Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Venice Bans Feeding Pigeons in St. Mark’s Square
by Michael Yessis | 05.02.08 | 10:33 AM ET
The birds are “eating away at the city’s marble statues and buildings by pecking at small gaps in the facades to reach for scraps of food that were blown inside,” according to Reuters. In the list of dangers facing Venice, I’d rank the pigeons below this, but above this.
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzThe Fugu Phenomenon*
by Michael Yessis | 05.02.08 | 9:23 AM ET
Homer Simpson may have introduced you to fugu. Or perhaps Anthony Bourdain. They’re among those who have eaten the potentially deadly blowfish and helped make it “the thrill-seeking gastronome’s equivalent to scaling Mount Everest,” writes Adam Platt in New York Magazine. It’s banned through much of Europe and available only in a few restaurants in the U.S., though the FDA-sanctioned importing process, according to Platt, renders the fugu “less toxic than a piece of mercury-saturated tuna sushi at your local Korean deli.”
Is the United States ‘The Most Underrated Country in the World’?
by Michael Yessis | 05.01.08 | 3:37 PM ET
Interesting conversation going on at the Sydney Morning Herald travel blog about the good and bad about traveling within the United States. Ben Groundwater started it with a mostly-positive defense of the U.S. as a travel destination. The CliffsNotes version of the conversation so far: Rocky Mountains, New York, New Orleans, clam chowder, pizza and people who are “generous to the point of being overbearing” are good. “[L]oud-mouthed, rude, arrogant, and ridiculously insular” people and getting fingerprinted upon entry are bad.
Globalization, Souvenir T-Shirts and the Future of Travel*
by Michael Yessis | 05.01.08 | 3:03 PM ET
Sophia Dembling asks three questions to kick off an intriguing blog post: “Now that the price of flying is skyrocketing, will the world start getting larger again? Will travel become less egalitarian than it has become in recent decades, as fewer people can afford to do it? And would that be, necessarily, a bad thing?” Dembling recently wrote Traveling While Texan for World Hum.
Update: May 2, 11:09 a.m. ET: A USA Today story outlines how “[r]ecord-high oil prices are threatening to ground millions of travelers who have grown accustomed to flying for fun and business during the past 30 years.”
Seeking Salmon in Southeast Alaska*
by Joanna Kakissis | 05.01.08 | 10:03 AM ET
Daniel Duane loves to eat wild salmon, which used to live in abundance off the West Coast of the United States and whose numbers are now crisis-level low. His home, the San Francisco Bay area, was once famous for its seafood. But many San Franciscans now get their seafood from elsewhere, like the rest of American supermarket shoppers. It’s an antiseptic setting, and it just won’t do for an outdoorsy foodie like Duane. So he traveled by seaplane to southeast Alaska to glimpse one of the last remaining American paradises and to catch “this beautiful food” in “a web of freshwater, saltwater, and surrounding wildlands healthy enough to generate 5 billion pounds of seafood year after year, without diminishing anything.”
Aboriginal Musician Rocks iTunes
by Joanna Kakissis | 04.30.08 | 12:36 PM ET
Australians are snapping up new music from Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, an Aborginal musician who sings some of his songs in his native language, Yolngu. According to the International Herald Tribune, his first solo album, “Gurrumul,” released earlier this year, “jumped to No. 1 on the iTunes Australia roots music chart (it is currently No. 3)” and “is running strong in the mainstream iTunes music chart, above such international heavy hitters as Mariah Carey.” His MySpace page touts it as “One of the most important and beautiful Indigenous albums yet recorded.” Here’s a video clip from a recent show:
For Sale: Rare Coconut Palm, $1 Million
by Jim Benning | 04.30.08 | 11:43 AM ET
With three heads atop a single trunk, it’s a “botanical curiosity,” an expert says. I bet it’d look great on a $350,000 private island.
The BoltBus: Cheap Rides, Free Wi-Fi, a Little Lonely
by Jim Benning | 04.30.08 | 10:03 AM ET
We’ve written occasionally about the cult appeal of Chinatown buses, which offer dirt-cheap rides between Chinatowns in a number of Eastern U.S. cities. To compete, Greyhound has launched its own budget option, BoltBus, which features online booking, power outlets and, perhaps coolest of all, free Wi-Fi. So how’s the ride? Daniel Sorid bought a round-trip ticket from New York to Philadelphia for all of $2.50 and found himself the lone passenger on the journey.
Crowdsourcing and GPS in Remote Namibia
by Jim Benning | 04.29.08 | 10:30 AM ET
Interesting example of how user-generated info and hand-held GPS devices are changing travel.
‘At Least’ 70 Killed in China Train Accident
by Jim Benning | 04.28.08 | 7:22 PM ET
Monday’s Shandong province crash was the worst rail accident in China in a decade, the BBC reports. Authorities blame human error.
Go! Airlines Fires ‘Sleeping Pilots’
by Michael Yessis | 04.28.08 | 11:01 AM ET
The two go! airlines pilots suspected of sleeping on the job have been fired. According to the Honolulu Advertiser, the Federal Aviation Administration may also sanction the pilots.
Related on World Hum:
* ‘Sleeping Pilots’ Air Traffic Control Tapes Aired
Bid to Save Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport Fails
by Michael Yessis | 04.28.08 | 10:57 AM ET
Not enough people voted in a referendum to save Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport yesterday, dooming the iconic airfield to closure come October. Among Tempelhof’s claims to fame: The terminal, once the biggest building in Europe, was intended to be an awesome symbol of Nazi Germany. The airport also served as the hub of the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49.
Related on World Hum:
* Jan Morris in Berlin: ‘Ooh, That’s Nice!’
* Extreme Eating in East Berlin With the Stasi
Photo by martinroell, via Flickr (Creative Commons)
‘Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay’ Not Rushdie-esque?
by Jim Benning | 04.25.08 | 2:17 PM ET
What could be a better setting for a travel-related screwball comedy than an offshore military prison many argue violates the Geneva Conventions? Sounds like the makings of a major yuck-fest, right? Actually, the premise for the new Harold and Kumar film, which opens today, sounds vaguely amusing as summarized by the New York Daily News’ Joe Neumaier: “Following their munchies-fueled mishaps in the first film, the Jersey college guys head to Amsterdam, but thanks to paranoid airline passengers and Kumar’s bomb-like bong, they’re mistaken for terrorists and shipped to Gitmo.”
Rural Pubs in Ireland Becoming ‘So Yesterday’
by Michael Yessis | 04.25.08 | 1:43 PM ET
The Irish pub may be ubiquitous around the world, but it’s struggling in parts of its homeland. Mary Jordan writes in the Washington Post, “Wealth has given the Irish more options and less time—a bad combination for the local pub. More people are spending sunny weekends in Spain rather than evenings of ‘craic,’ as good times and conversation are known, down at the pub.” The video that accompanies Jordan’s story is below.
Peggy Noonan: ‘America is in Line at the Airport’
by Michael Yessis | 04.25.08 | 11:51 AM ET
The Wall Street Journal columnist writes: “America has its shoes off, is carrying a rubberized bin, is going through a magnetometer. America is worried there is fungus on the floor after a million stockinged feet have walked on it. But America knows not to ask.” Funny beginning to an intriguing piece about the state of U.S. presidential politics as seen through the eyes of passengers at Gate 14, “small-town America, a mix, a group of people of all classes and races brought together and living in close proximity until the plane is called.”
