Travel Blog
Who Wears the Pants on Alitalia Flights?
by Jim Benning | 11.13.06 | 4:16 PM ET
Soon—for the first time ever—female flight attendants. From an AP report on USAToday.com: “Alitalia’s female flight attendants will be allowed to swap their traditional skirts for trousers, breaking with half a century of rigid dress code at Italy’s flagship carrier, a union said Thursday.”
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Yahoo! BuzzMexico 2006: ‘The Year of Traveling Cautiously’
by Jim Benning | 11.13.06 | 3:28 PM ET
That’s Los Angeles Times reporter Reed Johnson’s take on travel in Mexico this year. Johnson has been filing terrific culture-related stories from Mexico and the rest of Latin America for years. His assessment in Sunday’s newspaper sounds very reasonable—neither alarmist nor pollyannaish.
Secrets to Sleeping on a Stranger’s Couch
by Jim Benning | 11.13.06 | 2:56 PM ET
The Associated Press explores several Web sites that help connect travelers with strangers who have sofa space to share, including HospitalityClub.org, CouchSurfing.com and the ambitiously named GlobalFreeloaders.com. “The sites aren’t moneymakers,” the AP reports. “They’re largely the creations of 20-somethings bitten with wanderlust and the hope to help bridge together people from different cultures. They often depend on volunteer administrators to help manage the Web operations.” Traditionally, freeloading has been a local activity, so anyone who can take mooching to a global level has our deep admiration.
‘This is Lagos’: George Packer in Nigeria’s Megacity*
by Michael Yessis | 11.13.06 | 10:43 AM ET
By 2015, George Packer reports in an amazing and heartbreaking story about Lagos, Nigeria, in the Nov. 13 issue of the New Yorker, the country’s former capital will rank as the third-largest city in the world, behind Tokyo and Bombay, with 23 million inhabitants. Right now it’s the sixth largest and has 15 million residents, who live mostly in squalor. Packer writes: “It’s hard to decide if the extravagant ugliness of the cityscape is a sign of vigor or of disease—a life force or an impending apocalypse.” As the city struggles to fight off the latter, Packer explores its slums and how Lagos is now “a hip icon of the latest global trends, the much studied megalopolis of the future.” Unfortunately, the story is not available online. However, Packer did recently speak about Lagos on NPR’s Day to Day.
* Update: The story is now online.
Wallpaper City Guides: Stylish, Unconventional Looks Inside Great Cities
by Frank Bures | 11.10.06 | 1:05 PM ET
It’s not often that a publisher churns out a new guidebook worth mentioning. But the design and travel magazine Wallpaper has just come out with some beautiful little guides highlighting stylish sides of a wide range of cities, from Bangkok to Barcelona and Singapore to Stockholm. Each guide includes photos that feel real yet also alluring (in other words, no mundane close-ups of vegetables and market women). Each book has a 24-hour guide, an “Urban Life” section, an “Architour” and a few other unique features.
Karakalpakstan
by Ben Keene | 11.10.06 | 12:50 PM ET
Coordinates: 43 0 N 58 0 E
Population: 1,400,000 (2006 est.)
While it’s unlikely that he will inspire as many people to actually visit the glorious nation of Kazakhstan, one can hope that a percentage of the millions who’ve already rushed to see Sasha Baron Cohen’s movie “Borat!: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” will be inspired to learn something about Central Asia. If so, they might investigate Karakalpakstan, the autonomous republic in the westernmost part of Uzbekistan, due south of the shrinking Aral Sea. Compelled under Stalin to adopt a Soviet identity, the population of this massive expanse of harsh geography includes Tartars, Uygurs and Karakalpaks, in addition to Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kazakhs. Located atop numerous large mineral deposits, Karakalpakstan is also bordered by two deserts and the arid Ustyurt Plateau, and thus lacks an equivalent wealth in resources above ground.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
Potts Celebrates Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Wichita Vortex Sutra’
by Jim Benning | 11.09.06 | 7:51 AM ET
The Rise of the Procreation Vacation (Complete with Sea Moss!)
by Jim Benning | 11.08.06 | 1:40 PM ET
We’ve reported on the growth of dental tourism, among other offbeat vacation trends. Now comes word of the growing popularity of “procreation vacations” undertaken by couples on a quest to get pregnant. An AP story notes a range of options, including the three-day Procreation Vacation on Grand Bahama Island, where guests sip sea moss to boost their chances; the Birds and the Bees package on Chesapeake Bay in Maryland (think oysters and massages); and the Procreation Ski Vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which includes romantic crackling fires. The trips sound like good fun, but do they actually help?
UK-Inspired Thames Town Opens in China
by Jim Benning | 11.08.06 | 1:36 PM ET
Further evidence the planet will soon become one giant theme park: the opening of Thames Town, an English-inspired village in a suburb of Shanghai. It’s a $600 million development that includes a Winston Churchill statue, Victorian-style homes for sale, a fish-and-chips shop and a pub. Most of the homes have already been sold. But not everyone is pleased. According to Reuters, the owner of a pub and fish-and-chips shop in the UK feels cheated because her businesses were reproduced “almost exactly” in Thames Town. Said a representative from the development: “Maybe it’s a little bit of a misunderstanding. It’s not in any way supposed to be a replica.” Shanghaiist has more.
Iqaluit, Canada: Unlikely Celebrity Hot Spot
by Michael Yessis | 11.08.06 | 8:06 AM ET
All the stars go to Iqaluit: Foxx. Paltrow. Willis. Schwarzenegger. Banderas. The list goes on. And they go to the Arctic town of 6,500 on Canada’s Baffin Island for good reason: It’s where celebrities and politicians traveling between Los Angeles and Europe stop to fuel their private jets. “We’re a gas station,” Eric Leuthold, who runs Frobisher Bay Touchdown Services, told the Washington Post’s Doug Struck. “Some of the stars don’t even know where they are. They wake up groggy and ask where they are, and never come out of the jets.”
Scientists Unveil ‘Silent, Energy-Efficient Plane’
by Michael Yessis | 11.07.06 | 8:06 AM ET
It’s good news as concern grows about the environmental impact of jet travel. From the Guardian: “Plans for a silent, energy-efficient plane which could take to the sky in less than 25 years’ time were unveiled this afternoon by scientists,” writes Hillary Osborne. “On a typical flight the plane, which has been designed by scientists from Cambridge University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will achieve the same kind of fuel efficiency as a Toyota Prius.” Check the Silent Aircraft Initiative for details.
Potts: “I Resolved to Explore the Louvre by Seeking Out Every Baby Jesus in the Building”
by Michael Yessis | 11.07.06 | 7:58 AM ET
“Silly as this may sound,” Rolf Potts writes in his latest Traveling Light column on Yahoo!, “it was a fascinating way to ponder the idiosyncrasies of world-class art.” And an alternative to the usual way of seeing the Louvre: making a beeline to the Mona Lisa.
Surfing U.S.A.: Australian Duo Getting Stoked in All 50 States
by Michael Yessis | 11.06.06 | 8:16 AM ET
Here’s another addition to our list of interesting road-trip chronicles: Surfing 50 States. Stefan Hunt and Jonno Durrant, two friends from Australia, are traveling around the U.S. in an attempt to surf in every state in the Union. It begs a few questions, beginning with: Are these guys geographically impaired? To get a few answers, I dropped the guys an e-mail this weekend. Stefan replied somewhere on the road to Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
Flinn on the Lhasa Express: “I’d Give it a B-Minus”
by Michael Yessis | 11.06.06 | 8:06 AM ET
San Francisco Chronicle writer John Flinn took a ride on the Lhasa Express, the new train from China to Tibet, and returned with that verdict and a terrific tale of life—and strange happenings—on the high-altitude rails.
Second Life Welcomes Virtual Tourism
by Michael Yessis | 11.06.06 | 7:44 AM ET
It’s got at least one hotel and a travel guide, so it was only a matter of time before we read a real travel story about virtual travels in Second Life. Matt Gross’s piece in the Escapes section of the New York Times covers a virtual weekend in the virtual space. His thoughts: There’s a lot of dancing and, in some ways, it really is like being on the road. “I’d had brief chats with a dozen Second Life residents—the unreality makes it easy to approach them—but had made no real connection. In a way, it was because I really was a tourist,” Gross writes. “I had nothing invested in this world, while they were building houses and yachts, organizing rock concerts and fashion shows and creating virtual refugee camps to educate people about Darfur.”
