Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Al Gore, Are You Out to Destroy Travel Literature?
by Jim Benning | 07.17.07 | 10:46 AM ET
We know you’re out to save the planet, but have you given any thought to how your campaign to reduce emissions will affect travel literature? What’s that? You haven’t really considered it? Well writer Steve Coronella has. “[L]ately I’ve been wondering whether Al Gore has signaled the end of travel writing as we have come to know it,” Coronella writes in the Cape Cod Times. “Will the long-haul literary excursion become an indefensible extravagance in the face of global warming and the accompanying public outcry that we all need to reduce our ‘carbon footprint’ to combat it?”
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Yahoo! BuzzThe Art of Mileage Running
by Michael Yessis | 07.17.07 | 9:45 AM ET
Few know the ins and outs of airline frequent flier programs like mileage runners, a subculture of hard-core travelers—“airline hackers,” according to a recent Wired story—who create elaborate itineraries and fly around the world with no other purpose but to pad their mileage accounts. “Mileage runners are the high-tech nomadic wanderers of the air,” writes Wired’s Dave Demerjian. “Predominantly male, generally obsessed with flying and miles, and typically employed in white-collar careers that involve significant business travel, they scour the web for cheap flights, phoning in sick or using vacation days to fly the longest itineraries they can string together.”
In Krakow, Jewish Culture has Become Hipster Culture
by Terry Ward | 07.16.07 | 4:03 PM ET
In June, more than 20,000 people descended on Krakow, Poland for the city’s annual Jewish Festival—complete with Hasidic dance performances, Hebrew calligraphy lessons and klezmer music galore. But perhaps the most interesting thing about the gathering was that very few of the festival-goers were Jewish. Jewish culture is gradually making a comeback in Eastern Europe. And in Krakow, it seems, it has become downright trendy.
The Ikea Hostel: Norway’s New Take on Sleepover Tourism
by Julia Ross | 07.16.07 | 2:45 PM ET
Though Ikea has reliably provided me with inexpensive towels and silverware over the years, I’ve never looked forward to spending a Saturday trekking to one of its warehouses. So I was surprised to read in The Guardian that Norwegians consider the stores a destination, a must-see on the summer travel circuit. Now Ikea is capitalizing on this interest by turning hotelier, at least temporarily. This month the company will open a one-week overnight hostel at one of its Oslo locations, where up to 30 shoppers will have the chance to bunk down in-store each night, sample the cafeteria’s Swedish meatballs and wrap themselves in bargain-basement Ikea bathrobes, all free of charge.
Iweala: Stop Trying To ‘Save’ Africa
by Michael Yessis | 07.16.07 | 1:00 PM ET
Vanity Fair’s Africa issue prompted World Hum contributing editor Frank Bures’s examination of the West’s efforts to “save” the continent. Beasts of No Nation author Uzodinma Iweala’s inspiration for a piece on the subject in the Washington Post this weekend was an encounter with a “perky blond college student” who yelled at him, “Don’t you want to help us save Africa?”
So Long, Forbidden City Starbucks. Help Us Pick a New Wonder.
by Jim Benning | 07.16.07 | 11:33 AM ET
Earlier this month, we named the Starbucks outlet in China’s Forbidden City one of the seven wonders of the shrinking planet. It was, we wrote, symbolic of both globalization and, because of the ongoing protests surrounding its near-sacred location, any nation’s struggle to maintain its cultural identity amid rapid change. But now, like the ancient wonder the statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Forbidden City’s Starbucks outlet has bitten the dust. According to Reuters, it closed on Friday as a result of protests. The closure has left World Hum with only six viable wonders of the shrinking planet, and that’s just wrong. Now we need your help.
Frommer: America’s ‘War on Tourists’ Waged with Red Tape
by Jim Benning | 07.16.07 | 7:56 AM ET
Foreign tourism to the U.S. is down 10 percent since 2000, costing the U.S. billions of dollars in revenue. Why? “The overwhelming consensus of the WTTC [World Travel & Tourism Conference in Lisbon] was that we have made it extraordinarily difficult for most foreign tourists to obtain visas for travel into the United States,” writes Arthur Frommer in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune. “In some countries, it requires several weeks simply to make an appointment to apply for such a visa at a U.S. consulate. Let me repeat that: Not only is the application process a time-consuming procedure, but it requires a several-week wait for an appointment to apply for the visa!” Now, he adds, further delays are being proposed. The nation’s inability to improve the system, he concludes, is a “catastrophic oversight.”
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: It’s a Wonderful Life
by Michael Yessis | 07.13.07 | 1:31 PM ET
Their seven wonders, our seven wonders and the wonder of the Dreamliner top the minds of wide-eyed travelers this week. Here’s the Zeitgeist.
Most Read Feature
World Hum (this week)
Seven Wonders of the Shrinking Planet
* From “Airworld” (pictured) to Starbucks in the Forbidden City, an alternative take on the seven wonders of the world.
Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
By Popular Vote, the World’s ‘New 7 Wonders’ Named
Most Viewed Travel Story
Telegraph UK (current)
Where to Stay: Amsterdam
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
10 Great Places to Get in Tune, be Outdoors
World’s Best City
Travel + Leisure World’s Best Awards (2007)
Florence
* Travel + Leisure’s 12th annual readers poll also ranks the world’s best hotels, islands and more.
Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
‘Man Overboard’: A Look at Cruise Ship Disappearances
Coming Soon: Japanese Bidet-Toilets at 30,000 Feet
by Terry Ward | 07.13.07 | 11:23 AM ET
My sister, Janet, visited Japan last year and returned with a breathless account of her experience with Japanese toilets, particularly the “washlets”—high-tech bidet models with myriad features such as adjustable hot and cold water sprayers, heated seats, blow dryers and, in some cases, massage settings. “It’s not for someone who just wants to go in, do their business and get out the door,” she concluded. Japan-bound visitors have traditionally had to wait until they arrive to make use of what are perhaps the world’s most luxurious loos. But according to a recent Reuters story, soon passengers on some All Nippon Airways (ANA) flights won’t even have to wait that long. (Yes, the airline that brought the world the Pokemon jet is again breaking new ground.)
Where in the World Are You, Chris Vourlias?
by Jim Benning | 07.12.07 | 3:37 PM ET
The subject of our latest nearly up-to-the-minute interview with a traveler somewhere in the world: Chris Vourlias, a contributor to TravelGator.com. His response landed in our inbox this morning.
World Hum: Where in the world are you?
‘Hey America, Make With the !@~$ High-Speed Rail Already’
by Michael Yessis | 07.12.07 | 11:24 AM ET
I want my country to develop a high-speed rail system. Members of the U.S. House of Representatives transportation committee want it. According to the AP, Amtrak president Alex Kummant testified to the rail subcommittee yesterday that he’s “enthusiastic about a major high-speed corridor.” Chances are you want high-speed rail, too, whether you’re a resident of the U.S. or a traveler who visits the country and ends up spending 12 hours on a train from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Yet, nothing happens. Actually, there’s something happening. In China.
Seville Hotels Offer Siesta Rates for ‘Iberian Yoga’
by Terry Ward | 07.12.07 | 11:13 AM ET
Hotels in the southern Spanish city of Seville are looking to lure beach tourists to their scorching inland city this summer by offering “siesta rates,” with rooms discounted 30 percent during the hottest hours of the day—between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. “The siesta is making a comeback, recycled for the modern world as ‘Iberian yoga,’” Elizabeth Nash writes in The Independent. “Far from the afternoon snooze that consumes valuable working time, Spain’s siesta is being rebranded as essential for spiritual wellbeing and a balanced life.”
R.I.P. Lady Bird Johnson
by Jim Benning | 07.11.07 | 10:08 PM ET
Among the many accomplishments of Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady of the United States who died this afternoon at the age of 94: helping to beautify the American landscape, including highways.
Talk About Leg Room: The 193-Mile Flight in a Lawn Chair
by Jim Benning | 07.11.07 | 3:35 PM ET
Yes, on Saturday, Kent Crouch of Bend, Oregon kissed his wife goodbye, gave his Chihuahua a final pat and took off in a lawn chair attached to 105 helium balloons, according to an AP story. With three cars following him, Crouch flew 193 miles in nearly nine hours, passing through clouds and sailing above, among other things, cows and children. He starting popping balloons when his water supply ran low. He landed safely in a field near Union. “It was serene,” he reportedly told Good Morning America, “just like you’re on top of a cloud laying there.” He was flying in the helium contrails of Larry Walters, a Southern California man who took flight in a lawn chair in 1982. Walters became the subject of a story in George Plimpton’s The Man in the Flying Lawn Chair: And Other Excursions and Observations, excerpted in the New York Times.
Related on World Hum:
* Bring Your Tray Tables to the Upright Position and…Duck!
* It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s…a Flying Cruise Ship?
* The Critics: ‘The Happiest Man in the World’ by Alec Wilkinson
Is It Bad Form to Order a Cappuccino After 11 A.M. in Italy?
by Jim Benning | 07.11.07 | 2:44 PM ET
Not only did a friend tell John Flinn never to order a cappuccino after 11 a.m. in Italy “because Italians think it’s barbaric,” but Flinn found the same advice repeated on countless Web sites. Anyone who breaks the 11 a.m. rule, common wisdom seems to dictate, will immediately be exposed as a good-for-nothing ignorant tourist. Flinn wondered whether Italians were really that judgmental. “I tried to imagine the reaction if a Belgian tourist walked into a McDonalds in, say, Cincinnati, and asked for mayonnaise for his fries,” he writes in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle. “It would draw, at most, a bemused shrug, wouldn’t it? Would an Italian waiter react to a post-11 a.m. cappuccino request any differently?” Flinn set out to find the answer on his last trip to Italy. What did he discover?
