Travel Blog
Cat Fight Breaks Out at Hemingway’s Key West Home
by Michael Yessis | 07.31.06 | 11:26 AM ET
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Yahoo! BuzzBourdain in Salon: “Watching Beirut Die”
by Michael Yessis | 07.29.06 | 12:04 PM ET
On Wednesday, Anthony Bourdain fielded questions at the Washington Post about his recent experience in Lebanon—he was filming his Travel Channel show “No Reservations” when the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah began. Friday, he wrote a terrific essay about it for Salon. “It’s not what I saw happen in Beirut that I feel like talking about, though that’s what I’m doing, isn’t it?” he writes. “It’s not about what happened to me that remains an unfinished show, a not fully fleshed out story, or even a particularly interesting one. It feels shameful even writing this. It’s the story I didn’t get to tell. The Beirut I saw for two short days. The possibilities. The hope. Now only a dream.” Bourdain’s story has stimulated a flood of letters from Salon readers.
Stone Circles of Senegambia
by Ben Keene | 07.28.06 | 7:16 PM ET
Coordinates: 13 41 N 15 31 W
Approximate area: 15,000 square miles (39,000 sq. km)
Mention stone circles and most people probably think of the photogenic megaliths that beckon tourists to England’s Salisbury Plain. Farther to the south, however, along the River Gambia in West Africa, 93 stone circles in Senegal and Gambia represent a larger, more complex sacred landscape dwarfing Stonehenge. These massive seven-ton pillars were erected between the third century BC and the sixteenth century AD in a low-lying, sub-tropical region. On July 21, the World Heritage Committee added the Stone Circles of Senegambia along with 17 other sites to its list of 830 cultural and natural properties deemed most valuable to present and future generations.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
‘What Happens Here, Stays Here’: The Dark Side of Las Vegas’s Tourism Slogan
by Michael Yessis | 07.28.06 | 10:41 AM ET
Here’s what happens when some people start taking Las Vegas’s ad slogan—“What Happens Here, Stays Here”—a little too seriously: First, they arrive in Las Vegas and do things they never do at home, often involving too much alcohol, too little judgment and an alibi provided by the official Las Vegas Alibi Generator 2.0. Sometimes what they do in Vegas also happens to be dangerous and possibly illegal, and that captures the attention of the Las Vegas Police Department. And that prompts the local Las Vegas NBC affiliate to run a sensational local news story asking, Is the Vegas slogan causing problems for police? The answer? Well, maybe, but we don’t want to kill the golden goose.
2006 Book Passage Travel Writers Conference
by Jim Benning | 07.27.06 | 1:25 PM ET
Kerouac’s “On the Road,” Uncensored
by Jim Benning | 07.27.06 | 12:28 PM ET
When Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” was first published, a number of passages referring to drugs and sex were apparently edited out. (It was 1957, after all, not 1967.) But Viking Press now plans to publish the book in its original uncensored form, with text taken straight from the original scroll, according to John Sampras, executor of the writer’s literary estate. In an AP story via Yahoo! News, Sampras says he hopes the book will be out by the end of next year, the 50th anniversary of the classic novel. It’s about time, isn’t it?
Airport Gift Shops Feel the Sudoku Effect
by Michael Yessis | 07.27.06 | 12:27 PM ET
In the course of reporting a story about hot sellers at various airport gift shops, Harriet Baskas came across a bit of a mystery. She writes in her On the Road column for USA Today: “[T]he folks at the Hudson Group, which operates news and gift shops at airports nationwide, noticed that an unusual item was being increasingly re-ordered by newsstands. The Hudson Group’s Laura Samuels says, ‘We had plenty of pencils in storage, but noticed that the general managers kept re-ordering mechanical pencils. On closer study we realized this was a byproduct of the Sudoku craze.’ Travelers working on these extremely popular grid-based puzzles need sharp pencils and good erasers. Pencil sharpeners aren’t a common airport amenity, so savvy Sudoku players have transformed an old-fashioned writing implement into an airport bestseller.”
Life Abroad in the U.S. Foreign Service
by Michael Yessis | 07.27.06 | 11:40 AM ET
National Public Radio’s Morning Edition had an interesting two-part series this week on what life is like for American Foreign Service workers these days, at a time when anti-American feelings are so pervasive. “More and more, diplomats are assigned to serve in countries that are too dangerous for their families,” reports Megan Meline, a Foreign Service spouse whose husband has served in Dar es Salaam and Manila. “There are about 700 of these unaccompanied positions, in places such as Kabul and Bujumbura, Burundi.”
Reminder to Voodoo Practitioners: Please Keep the Human Skulls Out of Your Carry-On Bags
by Ben Keene | 07.27.06 | 11:20 AM ET
Airline travel sure isn’t what it used to be. As we’ve posted in the past, many carriers have reduced the niceties on long distance flights in an effort to cut costs in an increasingly competitive business. These changes may not bother all travelers, but after a U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale ruled against well-intentioned individuals packing human skulls with their other luggage last week, you have to wonder what comfort will be the next to go. Back in February, Myrlene Severe, a Haitian woman and practitioner of Voodoo, brought a head with her from Cap Haitien to the United States to ensure a safe arrival. Judge James I. Cohn saw things differently. “All of us has something unusual in our religions,” her lawyer said during her trial. In our religions, perhaps, but in our suitcases no longer.
Bourdain: “I’m Feeling a Little Pessimistic About the World These Days”
by Jim Benning | 07.26.06 | 12:40 PM ET
Globe-trotting, show-hosting chef Anthony Bourdain, back safely from Lebanon (where he was filming a Travel Channel show when the conflict began) fielded questions online this morning from Washington Post readers. Asked if a No Reservations episode was in the works based on the trip, he replied: “We’re trying to figure some way to show how beautiful and hopeful Beirut was before the bombing, how terrible a thing it is that happened, what we’ve lost, the pride and hopefulness and optimism that was smashed…It will not be a regular episode of No Reservations.”
Princess Cruises: Human Error Caused Listing Accident
by Jim Benning | 07.26.06 | 11:43 AM ET
As we noted here, the Crown Princess departing from Port Canaveral, Florida last week listed suddenly, injuring hundreds of passengers. On Monday, the cruise company published a letter apologizing for the accident: “[W]e can confirm that the incident was due to human error and the appropriate personnel changes have been made.”
GQ: Literary Travel, Elizabeth Gilbert in France and How Not to Look Like an American Abroad
by Michael Yessis | 07.26.06 | 10:26 AM ET
In its August issue GQ devotes 14 glossy pages to interesting travel stories, including three pages to “The Traveling Library,” which features a black-and-white photo of a sexy woman reading a book and a round-up of eight novels and memoirs that capture “what you’ve come looking for” in a destination. Among the recommended books and places are: Henry Miller’s The Colossus of Maroussi (Greece), George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (Barcelona), A.J. Liebling’s Between Meals (Paris) and Jan Morris’s The World of Venice. Walter Kirn also picks three books to read when you hit the highway—Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jim Thompson’s The Getaway and Charles Portis’s The Dog of the South. The story itself isn’t available online, though, of course, the photo of the sexy woman is. So are some online-only additions to the piece, including Geoff Dyer’s pick for India: V. S. Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness.
Travel Section Letter of the Week: Celebrities Run Amok
by Michael Yessis | 07.26.06 | 10:15 AM ET
New Road Music: Tom Petty’s “Highway Companion”
by Jim Benning | 07.25.06 | 11:00 PM ET
Tom Petty knows how to write a road tune. “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” from his 1990 album Full Moon Fever, featured an infectious guitar riff and celebrated the freedom and promise of a good road trip with verses like this: “I rolled on as the sky grew dark / I put the pedal down to make some time / there’s something good waitin’ down this road / I’m pickin’ up whatever’s mine.” Petty’s new album, released today, has a title that suggests it, too, will play nicely on the road: Highway Companion. Writes Rolling Stone in a review: “His songs are filled with images of motion, travel and the road; the sharpest writing appears in the cryptic, evocative ‘Down South,’ describing a journey that includes plans to ‘see my daddy’s mistress,’ ‘sell the family headstones’ and ‘pretend I’m Samuel Clemens / Wear seersuckers and white linens.’”
Writers on Ruins: An ‘Anthology of Archaeological Travel Writing’
by Jim Benning | 07.25.06 | 5:31 PM ET
Most contemporary travel writing focuses on the here and now, with only brief glimpses back. But recently, Oxford University Press published a collection of travel stories about visits to ruins entitled From Stonehenge to Samarkand: An Anthropology of Archaeological Travel Writing. The book features old and relatively new stories by such writers as Tom Bissell (a World Hum contributor), Paul Theroux, Robert Byron and Mark Twain. The New York Times called it a “smart” collection, and the Washington Times declared it “an admirably well-produced survey of the personalities and accomplishments of those pioneering people eager to recapture past relics of human history.”
