Travel Blog
TBEX ‘10 Revisited: Eight Great Travel Writing Samples
by Michael Yessis | 07.01.10 | 11:06 AM ET
During last weekend’s Travel Blog Exchange conference in New York, I had the pleasure of moderating the panel “Travel Writing: Upping Your Game.” Don George, David Farley, Jim Benning and Alison Stein Wellner tapped into their years of print and online writing experience to offer tips—and point out some pitfalls—for travel writers in the digital age.
Before TBEX, I asked the panelists to select two pieces of exemplary travel writing, which, time permitting, each of them would share and discuss. The pieces, I told them, could be essays. Or blog posts. Tweets. Whatever. I thought it would be a good way to highlight the diversity of excellent travel writing on the Internets, and perhaps offer a bit of travel writing inspiration.
Alas, we ran out of time. But it would be a shame to keep their selections to myself. Below you’ll find links to the stories each panelist picked. Happy reading.
Alison Stein Wellner’s Picks
Stalking Karl Rove by Rachel Dickinson
Notes on Doing Errands in Patagonia by David Miller
David Farley’s Picks
Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream by Joan Didion
Sensory Overload In Naples by Francine Prose
Jim Benning’s Picks
Obscure Sodas Tweet by Andrew Evans
Power Trip by Emily Maloney
Don George’s Picks
Upriver by Stanley Stewart
Why We Travel by Pico Iyer
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Yahoo! Buzz‘Is There a Place We Can Watch Television in the Camp?’
by Eva Holland | 07.01.10 | 6:19 AM ET
In Slate’s latest Well-Traveled series, Robin Shulman tours South Africa in the midst of World Cup madness. The latest installment? Watching France lose to Mexico from a Kruger safari camp. It’s a good read.
Daisann McLane: ‘Movies and Travel Make a Great Match’
by Eva Holland | 06.30.10 | 2:46 PM ET
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably heard it before: “Why are you wasting time in a movie theater when you should be out sampling the local culture?” World Hum contributor Daisann McLane has an articulate and convincing answer—which, yes, I’ll be cribbing from in future conversations with my fellow travelers. Here’s McLane on movie-going on the road:
When I first began to travel, I craved experiences that were totally different from what I already knew. But as I got more mileage under my belt, I discovered it was more interesting to follow my regular routines and see how my familiar furniture was rearranged by being in another place. When I travel by myself, I steer myself to places and activities I enjoy anyway, such as movies, and wait. Some of the most interesting experiences I’ve had have been watching films “out of context.”
Cruise the Middle East with James A. Baker and Bill Moyers
by Jim Benning | 06.30.10 | 11:25 AM ET
You don’t see too many cruises with such an impressive roster of intellectual heavyweights aboard (with the notable exception, of course, of the historic 2007 “Gimme Three Days” Concert Cruise featuring Lynyrd Skynyrd and .38 Special).
It’s called the World Leaders Symposium Middle East. From the Abercrombie & Kent release that landed in my in-box this morning:
Abercrombie & Kent presents the World Leaders Symposium Middle East, an extraordinary journey through countries that remain a mystery to many Westerners, in the company of those who know it best, including former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker, III; former Egyptian first lady Jehan Sadat and veteran journalist Bill Moyers. Travel beyond the headlines on this once-in-a-lifetime trip (December 29, 2010-January 12, 2011) to engage in dynamic discussions with these and other experts who offer authoritative analysis and personal perspectives on the rich culture of the Middle East; the current political situation; and the ideas, people and possibilities shaping the future.
Designed for travellers who seek a deeper knowledge and appreciation of this complex region, this Marco Polo Club Invitational features a seven-night cruise aboard the luxurious ‘Silver Wind’ that originates in Dubai and includes stops in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Prices start at a cool $19,990.
Paris and London: Has Eurostar Made Them ‘Twins’?
by Eva Holland | 06.30.10 | 10:08 AM ET
Simon Kuper makes the case in a Financial Times essay that chronicles the changing relationship between the two cities over the years. Here’s Kuper on the dawn of Eurostar:
Those first trains connected two fairly insular cities. I had returned to Britain from Boston the summer before the Eurostar was launched, and after the Technicolor US, I was shocked by dingy London. Tired people in grey clothes waited eternities on packed platforms for 1950s Tube trains. Coffee was an exotic drink that barely existed, like ambrosia. Having a meal outside was illegal. The city centre was uninhabited, and closed at 11pm anyway. Air travel was heavily regulated, and so flying to Paris was expensive. Going by ferry took a whole miserable day. If you did get across, and only spoke the bad French most of us learnt at school, it was hard to communicate with any natives.
And then both cities began to change.
‘I Can’t Remember a Time When Cartier-Bresson’s Images Did Not Exist in my Mind’
by Eva Holland | 06.29.10 | 10:31 AM ET
Over at The Smart Set, Jason Wilson pushes back against the critics of the soon-to-wrap Cartier-Bresson exhibit at MoMA—and wonders, at the same time, how much of his resistance to the criticism is purely personal. It’s a good read. Here’s a taste:
It hit me as I approached the mural-sized world maps that greet museum-goers at the show’s entrance, with dotted lines tracing Cartier-Bresson’s famous journeys over several decades. Ringing in my ears was Schjeldahl’s snarky take: “This suggests a novel measurement of artistic worth: mileage. It seems relevant only to the glamour quotient—a cult, practically—of Cartier-Bresson’s persona, pointing up what seems to me most resistible in his work.”
Ouch, I thought. But mainly because I was flashing on my own career as a travel writer, one that began 15 years ago when I gave up writing a novel. I’ve always harbored my own deep fears that I passed, miles ago, over that “impassable” line from art to journalism, never to return.
Tim Cahill: ‘Literate Outdoor Writing’ Isn’t Done Yet
by Eva Holland | 06.29.10 | 9:18 AM ET
In the San Jose Mercury News, World Hum contributor Peter Delevett interviews Tim Cahill about the origins of Outside magazine, risk and fear on assignment, and the state of outdoor writing in America today. Money quote:
Here was the main idea behind Outside: We were tasked to come up with an outdoor magazine, and three of us spent about six months reading every magazine there was. And they were all service-oriented: they’d tell you how to paddle a canoe the right way. Our concept was that there’s a great strain in American literature of outdoor writing, from James Fenimore Cooper through Herman Melville through Mark Twain through Hemingway and Faulkner, and that we could continue that strain of literate outdoor writing. And at first, in 1976, we were made fun of, because it was thought by a lot of the critics, “Literate people don’t go outdoors.”
Well, once again that great strain in literature has been subsumed, this time by technology. I think it always will come back; just in what form and how is the question.
Cahill’s “Road Fever” appeared in our list of the 100 Most Celebrated Travel Books of All Time. He also offered his thoughts on creating “literature adventure stories” in this video.
A ‘White Guy in a Tie’ in Beijing
by Eva Holland | 06.28.10 | 2:43 PM ET
The Atlantic has a dispatch from a Beijing expat with an unusual sideline: fake American businessman-for-hire. From the post:
Six of us met at the Beijing airport, where Jake briefed us on the details. We were supposedly representing a California-based company that was building a facility in Dongying. Our responsibilities would include making daily trips to the construction site, attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and hobnobbing. During the ceremony, one of us would have to give a speech as the company’s director. That duty fell to my friend Ernie, who, in his late 30s, was the oldest of our group. His business cards had already been made.
Oil Spill Update: Heartbreak on the Gulf Coast
by Michael Yessis | 06.28.10 | 1:28 PM ET
Two more moving pieces on travel and the oil spill in the Gulf: World Hum contributor and Lonely Planet’s U.S. Travel Editor Robert Reid writes about a “sobering and powerful” trip to the Florida panhandle last week, and Carl Hiaasen gets angry about the oil washing up on Florida’s shores. He writes:
It might be difficult for someone who was born and raised far from a beach or a bayou to visualize a place they cherish being poisoned and defaced on such a massive scale.
Or maybe not so difficult. Imagine if 120 million gallons of crude oil were flushed into the Minnesota headwaters of the Mississippi River, and for months the sludge was allowed to seep down through the veins of America’s midwest.
Now you begin to get the picture—the heartbreak, the helplessness.
Previously, Tom Swick wrote for World Hum about the situation in the Florida Keys.
Celebrating ‘Airplane!’ at 30
by Michael Yessis | 06.28.10 | 12:46 PM ET
The New York Times weighs in for the 30th anniversary of the comedic masterpiece, a movie that, on its 25th anniversary, I argued is one of the best travel movies of all time.
What We Loved This Week: The Barringer Meteorite Crater, RCL Enterprises and Book Marginalia
by World Hum | 06.25.10 | 5:22 PM ET
Pam Mandel Jim Benning
This view out the airplane window of a giant hole in the Earth. I was flying over Arizona earlier this week when the pilot pointed out the nearly mile-wide Barringer Meteorite Crater. Scientists believe it was created 50,000 years ago by a meteorite traveling at about 26,000 m.p.h.
The Science of Vacations: ‘Length Isn’t Terribly Important’
by Michael Yessis | 06.25.10 | 4:23 PM ET
Scientific research about vacationers has revealed some fascinating insights. From a piece in the Boston Globe:
For psychologists and behavioral economists, vacations are a window into the still only dimly understood mystery of human pleasure, a field known as hedonic psychology. Their research, along with other work on prototypically pleasant (and unpleasant) experiences, has begun to yield a portrait of your mind on vacation. And if the findings tell us anything, it’s that we might actually need some help. When we guess the best way to spend our free time, it seems that we often guess wrong.
Thanks for the tip Rob Verger.
Koolhaas on Museums and Their Impact on Cities
by Michael Yessis | 06.25.10 | 2:02 PM ET
Rem Koolhaas sat for an intriguing interview with Artforum that touches on museums’ influence on their communities. Here he is talking about the current state of Amsterdam and its big museums:
But Amsterdam is now a really interesting case, because it’s kind of a reverse Bilbao. They’ve closed two of Amsterdam’s major museums for eight years—the Stedelijk and the Rijksmuseum—both to be enlarged and “prepared for the twenty-first century.” The Van Gogh Museum has remained open, and recently the Hermitage opened a very successful satellite, but the effects of those two closures on the city are devastating. It’s lost its mission and its culture, and the absence really made the entire city suffer. The whole artists’ “scene” withered, because there were no major outlets you could hope to show in, nor outlets for systematic inspiration or interaction with significant art. In fact, it’s a very serious political issue: Simply the closure of two museums has diminished the status of the city internationally in a way that has many people dismayed and pessimistic about whether it might ever recover. So in some cases, you wonder whether “Bilbao” might actually be a necessity. It’s certainly legitimate for cities that aren’t “major” and have no “major” histories to try to use architecture to enhance their reputation, but when it’s being applied to the self-image of major cities like Rome and Moscow, it becomes counterproductive. It’s as if these cities are losing their confidence and self-respect.
(Via Coudal)
An Ode to the 50 States, Gawker-Style
by Eva Holland | 06.25.10 | 12:47 PM ET
Gawker’s writers are celebrating America in their own snarky way, with an “attempt to defame each of America’s fifty states.” The latest target? Florida, “America’s jungle rotted phallus,” home of Teences the Driving Dog and the Bong-Smoking Baby.
‘The Thrill of Menus is Bound Up to Some Degree With the Thrill of Travel’
by Michael Yessis | 06.25.10 | 9:53 AM ET
Bruno Maddox explores the allure of restaurant menus and talks to “lifelong menu obsessive and collector” Kimball Chen about their power. From Travel + Leisure:
[M]enus function, for him, almost as maps, repositories of unique data as to Where One Is Now. But just as clearly, what is really being informed and enriched is the larger journey of a man through life. “Food,” Chen reflects rather wistfully at one stage, “doesn’t last.”
