Travel Blog
UK Guidebook Writers: ‘Readers are Getting a Poorer Experience’
by Michael Yessis | 01.24.07 | 8:33 AM ET
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Yahoo! BuzzMaui Locals to MTV: We’re Not All White Deviants Who Prey on Tourists
by Jim Benning | 01.23.07 | 2:48 PM ET
Overseas Travel to U.S. Down 17 Percent Since 9/11 Attacks
by Jim Benning | 01.23.07 | 1:48 PM ET
The cost to the U.S.? More than $15 billion in lost taxes and nearly 200,000 jobs, according to a study released today.
‘Paris Syndrome’: The New York City Strain?
by Michael Yessis | 01.23.07 | 1:00 PM ET
The New York Post had some fun with a recent story about Japanese tourists in France who succumb to Paris Syndrome. The paper titled its piece Paris Leaves Japanese French Fried. Now the New Yorker’s Lauren Collins is on the case, wondering if there’s a New York City version of the syndrome that leaves travelers to the City of Light overwhelmed and in need of psychological treatment. An officer at the Japanese Consulate “does not believe in the existence of Paris syndrome, or, for that matter, a New York strain,” Collins writes, but she does report that Japanese visitors to the Big Apple do have certain traits.
It’s Jan. 23. Do You Know Where Your Passport Is?
by Jim Benning | 01.23.07 | 8:05 AM ET
If you’re an American flying from the U.S. to Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean and want to return home, we hope so. The new passport rule, otherwise known as the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, goes into effect today, requiring that you carry one. Predictably, many travelers are now rushing to get their own little blue book, prompting newspaper headline writers to break out their favorite egg-related verb. Meanwhile, U.S. territory Puerto Rico stands to gain from the new rule: Passports are still not required of U.S. citizens, a fact that Puerto Rico is spending $36 million to promote. So how many new passports do officials expect to issue this year?
The Norovirus Strikes Again
by Michael Yessis | 01.23.07 | 8:03 AM ET
Cruisers didn’t take the hit this time. Hotel guests in Virginia did. From the Associated Press: “The Hilton hotel near Dulles International Airport has been closed for a top-to-bottom scrubbing after more than 100 guests were sickened by the highly contagious norovirus.” The norovirus notoriously plagues cruise ships.
‘The Soccer People’: Heartbreak and Triumph in Clarkston, Georgia
by Michael Yessis | 01.22.07 | 8:47 AM ET
We write often about how soccer explains the world. Here’s another post, one that tells the story of an amazing soccer team based in a small town near Atlanta. Team name: The Fugees. “The Fugees are indeed all refugees, from the most troubled corners—Afghanistan, Bosnia, Burundi, Congo, Gambia, Iraq, Kosovo, Liberia, Somalia and Sudan,” writes Warren St. John in a front-page story in Sunday’s New York Times. “Some have endured unimaginable hardship to get here: squalor in refugee camps, separation from siblings and parents. One saw his father killed in their home.”
Amy Tan’s San Francisco: ‘This City is Like an Opera’
by Michael Yessis | 01.22.07 | 8:40 AM ET
When visiting San Francisco, Amy Tan says, bypass Chinatown and instead head for the Richmond. The author of The Joy Luck Club and occasional rock ‘n’ roller offers the good advice—tourists tend to go to Chinatown, while locals and newly arrived immigrants make Clement Street a vibrant place to eat and shop—and reveals a handful of her other favorite haunts in a “Their Town” round-up in the Washington Post. Tan is a Bay Area native who grew up hearing the “siren’s call” of the city in the 1960s.
‘A Sense of the World’ Nominated for National Book Critics Circle Award
by Michael Yessis | 01.22.07 | 8:31 AM ET
Jason Roberts’s book about the life of James Holman, a man who became a prolific traveler in the 1800s after losing his sight, has earned a National Book Critics Circle nomination in the biography category. In her review for World Hum, Liz Sinclair called ‘A Sense of the World’ insightful, highly detailed and gripping.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Wanderlust and WiFi
by Michael Yessis | 01.19.07 | 9:35 AM ET
This week, travelers are looking for a taste of luxury and a nice beach to catch some rays and ... surf the Internet? We’re off to Hermosa Beach, Aspen, Walt Disney World, Mount Everest, Hawaii and one dirty hotel in Virginia.
Most Popular Travel Story
Netscape (current)
Top 10 Beaches With WiFi Internet Access
* Not the kind of surfing we prefer at the beach.
Dirtiest Hotel in the U.S.
TripAdvisor’s Travelers’ Choice Awards (2006)
Tropicana Resort Hotel in Virginia Beach, Virginia
* One quote on TripAdvisor: “This had to be the toilet bowl of Virginia Beach.”
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World Hum (this week)
‘Has the Romance Gone Out of Travel?’
* Let’s not ask the travelers who stayed at the Tropicana in Virginia Beach.
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FlightStats
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
Beneath the Glitz, a Middle-Class Aspen
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USA Today (current)
Top Luxury Attractions at Disney World
* Plus, a slideshow.
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2007 by Bob Sehlinger with Len Testa
Top Travel and Adventure Audiobook
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Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
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iTunes (current)
Travel With Rick Steves
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Martin Sargent: Web Drifter
* The podcast described: “Journey with me now as I visit the physical loci of the most outrageous, surprising, intriguing and important websites I’ve bookmarked during my years of furious Internet surfing, actually going ‘behind the websites’ to get to know, and learn from, the time travelers, shamans, UFO cult leaders and other geniuses who created them.”
The Critics: ‘Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration’
by Jim Benning | 01.19.07 | 7:16 AM ET
Writing a sweeping history of world exploration sounds like no easy feat. Doing it well sounds even tougher. But the critics are raving about Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s new book that attempts just that, Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration. The New York Times calls it a “brilliant and readable book,” adding that it’s “an illuminating and, at times, stirring examination of the divergence and convergence of cultures, a rich study of humankind’s restless spirit. As intimate as Alexander the Great’s deathbed wish and as vast as human migration, this book explains who we are as much as what we have done.”
State Department Relaxes Warning for Oaxaca City
by Jim Benning | 01.18.07 | 9:54 PM ET
Instead of completely avoiding the Mexican city of Oaxaca, travelers should use caution there, the U.S. State Department now says. Translation: The place is beginning to return to normal after the protests and violence of last year. For those Oaxaca visitors ordering tasty mole in restaurants, we say: Exercise no caution. Go crazy. That stuff is good.
Related on World Hum:
* In Oaxaca, a Different Kind of Day of the Dead
Photo: Moody75, via Flickr. (Creative Commons License.)
Youth Travel On the Rise
by Jim Benning | 01.18.07 | 9:38 PM ET
Good news. According to a Detroit Free Press report: “The student and youth travel market is a huge 20% segment of all the travelers in the world. Among the fastest-growing segments, it includes not only college students age 25 and under, but increasing numbers of middle- and high-schoolers and even elementary children on group day or overnight school trips for band, choir, church, sports or science, civics and language classes.” While the article doesn’t identify a study to support the data, it also insitsts: “Children who start traveling when they are young become lifelong travelers. They are more likely to travel in high school. They’re more likely to study abroad in college. And they’re more likely to carry their love of travel into adulthood.” Ah, addicts, just like us.
Next Up on Hollywood’s Travel Book Adaptation List: ‘Eat, Pray, Love’
by Michael Yessis | 01.18.07 | 12:38 PM ET
Julia Roberts is on board to play the lead in Elizabeth Gilbert’s critically acclaimed bestseller “Eat, Pray, Love,” which World Hum books editor Frank Bures calls hilarious, moving and deeply engaging. Will a movie version of the book work? Bures, who also interviewed Gilbert for Poets & Writers, thinks it could. “It’s hard to say how much the film will resemble the travel book, but Julia Roberts is a fine actress,” Bures says. “She might not be quite as funny or quick-witted as Gilbert, but I’m sure she’ll be great. You can’t really lose with Julia Roberts playing you.”
R.I.P. Art Buchwald
by Jim Benning | 01.18.07 | 12:08 PM ET
The famed humorist, who died Wednesday at the age of 81, got his start writing abroad. He once wrote a column called “Paris After Dark” that featured “scraps of offbeat information about Parisian nightlife” for the New York Herald Tribune. His goodbye video (“Hi, I’m Art Buchwald, and I just died”) is up on the New York Times website.
