Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Morning Links: ‘Obama Fries’ in Kenya, Britney at Buckingham Palace and More
by Eva Holland | 06.05.09 | 8:23 AM ET
- In the New York Daily News, Robert Downes tries to sell Americans on the “low-cost logic” of backpacking, for travelers of any age.
- Britney Spears, in London for a series of shows, is apparently planning to “pop in” to Buckingham Palace in hopes of meeting the Queen. Tabloid reporters, start your engines—this should be good.
- In the Telegraph, Richard Madden confesses to an addiction to solar eclipses, and looks back on some of his journeys in search of a fix.
- President Obama found some time to play tourist in Cairo this week, too. The New York Post has a slideshow from his visit to the Pyramids.
- Meanwhile, in Kenya, the National Post’s Simona Siad wades through Obama souvenirs, “Obama fries” and more.
- The Times Online has picked the best 50 walks in Britain, and offers guides to each one.
- Travel Headline of the Day: 140 mph trains previewed, but they’ll cost more. (You think?)
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Yahoo! BuzzDanny Boyle Can’t Quit You, Mumbai
by Eva Holland | 06.04.09 | 3:27 PM ET
Yup, the Indian city has its hooks in the Oscar-winning director of “Slumdog Millionaire,” and it isn’t letting go. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Boyle has bought the film rights to Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, Suketu Mehta’s Pulitzer-nominated travelogue about Mumbai’s seedy, sometimes-violent subcultures: dirty cops, exotic dancers, religious hitmen and more.
Nashville: An Affair Worth Remembering?
by Jenna Schnuer | 06.04.09 | 12:30 PM ET
Dear Nashville,
It’s been too long. For a while there, we had a thing going. I showed up every six months or so. You entertained me. It was an ongoing affair to remember. But then life got in the way. All my fault. I know. I apologize. But, really, my love for you has grown. I think about you constantly and, don’t tell my hometown (or anywhere else for that matter), but I’m secretly rooting for you in Travel + Leisure’s Favorite Cities survey.
Budget Dining in Barcelona: How to Do it Right
by Eva Holland | 06.04.09 | 10:38 AM ET
The first time I visited Barcelona, I was at the tail end of a 10-week backpacking trip around Europe. I had just four days left before I caught a plane back to the U.K. (where I’d been living) and then home to Canada—and, predictably, I was out of money.
My British and Canadian bank accounts were both tapped out, and while I could still charge my dorm bed—a clear necessity—to my credit card, I stubbornly refused to charge restaurant meals or withdraw cash for groceries on it. (The interest will kill you, y’know.)
Morning Links: Stanley and Livingstone, the Cirque in Space and More
by Eva Holland | 06.04.09 | 8:19 AM ET
- Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. BlogHer has a thoughtful dispatch on the event from an expat in Beijing.
- Christine Garvin and her readers at Brave New Traveler share their most surreal travel experiences.
- This summer on the History Channel, four explorers will attempt to retrace Henry Morton Stanley’s most famous journey in Expedition Africa: Stanley and Livingstone.
- The Christian Science Monitor takes a look at the “foreign-film fadeout” in U.S. movie theaters.
- German-Lebanese-American writer Lionel Beehner compares the order of Berlin to the anarchy of Beirut, and realizes that he needs a little bit of both.
- Word has it that Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte is headed into orbit this fall. He would be the first Canadian space tourist.
- Employees at the Art Institute of Chicago are bracing for “an imminent encounter with a large group of identically clad people,” the Onion reports.
- Zion National Park turns 100 years old this summer. World Hum contributor Ben Keene takes a look at the park’s highlights and the planned centennial events.
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Travel Movie Watch: ‘Where’s Waldo?’
by Eva Holland | 06.03.09 | 2:05 PM ET
No, seriously. The goofy globetrotter with the striped shirt is getting a movie all his own. And it will be live action. Over at Get the Big Picture, Colin Boyd has a scathing look at the project, suggesting that Universal’s decision to pick it up after Paramount gave up on it “might showcase a fairly pronounced stupidity.” I’m inclined to agree.
Welcome, JetAmerica and flydubai
by Rob Verger | 06.03.09 | 10:07 AM ET
The list of lost-cost carriers now has two new names: JetAmerica and flydubai.
JetAmerica, a charter company with a home base in Toledo, Ohio, will fly to five cities. They are advertising $9 fares, with a “convenience fee” of $5, thus selling some seats (before taxes and fees) for $14.
Over at The Cranky Flier, Brett Snyder isn’t optimistic. “I honestly couldn’t make this sound any worse if I tried,” Snyder writes. “The CEO is John Weikle, one of the original founders of Skybus.”
Meanwhile, in the U.A.E., flydubai has been born, with initial routes beginning this week between Dubai and Beirut and Amman. They plan to expand from there. “You’ll soon be able to flydubai to other cities in the Middle East, GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] and India,” their website states. “And eventually, the network will extend to Iran, Eastern Europe and North & East Africa.”
Morning Links: Living out of a Suitcase, National Parks for Free and More
by Eva Holland | 06.03.09 | 8:09 AM ET
- It’s been confirmed that the missing Air France flight crashed over the Atlantic Ocean, 400 miles off the coast of Brazil. Investigations are ongoing, but officials say the plane’s data recorders may never be found.
- Britain’s Royal Family is being urged to expand the opening hours for Buckingham Palace, with the proceeds from increased ticket sales going to repairs on other royal palaces.
- Over at the Indie Travel Podcast, Sherry Ott explains how to live out of a suitcase. The secret, it seems, is all in managing the smells.
- Applications for the Peace Corps are up, and the volunteer agency figures the “Obama effect” is partly responsible.
- The Traveling Mamas interview Nia Vardalos, star of the upcoming Greek-tour-bus travel movie, “My Life in Ruins,” about Greece and traveling with kids.
- Our friends at Wend want your best shots of waterfalls for their June Friday Photo contest. The winner lands a pair of Teva water shoes.
- The L.A. Times Daily Deal blog has the scoop on free weekend admissions (on selected weekends) to 147 national parks this summer, including heavyweights like Glacier, Yosemite, Grand Canyon and Yellowstone.
- Slate’s food issue is here. Sara Dickerman has a thoughtful piece about those cookbook authors who “aim to bring another culture to life through recipes and observations,” while Laura Shapiro looks at the Federal Writers Project and one of its lesser-known programs, America Eats.
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When the President Goes to Vegas: Hail Obama?
by Alexander Basek | 06.02.09 | 10:20 AM ET
Photo by Alexander Basek It’s easy to ignore the language surrounding hotel stays. Spas have therapists and there’s a concierge or a butler for your pillow and your bath. In fact, it gets to be difficult when you need something but don’t know whom you’re supposed to talk to about it. Does an order for ice fall under the purview of the cooling concierge or the cocktail consultant? We may never know the answer.
Morning Links: State Department Recommendations, Guano Seen From Space and More
by Eva Holland | 06.02.09 | 8:57 AM ET
- The State Department has just updated its list of no-go countries, and several popular tourist spots—among them, Nepal, Colombia, Kenya and Israel—made the cut. Arthur Frommer has a critique.
- Ten new emperor penguin colonies have been located in Antarctica—and all thanks to patches of “excrement-stained ice that are so large they are visible from space.”
- Here’s a shrinking planet story for you: Meet Alfonso Ramirez, the Mexican immigrant who is Glendale, California’s hookah master.
- One of the stars from the entrance to Coney Island’s Astroland has been donated to the Smithsonian—it will be on display in the National Air and Space Museum.
- Travel writer Alain de Botton notes the absence of fiction devoted to our modern working lives, and calls for “an ambitious new literature of the office.”
- In an eerily timed article, Esquire looks at two new memoirs from plane crash survivors.
- Like us, Robert Reid is sick of that s-cation word. He offers 19 alternative -cation formulations. My favorite? The Kevin Bacation.
- Over at Reason Online, Josie Appleton argues that pointless regulations are ruining British pub life.
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Why Should You Follow Airlines on Twitter?
by Rob Verger | 06.01.09 | 1:54 PM ET
Lately, I’ve been enjoying receiving tweets from airlines, and there are a few reasons why.
First up, airlines frequently announce fare sales and other news on Twitter. United has been offering what they call “twares,” which are very brief sales broadcast on Twitter, and Southwest recently tweeted about their new pets policy—you can bring dogs and cats on board now—while Virgin America tweeted to announce that their entire fleet had Wi-Fi.
R.I.P. Millvina Dean, Titanic Survivor
by Eva Holland | 06.01.09 | 12:22 PM ET
REUTERS/Simon Kreitem The last survivor of the Titanic’s sinking has died at 97. Dean was just two months old when she was placed in one of the ship’s lifeboats with her mother and brother; she once said of her celebrity status: “Until the wreckage of the Titanic was found in 1985, nobody was interested in me. Who expects to become famous at that age?”
Morning Links: The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, Nicholas Kristof’s Travel Tips and More
by Michael Yessis | 06.01.09 | 9:29 AM ET
- An Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris has “dropped off radar” and may have crashed in the Atlantic. Today in the Sky, among others, is following the story closely.
- Nicholas Kristof offers 15 travel tips. No. 14: If terrorists finger you, break out singing “O Canada”!
- Joshua Hammer put together this year’s New York Times summer travel book reading list. His angle: “This summer, travel for the sake of pure travel is out.”
- Also reviewed in the New York Times Book Review: P.J. O’Rourke’s awesomely named “Driving Like Crazy: Thirty Years of Vehicular Hell-Bending, Celebrating America the Way It’s Supposed to Be—With an Oil Well in Every Backyard, a Cadillac Escalade in Every Carport, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank Mowing Our Lawn.”
- In the Wall Street Journal, O’Rourke addresses what doomed the American automobile.
- “One-in-five Britons admits that they happily jet overseas to holiday destinations they cannot pinpoint on a map,” reports the Daily Express.
- Wanderlust magazine wants people “to pay more attention to local dress and to cover up where appropriate on their travels.” Its campaign is called Put Your Brits Away!
- C’mon, fellow travelers. The Russian nesting doll industry needs our help.
- Finally, the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative goes into full effect today. For many Americans, that means you’ll need a passport when re-entering the U.S. from Canada or Mexico. The Buffalo News says that means it’s time for U.S. citizens to “think of Canada as a foreign country.”
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What We Loved This Week: Ellis Island, Dining in Bogota and More
by World Hum | 05.29.09 | 4:13 PM ET
Photo by Joanna Kakissis Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Sophia Dembling
My husband and I, feeling like huddled masses yearning to breathe free, waited for 90 minutes to board the ferry to Ellis Island. I worried that the museum wouldn’t be as spectacular as I remembered since visiting it in the early 1990s. Whew—it was indeed worth the tedious wait, even worth suffering through the piercing tones of competing steel drums played by overenthusiastic buskers. Ellis Island remains among my required sights for Americans. Next time, I’ll buy a ticket in advance, though.
Eco-Travelers and ‘Seafood for Thought’: An Interview with Lindblad Expeditions
by Joanna Kakissis | 05.29.09 | 12:10 PM ET
Photo courtesy of Mathew Lachesnez-Heude The image of sun-kissed travelers eating fresh fish at a seaside tavern has probably graced scores of brochures, postcards and promotional films. But is a craving for this iconic fish dinner contributing to the collapse of 75 percent of the world’s fisheries?
The business of seafood is big: The international trade in fish and fish products rakes in some $50 billion annually. But trawlers are fishing sea life faster than it can replenish itself. As a result, once-bountiful fish such as the Mediterranean bluefin tuna—the so-called king fish of the global sushi industry—will collapse by 2012, according to the World Wildlife Federation.
I spoke with Mathew Lachesnez-Heude, the environmental manager for eco-progressive small-ship tour operator Lindblad Expeditions, about sustainable seafood and the choices travelers can make to help restore the world’s sea life.
