Travel Blog
SkyMall: “There is No More Purely American Publication”*
by Michael Yessis | 09.19.06 | 6:56 AM ET
The Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach is almost certainly right about the ubiquitous in-flight catalog. “Ordering from SkyMall not only supplies an endorphin boost but is an act of optimism, as it presumes the safe landing of the plane,” Achenbach writes in the travel issue of Sunday’s Post Magazine. “The traveler thinks: I will survive this flight and own a new 1,000-CD multimedia storage tower!” Noted American optimist Stephen Colbert is also a fan.
* Update Sept. 22, 1:35 ET: Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times writer Dan Neil also recently wrote about the Sky Mall experience. Thanks for the tip, Eli.
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Yahoo! BuzzOprah Takes a Road Trip, Pumps Gas For First Time Since 1983*
by Sarah Schmelling | 09.18.06 | 8:17 PM ET
Today Oprah Winfrey launched the 21st season of her TV show with highlights from a cross-country road trip she took this summer with her very best girlfriend, Gayle King. Inspired by Chevy’s old “see the USA” slogan, the two took off in an Impala for a 11-day, 3,600-mile trek from Santa Barbara to New York. As with any good road trip, they experienced plenty of gorgeous views, traffic hazards, direction mishaps and lite-rock station sing-alongs (Celine Dion!). But what makes this different is, well, Oprah.
Passports and Privacy: Here Come the RFID Chips
by Michael Yessis | 09.18.06 | 3:15 PM ET
As if we needed more to worry about when we’re traveling. Soon the United States, like many other countries, will start embedding radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips into all of its citizens’ passports, where it will store electronic copies of your digital photo and other relevant information. “By itself, this is no problem,” Bruce Schneier writes in a scary op-ed piece in the Washington Post. “But RFID chips don’t have to be plugged in to a reader to operate. Like the chips used for automatic toll collection on roads or automatic fare collection on subways, these chips operate via proximity. The risk to you is the possibility of surreptitious access: Your passport information might be read without your knowledge or consent by a government trying to track your movements, a criminal trying to steal your identity or someone just curious about your citizenship.”
Ready for Takeoff? Please Fasten Your Seat Belt and Pop the Anti-Anxiety Drug of Your Choice.
by Michael Yessis | 09.18.06 | 3:06 PM ET
Make it Xanax or Valium or Ativan. Or just go with a sleep drug such as Sonata or Lunesta or Ambien. Don’t know which one’s best for you? Consult the interesting and highly informative story by Alex Williams in Sunday’s New York Times about the rise in popularity of prescription drugs among fliers in the age of terror alerts and cramped 737s.
“Everybody personally and professionally that I know who is afraid to fly gets their hands on Xanax,” said Jeanne Scala, a psychotherapist in Roxbury, N.J., adding that she has seen an increase in patients and friends talking about taking medication for flying jitters. “They’ll do anything to take the edge off the anxiety of sitting in a plane,” she said. “They just want to zone out, they want to sleep. So they’ll take Ambien, Sonata, even pain medication like Soma, which is for back pain. People use whatever they have—the pharmacy in their house.”
Just how effective are these drugs? I’m not a nervous flier, but I travel often with one, so I can attest to the power of a half an Ativan to calm nerves during turbulence. According to the Times’ story, the drugs alleviate much greater dangers than that.
Williams writes:
A few days after the terror arrests in London last month, a small commuter plane with three tourists was banking off the coast of Costa Rica when a sudden sound, like a muffled explosion, shattered the calm. The rear door of the plane, improperly shut, had blown open.
There was a moment of panic for two of the passengers. But Roger Knox, a graphic designer making a connecting flight before boarding a jetliner home to San Francisco, was not worried. He had just doubled his usual preflight dose of Ativan, a prescription anti-anxiety drug, in anticipation of the ride on the small plane.
Not sure I’d want to take anything that makes me—or my traveling companions—that calm.
Confucius in Modern China
by Michael Yessis | 09.18.06 | 6:11 AM ET
Part two of Tom Haines and photographer Essdras M Suarez’s two-part series Into a Changing China is now up at the Boston Globe. The final installment, Haines says, looks at modern China through its relationship with Confucius. And like part one, which we highlighted last week, it features a terrific audio slide show.
First Female Space Tourist Takes Off
by Michael Yessis | 09.18.06 | 6:08 AM ET
Dallas businesswoman Anousheh Ansari took off for the International Space Station today aboard a Russian rocket, reports ABC news. She is the fourth space tourist to travel with the Russians. The duration of the trip: 10 days. The cost: a mere $20 million.
Surtsey, Iceland
by Ben Keene | 09.15.06 | 2:35 PM ET
Coordinates: 63 4 N 20 3 W
Approximate elevation: 554 feet (169m)
Years and sometimes decades can pass before a map becomes visibly outdated to an untrained eye. But sometimes a rather dramatic change can be seen in a matter of months. Surtsey, a tiny Icelandic island named after a fire-possessing giant, qualifies handily as an example of the latter. Growing from a fissure in the ocean floor at a depth of about 400 feet, the island began to take shape above the waterline roughly two weeks after submarine explosions began on Nov. 8, 1963. Surtsey takes its name from Sutur, or Surt, a powerful giant in Norse mythology who hastens the destruction of the universe by setting fire to the World Tree. The island, which serves as a nature reserve and resting ground for migrating birds and seals in the North Atlantic, now appears on nautical maps and can be seen from a considerable distance.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
Top 30 Travel Books: Now It’s Your Turn
by Jim Benning | 09.15.06 | 1:32 PM ET
We just finished posting our top 30 travel books of all time, and we know you don’t agree with every selection on our list. Did we leave off your favorites? What’s in your top 30—or at least your top five? Let us know.
No. 30: “A Turn in the South” by V.S. Naipaul
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Pool Crashing, Soda Pop and “Pizza Jason”
by Michael Yessis | 09.15.06 | 8:04 AM ET
After last week’s end-of-summer blues and 9/11 remembrances, seems like travelers and armchair travelers are in a happier mood, ready to eat and drink and crash some pools. Where? Looks like the world’s classic destinations are still in style. Here comes your zeitgeist.
Most Viewed Story
World Hum (this week)
* Jason Wilson: One Traveler, Three Dishes Named “Jason”
Most Blogged Travel Story
New York Times (current)
* Los Angeles: Galco’s Soda Pop Store
Destination of the Year
PlanetOut Travel Awards (2006)
* Spain
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
* Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between
Most Viewed Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
* The Art of Pool Crashing in Las Vegas
Cover Story From a Glossy Travel Magazine
Conde Nast Traveler (September issue)
* Insider’s Guide to New York City
Favorite Country for Holidays
Conde Nast Traveller UK Reader’s Poll
* Italy
Most Viewed “Travel & Places” Video
YouTube (this week)
* “Welcome to Aggieland”
Most Popular Site Tagged “Travel”
del.icio.us (current)
* TravelPost’s Airport Wireless Internet Access Guide
The Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” Button Travel Zeitgeist Search
* A happier place than the happiest place on earth
Got something that deserves to be included in next week’s World Hum Zeitgeist? .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Hotel Bed Jumping HQ
by Michael Yessis | 09.15.06 | 7:30 AM ET
For photos of families jumping on beds, kids jumping on beds, hipsters jumping on beds, people in Las Vegas jumping on beds, cruise ship bed jumps, bed jumping videos and just about all the bed-jumping images one can take, Hotel Bed Jumping HQ is your place.
Let Us Now Praise the Teaching Geography is Fundamental Act
by Ben Keene | 09.14.06 | 5:00 PM ET
“Most Americans probably think Denmark is the capital of Sweden.” Sure, the remark was made somewhat in jest, but Tobias, the Dane I had just met while sitting outside of a pub in Aarhus on a crisp evening last weekend, had a point. As 2006 enters the home stretch, most of us Americans still don’t have a passport. The encouraging news, however, is that a bill currently under consideration by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and sponsored by Roger Wicker of Mississippi could reduce the frequency of such geography-related jokes in the future. If passed, the Teaching Geography is Fundamental Act would “improve and expand geographic literacy among kindergarten through grade 12 students in the United States” by establishing a geography education grant program. House bill 5519 still has a long way to go before it’s signed into law, but I’m cautiously hopeful. At the very least, we owe it to the Swedes—er, I mean the Danes.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
Out: Palm Trees. In: Oak Trees.
by Jim Benning | 09.14.06 | 1:36 PM ET
Few features define the Los Angeles landscape more than towering palms. They’re the stuff of postcard images. They earn appreciative nods in just about every L.A. travel story—a quick Google search turned up this gem: “From sun, sand and palm trees, to hiking and biking in the mountains, the Los Angeles area has something for everyone.” But according to city officials, they couldn’t be less environmentally correct or more expensive. As a result, few of the dying trees planted before the 1932 Olympics are being replaced by young palms. A USA Today story about this—and how oaks just might become L.A.‘s new palms—offers a fascinating glimpse into the way economics and changing environmental attitudes can re-shape a landscape.
‘The Power of Travel Must Be a Critical Element in our Public Diplomacy Efforts’
by Michael Yessis | 09.14.06 | 8:17 AM ET
I pulled that quote from the home page of the Discover America Partnership, a new organization of United States travel industry representatives that seeks to boost the levels of visitors to the country and to enlist Americans as “citizen diplomats.” As we wrote earlier this year, the dwindling number of visitors to the U.S.—the industry says the war in Iraq and security restrictions are the main contributors to the decline—has the domestic tourism industry in a panic.
Shanghai: Beyond the Skyline
by Michael Yessis | 09.13.06 | 6:38 AM ET
On a recent trip to China, Boston Globe travel writer Tom Haines took the amazing architecture of Shanghai as a given, old news. He and photographer Essdras M Suarez instead took a look a how the rising buildings and economy have affected life in Shanghai, and their story—the first of a two-part series “Into a Changing China”—and a terrific audio slide show highlighting the collision of old and new, are now online. “Across the river, guests at the Hyatt rest their heads on pillows 80 stories above the city. Foreign bankers emerge from apartments in the French Concession and swing into Starbucks for blueberry muffins and venti lattes. Tom Cruise leaps from Shanghai’s real towers in the imagined world of M:i:III,” Haines writes. “It can be easy to forget that beneath it all a local culture evolves.”
Waiting for Snow in America
by Terry Ward | 09.12.06 | 4:50 PM ET
I know how it feels to be a 6-foot-tall blonde in Tokyo—or, from my first travels to the Middle East, to realize that showing a little kneecap can be tres risquÃ(c)—but I always find it more interesting to read about the culture shock foreigners experience here in America. For Somalian immigrants taking a recent crash course on American culture at a Kenyan refugee camp, one thing awaiting them in their new home proved particularly baffling: snow.
