Travel Blog
Barack Obama and the White House Shaka
by Pam Mandel | 01.21.09 | 3:12 PM ET
REUTERS/Larry Downing Maybe you caught it. Our new president, Barack Hussein Obama—and his little daughter, Sasha—threw the “shaka” at the Punahou School Marching Band during the inauguration parade. If you’ve driven in Hawaii, you’ve seen the shaka more than once—when you let the guy merge in front of you or stopped to let someone cross the street to the beach. Wikipedia has the most consistent origin story for the greeting which means, depending on context: it’s cool, hang loose, right on ...
One theory according to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, prevailing local lore credited the gesture to Kalili Hamana of Laie, who lost the three middle fingers of his right hand while working at the Kahuku Sugar Mill. Hamana was then shifted to guarding the sugar train, and his all-clear wave of thumb and pinkie is said to have evolved over the years into the “shaka.”
I can’t help but wonder what other signs of island culture the 44th president is going to bring to Capitol Hill.
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Yahoo! BuzzChinua Achebe (Briefly) Returns to Nigeria
by Eva Holland | 01.21.09 | 12:33 PM ET
The renowned author of Things Fall Apart returned to his home country recently to deliver a lecture, after almost two decades spent overseas. As This Day Online notes, “all previous efforts to bring Achebe home, who was highly critical of the Olusegun Obasanjo government, had failed until now.” (Via The Book Bench)
A ‘Guilt-Free Green Luxury Resort’ for the ‘Grown-up Backpacker’?
by Joanna Kakissis | 01.21.09 | 11:07 AM ET
I’m guessing you have to be a very rich grown-up backpacker to buy a place at the Cacao Pearl, Palawan, billed as the first non-profit, luxury eco-resort community to devote all of its revenue to environmental protection and social improvement. Cacao Resorts is set to build the resort on an 124-acre private island in the Calamianes archipelago on the northern end of the Palawan Biosphere Reserve in the Philippines. Antonio Calvo, a former film art director who worked on “Love Actually” and the horrifically acted “Alexander,” designed the five-star resort, which will have chic, zero-carbon homes, a spa and organic food amid rain forests, coconut trees and beaches.
I hope they will let me visit if I am ever rich and quietly famous.
Morning Links: Lego Hotel, Strange Travel Jobs and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.21.09 | 8:30 AM ET
- Throw a can of tomato juice on a plane, get charged with terrorism?
- San Diego’s Legoland looks to build a 250-room Lego-themed hotel.
- Passengers on US Airways Flight 1549—the one that landed in the Hudson River—are getting $5,000 each.
- The 10 strangest jobs in the travel industry by one count include driver of karaoke-equipped taxi and coconut safety engineer.
- All those extra charges on Ryanair add up to a lot of pounds.
- Environmental groups won a restraining order to stop oil and gas exploration of more than 100,000 acres of land in Utah.
- Brave New Traveler attends the Chuck Palahniuk school of travel.
- Jason Wilson throws down some presidential cocktails. Baracktail, anyone?
- Here are some photos of San Francisco’s Bush Street ... or is it Obama Street? Pranksters changed some signs overnight. When I lived in S.F. in 2000, signs were changed from Bush Street to Puppet Street.
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‘The Terminal’: Limbo I Can Relate To
by Eva Holland | 01.20.09 | 3:20 PM ET
This weekend, on a long distance bus ride, I found myself watching The Terminal. (You know, the one where Tom Hanks lives in JFK for a year and makes out with Catherine Zeta-Jones?) Under ordinary circumstances, I probably would have found it sweet, if fairly forgettable—but on the bus, with snowy, nondescript Western New York sliding by, I was surprised by the way the film’s themes, about waiting and limbo, grabbed me. Airport terminals have a static in-between-ness all their own, but long bus and train rides—despite, obviously, keeping travelers in motion—can have that same quality of suspended animation, too. Being in a strange place, surrounded by strange people, dozing and eating in semi-public, I felt much less like someone watching Hanks’ character from the outside, and more like a colleague—or, well, like a fellow-traveler.
When is Gas Station Food Better Than Restaurant Food?
by Sophia Dembling | 01.20.09 | 2:45 PM ET
Next time I go to Louisiana, I’m bringing along this article, by writer Nathan Stubbs, about great Cajun cooking in Acadiana gas stations and convenience stores. Sounds like I’ll eat a thousand times better than I did on my last trip to Louisiana, when my assignment was to sample as many Shreveport casino buffets as my digestive tract could tolerate. Any time anyone waxes envious about my glamorous travel writing life, I tell them about that trip.
The best advice I have, should you happen to find yourself dining in a Shreveport casino: Stick to the home cooking station. The next best advice: Avoid the pizza. The next next best advice: Ditto the Chinese food. The best best advice: Eat elsewhere. But you probably knew that.
Aloha, Washington-Style
by Pam Mandel | 01.20.09 | 1:58 PM ET
It’s way too late now to get a ticket to the Hawaii Inaugural Ball, but if you’re looking to find some of the island spirit while you’re in D.C. today, National Geographic Traveler has the lowdown on Where the Hawaiians Hang Out. You might still be able to get in to the luau at the Hotel Monaco, just two blocks from the inauguration. Attire? “Aloha Formal,” of course.
Obama and the Departure Seen ‘Round the World
by Jim Benning | 01.20.09 | 1:00 PM ET
REUTERS/Mike Segar I wouldn’t have anticipated it, but for me, the most powerful moment of today’s inaugural events didn’t come during the swearing-in ceremony or President Obama’s speech. It came at the end: the moment former President Bush boarded the helicopter near the Capitol and departed, his chopper moving away from the seat of power, becoming ever smaller as it receded into the distance. We experience departures all the time, but few so symbolic for so many people around the world. What a sight. Travel as history.
The Traveler’s Guide to Barack Obama
by Michael Yessis | 01.20.09 | 8:39 AM ET
Morning Links: Obama’s Places, Poe’s 200th Birthday and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.20.09 | 8:06 AM ET
- Barack Obama’s places: Six writers on six places the new president lived.
- Another Onion gem: ‘United Flight Crew Hits up Passengers for Gas Money’
- Modern Drunkard’s bars you won’t be going back to anytime soon.
- US Airways Flight 1549: A New York tourist attraction?
- JetBlue has added a few flights between Pittsburgh and Tampa to accommodate Steelers fans flying to the Super Bowl.
- Photos: Behind the scenes of the Tube in London.
- Happy 200th birthday, Edgar Allen Poe. Here’s where to go in five cities that claim his legacy.
- What’s it worth if you’re mauled by a javelina? A Dutch tourist believes $400,000.
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World Hum’s Most Read: Jan. 10-16
by World Hum | 01.16.09 | 6:48 PM ET
iStockphoto Our five most popular feature stories for the week:
1) Eight Best Cities for Street Food (pictured)
2) The Songlines of Key West: Doing the Duval Crawl
3) With Obama as President, Will Americans Get a Warmer Reception Overseas?
4) World Hum’s Top 40 Travel Songs of All Time
5) English Everywhere
What We Loved This Week: Washington, D.C.‘s Inaugural Spirit, Dinosaurs and More
by World Hum | 01.16.09 | 6:42 PM ET
Photo by Michael Yessis. Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Michael Yessis
I spent a frigid morning in Washington, D.C., walking up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. I brought my camera and stayed warm enough to snap some shots before the masses fill the bleachers lining the street. More images to come tomorrow in a slideshow.
Jenna Schnuer
While procrastinating this week, I became obsessed with this photo gallery of close-up images of sand from the book, A Grain of Sand. From now on, shell-collecting is out. I’m toting sand home. Then I’ll just need to pick up a high-powered microscope. I guess I’ll buy the book and stick with the shells.
Roll With It
by Jenna Schnuer | 01.16.09 | 4:34 PM ET
Photo by Jenna Schnuer. “You the lady from New York?”
A loaded question if ever there was one. It’s drenched in the expectation that I’m some sort of big city snob out to prove that life outside NYC is no life at all.
But, once again, the question. This time it came in the Monroe County Marble Super Dome in Tompkinsville, Kentucky. I was there to spend four days with a group of guys who, daily, play game after game of Rolley-Hole marbles on the Super Dome’s dirt floor. With kids choosing Wii and X-Box over traditional games, Rolley-Hole probably won’t last through this century. Most of the Rolley-Hole crew has been shooting it out for 50 years or more.
President Obama’s ‘Green’ Inauguration?
by Joanna Kakissis | 01.16.09 | 1:10 PM ET
Photo by tifotter (Creative Commons). Depends on what “green”—that “it” word with the elastic definition—means. The event will no doubt leave a giant carbon footprint, since there will be lots of flying and driving to get the estimated four million people expected to attend the 44th president’s swearing-in to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20. But if green means less wasteful, then those organizing the Inauguration of Barack Obama and veep Joe Biden are taking a few thoughtful and symbolic steps. For one, Obama will be the first president in history to take the oath of office on a carpet made out of recycled material. The Inauguration committee has also recruited 6,000 volunteers to gather recycling along the National Mall and parade route, is offering electronic versions of media guides (less printing), and even plans to gather the manure from the event’s horses for a nearby farm.
Eat Like Abe Lincoln. Sort of.
by David Farley | 01.16.09 | 12:02 PM ET
Barack Obama’s taste in food has gotten a fair amount of attention in the last year: when it came out that he likes arugula, the anti-intellectuals of the country wrinkled their collective noses (and then wondered what the hell arugula was). And a just-surfaced video showed him waxing about no-frills Southern food. Then there was all the hubbub about whether or not he was going to tell White House chef, Cristeta Comerford, to go pack her knives, replacing the Filipino-born, Vienna-trained top toque of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with a big name all-organic locavore of a chef.
Now comes word that the Inauguration lunch is going to be Lincoln-themed: the 44th president has been reading the 16th president’s writings of late, and he’s even going to be sworn in on the Bible that Lincoln used at his Inauguration, so why not ape his food choices, too? But WWLE (What would Linoln eat), you ask?
