Travel Blog
Travels With Nicholas Kristof: ‘There is no High-Five in Rwanda’
by Michael Yessis | 06.15.07 | 8:35 AM ET
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reprised his Win a Trip With Nick contest this year, and he and the two winners—a teacher from Chicago, Will Okun, and a a Rhodes Scholar-elect, Leana S. Wen—have landed in Rwanda.
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Yahoo! BuzzRick Steves: ‘Happy Travels—Even to Tijuana’
by Jim Benning | 06.14.07 | 4:20 PM ET
Can you smell it, the sweet smell of success? Or at least the semi-sweet smell of partial success? Earlier this week, in our Speaker’s Corner section, I invited travel guru Rick Steves to a full-on, mano a mano Tijuana-Off after he suggested off-handedly that my favorite Mexican border city was a hellhole.
Rocking Diplomacy: Fulbright-mtvU Fellowships
by Julia Ross | 06.14.07 | 3:01 PM ET
As someone just finishing up a Fulbright grant in Taiwan, I’m convinced one-to-one international exchange will do a lot more for the United States’ image abroad than some of the highly-spun messaging we’ve heard out of Washington. So I was pleased to see the U.S. State Department push the Fulbright program into the 21st century with four new grants to study global music culture, awarded in collaboration with mtvU, MTV’s 24-7 campus network. It’s a partnership about as unlikely as, say, Condi Rice joining the cast of “The Real World,” but it just might help give sagging U.S. public diplomacy efforts a shot in the arm.
Monastery Travel: ‘There Was, I Thought at the Time, no More Foreign Place I Could Visit’
by Michael Yessis | 06.14.07 | 11:05 AM ET
Slate’s latest Well-Traveled chronicles Inigo Thomas’s journey to Pluscarden Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in northern Scotland. Thomas doesn’t quite declare monastery travel a trend, but he writes that more people do it than one might think. “If monasticism isn’t thriving as it did in medieval Europe, neither is it dying,” he writes. “Going on retreats to monasteries, whether they are Christian or Buddhist or semimonastic institutions, seems more popular than ever.”
Rome’s Trevi Fountain Flows Despite Aqua Virgo Damage
by Michael Yessis | 06.14.07 | 10:44 AM ET
Aqua Virgo, a more than 2,000-year-old underground Roman aqueduct responsible for feeding the globally-famous, coin-filled Trevi Fountain (pictured), has been damaged during the construction of an underground garage. The accident caused the water to stop flowing to the fountain, but, according to the BBC, water from another aquduct has been “redirected to the Trevi to avoid the spectacle of it running dry.” Travelers to Rome, then, will be able to continue to throw their coins in the fountain to ensure a return trip to the Eternal City.
‘No Particular Place to Go’: A BBC Radio Celebration of Great Works of British Travel Literature
by Michael Yessis | 06.13.07 | 4:40 PM ET
It’s a feast of British travel writing this week on BBC Radio 3. The program The Essay is featuring audio essays by modern travel writers about great works of travel literature written by British authors—“books that changed the way we saw the world and the art of writing about it,” according to the promo copy. It started Monday with William Dalrymple discussing Fanny Parkes and her book about India, “A Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque.” The rest of the schedule:
Who’s Slowing Down a High-Speed Train in California?
by Jim Benning | 06.13.07 | 4:20 PM ET
Oh, to be able to hop on a high-speed train like this French TGV to breeze through California. High-speed rail has serious support among the public and in the state legislature, according to a recent story in San Diego CityBeat. So who’s standing in the way? According to Steven T. Jones’s report, it’s none other than Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who in the case of high-speed rail really does seem to be The Terminator. Writes Jones: “While posing for the April 16 cover of Newsweek with the headline ‘Save the Planet—or Else’ and touting himself around the world as an environmental leader, Schwarzenegger has quietly sought to kill—or at least delay beyond his term—high-speed rail.”
Learning Mandarin and Spanish by MP3 and Skype
by Julia Ross | 06.13.07 | 2:45 PM ET
Learning Chinese is a long road: After nine months of full-time study in Taipei, I’m still grappling with getting my tones right and suffer the occasional blank look from the clerk at my local 7-Eleven. While I’ve learned grammar and characters in the classroom, I’ve found another, less traditional source a big help with day-to-day conversation: Chinesepod.com. It’s the go-to site for most Mandarin students I know, offering free, daily podcasts that introduce dialogues on useful topics like how to break up with your boyfriend. Lessons, given by podcast “hosts” who banter like DJs, are downloadable in MP3 format, so you can drop them into your iPod and go; more devoted students can sign up for voice lessons via Skype.
Japan’s Mount Fuji: Icon, Garbage Dump
by Jim Benning | 06.13.07 | 2:07 PM ET
At least we have Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji, including the one pictured here, to remember what the iconic Japanese mountain used to look like. According to an AP report, the forests at the base of Mount Fuji are strewn with rubbish these days. “We’ve found everything from household trash to broken TV sets and other appliances,” observed one environmentalist. “Sometimes we find hazardous materials like leaky old car batteries.”
‘Rome Reborn’: Journey to the Eternal City, Circa 320 AD
by Michael Yessis | 06.13.07 | 11:15 AM ET
To June 21 of that year, to be exact. Earlier this week, the University of Virginia and its partner institutions unveiled Rome Reborn 1.0, a digital model of ancient Rome as it appeared during the time of emperor Constantine. It’s designed for scholars and virtual tourists, and early reports about the project sound impressive. The AP’s Ariel David writes: “When in virtual Rome, visitors will be able do to even more than ancient Romans did: They can crawl through the bowels of the Colosseum, filled with lion cages and primitive elevators, and fly up for a detailed look at bas-reliefs and inscriptions placed atop triumphal arches.”
Two Words on Being a Better Traveler: ‘Be Counterintuitive’
by Michael Yessis | 06.13.07 | 10:42 AM ET
Wall Street Journal travel writer Stan Sesser, a man with 40-plus years experience on the road, says that’s the key to escaping what he calls the “tourist bubble.” “When conventional wisdom tells you to do A, consider doing B,” he writes. “In practice, this might be something as simple as eating food from a street vendor or as heart-stopping as going to a country when everyone else is fleeing it. Counterintuitive thinking inevitably gets me out of the bubble, and even though it might provoke some anxiety, it usually works out fine.”
From Caterer to Nanny, More Ideas For Overseas Jobs
by Jim Benning | 06.12.07 | 3:54 PM ET
We’ve covered ways to work abroad before—Rolf Potts recently suggested a variety of job possibilities, from hotel clerk to dive instructor—but the more ideas the better, as far as we’re concerned. Now, CareerBuilder.com proposes a few more travel friendly gigs worth considering.
From Antarctica to the Silk Road: More From the New York Times ‘Photography Issue’
by Michael Yessis | 06.12.07 | 2:18 PM ET
Howard W. French’s slide show and essay on Shanghai’s old quarters, which we recently posted about, isn’t the only piece in Sunday’s New York Times travel section worthy of note. The “Photography Issue” features several sharp audio slide shows, including Jehad Nga’s look at the Silk Road and Heidi Schumann’s tale of following in Ernest Shackleton’s wake in Antarctica, as well as a compelling essay by Richard B. Woodward about the intertwined history of photography and travel.
Secret Shanghai: Old Streets and Etched Faces Tell the Tale
by Julia Ross | 06.12.07 | 12:00 PM ET
Shanghai’s Fangbang Road is one of those places where time stands still. A stroll down the winding, dusty lane is a window into Chinese urban life untouched by modern artifice: Leathery-faced farmers sell produce from bicycle carts and spouses bicker in the street, much as they probably did 50 years ago. I stumbled onto Fangbang one Saturday afternoon when I lived in Shanghai in 2002 and was immediately seduced by its gritty chaos. It seemed almost like something from a movie set, and I eventually came to think of it as my own secret corner of the city, unknown to tourists and overlooked by developers. Now I know the secret’s out.
Young Americans to Canada: You’re Boring
by Michael Yessis | 06.12.07 | 10:33 AM ET
New passport rules and a strong loonie are keeping many Americans away—there’s been a 34 percent decline in U.S. visitors since 2000—but also the perception that Canada isn’t exotic or adventurous enough. In fact, according to a study by the Tourism Industry Association of Canada that tracked U.S. perceptions of travel to Canada, many Americans in their 20s and 30s (American newspaper editors apparently have feelings about this, too) call the country an “average” or “boring” place to visit. C’mon, fellow American twentysomethings and thirtysomethings. Give our northern neighbors some love. I’ve snowboarded the Canadian Rockies, seen moose and elk wandering through Banff, watched the Saint John river go in reverse, kayaked in Nova Scotia, quaffed Canadian beer and touched the Stanley Cup, and I know what anyone who’s explored even a little of Canada knows: It’s plenty adventurous and exotic. So what’s the problem? Branding, apparently.
