor to towns on the leeward side of Oahu. Maybe it’s OK if you go the long way, around the south end. Whatever you do, finish up that Hawaiian pizza before you head up to see the view.
