Travel Blog
The Onion Reveals How to See the ‘Real Morocco’
by Michael Yessis | 12.01.09 | 12:59 PM ET
It’s just down the alley that curves into the distance, and Tahar Hissou knows you’ll like the woven goods you’ll find down there. “I could tell by your Boise State University T-shirt that you are an educated man who knows it is truly best to visit my country alone,” he writes. “That is how you get to see the real Morocco, the one you cannot find in any guidebook.”
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Yahoo! BuzzTravel Movie Watch: ‘Leap Year’
by Eva Holland | 12.01.09 | 10:27 AM ET
See, I told you Hollywood never gets tired of this story. “Leap Year” stars Amy Adams as uptight Anna, who decides to take advantage of an old Irish tradition and fly to Dublin on “Leap Day” to propose to her boyfriend. Of course, she gets sidetracked by a series of comic mishaps and a handsome European stranger—the trailer tells you the rest:
It hits theaters in January, alongside When in Rome, making it a good month for fans of the romance-in-Europe flick.
Travel Writing and the NYT’s ‘Notable Books of 2009’
by Eva Holland | 11.30.09 | 5:29 PM ET
The annual list is out, and some familiar travel writing names are on it: Geoff Dyer’s “Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi” and Orhan Pamuk’s “The Museum of Innocence” appear in the fiction section, while a few travel-related titles made the nonfiction list—Bill Streever’s “Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places,” Greg Grandin’s “Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City” and David Grann’s “The Lost City of Z” among them. (We interviewed Grann about his book earlier this year.)
In slightly less prestigious book-list news, Hudson Booksellers has also released its picks for the best books of 2009. Take a good look, frequent flyers—these are the titles that will be front and center in airport bookstores for the next while. (Via The Book Bench)
In-flight Magazines: Still Profitable
by Eva Holland | 11.30.09 | 4:03 PM ET
The Wall Street Journal reports that, despite the air industry’s recent woes and the travel publishing industry’s even worse ones, in-flight magazines are still a money-maker. The secret? Low marketing and distribution costs and a large, captive audience, for a start. (Via Gawker)
Video You Must See: Summiting Mount Everest
by Eva Holland | 11.30.09 | 2:18 PM ET
Travel Song of the Day: ‘See the World’ by Gomez
by Michael Yessis | 11.30.09 | 11:04 AM ET
What We Loved This Week: The Icefields Parkway, ‘An Irreverent Curiosity’ and More
by World Hum | 11.25.09 | 12:23 PM ET
Photo by Eva Holland Mike Barish
I spent a morning staring in amazement at Boston.com’s gallery of National Geographic’s International Photography Contest submissions. From crashing waves to fighting hippopotamuses to a simple portrait of a child, the gallery reminded me that travel photos can tell stories in any number of ways.
The ‘Tintin’ Movie: ‘It’s Made’
by Eva Holland | 11.25.09 | 11:45 AM ET
The BBC has the latest on the “Tintin” movie we’ve been tracking. The filming and editing are complete, the Beeb reports, but the last stage—the computer animation—could take another two years. “Tintin is great,” producer Peter Jackson said. “It’s made. The movie is cut together and now [we] are turning it into a fully-rendered film.”
The same story also notes that Jackson is currently scouting locations in New Zealand for his adaptation of “The Hobbit.” I guess this time around we’ll be calling it a “Bilbo economy”?
Video You Must See: Snow Sculptures in China
by Eva Holland | 11.25.09 | 11:09 AM ET
What Psychologists Have Learned From Watching You on the Subway
by Michael Yessis | 11.25.09 | 10:41 AM ET
Tom Vanderbilt looks at what psychologists have gathered from studying subway riders, and why the subway is “a perfect rolling laboratory for the study of human behavior.”
As the sociologists M.L. Fried and V.J. De Fazio once noted, “The subway is one of the few places in a large urban center where all races and religions and most social classes are confronted with one another and the same situation.”
Or situations. The subway presents any number of discrete, and repeatable, moments of interaction, opportunities to test how “situational factors” affect outcomes. A pregnant woman appears: Who will give up his seat first? A blind man slips and falls. Who helps? Someone appears out of the blue and asks you to mail a letter. Will you? In all these scenarios much depends on the parties involved, their location on the train and the location of the train itself, and the number of other people present, among other variables. And rush-hour changes everything.
William Least Heat-Moon: ‘Speed Corrupts Travel far More Than Bad Chinese Food’
by Michael Yessis | 11.24.09 | 2:46 PM ET
CNN talks to the author of the classic travel book “Blue Highways” as part of its American Road Trips package. The Blue Highways experience, he says, is still out there:
There are still miles and miles of two-lane roads to take a traveler into recesses of America, where delights and amazements await.
The problem with an interstate is not the interstate itself but the speed at which one can move on an interstate.
(via Jaunted)
Photos: Accidental Geography
by Michael Yessis | 11.24.09 | 1:37 PM ET
Strange Maps just posted another amusing batch of photos where the familiar shapes of continents, countries, states and the like appear in things like shower tiles, cracks in floors, fruit and other random places. Here’s the first batch from last year. (via Coudal’s Fresh Signals)
Photo You Must See: Preparing for the Hajj in Mecca
by World Hum | 11.24.09 | 12:13 PM ET
REUTERS/Caren Firouz Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba inside the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca after morning prayers, and before the start of this year’s hajj pilgrimage.
Video You Must See: Sailing on Ice
by Eva Holland | 11.23.09 | 11:41 AM ET
Finding the Zagat of the Napoleonic Era
by Eva Holland | 11.23.09 | 11:37 AM ET
World Hum contributor Tony Perrottet has a great read in this week’s New York Times Travel section—he heads to Paris on the trail of Alexandre-Balthazar-Laurent Grimod de la Reynière, a legendary gourmand who financed his immersion in early 19th-century Parisian dining by writing a series of proto-guidebooks, the “Almanachs des Gourmands.” It’s exactly the kind of historical tidbit I love stumbling across, though it’s not recommended for readers on an empty stomach.
