The duo behind BigTripProductions’ videos aren’t kidding with the “Big Trip” part. Otherwise known as Kevin Allgood and Valerie Marshall, they’re currently on a one-year, round-the-world journey that they’re filming and blogging along the way. They took off on September 5th and warmed up with a trip to London and Amsterdam, before traveling through Turkey and Egypt. While they have a rough plan of where they’re headed, Kevin and Valerie are making up a large part of their route as they go. Their website, BigTripBlog is continually updated with posts from the road and clips of their most recent expeditions, and has all the backstory on their trip planning and previous stops. Kevin is the techie of the two, and has done a excellent job of fleshing out the site with pictures, route maps, embedded videos, and, my favorite, blog posts paired with binaural audio recordings made on location, for an even greater sense of place. Of course, you can always watch their videos right here on Travelistic, too.
Darren Cronian of Travel Rants, a great, UK-based travel news and advice blog, picked us as one of his top ten travel sites for 2006. We clocked in at number nine on a list that also included sites such as Lonely Planet, SideStep, YouTube, and Google Maps. Considering that we only launched in October of the year in question, we’re well pleased (and just a little abashed) to be thought of in such good company. Aw shucks, Darren.
Here’s the whole list:
10. Travel Rants
Sorry, I couldn’t help it – there’s nothing more fun than self promotion. Travel Rants has grown rapidly in the last 12 months with over 330 blog articles, and over 2,500 comments from travellers, travel professionals, and anyone interested in travel.
9. Travelistic
8. SkyScanner.net
7. Lonely Planet
6. SideStep
SideStep is relatively new in the UK and Ireland Travel market, but what I love about SideStep is the very well designed filter search system, where you can search for all hotels in London who provide Internet access – searching is simple, and allows you to filter right down to the hotels which exactly match your needs.
5. WikiTravel
4. Travel Supermarket
3. YouTube
YouTube has changed the internet – reports this week suggest that people are moving away from watching mainstream TV, to spend more time watching videos via the internet and YouTube. If your looking for information on a specific destination then its worth checking out this video networking site, first to see if anyone has taken a video, for you to watch.
2. Google Maps
1. Trip Advisor
Google Maps was a close second, but it was beaten to the finish line by Trip Advisor, simply because as a traveller, it’s imperative that when you are searching for a hotel, you can read real hotel reviews from other travellers who have stayed there.
Yes, you have to have an open mind, and whilst the Trip Advisor hotel review concept has been put under some strain from the media lately (as reported on the Travolution Blog) you shouldn’t book a hotel without checking out this website first.
Remember trains? We do still have them in the US of A. Despite the constant scheduling problems and crippled infrastructure, I can’t help but root for Amtrak for hanging on in the face of our relentless car culture. So what the the Acela only goes from New York to DC thirty minutes faster than the regional service? We actually have something resembling European high-speed rail in this country! The first long-distance train I ever rode was the Amtrak Adirondack, on summer trips from New York up to see my grandparents near the Canadian border. I remember great views along the Hudson and Lake Champlain, and my mom unharried by traveling with rowdy kids since we were free to run around, not catastrophic lateness and poor service. Later on, after living in Europe for awhile, where near door-to-door public transit delivered me from trips all over the continent to my block in Paris, I couldn’t imagine why rail in the US had been allowed to fall apart. Thus, I was glad to read today that airport hassles and high gas prices finally seem to be putting America back on track, as it were. Ridership on Amtrak’s entire system rose 1.1% in the past year, with certain lines in the Northeast, Southeast and Midwest showing jumps as high as 10 – to 23%.
“Robert Mann, an airline industry analyst, says airlines drove passengers to the train by reducing the number of seats available for shorter trips and raising the “walk-up price” of tickets on their shuttles.
“The result is Amtrak becomes more convenient,” Mann says. “You don’t get the level of screening, if at all, in a train station compared to an airport.””
More good news: a transportation think tank at Rutgers University just announced a plan recommending that the Federal Government acquire the busiest stretch of American railroad, the Northeast Corridor between Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., which carries 1,700 trains a day. Currently all Amtrak trains operate on rails owned by freight companies, who really couldn’t care less about passenger service, or those Amtrak’s forced to maintain itself, though it has never shown a profit since it was founded in 1971. Next stop: a healthy, state-supported train network? Everybody get on board.
– “Amtrak ridership increases (USA Today)
– “Study: Feds Should Own NE Corridor Line” (AP)
– Amtrak
The results of the Condé Nast Traveler film poll are in, with the top 50 flicks, as chosen by readers, that captured a real sense of place and inspired them to travel. 50 films in the space of a year seems a little ambitious to me: I’m not sure I would classify Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (No. 22) as a travel piece, no matter how appealing its vision of a misty, Victorian UK. And how did it, or, for that matter, Last Holiday (no. 20), ever wind up higher on the list than the Eastern European odyssey in Everything is Illuminated (no. 24)? Still, there’s little to quibble with in the top 10, with Brokeback Mountain, The Constant Gardener, and Tsotsi all making the list. But the top two finishers, Pride and Predjudice, and Chinese Actresses in Kimonos, er, Memoirs of a Geisha, show a preference for the fantasy version of a place, rather than any attempts at “reality”. Ergo, readers might want to learn from the lesson of eco-fantasist Timothy Treadwell, before they take too much inspiration from the 4th place winner, Grizzly Man, and go running off to the wilds of Alaska to commune with the bears.
1. Pride & Prejudice (England)
2. Memoirs of a Geisha (California; Japan)
3. Brokeback Mountain (Alberta, Canada, as Wyoming)
4. Grizzly Man (Alaska)
5. The Constant Gardener (Berlin; Kenya; London)
6. Tsotsi (Johannesburg; Soweto)
7. Casanova (Venice)
8. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Mexico; West Texas)
9. The Da Vinci Code (Paris; London; Scotland)
10. Mrs. Henderson Presents (London)
Previously:
– “Condé Nast Traveler Movie Poll“
The paperback companion of the world’s backpackers has joined the blogosphere. Lonely Planet launched a travel blog last week that advertises itself as drawing from “326 Authors, 173 countries, and 400 travel-loving staff” as informants. So far they’ve covered everything from aid work in Darfur, to Pho eateries in Vietnam, to the fine art of souvenir t-shirts, and that’s after only two days of posting. Definitely worth staying tuned to see what their network of hard-traveling readers and authors digs up next. (via Jaunted)
Previously:
– “Moscow Takes Aim at Lonely Planet”
– “Micronations”
– “Lonely Planet Cities“
Argentina
– “Maté obsession knows no class, age boundaries” (San Francisco Chronicle)
Brazil
– “In Lapa, Rio de Janeiro, the Samba Never Stopped” (NYT)
– “Discover ‘Black Gold’ in Ouro Preto, Brazil” (Houston Chronicle)
Car-less California
– “A freeway-free coastal journey” (LA Times)
Chile
– “Surreal Patagonia” (San Francisco Chronicle)
Mexico
– “Chiapas, Without Reservations” (Washington Post)
New Orleans
– “Back to New Orleans, Gently” (NYT)
Oslo, Norway
– “Norway’s grand prize” (LA Times)
Protecting World Heritage
– “Saving the Great Wall From Being Loved to Death” (NYT)
– “Wearing out our welcome” (LA Times)
Senegal
– “7 hours away” (Guardian)
Whatever your story of Thanksgiving travel woe this holiday weekend, the LA Times wants to remind you that it could always have been worse. In honor of the busiest travel days of the year, they asked their regular writers to weigh in with stories of their worst travel experiences. Their tales range from a snowstorm in the Canary Islands, to a two-week road trip through strip-mallandia in a 37-foot RV with plumbing problems, and will leave you feeling that nothing complements Turkey leftovers like a side of schadenfreude.
Travel Turkeys
– “37 feet of sheer agony”
– “Saving her clutch from their clutches”
– “Sure was a swell time (for her foot)”
– “Feeling flurries of panic”
– “If you can see it, you can eat it”
– “After ‘I do,’ trip doesn’t”
– “Honey, saddle up the spider”
Enjoy the long weekend everyone, I’ll be back with new posts on Monday.
As you give thanks today over your once-frozen bird, know that travelers have an extra reason to be thankful for that Butterball. It could just as easily have been used to protect the lives of pilots and airplane passengers. You may or may not be familiar with a phenomenon known as a “bird strike,” in which an aircraft encounters a bird or flock of birds while flying, but in the aviation world it’s a serious business. Bird strikes can cause extensive damage to plane fuselage, windshields and engines – and on at least five occasions have downed planes. Aeronautics engineers decided back in the 70s that a great way to test prototype aircraft against bird strike was to fire a chicken, turkey or goose carcass at the plane at speeds up to 450 miles-per-hour, using an air cannon. There’s much debate as to whether a frozen or thawed bird works best, with a certain faction preferring the realism of unplucked fowl, though an article on urban-legend-debunking site Snopes.com is quick to point out, “the birds are dead when cannonized.” Still, some testers have switched over to specially designed gelatin, plastic or clay “birds” in deference to animal-rights groups.
Elsewhere:
– Birdstrike Committee USA
– “Bird Plus Plane Equals Snarge” (Wired News)
The proverbial “busiest travel weekend of the year” is now officially in progress, as those without the leisure to travel well in advance of Thanksgiving are leaving work and scrambling, by plane, train, and auto, to get to wherever it is that they’re expected for dinner tomorrow. MSNBC and CNN are staying on top of the latest details that may affect the 38 million Americans traveling this weekend. So far, the biggest snafus are a strike by Northwest’s baggage handlers in Minneapolis, and foul weather on both coasts tying up airports and highways. Here’s MSNBC’s list:
– Baggage handlers for Northwest Airlines stop handling bags in Minneapolis in a reported labor dispute.
– Overturned truck blocks traffic on Interstate 405 in Los Angeles near one of country’s busiest airports.
– Rain, 60-mile-an-hour gusts slow travel in Mid-Atlantic.
– Widespread flooding in eastern North Carolina, with major highway on Hatteras Island closed.
– Snow in Cascades slowing travel, especially through mountain passes, in Washington state and Oregon.
– Wind delaying departures at Newark Liberty International Airport, outside New York City.
Good luck to everyone on the roads and rails, or in the air tonight, here’s hoping you get to your destination in time for the feasting.
Previously:
– Airports on Film
– Traveling for Thanksgiving
Not everything in Paris is horribly overpriced, even in these days of the Euro. Just a coin or two can buy you a piece of a French national tradition, in the form of the best bread you’ll ever taste. Budget Travel has published an article with their picks for the best boulangeries in Paris, winners of the annual Grand Prix de la Baguette (yes, the French are that serious about baked goods) among them. Their list of five includes the mini-chain of stores run by baker extraordinaire Eric Kayser, boulangerie to the stars Bread and Roses, and the Moulin de la Vierge, which is housed in a 14th-century mill. But you can hardly go wrong with any neighborhood bakery in Paris – when I lived there, I had four within throwing distance of my building’s front door whose everyday product beat out even the best baguettes from schmancy New York bakeries – not that that’s so hard to do. (For more on that sob story, see New York’s article ranking the best of the mediocre – which is basically as good as it gets on this side of the Atlantic.)
Elsewhere:
– Maison Kayser
– “Living in Paris: Poor but not hungry” (Parisist)
– “The Best Baguette in Paris” (Chocolate & Zucchini)
The RAD Blog’s Jon Rawlinson is back with new videos after an absence of a month or more. Take a gander at his trip to Kotor, Montenegro – an ancient medieval town, and UNESCO Heritage site, in the newest country on earth.
Previously:
– Yahoo! | Current Traveler
– Scourist Travel Vlog
The Orlando Sentinel, news outlet to Florida’s theme-park corridor, featured us on Monday in a post from their Tourism Central Florida blog. Like the London Times before them, the Sentinel’s bloggers think that researching your chosen destination by video is a great way to to get a feel for a place before you book a trip. For more on
that thought, visit our archive of videos from Florida.
Perhaps to give you something to think about during the hours you will spend at the airport if you’re flying for the holidays, USA Today has published a dubious list of “Great Airport Moments in Film” – from Casablanca to [sic] Trains, Planes and Automobiles. (Attention fact-checking department – it’s Planes, Trains and Automobiles)
“Who can think of business travel and Thanksgiving week without recalling the 1987 comedy cult classic movie Trains, Planes and Automobiles? Steve Martin and John Candy — Neal Page and Del Griffith in the movie — play road warriors struggling to get home for Turkey Day against a long list of obstacles, including storms, overbooked hotels, a train derailment and a car fire.
One unforgettable scene is Martin’s obscenity-laced tirade at the rental car counter at Lambert-St. Louis airport after the clerk had sent him to a distant parking lot to find his car not there.”
Please note the absence of the deeply emo ending of Garden State, and the entirety of The Terminal. Undeservedly missing is the compelling central scene of 12 Monkeys in which a rogue scientist uses an airport as ground zero of his plot to spread a lethal virus. To keep you feeling safe as you while away the hours in line for security, they’ve opted to end the list with another Bruce Willis vehicle, Die Hard 2, where terrorists seize an airport control tower threatening to crash planes, and eventually get their own escape jet blown up right there on the tarmac. Yay!
The drunkards of the Web are toasting the Thirsty Traveler. Recently, his alcoholic adventures have gotten attention from a bunch of sites and blogs: Drink of the Week picked up an episode from Japan on sake, while Cheap Fun Wines and Saving the world, one drink at a time are both digging Kevin’s trip through Australia’s wine country. Say the Cheap Wines crew: “We recommend watching with a nice little glass of something in your hand.” Cheers, guys!
Get out your long johns, ski season is here:
NYT “Snow Days”
– “Finding Bliss in Avalanche Country, British Columbia”
– “At Deer Valley, Utah, a One-Size-Fits-All Vacation”
– “Resorts Aim to Please Younger Skiers”
– “Niseko, Japan: Downhill Skiing in the Land of the Rising Sun”
– “Powder Trip in Silverton, Colo.”
– “36 Hours: Whistler”
– “Getting Ahead, or, How to Cut the Lift Line”
– “Eco-Resorts Turn White Slopes Green”
Globe and Mail
– “Early riders”
– “Earning your turns in the Selkirks”
– “Stowe’s major makeover”
SF Chronicle “Ski Preview”
– “BREAKING OUT OF THE TAHOE RUT: Kirkwood and Bear Valley”
– “Northstar, Tahoe resorts unveil new lifts, lodging, terrain”
Casino Royale, the 21st film about jet-setting secret agent James Bond, opens today. And, despite the James Blond epithets hurled at the producers over their controversial choice of sandy-haired Daniel Craig for the lead role, the buzz about this latest edition is good. Bond and travel have become synonymous from the far-flung, exotic locations used in the films – to learn more about Casino Royale’s settings for action sequences and seduction, take a look at the latest episode of our news show, The Map, in today’s featured videos. If you want to try and live the super-spy lifestyle, though, the Telegraph has an article on Bond moments that you can recreate for yourself, with tips on how to drive, dress, date, shoot, and travel like 007. For the story, writer Charles Starmer-Smith signed up with a company that replicates the opening stunt from Goldeneye, a 728-foot bungee jump to the base of Switzerland’s Verzasca Dam, and took plunge while suitably attired in a tux. Alas, the suave and composed demeanor stopped there. (Click on the image for video)
”’OK. Three!’ said Tony, counting me down.
‘I am 007,’ I said to myself.
‘Two!’
‘I am 007,’ I said again.
‘One!’
‘I am double-oh aaaarrrrggggghhhhhh!’”
(via Gadling)
In the increasingly high-stakes business of luxury hotels, a four-star concierge – someone willing and able to meet almost any guest demand – is indispensable. After all, when you’re paying several thousand (or tens of thousands) a night for your suite, you likely expect the royal treatment, even if that means having hotel staff buy your kid a BMW as a 16th birthday present while you’re busy playing master of the universe in the boardroom. Forbes, naturally, has a story on decidedly odd requests received by resourceful concierges around the world (including the preceding gem), which makes for some worthwhile gawping at the things the ultra-rich expect from “the help.”
“Lanfranco Gualandi, now chef concierge at the SoHo Metropolitan Hotel in Toronto, once shipped a month’s supply of yogurt to a guest from Saudi Arabia, who had tasted it during his stay at the Sutton Place Hotel, and found it very pleasurable. His colleagues at the Sutton Place once chauffeured a guest’s dog across the Canada-New York border in a luxury sedan.
If that’s not enough of a taste of how the new all-billionaire cast of the Forbes 400 vacations, take a look at their list of the world’s most expensive hotels.
The French Government takes their country’s gourmet reputation seriously: by law, the first bottle out of France ’s vineyards each year, le Beaujolais Nouveau, can’t be uncorked until the third Thursday of November. So today, all over France, and anywhere in the world where Francophiles and/or wine-bores can be found, there will be people eating baguettes and drinking gallons of cheap red wine. Some 60 million bottles of the stuff will be consumed by the end of the day, all to the delight of Georges Duboeuf, Monsieur Beaujolais himself, who transformed the day from a regional post-harvest tradition into a global phenomenon to bolster sales of his mediocre flowery labeled vintages. The point, of course, isn’t the wine – which is thin, fruity and shouldn’t be kept past six months – but having a party to celebrate the first drinkable product of the past summer’s grapes, and to drive back the winter chill. Think of it as Thanksgiving for winos.
Elsewhere:
– “Ahead: Beaujolais Nouveau” (NYT)
– “A little beau peek” (Chicago Tribune Metromix)
(image via kikoosland’s photostream)
Let the countdown begin, we’re officially one week away from the apogee of American Civil Religion: Thanksgiving. Whether for you this means feasting and a resultant tryptophan coma, or getting into fighting stance for the biggest shopping crush of the year, for anyone traveling, T-Day means a cornucopia of endless lines, delayed flights, traffic jams and the like. 37.2 million people traveled over the Thanksgiving weekend last year, and experts predict greater numbers next week. If you plan to be among them, take a look at this week’s NY Times “Practical Traveler”, which has a survival guide on how to avoid the worst of it. Chief on their list of concerns are the rules about carry-ons and toiletries (remember those?) which are still very much in effect.
“Airports say they are doing their part to make sure that people know the liquid and gel carry-on rules: containers no larger than three ounces, all tucked into a single quart-size, zip-top, clear plastic bag ready to be placed on the security conveyor belt.”
The piece also has useful advice on how to avoid traffic jams on the way to grandma’s house (drive at off hours, or on the day itself), and how to avoid a late or canceled flight (check flight on-time stats and fly non-stop). Or you could follow the advice of Bob Cella, a disgruntled traveler interviewed for the piece, and just stay home: ”’My dog and I are having Thanksgiving together,’ he said.”
Elsewhere:
– “Tips to help you get to grandma’s” (MSNBC)
User ianmack is otherwise known as Ian MacKenzie – the voice behind the new online travel magazine Brave New Traveler, and a co-founder of the backpacker resource Travelblogger.net. Travelblogger is a community-building site for trekkers and hostelers, with blogs, photo-sharing, and resources for planning your multi-country jaunt. Ian is no stranger to the backpacker trail himself, having traveled to Southeast Asia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Spain, the Czech Republic, Fiji, and Australia. His most recent journey, in spring of this year, took him through Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, and you can find footage of his exploits – from eating bugs on Ko San Road, to a visit to the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields – right here on Travelistic.
Apple has inked deals with six air carriers to offer iPod services on their flights. Never again will your battery die in transit and strand you without your travel soundtrack of choice! Air France, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM, and United will all be adding armrest charging docks and the ability to play your videos in seat-back screens in mid-2007. This seems like a very canny move on Apple’s part, because the iPod, as far as I’m concerned, is the best travel accessory of the past decade, and airplanes remain one of the only places where you can’t charge the little buggers. Announcing this development on Tuesday, the same day the Microsoft released its pod-like Zune, is just icing on the cake. (via inFlightHQ)
Elsewhere:
– “Apple iPod to Fly Connected” (Red Herring)
– “iPod takes to the skies” (Stuff UK)
London’s Times listed Travelistic as one of their top five favorite travel video sites in an Online Travel feature on Monday. According to the piece, watching other people’s vacation videos is the new best way to research a trip before embarking: “Shaky camerawork, bizarre commentary and blurred footage abound, but there’s also some real gems to be found. Find the right video and you can have a sneak preview of your holiday destination, resort or even hotel, before you go, or get inspiration on where to visit when planning as trip.” Check out our big screenshot at the top of the page!
Technology in travel is all for the good – global cellphones, GPS, travel websites (ahem). But even the most flashpacker-y among us can’t deny the nostalgic appeal of more analog trip technologies, ergo the Moleskine, journal of choice for the philosophically inclined backpacker, was recently resurrected from oblivion. Personally, I have a real fondness for postcards, bizzaro multicolored foreign currency, and old maps that show the world carved up by different boundaries than those that exist right now. This is why I love a new a new layer that’s been added to the latest version of Google Earth: The Rumsey Collection of Historical Maps. There are 16 maps from the 1600s to 1800s – including the knockout 1790 map of the globe above – that you can layer onto current satellite maps of the same location. To find the collection, look in the “Layers” Tab, select “All Layers” and look under “Featured Layers,” then zoom into some intense past/present fusion. (via Lifehacker)
Previously:
– Google Earth
People can’t seem to get enough of those crazy ‘Stans and their hodgepodge post-soviet cultures lately. Faux-Kazakh documentary Borat remained the number one film at the box office for the second weekend in a row, and yesterday, the SF Chronicle ran a story from two intrepid reporters sent to canvas Almaty, the largest city of his erstwhile home state. Today, Gridskipper weighed in with a post about Almaty-based photographer Chris Herwig who specializes in photographing Central Asia. He’s published two books of his work: Stanorama, and Soviet Bus Stops, and has extensive online galleries, grouped by country, of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. One-stop shopping for all your ‘Stan needs!
Previously:
– Kazakhstan Caves! Borat Invited to Visit His “Homeland””
– Today in Borat News
In today’s featured episode, the Thristy Traveler explores the ancient Belgian brewing technique of making Lambic beers. Lambics are brewed “wild,” with yeast that naturally occurs in the environment, and fermented in oak barrels, for a whole different kind of flavor than you might associate with lagers and other brews created under strictly controlled conditions. A few months back, the NY Times ran a story on Lambics, including a taste-test that rounded up some of the best available in the States, which I thought I’d repost for those of you that want to have a little bit of a Thirsty Traveler experience at home.
The travel pages kept it real this weekend, with stories on stunt trips, insider knowledge and secret destinations, tips on how to find and avoid political hotspots, and news about how growing numbers of people are changing some beloved destinations.
Overcrowding at Machu Picchu
– “Taking the Back Roads to Machu Picchu” (NYT)
Hong Kong’s Disappearing Harbor
– “Hong Kong mourns as shrinking harbour gives way to development” (Guardian)
SF Chronicle Goes for the Borat Tie-in
– “JUST BACK FROM: Almaty, Kazakhstan” (SF Chronicle)
Survival Tourism
– “Setting Out Into the Arizona Wilderness With Only a Knife” (NYT)
Steering Clear of Politics in Mexico
– “Let caution be your guide” (LA Times)
Che’s Cuba
– “Santa Clara’s rebel saint” (Globe and Mail)
Berlin’s Fast Food for Foodies
– “Street Food with Ambition in Berlin” (NYT)
Istanbul on the Cheap
– “Modernity or Tradition: Istanbul at a Crossroad Finds Its Own Way” (NYT)
Secret Baja
– “Loreto: A relaxed fit” (LA Times)
Yellowstone in Winter
– “Zipping through Yellowstone” (Houston Chronicle)
We got a shoutout yesterday from the Gen Art Pulse blog in their travel section. It seems one of their writers is going to Russia and picked our City Guide: Moscow by Night episode as her guide of choice for how to have a rocking novi ruski good time in the clubs and casinos. Pulse bills itself as the “lifestyle and entertainment navigator” and has content in six different categories: design, music, fashion, leisure, travel, and film. Give them a read for your recommended daily lifestyle allowance.
It doesn’t matter how good you have it, there’s always something to complain about. In the same way that your parents made you clean your plate because children were starving elsewhere on the globe, Norwegians have been told to stop whingeing about their comfy state-supported lifestyles, as the UN Development Programme has declared Norway the best place to live on earth. Now eat your spinach Norway. Based on criteria including life-expectancy, income and education, the UNDP’s annual Human Development index ranks 177 countries around the globe. This is the sixth year that Norway has taken top honors, with 40 times the average wealth, twice the life-expectancy, and five times the literacy of last-place finisher Niger. But according to the Associated Press: “Despite wealth, high levels of education, low unemployment, and an economic boom, Norwegians often complain of high taxes and of shortcomings in their cradle-to-grave welfare state, such as waiting lists at hospitals, and a lack of public care for both children and the elderly.” In response to this nit-picking, Aid minister Erik Solheim was quoted as saying: “There are unsolved problems in Norway, but let us battle this culture of whining, and look at the future with optimism.” Second through Tenth places this year went to Iceland, Australia, Ireland, Sweden, Canada, Japan and the United States, while 17 countries – including Iraq and Afghanistan – were omitted due to “insufficient data.” (via Jaunted)
Elsewhere:
– “Stop moaning about best country in the world, Norwegians told” (IHT)
(Image via Skyecap’s photostream)
As an aspiring journalist, Kelly Loudenberg interned at CNN, ABC, NPR, and HBO, before deciding that corporate media was too restrictive for the kind of stories that she wanted to tell. With a used camera she purchased on eBay, she hit the road after graduating from NYU, and started making short films about her experiences. Kelly’s no novice to traveling: she’s been saving her pennies since she was 17 to finance her solo travel adventures – and to date has been to South and Central America, Europe and the Caribbean. Her work focuses on out of the way places – a hindu temple in Trinidad, a village built by the formerly homeless – and low-to-the-ground traveling, as in her piece on hostelling in the US. Kelly’s clip about a Craigslist ride-share from New York to Montreal, where she met up with the founders of couchsurfing.com, is a perfect case in point:
Les Inrockuptibles a French music magazine that kicks the collective derrière of major US titles, but is sadly little-known here, because, well, it’s in French, launched their annual festival yesterday. Festival des Inrocks runs through November 14, with a cavalcade of shows in not one, but five cities – Paris, Lille, Nantes, Bourdeaux and Strasbourg -bringing le rock to the country of pop and Serge Gainsbourg-like chanson. The bulk of the shows are in Paris, at venues from the legendary l’Olympia, to the Elysée Montmartre in louche Pigalle. Fittingly, human narcotic Pete Doherty and his band The Babyshambles are scheduled at the Elysée; start placing bets on whether Doherty will actually make it on stage now. Other headliners include cross-pond hype machines TV on the Radio and Lily Allen, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, post-punk heros Gang of Four, and, to keep things local, French lo-fi crooner Etienne Daho. (via Gridskipper)
UK-based writer Rachael Glazier decided to put her green beliefs into some extreme practice this month. Looking for an alternative to carbon-belching jumbo jets for a long-haul trip, she opted to travel from London to Hong Kong, by train. Currently in day three of a planned 11-day trek, Glazier had a piece in this weekend’s London Times detailing how she planned the trip, bought her tickets, acquired visas and prepared for at least 11 days in transit in countless different climates, from frigid Mongolia to subtropical Hong Kong. Doubtless, it won’t be an easy trip, and it’s certainly more expensive and time-consuming than flying – with days of planning, a total pre-travel cost of $1,550, and dealing with a travel industry where a train crossing seems completely Victorian, if the agents even have an idea how to make the arrangements. I’m guessing though, that she’ll have some great stories to tell when she arrives at her destination.
(Image via itchypaws’ photostream)
More US-themed fun for some Election-Day distraction, with a little clip that shows – Red State/Blue State be damned – how connected we all are by travel.
Aaron Koblin’s featured video, Flight Patterns, is an animated rendering of US air traffic data from the FAA, with the hubs and spokes of flight paths lit up like highways and cities seen from overhead at night.
It’s election day in the States, so here’s a US-centric game to kill some time while we’re waiting for the polls to close and the results to roll in. A survey published earlier this year showed that – even in the wake of Hurricane Katrina – one-third of Americans 18-24 couldn’t find Louisiana on a map, and one-half couldn’t find Mississippi. Want to see how well you fare? Place all the states on the map in the random order that they’re given to you – and it’s trickier than it looks, no credit for being in the right general area.
The Vloggie Awards for the best video blogs on the Web were handed out in San Francisco on Saturday. The big winner of the night was Alive in Baghdad, which garnered a standing ovation for its Best Vlog win, and also won for Best Group, Political, and Interview vlog. Alive in Baghdad is a collaboration between on-the-ground American and Iraqi correspondents that broadcasts stories of the occupation, told by people who are living through it. Favorite Travel Vlog went to Graham Walker of Travelvlog, whom I’ve covered before. And kudos go to Chuck Olsen of Minnesota Stories, who took home a Vloggie for Best Community Vlog. You can check out some of Chuck’s work on Travelistic, where he goes by the handle MNstories.
Elsewhere:
– List of Vloggie Winners (Scobleizer)
Previously
– User Spotlight: MN Stories
– Video Taxi in Kathmandu
Alternative Israel
- “Had Your Fill of the Ancient Charms of Jerusalem? Relax in the German Colony.” (Washington Post)
- “An Arty Oasis in Old Tel Aviv” (NYT)
Malaysian Cooking
- “In Malaysia, Take Many Peoples and Ingredients, Mix, Enjoy” (NYT)
The Ajanta Caves
- “In the Holy Caves of India” (NYT)
Cologne/Köln, Germany
- “Fun amid the splendor of spires” (Houston Chronicle)
Pre-Ski Season Special
- “Canada: The Best of Everywhere” (Chicago Tribune)
- “From resorts to ski reviews, it’s online” (Chicago Tribune)
- “North America: It’s a big continent, with lots of snow” (Chicago Tribune)
User GillianG has been busily uploading to Travelistic since the site launched, 31 videos to date on destinations from the Western US to South Africa, and Borneo. With a husband who works for British Airways, she never lacks for opportunities to travel, and has been documenting their adventures on video since 1996. But wanting to do more with her footage than make holiday videos for the family, she studied editing and began to produce short films of her trips instead. Check out her work here on Travelistic, or at her website: http://www.gilliangvideo.co.uk/.
Flickr user michael_hughes had a very clever idea for a photoset: images of tchotchkes and photos of international landmarks carefully lined up in place of the originals. It’s so meta.
(via World Hum)
Halloween may be behind us, but in Mexico and parts of the US Latino community the macabre All-Saints goings-on have carried through to today, the second and last day of Día de los Muertos. One-part Catholic holiday, one-part Aztec festival, the Day of the Dead actually spans two days – Nov.1 and 2 – in which families spend all night at the graves of their dear departed, munching candy craniums and bread decorated with bones by the light of skull candles. Skeleton sculptures and elaborate flower-strewn altars to the dead also invade homes, public spaces, schools and office buildings. For the occasion, Reuters has a news report shot in Mexico City’s Zócalo, which, considering it’s built over a massive Aztec temple complex, is where a lot of the el Día action goes down.
For a taste of how the Day of the Dead is celebrated in the US, check out YouTuber omhappy1’s footage of the festivities at LA’s Hollywood Forever cemetery over the weekend.
We got some love from the Denver Post this weekend, with an item in their Travel Extras column about the site:
“travelistic.com
Newly launched, travelistic is the YouTube of travel video sites, a place where budding videographers can upload their productions (after registering, free and easy) and the curious traveler can watch video after video from around the world. Already the site is loaded with views of people, places and things, from the volcanoes of Costa Rica to the corn beer of Peru to the fanciest villas of France, with videos ranked by popularity and producers ranked by most traveled and most viewed. The films are further broken down into searchable categories, such as mountains, beaches, architecture, ruins, festivals – you name it – or can be searched by producer or commentator. The quality, of course, varies from slick professional to “Blair Witch” road trip, although most of it seems to be on the higher end, and their duration ranges from a little over one minute to about eight. Not surprisingly, the Get Out! girls, gals who tear up the globe clad in bikinis, are rated pretty highly, as is the Thirsty Traveler, who seeks the best drinks wherever he goes.”
”’Blair Witch’ road trip”, eh? I wonder whose video they could talking about?
You can take a gander at the Thirsty Traveler and Get Out! girls’ profiles here and here.
