Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Interview With Scott McCartney: Author of ‘The Wall Street Journal Guide to Power Travel’
by Rob Verger | 05.21.09 | 11:30 AM ET
Scott McCartney, who writes the popular Middle Seat column for The Wall Street Journal, has a new book out with an enticing subtitle: The Wall Street Journal Guide to Power Travel: How to Arrive With Your Dignity, Sanity, and Wallet Intact.
The book, which provides a look inside almost all aspects of the airline industry, is full of great advice on how to navigate air travel today. I’ll have my review of the book in a forthcoming item here, but in the meantime, I caught up with McCartney, who is also a licensed private pilot, via email to ask him a few questions.
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Yahoo! BuzzMorning Links: ‘Hello Kitty’ Holidays, Traveling During Pregnancy and More
by Eva Holland | 05.21.09 | 8:52 AM ET
- So long, Vegas: the Blue Man Group is headed for the high seas with Norwegian Cruise Lines.
- “Hello Kitty Dream Holiday” package, anyone? Taiwan can provide.
- For all our fellow heat seekers: World Hum contributor Lola Akinmade checks out the world’s hottest peppers, and where to find them.
- In the U.K., Google Street View has obscured the faces of anyone included in their images—including Colonel Sanders.
- A flight to Hawaii for $400 round-trip? Arthur Frommer has the details.
- “Dancing With the Stars” may be over for another year (and hey, congrats, Shawn Johnson) but dancing is forever—and World Hum contributor Abbie Kozolchyk has the down low on where and how to learn some of the world’s iconic steps.
- We’ve gone way beyond shampoo and conditioner: Matador Goods offers up 10 surprising travel-sized items.
- Just in time for Memorial Day, HalogenLife picks 10 favorite local brews from across the U.S. (Via Gadling)
- Traveling while pregnant? Check out Delicious Baby’s ongoing series on the subject. The latest post tackles flying while pregnant.
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Love Letter to the Interstate System
by Sophia Dembling | 05.20.09 | 3:25 PM ET
A certain type of traveler, the “I-only-watch-PBS” type of traveler, scorns the Interstate. These travelers are all about the blue highways, those small rural roads that require time and patience and don’t send you hurtling through America’s heartland. (Today’s rumination is brought to you courtesy of this New Yorker cartoon, which got me thinking when it turned up in my email inbox.)
But I love America’s great Interstate system, officially (and a little frighteningly) called The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.
From Scenic River to a Stream of ‘Black Gel’
by Joanna Kakissis | 05.20.09 | 1:31 PM ET
The great master of riverine prose, Norman Maclean, was haunted by the crystalline waters of Montana’s Blackfoot River. But the residents of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, are haunted by the stench of the Buriganga, a river so polluted by human and industrial waste that it’s turned into a dead stream of “black gel,” Reuters reports.
Travel Movie Watch: ‘Homage to Catalonia’
by Eva Holland | 05.20.09 | 10:53 AM ET
More than 70 years after its initial publication, George Orwell’s Spanish Civil War memoir is hitting the big screen.
Hugh Hudson, best known for “Chariots of Fire” and “I Dreamed of Africa,” will direct, while Colin Firth and Kevin Spacey have already signed on to star—the media coverage of the news doesn’t offer anything definite, but it looks as though Firth will play Orwell, and Spacey will take on the role of Georges Kopp, Orwell’s POUM commander.
Morning Links: Watering Old Faithful, the Salish Sea and More
by Eva Holland | 05.20.09 | 7:35 AM ET
- Two employees at Yellowstone National Park have been fired after being caught urinating into Old Faithful—the story notes that the geyser “was not erupting at the time.”
- Nobel Prize winner (and occasional travel writer) Orhan Pamuk is headed back to court over complaints that he insulted Turkishness. (Via the Book Bench)
- For the second year in a row, New York City has free bike rentals available through the summer.
- Strait of Georgia? Puget Sound? Juan de Fuca? A retired professor has a proposal to give those confusing bodies of water around southern British Columbia and Washington a single name: the Salish Sea.
- In the wake of February’s Buffalo plane crash, several senators are calling for an investigation of the safety standards being enforced for regional airlines.
- London’s rail commuters are Twittering haikus about “the great British summer,” in “the world’s first interactive Twitter poetry competition.” Yoko Ono will select the winners.
- Breaking news: Airport currency exchanges offer the worst rates going. I know. I was shocked, too.
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Drink a Microbrew, Save the Planet, Taste the Culture
by Joanna Kakissis | 05.19.09 | 1:29 PM ET
I’ve said before that travelers who want to walk the talk of environmentally responsible living must also seek out sustainable food (i.e. no Chilean sea bass!) when on the road. I’m adding locally brewed beer to my list.
Making and transporting beer doesn’t produce nearly as many carbon emissions as boutique wines, which are often flown by overnight air, says Pablo Paster in his column for Treehugger. Still, Paster advises eco-imbibers to drink a local brew over that beloved German beer.
Morning Links: Whole-Body Imaging, Advice from an RVer and More
by Eva Holland | 05.19.09 | 9:11 AM ET
- A woman was asked to leave Toronto’s Pearson International last week after staff realized she’d been sleeping in Terminal One since Easter. Police believe that when she left, she had “somewhere to go.”
- David Grann’s “The Lost City of Z” has been longlisted for this year’s Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. We interviewed Grann awhile back about the book. (Via the Book Bench)
- Privacy groups are girding for a fight against the TSA’s new “whole-body” airport scanners, with a national campaign against the “virtual strip search” launching this week.
- Need life advice? The Onion’s latest column, Ask A Wife Helping Her Husband Back A Camper Into A Park Site, is here to help.
- World Hum contributor Karl Taro Greenfeld talks to NPR about his new book, a memoir of growing up with an autistic brother. There’s an excerpt to go with the thoughtful interview.
- Ever wondered which North American cities have the winningest sports teams? You’re in luck: here’s a map of the rankings.
- Four months later, passengers from the flight that crash-landed in the Hudson River are slowly being reunited with their belongings.
- Warnings against travel to Mexico are being rescinded, and cruise lines are making plans to return; meanwhile, an AP writer looks back at a week spent quarantined during China’s swine flu crackdown.
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For the Love of Minor League Baseball
by Jenna Schnuer | 05.18.09 | 3:15 PM ET
The Albuquerque Isotopes. The Clearwater Threshers. The Dayton Dragons.
Ah, minor league baseball. The team names alone are joy. The experience? That much better. While I’ve always found it a bit ho-hum to attend a major league game for a team that wasn’t my hometown favorite, minor league games feel more neutral.
They’re about hanging out eating stuff you shouldn’t eat on a (hopefully) beautiful spring or summer night and (hopefully) getting to see a little magic when some not-so-known player smacks one out or looks like he has the potential to pitch a perfect game. They’re about relaxing. And just kind of being in a place with, mostly, the people who live there.
Minor league games feel out of time. They feel hopeful.
Morning Links: John Lennon’s New York City, Kansas City Barbecue and More
by Michael Yessis | 05.18.09 | 9:11 AM ET
- They wanted a story “about a time you double-booked in a particularly awkward way.” This guy’s trip to Bally’s Las Vegas sure fits the bill.
- The lives of regional airline pilots aren’t so glamorous. Unless you think traveling with sandwiches in a cooler is glamorous.
- Anthony DeCurtis remembers John Lennon’s New York City of the ’70s.
- James Wolcott remembers New York City in the ’70s, too. He writes: “One key difference between the ’70s and today is that in the ’70s the tourists looked scared.”
- Are travelers more unsafe at hotels now due to the economic climate?
- The crappy economy is hitting Kansas City where it hurts—in its barbecue joints.
- Greece has asked visitors to its archaeological sites to refrain from wearing stiletto heels.
- Vanity Fair says the movie version of “On the Road” is languishing in circle two of development hell.
- Tanya Gold field-tests a corporate training exercise that involves a plane-crash simulation.
- On “60 Minutes,” Andy Rooney continued his ridiculous campaign to encourage people not to go anywhere.
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What We Loved This Week: Eldorado Canyon, Kerouac the Fantasy Baseball Player and More
by World Hum | 05.15.09 | 5:45 PM ET
Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Joanna Kakissis
A friend and I hiked through Eldorado Canyon State Park, passing golden cliffs, the rapids of South Boulder Creek and the ruins of the once-grand Crags Hotel. But my favorite moment was sitting on the rocks and taking in this view of the Continental Divide from a rocky perch on the Rattlesnake Gulch trail (where, thankfully, we saw no actual rattlesnakes.)
The Wi-Fi-in-the-Sky Wars
by Rob Verger | 05.15.09 | 10:46 AM ET
AirTran fired off a powerful volley this week in the competition between airlines to provide wireless internet access on flights. It kicked the service off with a flight on Tuesday, and says that all 136 of its planes will have Wi-Fi by the end of July, making it, as USA Today reports, “the first large U.S. airline to offer wireless Internet access on every flight nationwide.”
As Ben Mutzabaugh put it in another story in the same paper, “AirTran’s promotional flight points up how fast airlines are racing to provide Wi-Fi capability on their planes after experimenting with it for more than a year.”
Morning Links: Thanksmas, Stonehenge, Hollywood’s own Wax Museum and More
by Eva Holland | 05.15.09 | 8:39 AM ET
- Today in random airport cruelty: an EasyJet agent told a 6-year-old child in Glasgow that her teddy bear would have to be checked as excess baggage, and make the trip, as the girl’s mother put it, “in the big, dark hold.”
- Brave New Traveler asks: Why do bad things happen to good travelers?
- National Geographic has put together this fun map of Native American place names—and their English meanings—across the United States. (Via Intelligent Travel)
- There’s been a breakthrough in the ongoing struggle over plans for a new visitor center at Stonehenge. The Guardian has reaction.
- Virgin’s Sir Richard Branson plans on putting a stop to the proposed British Airways/American Airlines merger—and Jaunted is ready to fight by his side.
- Biographer Claire Tomalin tells Intelligent Life about the seven wonders of her world.
- Good news for lovers of foodie travel writing: New York Times restaurant reviewer Frank Bruni is shifting gears, becoming a writer-at-large for the Times magazine, “where he will have license to follow his appetites ... wherever they lead him.” (Via @davidfarley)
- The holiday season is months away, but I’m sure some travelers are already dreading it—luckily, the Daily Deal blog has a solution: Thanksmas.
- At long last, Madame Tussauds is coming to Hollywood. I can’t think of a better home for celebrity wax—is anyone else amazed that it took this long?
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A First-Hand Look at Some Desperation Deals
by Eva Holland | 05.14.09 | 2:52 PM ET
There’s been a lot of talk about tourism numbers contracting during the economic crisis, and plenty of observers—our own Rolf Potts included—have pointed out that for the budget traveler, with the travel industry running scared and handing out deals left and right, there’s no better time to hit the road than right now.
Still, until I arrived in Barbados this week and started making some bookings for a visit to Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent, I didn’t fully understand the extent of the bargains out there.
Lessons From The Dancing Chickens
by Sophia Dembling | 05.14.09 | 1:44 PM ET
Photo by Sophia Dembling When I heard about the Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival in Woodward, Okla., my mind went directly to funnel cakes, face painting, and maybe a parade with a Lesser Prairie Chicken Queen. Sign me up, I said! I love small-town fests.
I’m kind of a moron sometimes. It wasn’t until I had my trip planned that I fully understood that a bird festival is where bird watchers gather to watch birds—in this case, lesser prairie chickens. Not only was funnel cake not part of the event, but the centerpiece of the weekend involved waking before dawn to spend three hours in a field watching chickens dance.
