Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Cheap Airfares! Buy Now!
by Rob Verger | 05.01.09 | 10:30 AM ET
There is an amazing multitude of low fares for air travel out there right now. Want to fly cheaply to Australia? Shanghai? Las Vegas? I’ve rounded up some great travel deals below.
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Yahoo! BuzzMorning Links: Railway Hotels, the National Magazine Awards and More
by Eva Holland | 05.01.09 | 9:06 AM ET
Interview With a Celebrity Chef: Govind Armstrong
by David Farley | 04.30.09 | 4:15 PM ET
Photo courtesy of Table 8 at the Cooper Square Hotel Govind Armstrong may not yet be 40 years old, but the dreadlocked chef is already a veteran in the kitchen, having logged time in some of the world’s most famous restaurants.
It all started at the improbable age of 13 when Armstrong found himself working at Spago, Wolfgang Puck’s celebrated Los Angeles restaurant. Now, after working in some of the most acclaimed kitchens in Los Angeles and Spain, he’s on the verge of his own restaurant empire. The Los Angeles and South Beach outposts of Table 8 won rave reviews, and now he’s about to take his biggest leap yet: New York.
On his way up the celebrity-chef ladder, he’s found himself on Iron Chef America, as a judge on Top Chef and on People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People” list.
I met up with Chef Armstrong at the Cooper Square Hotel in New York’s East Village where he’s putting the finishing touches on the Big Apple outpost of Table 8.
Morning Links: Electric Cars, Award-Winning Toilets and More
by Eva Holland | 04.30.09 | 8:33 AM ET
- Ready for an electric-powered road trip? Wired takes the much-hyped Chevy Volt for a test drive.
- The ground-floor men’s bathroom at Nashville’s Hermitage Hotel has been named the best restroom in America.
- The L.A. Times looks back at classic Hollywood’s love affair with North Africa.
- Mercer’s annual Best Places to Live rankings are out; the winning cities are “clean, safe, and a little bit dull,” says the Independent.
- Check out this compelling story from a California journalist who fell in love with an Iraqi reporter while on assignment in Baghdad—and then ran into a lot of red tape.
- Who knew? According to a Cornell research team, the Apple Store is New York City’s fifth-most photographed spot.
- Malaysia’s McCurry restaurant has survived a legal challenge from McDonald’s. The ownership claimed the name stood for “Malaysian Chicken Curry.”
- The Washington Post looks at the impact of swine flu on Mexico’s tourism industry, and in more flu news, an L.A. Times blogger wonders whether Baja California is safer than Los Angeles.
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Flyover America: 10 (More) Songs for an American Road Trip
by Jenna Schnuer | 04.29.09 | 4:32 PM ET
While the invention of iTunes has made things far easier than the days when we had to go through stack and stacks of cassettes to create the perfect on-the-road mix tapes, there’s still an art to creating the perfect road-trip playlist.
It takes time, thought, a sense of humor, and a wide-ranging music collection in whatever digital format you prefer. It also needs a theme. It can be about a mood, a time of day, your love for hot dogs, or whatever. You don’t even have to announce the theme. You don’t have to name the playlist “hot dog music” but, to make it all hang together, the theme must at least be in your mind during the song selection process.
Southwest and JetBlue to Face Off in Guitar Hero Challenge
by Rob Verger | 04.29.09 | 10:20 AM ET
There’s plenty of bad news out there about the airline industry these days, and things like swine flu, or the very dumb decision to buzz Lower Manhattan in a presidential 747 aren’t making people any happier.
So, I decided to focus on something a little more lighthearted here: an airline Guitar Hero showdown.
Morning Links: Swine Flu and Travel, Antarctic Ice and More
by Eva Holland | 04.29.09 | 9:00 AM ET
- An ice cap “bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York City” has broken off the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
- In Britain, a woman who changed her name to Pudsey Bear for a charity drive has been denied a new passport.
- The Economist gets on the two-wheeled transit bandwagon.
- Five major cruise lines have suspended all visits to Mexican ports over swine flu fears, while in Europe, France plans to ask the EU to suspend all flights to the country, as well.
- The always-classy CEO of Ryanair weighs in on swine flu, opining that it “is a tragedy only for people living ... in slums in Asia or Mexico.” (Via Gadling)
- This Just In offers a quick guide to the Eiffel Tower’s 120th birthday celebrations.
- Planning to catch the
GratefulDead on their reunion tour? Slate has a handy guide explaining what your favorite Dead song says about you. - And the Travel Headline of the Day goes to ... Travel writers send American tourists to London’s rundown Deptford. Says one local politician: “I hope they like hoodies, muggers and junkies—there are enough of them here.”
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Travel Movie Watch: ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test’
by Eva Holland | 04.28.09 | 12:08 PM ET
Move over, Fear and Loathing. There’s a new drug-addled, road tripping book-turned-movie in town. A film adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test—which follows Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters cross-country in a school bus named “Further”—is due out in 2010. Production details are still thin on the ground, but the New York Times notes that Gus van Sant will direct, while Dustin Lance Black, who recently won an Oscar for writing van Sant’s “Milk,” will provide the screenplay.
Morning Links: How Travel Publishing is Like Climbing Kilimanjaro, a Hasty Cleveland Video and More
by Michael Yessis | 04.28.09 | 10:16 AM ET
- I like Cleveland. I might like the Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video better, though.
- “Navigating the world of travel publishing these days is a lot like climbing Kilimanjaro,” writes Don George in the new Recce.
- The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of endangered historic sites is out.
- Harriet Baskas investigates the possibility of solar powered airports.
- Swine flu update: A CDC travel warning urges against nonessential travel to Mexico, and USA Today looks at how the flu might affect the travel industry. Here’s more on the outbreak and travel.
- Good magazine lists five of America’s most innovative public-transit projects.
- Should tour guides in Philadelphia have to take a two-hour history test? Or should they be able to tell tourists that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln ate lunch together? Marketplace explains.
- Finally, who among us couldn’t use a travel tip from Martin Brodeur?
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Flyover America: 10 Songs for an American Road Trip
by Sophia Dembling | 04.27.09 | 4:09 PM ET
Forty-seven percent of road trip success is having the right soundtrack. (The rest is route, scenery, and snacks.)
This week Jenna and I offer you our Flyover America Mix—10 songs each (though we could think of many more) about flyover states. Of course, road songs needn’t have places in them, but that’s just a little extra fun.
The Carter Family Fold: The Most Joyous Place in the World
by Jenna Schnuer | 04.27.09 | 12:59 PM ET
Photo by Jenna Schnuer. Try as I might, I’ve been having trouble pushing off the gray cast that seems to have settled over my brain. Damned economy. But, over the last few days, thanks to trips of days past, there’s been some relief. I’ve been clicking through my mental View-Master® (and my photos) to temporarily step back into some truly happy moments.
I’m convinced that if I keep building the stack, it’ll topple the gray. One surprise stop on my magical mood-bender tour came in Hiltons, Virginia, at the Carter Family Fold. Part of the Carter Family Memorial Music Center—owned by the first family of country music—the Fold hosts a weekly old time and bluegrass music show.
Morning Links: Swine Flu and Travel, Viewing North Korea and More
by Michael Yessis | 04.27.09 | 9:13 AM ET
- In response to the swine flu outbreak, several airlines are waiving change fees for Mexico travelers.
- Airline and tourism stocks have been slammed by the news of the swine flu.
- As of 9:18 a.m. ET, the CDC “has NOT recommended that people avoid travel to Mexico at this time” because of the outbreak. However, the EU’s health commissioner “urged Europeans on Monday to postpone nonessential travel to the United States or Mexico.”
- Here’s how an Italian cruise ship fended off a pirate attack.
- Daisann McLane on the financial “tsunami”: “[W]hen the hardest waves hit, my response has always been the same: hit back, and hit the road.”
- World Hum contributor David Farley surfaces in Dublin’s Smithfield neighborhood.
- The Economist says there’s an “element of silliness” to this story about female business travelers.
- The Big Picture peers into North Korea.
- The Telegraph has a slideshow of the world’s weirdest festivals.
- A hammer-and-sickle T-shirt almost derailed efforts to have The Flaming Lips song “Do You Realize” named Oklahoma’s official rock song.
- Gail Collins has “been thinking a lot about state slogans this week.” They’re pretty funny thoughts.
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What We Loved This Week: ‘One Day in Africa,’ ‘Juanes: A Musical Journey,’ and More
by World Hum | 04.24.09 | 7:00 PM ET
Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days:
Eva Holland
The Longest Way, a short video that’s been picking up viral steam in the past couple of weeks. It documents one traveler’s year-long walk across China, through the growth of his beard:
Hotel on the Hudson: Interview With Eva Ziegler
by Alexander Basek | 04.24.09 | 1:10 PM ET
W Hoboken’s opening party was last night, complete with ladies in giant martini glasses, a Jamie Foxx musical performance and W-shaped fireworks over the Hudson. (With some M’s and E’s mixed in, depending where you stood.)
Before the festivities began, I sat down with Eva Ziegler, W’s Global Brand Leader, in the W Hoboken’s “Chandelier Room,” the bar and club space with wall-length picture windows overlooking the New York City skyline.
Low-Cost Carriers: Not Always a Bargain
by Eva Holland | 04.24.09 | 11:52 AM ET
Photo by irishflyguy via Flickr (Creative Commons) Fodor’s posted a helpful reminder for thrifty travelers this week: Be wary of European budget airlines. Of course, those low-cost carriers have generally been a huge help in reducing the expense of European travel, but, as writer Doug Stallings points out, they aren’t always as cheap as they seem.
His first two points are, for me, the most important: low-cost flights tend to leave from secondary airports, and at odd times of day.
