Travel Blog
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.”
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Yahoo! BuzzThe 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
Happy Birthday, Prague’s Charles Bridge
by Jim Benning | 07.13.07 | 1:17 PM ET
Prague’s landmark Charles Bridge, one of Europe’s most arresting sights, turned 650 years old this week. The Prague Post covered the city’s elaborate festivities and recounted a little bridge history: “According to legend, King Charles IV, later to become Holy Roman Emperor, laid the foundation at 5:31 a.m. July 9, 1357, after consulting astrologers to come up with the palindromic time and date sequence of 1357-9-7-531.” A Charles Bridge webcam shows plenty of people out enjoying the bridge today. I dialed up World Hum contributor David Farley, who lived in Prague for three years and edited Travelers’ Tales Prague and ask him about his memories of the bridge.
How Do Americans Struggle With Vacations? Let Us Count the Ways.
by Jim Benning | 07.13.07 | 12:25 PM ET
This week’s Onion chronicles a few ways, with stories such as Longtime Married Couple Subjected to Excruciating ‘Romantic Weekend Getaway’ and Acid Trip Better Planned Than Vacation. While the latter headline seems just a tad ridiculous, a recent AP story suggests that many Americans just aren’t planning long vacations at all these days. (Not surprisingly, the AP neglected to cover acid trip preparation habits.) “A recent study by Orbitz, the online travel company, found a drop in the number of people taking three-week or two-week vacations and an increase in those taking a week or less,” the AP reports. “One-third of respondents said they took five or fewer days of vacation in the past year. One in four of those surveyed said they felt their bosses did not encourage them to take vacations, and one in three said they stayed connected with their office via phone or computer while on holiday.” Further evidence, sadly, that for too many Americans, summer has become the “vacation deprivation” season.
Photo by Whining Pom via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
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.)
U.S. Embassy in Italy: Naples Stinks!
by Michael Yessis | 07.13.07 | 7:17 AM ET
There’s some serious trash talk going on in Italy. The U.S. Embassy issued a warning earlier this week urging Americans to avoid Naples and its suburbs because they “may encounter mounds of garbage, open fires with potentially toxic fumes, and/or sporadic public demonstrations by local residents attempting to block access to dumps.” Naples, it turns out, is in the midst of a garbage crisis. Trash service has been disrupted since May, according to reports. Dumpsters are overflowing, and those that aren’t are allegedly controlled by the camorra, the Neapolitan mafia. And doing business with the camorra will cost you some euros.
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.”
Mongolia: ‘On the Trail of the World’s True Last Wild Horses’
by Michael Yessis | 07.12.07 | 8:17 AM ET
On the heels of Deanne Stillman’s story honoring the horses Battle of the Little Bighorn comes another interesting piece, this one from a spot on the other side of the world: Mongolia. The country has more horses—an estimated 3 million—than people. The Telegraph’s Sara Evans ventured to the Mongolian plains to see the horses. She writes of the wild creatures known as takhi: “While takhi may come in confectionary colours, their nature is not so sweet. During the mating season, stallions will kick each other to death to gain dominance; when wolves threaten to take foals, takhi will rear fiercely to protect their young; and no man - except, if you believe the legend, Genghis Khan - has ever been able to ride one. Unknown to Europeans until 1878, takhi are as wild as the landscape they live in.”
Related on World Hum:
* ‘Mongolia Loves Puff Daddy’
* The Horse Spirits of Big Sky Country
* Down by the Buskaschee Field
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?
Chopsticks Faux Pas and Other Cultural Land Mines in Japan
by Terry Ward | 07.11.07 | 12:47 PM ET
I try to be sensitive to cultural customs while traveling abroad but inevitably find my American-ness shining through. I can only imagine what cultural land mines await me in a traditional country like Japan. An insightful piece in the International Herald Tribune looks at the country’s subtle etiquette code from the viewpoint of a Japanese woman readjusting to her country’s norms after spending many years abroad. From “faux pas chopstick maneuvers” to dealing with her runny nose on a crowded train (in Japan, blowing your nose in public is the epitome of bad manners), Kumiko Makihara often finds herself overcompensating in an attempt to avoid offense.
‘Gopher Tourism’: Free Room, Board and Ammo for Willing Exterminators
by Michael Yessis | 07.11.07 | 12:02 PM ET
Wanted near Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Canada: Tourists with guns and good aim to help combat gopher infestation. It’s not my idea of a pleasant trip, but, according to a CBC News story, for some it has a certain Ted Nugent-y appeal.
