Travel Blog
Happy Birthday, Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift
by Michael Yessis | 11.30.07 | 10:46 AM ET
Heard on the radio this morning that Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift, creators of the World Hum’s No. 7 and No. 6 greatest fictional travelers respectively, share a birthday today. Twain was born on this day in Missouri in 1835; Swift was born in Dublin in 1667. While in Ireland last week, I saw an early 19th century edition of “Gulliver’s Travels” at the Dublin Writers Musuem. The page in the photograph was surreptitiously taken there.
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzA (Three-Legged) Swan Song for America’s Roadside Attractions?
by Joanna Kakissis | 11.30.07 | 8:29 AM ET
Seems that fewer and fewer people these days want to see the stuffed jackalopes and the live six-legged cow at Prairie Dog Town. So after 40 years, owner Larry Farmer is closing up his petting zoo/freaky taxidermy exhibit in western Kansas—one of many mom-and-pop attractions fading from the American road-trip landscape. In an interesting feature for National Public Radio, Jason Beaubien explores how old bits of Americana such as the Elvis Is Alive Museum are disappearing with the rise of high-tech road trip distractions such as DVD-equipped minivans and iPods.
A Travel Writer’s Call to Arms
by Eva Holland | 11.29.07 | 1:06 PM ET
The Hollywood writers’ strike is in full swing—I’ll be pining for those sassy doctors on “Grey’s Anatomy” tonight—and it was only a matter of time before other writers started organizing as well. In his latest column, South Florida Sun-Sentinel travel editor Thomas Swick calls for travel writers to take some action. Writes Swick: “Our concern is not so much money but respect. In the literary hierarchy, we fall even lower than the screenwriters and TV scribes in L.A. There’s never been a joke about an ambitious blonde sleeping with a travel writer. We are so invisible we don’t even figure in punch lines.” Swick makes a number of demands. My favorite: “No one is allowed to ask us, on our return from a trip, how our ‘vacation’ was.”
Related on World Hum:
* Thomas Swick on Travel Writing
Rock Stars in Hotels: ‘Whatever Happened to the Good Old Days?’
by Joanna Kakissis | 11.29.07 | 12:21 PM ET
Trashing a hotel room like a wild animal is so 1990s. Today’s rock stars want the same things many of us want in a hotel—clean and quiet rooms without intruding housekeepers, high-speed Internet access, an in-hotel gym and maybe some San Pellegrino in the mini-bar, writes David Browne in The New York Times. “These guys want to go back to their rooms and have peace and quiet,” Jennifer Chiara, a travel agent who works with musicians, tells Browne. “Gone are the days of people riding a motorcycle down the hallway.”
Photo: Flying by the Light of the Moon
by Jim Benning | 11.29.07 | 10:49 AM ET
The same full moon causing astronomical tides in recent days—I’ve seen exposed sections of San Diego beaches I’ve never seen before—made a great backdrop for this photo of a single-engine plane over Denver.
Photo: AP.
New Travel Book: Bad Karma
by Frank Bures | 11.29.07 | 10:19 AM ET
Full title: “Bad Karma: Confessions of a Reckless Traveller in Southeast Asia”
Author: Tamara Sheward
Released: Nov. 1, 2007 (U.S.)
Travel genre: Bad Aussies abroad (you know the type)
Territory covered: Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia
Video: Crossing the Drake Passage
by Jim Benning | 11.28.07 | 5:02 PM ET
My conversation with Susan Fox Rogers about Antarctica got me Googling places like the Drake Passage, the stretch of water you cross if you’re sailing from the tip of South America to Antarctica. Based on this short but wild YouTube clip of a ship rocking and rolling there, I’d never want to attempt it in a storm.
Three Antarctica Books: Susan Fox Rogers’s Picks
by Jim Benning | 11.28.07 | 12:55 PM ET
This week we interviewed Susan Fox Rogers, editor of “Antarctica: Life on the Ice.” She talked about the recent cruise ship wreck, as well the power of Antarctica to change visitors. We asked her for three Antarctica book suggestions. Here’s what she told us.
Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica by Sara Wheeler
Fox Rogers says: “She kind of hitchhikes her way around the continent, for lack of a better way of putting it. She’s a beautiful writer with a great sense of adventure.”
China’s Theme Parks Look West
by Julia Ross | 11.28.07 | 12:49 PM ET
Call it Interlaken East. Just outside China’s coastal boomtown, Shenzhen—a city better known for shark’s fin soup than grilled bratwurst—a meticulously duplicated Swiss Alpine amusement park is attracting middle class Chinese looking for a vicarious European vacation. In a story on the rising popularity of Western-themed amusement parks in China, Time magazine reports that the Shenzhen project, called OCT East, spared no effort in recreating a Swiss village (the real Interlaken is pictured): “Last summer, an Alpine songfest brought yodelers. A wooden Christian chapel sits above a Swiss clock made from flowers. You can tour the whole property aboard an antique railroad that circles it, or view it from the highest summit—some 50 feet high—before plunging down the slope on the gondola-cum-roller coaster.”
Slide Show: ‘A History of the Hotel’
by Michael Yessis | 11.28.07 | 10:21 AM ET
Photo of the Las Vegas Hilton by Markyboy81, via Flickr (Creative Commons).
Modern hotels trace their history to early America, and Slate currently has a terrific slide show from A.K. Sandoval-Strausz depicting just how the country built and shaped them. “The hospitality industry is one of the fastest-growing segments of the international economy,” Sandoval-Strausz writes. “So it is easy to forget that the hotel, as we know it today, was once a new invention, an experiment that initially met with failure and endured periods of slow, halting development.”
Beyond The Nuclear Family: Single Parent Holidays On Offer
by Eva Holland | 11.28.07 | 9:37 AM ET
We all know how tough it can be traveling with kids, and these days it only seems to be getting tougher. But how about trying it without a co-pilot? In an article in the Times of London, Jane Owen lists non-profit organizations and travel agencies that offer custom-designed holidays, discounts or other opportunities to single parents and their children. The offerings range from ways to dodge single room supplements to full-on group holidays, where the theory is “that if single parent families eat together and play together, the parents will be more relaxed and the children will have more fun.”
New Travel Book: ‘Children of Jihad
by Julia Ross | 11.27.07 | 12:14 PM ET
Full title: “Children of Jihad: A Young American’s Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East”
Author: Jared Cohen, U.S. State Department policy planner and 25-year-old second-time author
Released: Oct. 25, 2007
Travel genre: Travel memoir, cultural commentary
Territory covered: Internet cafes and house parties from Beirut to Tehran
U.N.: Iceland Rocks. Sub-Saharan Africa? Not so Much.
by Jim Benning | 11.27.07 | 11:57 AM ET
Reports Reuters on the United Nations’ annual Human Development Index report: “Norway had held top spot for six years but was edged into second place by Iceland this year because of new life expectancy estimates and updated figures for gross domestic product.” Australia, Canada and Ireland rounded out the top five. The U.S. is 12th. Sub-Saharan Africa is the worst place to live, according to the rankings, and worst of all is Sierra Leone.
Disney vs. Denver vs. Chicago
by Michael Yessis | 11.27.07 | 10:53 AM ET
My return flight from Ireland landed at Dulles International Airport late Sunday afternoon, giving me a first-hand opportunity to see how the Disney-produced, U.S. government video to promote travel to the U.S., Welcome: Portraits of America, was being presented and received. I was amused, albeit probably not in the intended way.
Smithsonian Takes on ‘America By Air’
by Julia Ross | 11.27.07 | 9:27 AM ET
As we’ve noted, modern air travel leaves a lot to be desired, tarmac delays and all. But we’ve come a long way since the 1940s, when nurses were brought on board to calm jittery passengers anticipating a bumpy ride in unpressurized planes. I was reminded of the marvels of jet-age flight while visiting a new exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, America by Air, which traces the history of passenger air travel since 1914.
