Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Visiting with Jan Morris in Wales
by Jim Benning | 06.13.06 | 1:27 PM ET
For the May/June issue of National Geographic Traveler, writer Michael Shapiro visited Wales and had tea with acclaimed author Jan Morris. His story isn’t available online, but a photo gallery is. Shapiro contributed to our recent feature on the 30 greatest travel books of all time. In fact, he sang the praises of Morris’s classic “Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere,” which was number 24 on our list.
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Yahoo! BuzzExpedia, TripAdvisor, New Zealand Tourism Win Webbys
by Michael Yessis | 06.13.06 | 6:41 AM ET
The Webby Awards were handed out last night in New York. Expedia won the award for best travel site, and NewZealand’s tourism site took the tourism site award. As we discussed when the nominees were announced, the difference between the two categories is a bit fuzzy. TripAdvisor won the People’s Voice Webby for best community site and best travel site. Congats to the winners and nominees.
National Passport Month: It’s About Time, No?
by Jim Benning | 06.09.06 | 1:01 PM ET
Last summer, we wrote about Lonely Planet’s effort to promote international travel by urging Congress to declare September National Passport Month. A resolution was written that apparently had bipartisan support. Then September 2005 came and went and nothing happened. Well, this week—finally - the House of Representatives passed the resolution without a single “no” vote. (It’s hard to imagine opposition to such a thing.) Apparently it doesn’t require Senate approval, so now all it needs is President Bush’s signature. To ensure that happens by September of this year, Lonely Planet plans to launch a letter-writing campaign, among other efforts. What will come of it all, we don’t know, but we think it’s a grand gesture. Less than 23 percent of Americans hold a passport. Any effort to get passports into more Americans’ hands, and inspire a few more trips abroad, is one worth supporting, isn’t it?
Welcome to “Tehrangeles”
by Michael Yessis | 06.08.06 | 12:28 PM ET
The biggest community of Iranians outside of Iran lives in Los Angeles, or “Tehrangeles” as some residents call it. As tensions between the governments of U.S. and Iran continue to rise over, among other things, the development of nuclear technology, Tehrangeles has become more and more important in the eyes of both countries. The Council on Foreign Relations, for instance, says the CIA relies on Tehrangeles to “pick up valuable intelligence” from residents who travel often between the two countries. Today on NPR’s Morning Edition, Renée Montagne takes a less wonky look at the community, which is centered along Westwood Boulevard, just south of the UCLA campus. “Pop into any shop and you’ll hear Farsi,” she says. “The business signs are all in Persian.”
Just Because a Village is Small Doesn’t Mean it Can’t Be Global
by Michael Yessis | 06.08.06 | 7:25 AM ET
John Ward Anderson has a good story in today’s Washington Post about Aguaviva, Spain, a small village with a dwindling population that has sought to recover by recruiting residents from around the world. “The woman who runs the city hall cafe in this remote Spanish hill community is a Romanian. Down the road, Italians and Argentines make electric cables in a small factory. The local school is bustling with foreign-born children, who make up more than a third of the students,” he writes. “While much of Western Europe shuns immigrants, this town seeks them. They are seen as key to reversing a decades-long drop in population that has brought slow death to so many other Spanish villages as residents fled to the cities for a better life.”
Signspotting’s Five Finalists
by Jim Benning | 06.06.06 | 1:16 PM ET
Voting is open for Signspotting’s Sign of the Year award. Among the five finalists is Josh Kaplan’s shot of this sign along the road to Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. Who knew invisibility was such a problem in Tanzania? The person with the winning photo gets a ‘round-the-world plane ticket.
A Journey through “Transfatamerica”
by Michael Yessis | 06.05.06 | 4:53 AM ET
What happens when a big city restaurant critic drives across the country sustaining himself by eating only fast food? I missed Frank Bruni’s story about his trek when it first ran in the New York Times recently, but the International Herald Tribune has it up now and it’s a great read. “My sample period ultimately spanned 9 days, 15 states, 3,650 miles and 42 visits to 35 different restaurants (I hit some more than once),” he writes. “It bequeathed crucial knowledge and invaluable lessons.”
‘Wanderlust: On the Road with American Road Movies’
by Michael Yessis | 05.29.06 | 7:30 PM ET
Tonight at 9 p.m ET/PT the Independent Film Channel debuts Wanderlust: On the Road with American Road Movies, a 90-minute documentary that, according to the promo materials, explores the questions: “Does the road still promise us an open sense of freedom and liberation as it did in so many great films? Or, has the adventure of the American road ultimately been reduced to the stuff of Hollywood lore?” As someone who earlier this month spent eight days driving America’s interstates and backroads relocating from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., I know the adventure of a road trip is very much alive.
World Borders Redefined
by Michael Yessis | 05.29.06 | 9:22 AM ET
What defines a country’s border these days? Is it a physical place, or does it extend into the “virtual and electronic space”? Moisés Naím argues that it’s all three places and more in an intriguing essay in the Outlook section of Sunday’s Washington Post. “[W]hile geography still matters,” Naím writes, “today’s borders are being redefined and redrawn in unexpected ways. They are fluid, constantly remade by technology, new laws and institutions, and the realities of international commerce—illicit as well as legitimate.”
An “American Idol” View of History
by Jim Benning | 05.24.06 | 10:58 AM ET
World Hum contributor Sarah Schmelling offers a glimpse into just that with “Ryan Seacrest Breaks Bad News” on McSweeney’s today. Who knew that Simon didn’t care for the way Napoleon marched into Leipzig?
World Cup Fans: Do You Know What Your Country Smells Like?
by Michael Yessis | 05.23.06 | 1:09 PM ET
Coca-Cola? Ripe mangoes? A piña colada? An After Eight mint? Chanel No 5? According to the Telegraph, retired perfume maker Ernst-Adolf Hinrichs of Holzminden, Germany, has identified the scents of the countries competing in next month’s World Cup tournament. Kate Connolly writes that Holzminden is “home to one of the world’s leading industrial producers of smells,” and that Hinrichs has created the scents for “smelling posts” around the city. Visitors are instructed to, of course, “follow their noses.” So which of the scents listed above belong to which country?
Brits to French: You’re Unfriendly, Ungenerous and Boring
by Michael Yessis | 05.23.06 | 7:12 AM ET
So say 6,000 voters surveyed by the travel site Where Are You Now, according to an AFP report. Germans finished second in all of the same categories. Respondents in the survey ranked countries in various categories, including most cultured and most unstylish. The “winners” respectively: Italy and the United States.
Report: Passenger on Virgin Atlantic Flight Had Ebola Virus
by Michael Yessis | 05.21.06 | 4:41 PM ET
The Mirror reports that a 38-year-old passenger on a flight from Johannesburg to London suffered a “violent fit” and subsequently died from the deadly Ebola virus. “Virgin Atlantic cabin crew who came into contact with the woman have been told to monitor their health,” writes Stephen Moyes. “One said: ‘We are now terrified what we may have caught.’”
Montserrat: It’s “Against FAA Regulations to Fly Through Volcanic Ash”
by Jim Benning | 05.21.06 | 3:06 PM ET
Gadling’s Karen Walrond had a wild flight near the Caribbean island of Montserrat yesterday. Her flight from Miami to Trinidad was diverted because, as she saw from the window, the deadly Soufriere Hills volcano has been shooting ash nearly 60,000 feet high.
Forget Hollywood. How About Nollywood?
by Jim Benning | 05.20.06 | 12:34 PM ET
What’s Nollywood? As World Hum books editor Frank Bures reports in today’s Los Angeles Times, it’s Nigeria’s thriving film industry, “which, in terms of sheer numbers of movies made, has grown bigger than either Hollywood or Bollywood—with estimates of 500 to 1,500 new films being shot each year.” Bures was recently in Nigeria, and his vivid story takes readers inside Lagos video shops and explores how the low-budget films are made.
