Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Queen Mary 2 Mutiny Update: “They Say There Is Anarchy!”
by Michael Yessis | 01.24.06 | 5:34 AM ET
They’re still restless aboard the Queen Mary 2. BBC News has solicited feedback (scroll to bottom) from cruisers aboard the ship and others affected by the QM2’s problems, and at least one respondent has quite the inflated sense of the enormity of their plight.
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzBird Flu Isn’t Hurting Asia Travel
by Jim Benning | 01.24.06 | 2:25 AM ET
Back in October, we noted that small numbers of Westerners were changing their Asia travel plans because of concerns over avian flu. (Some, for example, had decided to avoid rural areas in Southeast Asia.) Three months later, the travel industry is thriving in Asia as the Lunar New Year approaches, according to the AP. Said one travel company director in Vietnam, “According to the figures from hotels, they’ve never known such a high occupancy rate.”
Mutiny on the Queen Mary 2?
by Michael Yessis | 01.23.06 | 10:41 AM ET
The AP is reporting that some passengers cruising aboard the Queen Mary 2 are threatening to remain on the ship at its next port of call to protest a last-minute itinerary change.
Think Buying Airline Meals is a Pain? Soon, We Could All Be Paying Just to Check a Bag.
by Jim Benning | 01.23.06 | 8:32 AM ET
I know major U.S. airlines stopped offering free hot meals on many domestic flights a while ago, but I’m still having a hard time adjusting. My e-mail confirmation for an upcoming American Airlines coast-to-coast flight declared “FOOD FOR PURCHASE.” What might that be? Cold sandwiches, an airline representative told me. It’s not the end of the world, I know, but such cutbacks are sucking what little pleasure there is left in flying right out the cabin door. According to James Gilden’s story, On Most Airlines, the Frills Are Gone, in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, we can all expect the sorry trend to continue in 2006.
Vanity Fair on Air Marshals: “Are We Safer With or Without Them?”
by Michael Yessis | 01.23.06 | 7:11 AM ET
The magazine’s February issue has a chilling story about U.S. air marshals, our gun-wielding protectors in the skies. Richard Gooding paints the Federal Air Marshal Service as a bureaucratic mess, and does some first-person reporting that shows just how easy it probably is for a would-be terrorist to spot a marshal, which could greatly increase in-flight dangers.
The Lost Liberty Hotel: “Part Political Statement and Part Pipedream”
by Michael Yessis | 01.23.06 | 1:05 AM ET
A group of activists—heroes or wackos, depending on your point of view—descended upon Weare, Vermont this weekend in an effort to rally support to turn U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s 200-year-old farmhouse into an inn they plan to call the “Lost Liberty Hotel.” The Ayn Rand-inspired objectivists and Libertarians that make up most of the group are protesting the Court’s recent decision favoring government power to take private property by eminent domain. What better way to make their point, they say, than attempting to seize the private property of one of the Justices who voted to make such an action possible?
Rick Steves: “If the Bed is Too Short, You Are Too Long”
by Jim Benning | 01.20.06 | 1:50 PM ET
I didn’t come across anything I didn’t already know about Rick Steves in yesterday’s Bellingham Herald profile, but I loved this quote about the bed. It perfectly summarizes Steves’ relentlessly upbeat approach to travel—an approach we could all benefit from when inevitable travel disappointments arise.
The Whale Has Passed the Houses of Parliament*
by Jim Benning | 01.20.06 | 12:54 PM ET
A possibly ill northern bottle-nosed whale has swum up the River Thames in London, and CNN footage this morning showed people lining the river to see the whale, which recently passed the Houses of Parliament. It’s apparently the first sighting of this kind of whale in the river since records began in 1913. According to the CNN report, rescue efforts are in the works. * Update, Monday, Jan. 23: Sadly, after a rescue attempt over the weekend, the whale died. CNN reports that tests are underway.
Rick Reilly on the Palms’ Hardwood Suite
by Michael Yessis | 01.19.06 | 6:07 AM ET
It’s only $50,000 a night, a bargain for what Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly calls the “hardworking NBA star, trying to feed [his] family on $9 million a year.” Reilly devoted his entire column last week to the outrageously expensive suite at the Palms in Las Vegas, which features, among other things, three “NBA sized” Murphy beds and a basketball court. His column is, as usual, quite funny. Unfortunately, it’s available online only to SI’s subscribers, but the magazine has made a slide show available. Beware of image two: Reilly wrapped around a stripper pole.
L.A.‘s Ambassador Hotel: It’s Gone
by Michael Yessis | 01.18.06 | 1:33 PM ET
The last bits of the famed hotel have been cleared away and The Ambassador is officially no more. The Ambassador’s Last Stand will be hosting a wake next Tuesday at the HMS Bounty, the bar across the street from the hotel’s former location.
On Writing About Africa
by Frank Bures | 01.17.06 | 9:42 AM ET
The flaws in Western writing on Africa are not hard to find, and are often bizarrely consistent. For example, Wendy Belcher wrote in Salon how nearly every travelogue on Africa begins on an airplane. Others have noticed how there are usually more animals than people, how Africans can never seem to help themselves, how they just can’t see things the right way. But now Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina, editor of the literary magazine Kwani?, has offered a biting summary of shallow Western “impressions” that pass for insights.
In: Asking the Passenger Behind You Before Reclining Your Seat. Out: Massive Carry-On Bags.
by Jim Benning | 01.17.06 | 8:07 AM ET
That’s right. Thomas Swick imagines a better year in travel. “Flying is about to become enjoyable again,” he writes in Sunday’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “Airlines will continue to struggle financially, but a new (actually, old) graciousness will slowly emerge. Flight attendants of all ages will be happy to see us, greeting everyone with the same warm smile whether they’re sitting in first-class or the last row of coach.” Swick’s dream also inlcudes more rail travel in America and a greater interest in visiting real places: “The Texas State Fair will outdraw Disney World.” Well, a guy can dream.
Swedes Say “I Do” to Airport Weddings
by Michael Yessis | 01.17.06 | 5:40 AM ET
Last year 488 couples got married at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport, and any traveler would have to admit the reasoning for doing so is sound: It allows the bride and groom to get on with their honeymoon faster. The AP reports: “The weddings took place in the airport chapel or, more commonly, in a VIP room, where the bride and groom can check in their luggage, order champagne and catering, and when the ceremony is over, be driven straight up to the aircraft.”
Key Notes
by Michael Yessis | 01.17.06 | 1:14 AM ET
I just returned from a long weekend in San Francisco, where I stayed at the travel-themed Hotel Carlton. It’s got many great touches—globes throughout the lobby, travel photos hung on the walls, maps and postcards decorating the interior of the elevators—but I liked the hotel’s room key cards most.
The Year in Geography
by Jim Benning | 01.13.06 | 9:02 PM ET
We’ve seen many year-end reviews in the last few weeks, but few focusing on geography. Ben Keene, who edits the “Oxford Atlas of the World” and writes Ben’s Place of the Week on World Hum, looked back at the year in geography on an Oxford University Press weblog. His mind has been reeling trying to keep up with all the changes in world geography. “Just to emphasize the pace of change in cartography in recent years,” he writes, “it’s worth pointing out that over 30 new nations have been created since 1990, making maps a mere decade old anachronistic curiosities.”
