Travel Blog
Tourist Architecture: Kitsch Curios and Vainglorious Monstrosities
by Michael Yessis | 02.13.06 | 10:02 AM ET
I think the proposed Grand Canyon Skywalk is unnecessary. Jonathan Glancey thinks it’s a travesty. And his criticism extends to other questionable developments in well-traveled spots around the world. In Saturday’s paper, the Guardian’s architecture correspondent listed his picks for worst additions to natural landscapes around the world. He pulls no punches.
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Yahoo! BuzzMattel’s New Ken Doll: “He’s Been Backpacking Through Tibet”
by Jim Benning | 02.12.06 | 2:56 AM ET
Turin, Italy
by Ben Keene | 02.10.06 | 6:49 AM ET
Population: 867,857 (2004 est.)
Coordinates: 45 3 N 7 40 E
As host city for the 2006 Olympic Winter Games, Turin, Italy is now in the news, but as it happens, this riverine city in the Piedmont region has held positions of even greater importance in the past. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was the capital of the kingdom of Sardinia, which then included the island of the same name in the Mediterranean. Then in 1861, after several decades of warfare and diplomacy among powerful European empires and dynasties, Turin became the first capital of a unified Italian state. The seat of government was moved to Florence four years later where it remained until Rome ultimately became the capital of the modern republic.
Conan O’Brien: “Once I Conquer Finland, I’ll Head South Through the Baltics and On To Belarus”
by Michael Yessis | 02.09.06 | 11:45 AM ET
I’m betting that Conan O’Brien’s visit to Finland next week will prove to be some of the best travel television programming of the year. Or at least the most amusing. The host of “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” will broadcast all week from the country and even meet with newly-elected president Tarja Halonen, whose candidacy O’Brien had endorsed based in large part on their resemblance.
The BBC World Service Short Story Competition: “One Night in Bangkok”
by Frank Bures | 02.09.06 | 11:38 AM ET
The BBC has posted a reading of a great travel-related short story that was a runner up in its World Service Short Story Competition. Tracey Martin’s “One Night in Bangkok” is about “a young woman whose round-the-world travels take her no further than Bangkok,” where she gets more, and maybe less, than she bargained for. The story, as well as another travel-related runner up, Manini Nayar’s “Child at Play,” can be heard on the BBC World Service website, but will be online for only a week, so listen soon.
Thomas Swick on Book TV
by Jim Benning | 02.08.06 | 6:03 PM ET
South Florida Sun-Sentinel travel editor and author Thomas Swick will appear on C-SPAN2’s Book TV Saturday at 6:35 p.m. EST. A crew from the cable channel recently interviewed Swick and taped him reading from “Travels with a Book,” an unpublished story about his book tour of the Midwest last summer. Swick made the tour in support of his collection of travel stories, A Way to See the World: From Texas to Transylvania with a Maverick Traveler. Readers will recall that Swick was a guest blogger here last month. In 2003, he spoke to us in a World Hum interview.
Queen Mary 2, Meet Your Namesake
by Jim Benning | 02.08.06 | 1:36 PM ET
The Queen Mary 2 could use some good press after angry passengers threatened to stage a sit-in recently like anti-war protesters in the ‘60s. A little could come Feb. 23, when the Queen Mary 2 is scheduled to sail into the Port of Long Beach near Los Angeles and “greet” the original Queen Mary for the first time with a whistle salute. The event is being billed as “A Royal Rendezvous.” A Web site has details.
Franz Wisner on the Writing Life and Honeymooning With His Brother
by Jim Benning | 02.08.06 | 12:44 PM ET
Rolf Potts has posted a terrific interview with Franz Wisner, the author of Honeymoon with my Brother: A Memoir, which came out in paperback yesterday and is in development for a movie. Wisner has a great story. He was left at the altar by his fiancee. (Okay, that part doesn’t sound so great.) He took the honeymoon anyway—with his brother, who never once complained about Franz’s “spooning technique”—and the two decided to travel together for two years. Then Wisner wrote a bestselling memoir about their journey and sold the film rights to Sony Pictures.
JT Leroy is…Laura Albert
by Michael Yessis | 02.08.06 | 12:22 AM ET
The saga of JT Leroy, the celebrated novelist and sometime travel writer who, it turns out, never existed, reached an end of sorts today. Warren St. John reports in the New York Times that a central figure in the hoax has fessed up. The author of the books Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things and one infamous travel story about Disneyland Paris is a 40-year-old woman named Laura Albert.
New Guinea: Paradise Found?
by Terry Ward | 02.07.06 | 12:43 PM ET
More than 20 new frog species, a rare tree kangaroo never before seen in Indonesia, four new butterfly species and five new types of palms are some of the astonishing findings reported by scientists during an expedition to a remote mountain jungle in the west of New Guinea. Predictably, it’s being likened to heaven on Earth. “It’s as close to the Garden of Eden as you’re going to find on Earth,” said Bruce Beehler, co-leader of the U.S., Indonesian, and Australian expedition, according to a Reuters report on CNN.com. Beehler said they “just scratched the surface.” Sounds like further evidence that undiscovered locales still await intrepid souls (or, at the very least, heavily funded scientists) in the world’s most far flung corners. Note to intrepid backpackers and Starbucks developers: According to the story, the area is now “off limits to most visitors.”
Where is That Pair of Scissors Security Confiscated From You at JFK? Check eBay.
by Michael Yessis | 02.07.06 | 12:31 PM ET
USA Today’s Gary Stoller reports that government agencies are making more than a few bucks by selling the prohibited items surrendered by travelers to the U.S. Transportation Security Administration. Often, the items are put up for bid on eBay.
The Grand Canyon Skywalk: What Would Edward Abbey Think?
by Michael Yessis | 02.07.06 | 12:24 PM ET
We’re big fans of the land. Mountains. Mesas. Wide open spaces. All of it. So whenever we come across questionable development on Mother Nature’s fine works, we often find ourselves wondering, What Would Edward Abbey Think? In this first installment of our new recurring feature, we ask what the environmental advocate and author of Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang would think of the Grand Canyon Skywalk. The Hualapai Tribe plans to open a glass bridge—it looks more like a see-through horseshoe to me—extending 70 feet beyond the rim of the Grand Canyon, 4,000 feet above the Colorado River. It was scheduled to open last month, but its debut has just been pushed back until the end of 2006. Read all about it in this press release. An artist’s rendering is above.
Airbus A380 Makes North American Debut
by Michael Yessis | 02.07.06 | 9:43 AM ET
The world’s largest passenger jet, the double-decker Airbus A380, landed in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada Monday for cold-weather testing, according to a CBC news story. Built in Toulouse, France, Airbus’s 555-passenger plane—the CBC has an excellent graphic and slide show—has already been tested for high altitudes in South America and for high temperatures in the Middle East.
“It’s Really Not That Dangerous Out There”
by Jim Benning | 02.06.06 | 1:15 PM ET
The San Francisco Chronicle’s John Flinn enjoys perusing the travel-gadget catalogs loaded with items to keep you safe: shirts with secret pockets, siren alarms for your hotel room, germ-fighting airline seat covers. “These catalogs are fun to peruse (and even more fun to make fun of),” he writes in Sunday’s paper, “but I worry about two things: that they foster paranoia in novice travelers, and that they perpetuate the notion that safety and security comes mainly from buying—and lugging along—the right gadgets. Experienced travelers know this, but to those of you just getting started: It’s really not that dangerous out there.” I agree wholeheartedly.
The $1 Billion Cruise Ship
by Jim Benning | 02.06.06 | 12:29 PM ET
Like passenger jets, cruise ships are getting bigger. Much bigger. The AP is reporting that Royal Caribbean International has ordered the construction of the world’s largest and most expensive cruise ship ever. When delivered in 2009, the ship is expected carry 5,400 passengers, which is 46 percent more than the current record holder, due out in April. It will be 1,181 feet long. According to Oslo-based Aker Yards ASA, which will build the ship, Project Genesis is “the most valuable ship ever ordered in the history of commercial shipbuilding.” USA Today has the details.
