Cue the bad “Mile-High Club” jokes. Demonstrating why the commercial passenger jet has never before doubled as a flying concert venue, Jamiroquai played a set of their white-man funk for a plane full of contest winners on Monday, on a flight from London to Athens. A Guiness World Records official was on hand to certify the event the highest ever concert, fastest concert, highest recording, fastest recording, highest gig in a plane and fastest gig in a plane. To witness the maximum awkwardness, check out this video from Reuters; airline seating is hardly designed for anyone to have adequate knee-room, not to speak of room to get their groove on:
Jamiroquai frontman Jay Kay announced today that he’s quitting the band because he’s “bored,” and “won’t play again until he gets his inspiration back.” Guess, there’s nowhere to go but down after you’ve rocked out at 35,000 feet.
– “JAMIROQUAI GIG BREAKS SIX WORLD RECORDS” (PR-Inside.com)
– Tagged: Music
You may be many things, Travelistic viewers, but you certainly aren’t predictable. Conventional travel wisdom tell us that you should be looking for London, Paris, or the Caribbean when you peruse our videos and destinations. According to last nights stats, however, you were far more interested in:
Cuzco, Peru,
Starting today, a version of Condé Nast Traveler’s Web outlet, Concierge.com, is available to cell phone-toting travelers as Concierge Mobile. All the rankings and reviews from 175 destination guides are available in mobile-ready format, as well as CNT’s “Gold List” of the world’s top hotels as rated by their well-heeled and -traveled readers. Just click on the cell icon next to any guide, category, or specific entry, plug in your number, and all the necessaries for a pitch-perfect (if pricey) trip will be sent to you, for use while you hit the town. (via Globorati)
– Tagged: Magazines
– Tagged: Technology
Or should I say Vlog Hawt.
We at Travelistic were shocked–shocked!–to learn that The Map’s Liza de Guia was nominated for Valleywag’s hot vlogger contest. We love her for her sparkling personality, interview skills, and travel savvy, but apparently some of you are interested in other things.
Oh, who are we kidding: Vote Liza! (You can find her in Heat 2 of the “Newsbabes” – right after Rocketboom’s Joanne Colan)
We got the nod from the tips-for-everything blog, Lifehacker, on Sunday. The Lifehackers definitely know their tech, and apparently, they’re pretty pleased with ours:
“There are a lot of very well-done vids here; anything from the entrance to the Tate Museum to St. Barth’s. A great way to plan your next trip, live vicariously, or writhe in jealousy dream a little.”
[nb: we’ve got 2,229 travel videos at last count – happy browsing!]
So much for their good intentions: JetBlue canceled 68 flights out of JFK this morning due to an overnight snowstorm that dropped a measly 2-4 inches on New York. Once again flights were kept on the tarmac for hours (though nothing in the ballpark of 10 hours) before being turned back to the gate. In accordance with their new air travelers’ rights “promise”, each of the inconvenienced passengers will receive a $100 voucher towards a future flight, and either a rebooked ticket or a refund of the cost. Yes, it’s generous on JetBlue’s part to help their inconvenienced passengers, but it still sounds like cold comfort to the people whose travel plans were grounded. Fewer cancelations equals fewer reimbursements, guys.
– “Snowstorm forces JetBlue to cancel 68 flights” (MSNBC)
– Tagged: JetBlue
(image via DRust’s photostream)
In the headlines this weekend: continued fallout from the JetBlue fiasco, planning a different kind of Spring Break, with a few tropical beaches thrown in for good measure, and the New York Times’ guide to cruising.
Air Travel Woes and the Passengers’ Bill of Rights
– “Time for a bill of rights for air travel?” (Chicago Tribune)
– “Well? We’re Waiting” (Washington Post)
– “Stranded Fliers Adapt” (Washington Post)
Spring Break
– “Spring Break can include more than partying” (Chicago Tribune)
New and Renewed Beaches: Hawaii and Mexico
– “Extreme Makeover Waikiki edition” (SF Chronicle)
– “In Playa Chacala, sun, sand and something more” (LA Times)
The NYT Cruise Issue
– “Strategies to Make More Passengers Maiden Voyagers”
– “Sailing With Few Frills or Inhibitions”
– more stories
French Road Trips
– “Three of France’s best drives” (Times of London)
Toronto’s Underground
– “Under Cover in Toronto” (Washington Post)
The slide in this picture isn’t in a theme park (unless your idea of a thrill ride is watching Un Chien Andalou), it’s in the massive entry hall of the Tate Modern in London. The Tate Modern was once Bankside Power Station, and after removing the turbines, curators were left with a five-story gallery capable of dwarfing even the most grandiose installations. Carsten Höller’s twisting steel-and-plastic slides are the seventh installation underwritten by the Unilever Corp. to utilize all that space. The tallest of several slides drops 182 feet to the gallery floor, reducing cool and collected museum-goers to giggling idiots in the space of a few seconds. Höller, of course, dresses this up for the art world with statements like: “The funfair experience is completely underrated, I don’t know why we don’t take it more seriously philosophically and artistically.” I’m sure the 600,000 people who’ve queued up for the slides since they debuted were considering the philosophical implications as they plummeted towards the gallery floor. A piece from this weekend’s Washington Post travel section has all the details on how you can visit before the exhibit ends on April 15.
– “Doing the Electric Slide in London” (Washington Post)
– “Catch the tube at the Tate – it’s worth the ride” (Guardian)
– Tate Modern (official site)
– Tagged: Art
(Image via austinraustin’s photostream)
Number one on your lists this week, Travelistic viewers: beaches in top tags, and Jamaica in top searches. Do I sense Spring Break planning in the works?
Top Tags:
Beaches
Tapping into the JetBlue hoopla, MSNBC travel columnist Christopher Elliott responded today to one Vinit Desai, who had sit through 30 hours of delays after his scheduled American Airlines SF-to-Chicago flight was canceled because of weather. Desai wanted to know why AA agents attended to passengers booked on later delayed flights before him, and why, it seemed, that help was being meted out so unevenly. The sad answer? According to AA, those other passengers were on flights delayed by “mechanical problems” – basically anything an airline will cop to being at fault for. Most airlines’ conditions of carriage include a section called Rule 240, which stipulates all sorts of protections – hotels, meal vouchers, compensation – for passengers stranded or delayed by operational screw-up. Those inconvenienced by an “act of god,” however, like the ice storm that recently put most of JetBlue’s planes and staff into the deep freeze, generally aren’t guaranteed anything. In Desai’s case, though his initial delay was caused by weather, mechanical problems on other flights prevented agents from getting him back en route for 30 hours. Where’s the justice in that? Though the form it may take is still kind of vague, a proposed Bill of Rights for air travelers might help passengers in similar situations, who have been seriously delayed by a combination of both Force Majeure and Force Stupide.
– “You call that a weather delay?” (MSNBC)
– “ASTA responds to call for passenger Bill of Rights” (Travel Daily news)
– “JetBlue Unveils “Passengers Bill Of Rights”” (Consumer Affairs)
– “JetBlue Tries to Straighten Its Wings” (NPR Podcast)
Chinese New Year started with a bang (literally) on Sunday, with firecracker ceremonies to ward off evil, and runs through the beginning of March. This year is the year of the pig, and not just any old porker, but the golden pig! The piggly portion of the chinese 12-year zodiac is supposed to bring prosperity, luck and fertility, especially so during the once-in-60 years arrival of the golden swine. For the next few weeks Chinese cities and chinatowns everywhere from Beijing to London will be a riot of all things gold and red and elaborate light displays, as everyone tries to amp up their luck for the year to come. In Boston’s chinatown, all the local dim sum palaces are visited in turn by lion dancers to make sure that any nasty spirits are scared away. User Indietrekker just uploaded a clip of the proceedings:
A friend just forwarded me a link to some very impressive pics of Stockholm’s Tunnelbana stations – apparently, the city’s metro system is known as “the longest art gallery in the world.” They’re all uniquely decorated, and many were built directly into bedrock, resulting in the cool neolithic effect seen here:
– Stockholm Transport (official site)
– Tagged: Photo of the Day
– Tagged: Subway
– Tagged: Public Transportation
Starting today, Travelistic’s got company here at Diversion Media. We’ve been in the lab for the past few months crafting a new video site for the snowboarding community: Snowvision.com. Snowvision has the same tasty video quality you expect here, but it’s all snowboarding, all the time!
Brangelina and the Zagat guides are doing their best to help New Orleans back on its way to hedonistic health, but a party like Mardi Gras really speaks for itself:
Poor JetBlue – the friendly little budget-carrier-that-could has spent the past week publicly flailing. The poop hit the jet engine (with predictably nasty results) when a Valentine’s Day winter storm caused scheduling and communications breakdowns that left several planes full of passengers stranded on the tarmac at JFK for up to ten hours. For an airline with low overhead, the backup of so many planes and flight crews, and the resulting backlash that downed their reservations system, so thoroughly scrambled operations that flight cancellations kept rolling through the weekend as they struggled to catch up. Just yesterday, JetBlue canceled 139 of 600 flights scheduled to ferry fliers home after a busy long weekend, just to restore some order. JetBlue CEO David Neeleman has gone on record declaring himself “humiliated and mortified” at his company’s inability to cope with the situation. But all hope is not lost for the airline once famed for its customer service; Neeleman has responded to the crisis by declaring an industry first: a passengers’ “ Bill of Rights” for JetBlue fliers that would ensure major financial rewards for anyone “seriously inconvenienced” by this type of snafu in the future. (See a video message about this from Neeleman here.) Prior to this, airlines have hidden behind an “act of god” out-clause to protect themselves from weather-induced operations problems. According to CNN, California Representative Michael Thompson is seizing this opportunity to introduce a bill in congress that would hold all commercial carriers to the same standard.
– “JetBlue’s C.E.O. Is ‘Mortified’ After Fliers Are Stranded” (NYT)
– “JetBlue cancels more flights into Monday as it struggles with storm aftermath” (USA Today)
– “More JetBlue flights canceled Monday” (MSNBC)
– JetBlue Customer Bill of Rights (JetBlue.com)
– “JetBlue debacle spurs passenger rights bill in congress” (CNN)
– “JetBlue Introduces Passenger’s “Bill of Rights”” (inFlightHQ)
Best Beaches
– “Top 10 beaches of the world” (Guardian)
Dallas for Art Buffs
– “Bohemia in the Big D” (LA Times)
French Country Retreats
– “The best of rural France” (Times of London)
Hanoi
– “The Awakening of Hanoi” (NYT)
New Orleans Dining
– “Preparing a Renaissance” (Washington Post)
Singapore
– “Another side of Singapore” (LA Times)
Tahiti’s Tuamotus
– “The Fragile Paradise That Tahiti Used to Be” (NYT)
Taiwan
– “Fantasy Island” (SF Chronicle)
This weekend there will simultaneous partying involving parades, masked mischief, beads, babes, and drinking going on all over the nominally catholic world. To get the skinny, take a gander at the latest episode of The Map, where Liza runs down some of the world’s top Carnival spots, and hits up a German “Karneval” party right here in New York. For some extra goodness, take a look at other carnival videos from our archive. Here’s a clip about Rio’s Samba school parade, and a list of the cities most famed for their pre-Lent madness:
The week that was, in your top tags and searches.
Tags:
– Dancing
– Islands
– Travel
– Nightlife
– Castleoma?
The announcement came a week later than expected, but yesterday Al Gore went public with plans for the “Live Earth” concerts that will happen on July 7. The 24-hour global festival of live performances, radio, television and internet broadcasts aims to do for the Climate Crisis, what Live Aid did for starving kids in Africa. The organization that’s running the show, though, has managed to come up with the least altruistic-sounding ever name for their project: Save Our Selves. Find out more about their plans to save us all at www.liveearth.org.
– “Gore announces ‘Live Earth’ concert” (CNN)
Previously:
– “Triple Zero-Seven”
– The Forestry Bureau of Fumin County in Yunnan Province, China, paid $60,000 to have a barren hillside opposite their office painted green, in order to “correct its feng shui.”
– Things got squirrely on an American Airlines Flight from Tokyo to Dallas when a “varmint” was discovered stowing-away in the wiring over the plane’s cockpit.
– Communities for a Better Environment now leading “Toxic Tours” of Los Angeles. And no, they’re not staking out Britney Spears’ current abode. “Among its stops are “Asthma Town” in Huntington Park and an elementary school that was plagued by miscarriages among workers.” Whee!
– Tagged: Oddities
The Vice magazine boys just uploaded a few clips from their gonzo travel documentary to Travelistic. One part “extreme” travel and one part Jackass, the film took editors and contributors around the world in pursuit of the dangerous, bizarre, and decidedly ill-advised. Look for a clip on radioactive boar hunting in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl in today’s featured videos, or check out this teaser for a trip that Vice co-founder Shane Smith and Spike Jonze took to Beirut to investigate the PLO’s “boy scout” program for martyrs in training:
In honor of Valentine’s Day the weather gods of the northeast have delivered pelting ice, snow and sub-freezing temperatures, everywhere from the Great Lakes to Maine. Such love. The view out of the blogcentral window is making Forbes’ list of the “Most Romantic Beaches” – not to be confused with the “Sexiest Beaches”, they caution – very appealing right now. Why look at soggy, grey midtown Manhattan when you can look at Bora Bora, or Costa Rica? Maybe you lucky travelers who played your cards right are basking in some of these places as I type, for everybody else, here’s something to dream on for next year. Happy Valentine’s Day everybody.
Previously:
– The Map: Valentine’s Day
– Tagged: Valentine’s Day
In a series of Lonely Planet blog posts that promises to be fascinating, LP writer Frances Linzee Gordon is publishing her experiences traveling as a single woman traveling in Saudi Arabia for an upcoming guide on the Arabian peninsula. Gordon was the first person ever granted a visa to travel independently – something readers may have a hard time duplicating, as the government insists on guides to accompany travelers, and Gordon had to call in a favor from some anonymous (but apparently high-ranking) source in order to get clearance. Other things that tourists aren’t allowed to do in Saudi Arabia: bring in alcohol, pork, and any of a long list of books, movies and music that might have objectionable content, openly practice or profess any religion other than Islam, or have evidence of visiting Israel in their passport. Women must wear an abeya (full-body cloak) at all times, and preferably a head scarf. Non-Muslims can be deported for entering Mecca or Medina; even Hajjis making their once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca aren’t allowed to travel freely through the kingdom. Definitely not your typical guidebook assignment. There’s one post up so far, and seven more to follow.
– Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia
– Saudi Arabia Travel Guide (Wikitravel)
Kelly Loudenberg’s latest effort, a foray into culture jamming, is getting some pickup from the blogosphere. She attended a workshop run by the Anti-Advertising Agency at New York’s art and tech center, Eyebeam, and learned how to put a more human face on the corporate products lining store shelves. I love it, and so do Gothamist and Uncool Kids. Peep the technique here:
People-watching is one of the best parts of urban travel – seeing how global fashion trends get filtered through regional style, or what unique brand of sartorial crazy the locals have dreamt up. Of course, if you can’t make it to the style capitals yourself, you can always rely on the pathological need of the fashionable to be photographed, and to have a chance to illuminate the details of their outfits in print and online. To judge from the diabolically-named site Hel Looks (the Hel stands for Helsinki), the Finns are giving the Japanese of Fruits, and the “Look Book” New Yorkers a run for their money in the street fashion department. There are 46 pages of style mavens, batty grandmas, and androgynous fashion weirdos to sift through – demonstrating some serious dedication to the art of the street parade. The photographers behind the site have even rounded up a broad slice of their work into a museum exhibition, now on view in Copenhagen. (via Gridskipper)
We’ve had a bunch of uploads in the past few days from Overlander TV, aka Mark Shea, who’s created a podcast travel series of his experiences driving through Australia. Watch his take on the arty beach town of Byron Bay:
I’m a firm believer that the true test of any relationship (platonic or romantic) is surviving traveling together. You don’t really know someone until you’re thrown on each other’s sole company for days, living in close quarters with his or her quirks, habits and shortcomings. But traveling as a couple is really a trial by fire. Nothing can take the glow off a trip that’s supposed to be idyllic faster than watching your significant other morph into a micro-manager, germaphobe, or expert in stereotypes when their comfort zone is challenged. Some people’s idea of a perfect trip is maxing out at the hotel, lingering over meals, and generally doing as little as possible, while others won’t be happy unless they’re making the most of every minute they’re away from home. But without a little discussion beforehand, you might not find these things out until you actually get to your destination, and then, woe betide you. So, in honor of Valentine’s Day and the many couples who may be stepping out of the frying pan on their first trip together, here’s some food for thought:
– Backpacker guru Rolf Potts, in his most recent Yahoo column, weighs-in with ten factors all couples traveling together should consider, including the very key number five, The Space Factor: “Do you expect to spend every moment of the trip together, or can you be independent of one another as a couple? Are you both prepared to deal with constant companionship? Should too much time together become tedious, can you both empathetically communicate the need to be solitary for a few hours?”
– For a look at how an actual couple on the road dealt with these issues, check out Elizabeth Koch’s “World Tour Compatibility Test” at Memoirville. Elizabeth and her boyfriend Todd Zuniga, both editors of Opium, a literary humor magazine, went around the world together as a way to decide whether their relationship was at an end, or, if they should move in together. In 10 installments, Koch chronicles the trip in refreshingly honest detail, but I won’t spoil the cliffhanger for you.
– Hannah Betts at the London Times, however, claims to have had a bust-up in pretty much every romantic destination out there, and is sick of the whole process. Her advice? “Valentines? Paah, travel alone”.
Previously:
– “The Map: Valentine’s Day”
Most viewed this weekend:
– Apparently, the NSA touchy-feeliness of cuddle parties makes our friends at Gothamist, and some of you guys, very, very, uncomfortable.
Valentine’s Day: Romantic Spots or Single Travel?
– “World’s most romantic hotels” (MSNBC)
– “Romance, food and wine in Sonoma” (SF Chronicle)
– “The look of love just might be the view out the window” (SF Chronicle)
– “Valentines? Paah, travel alone” (Times of London)
– “Solo diving in the Red Sea” (Times of London)
– “Find love in the great outdoors” (Times of London)
Black History Month
– “Five Cities, Five Takes” (Washington Post)
Backwoods Lodges
– “Some Getaways Are More Away Than Others” (NYT)
California’s Surf History
– “The birth of surf” (Guardian)
Cambodia
– “In Phnom Penh, Hopefulness Replaces Despair” (NYT)
China’s Wild West
– “Viewing Two Chinas From a Stop on the Silk Road” (NYT)
Lake Tahoe in Winter
– “Snowed by Tahoe” (NYT)
Mali
– “Welcome to Mali” (Times of London)
Miami Matures
– “Is South Beach Growing Up?” (NYT)
Natchez, MS’s New South
– “A Magnolia state of mind” (LA Times)
San Francisco’s Chinatown
– “Young insiders reveal tales of a hidden Chinatown” (Houston Chronicle)
Sedona, AZ
– “36 Hours: Sedona, Ariz.” (NYT)
Tibet
– “Solving Shangri-La’s Mysteries” (SF Chronicle)
A look inside the hive-mind of Travelistic’s internet travelers.
This week’s top searches are all over the map:
– Cuba
– China
– Italy
– Thailand
– South Africa:
Today in travel news-that’s-not-news (via Reuters):
France retained its title as the number one destination for tourists from around the globe in 2006, taking down the competition with heady combo of style, snobbery, fine wines, the Eiffel Tower, and buttery baked goods. Not even the “Paris Syndrome” experienced by Japanese tourists could cut into the crowds of 78 million who visited last year.
Tomorrow: French Considered Snooty, Americans, Boorish. News at 11:00.
Previously:
– “UN Names Norway Best Place to Live, Norwegians Told to Quit Whining”
– “US Travel Industry to US Government: “Stop Hurting America””
– “Tag party: Today’s Top Fives“
Only a month into the new year, people everywhere are staking out the nicely mnemonic date of 07/07/07 (and all those lucky sevens) for their own purposes:
The New 7 Wonders project (naturally) laid an early claim to the day as the moment to announce the results of their worldwide vote to pick seven new wonders. As of January 31, the top seven candidates are: the Colosseum, the Great Wall, Machu Picchu, Petra, the Pyramids of Giza, Easter Island’s Moai, and the Taj Mahal.
Internet and phone voting will continue until just before the announcement.
Just announced in today’s Financial Times: July 7 is the planned date for a massive series of concerts to raise awareness about the Climate Crisis. Satellite-linked events in seven (again!) cities–including London, Washington DC, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town and Kyoto are expected to bring in an audience of two billion viewers. The organizers are: “promising a line-up of artists to “dwarf” that of the Live8 and Live Aid concerts, thought to be branded under the name ‘SOS’. One person close to the event said yesterday: ‘The talent involved is just exponentially bigger because the issue itself is bigger.’” (Take that, Live Aid) Al Gore is expected to announce the event in London tomorrow.
They may have some competition for their audience, however. Also happening on the 7th:
– The 2007 Tour de France makes its Grand Départ from London, in a show of solidarity on the anniversary of the 2005 Underground bombings.
– a worldwide rush on weddings.
– international Harry Potter pandemonium as the seventh and final book of the series is released.
Choices, choices.
Erik at Gadling picked up a clip on Brooklyn’s Army of Björk party this week, shot by our very own Liza de Guia. Says he:
The Icelandishstic singer/performer/maker of very odd music videos in fact has her own army, which does occasionally gather in meeting places across the globe…or at least in predictably Björk-friendly neighborhood in Brooklyn.
I am an avid fan of the travel video site Travelistic, and this link came to my attention from one of the producers of this segment, and I pass it on to you, dear gadling reader, to decide for yourself if the Army of Björk is a threat to national security and/or an affront to cultural sensibilities. I argue that it is not, but my guess is that red staters might disagree. Either way, take a moment to enjoy. And please make note of the extra-special effort I put forward in this post to find an actual ö.
Excellent use of umlauts, and thanks for the kudos, Erik!
Well, not a photo exactly. According to the Air Transport Association, this radar screenshot shows private jets scattering to the winds on Monday, after the tornado of gambling, price-gouging and sponsored after-parties that was the Super Bowl. (via Boing Boing)
Previously:
– “The Map: Super Bowl Weekend”
– “Super Bowl Travel”
– Tagged: Sports
– Tagged: Flying
It’s awards season – and the travel bloggers of the world demand their share of the action, by golly! Upgrade: Travel Better is kicking off a new annual award, The Travvies, for the best travel blogs in six categories:
- Best Travel Blog
- Best Destination Blog
- Best Informative/Practical Travel Blog
- Best Group-Written Travel Blog
- Best Single-Author Travel Blog
- Best Photography on a Travel Blog
Click on each link to leave a comment, where you can vote for up to three candidates. Community voting runs through the end of this week, after which the top three nominees in each category will compete as finalists in a second vote from Feb 23 – 28. Click on over and show some love for your favorite travel sites! (ahem, cough cough).
Previously:
– “The Vloggies”
– Tagged: Blogs
Simon Calder, of the UK’s Independent recently interviewed the founders of Lonely Planet and posted the results as a podcast. Love them for freeing independent travelers with their wealth of information, or hate them for making everywhere accessible to the backpacking masses, the Lonely Planet guides have undeniably remapped the face of travel in the 30-odd years since they debuted. Writing to finance a traveling habit while they had full time jobs, the Wheelers spent the first 10 years of Lonely Planet’s existence thinking of themselves as “travelers who published” rather than vice-versa. Today, they’re very positive about the changes brought by greater access to destinations through guidebooks and the internet. “I think one of the things about travel is that the more you travel, the more you find out about places you haven’t been to,” says Tony. “So the world doesn’t get smaller, it just keeps on getting larger. If you keep a list of places you want to go, after 10 years that list hasn’t shrunk, it’s just expanded.” Maureen downplays the magnitude of their influence, saying: “we didn’t invent the jumbo jet” and deflects Calder’s questions about whether it’s “all been done” with: “when I was 20 and started traveling, there were already people who said “oh, you should have gone to Bali ten years ago.” Plus ça change. (via Gadling)
– Tagged: Guidebooks
– Tagged: Podcast
– Tagged: Lonely Planet
It looks like it can’t be real, but I’m going to take the people at NASA at their word. From their Astronomy Picture of-the-Day file: This photo is a three-shot panorama of onlookers gathered on a beach near Perth for Australia Day fireworks, on January 26th. The night sky decided to pitch in its own pyrotechnics in the form of the extremely bright Comet McNaught (center), now visible from the Southern Hemisphere, and a dramatic thunderstorm. Now that’s what I call a sound and light show. (Thanks to Travelistic’s design maven Floor for this one!)
A few months back, I blogged about Tribewanted.com’s social experiment: a 5,000-member online social network with a three-year lease on an undeveloped Fijian island to use as their own personal paradise. James Vlahos went along with the “first footers” who kicked off development on Vorovoro, and lived to tell the tale in National Geographic Adventure. It’s a suitably cinematic story, all about the challenge of making a virtual community into a real one (in the space of a year), balancing the relationship between the genuine tribe and their idealistic tenants – it even includes rituals and a tribe-dividing brush fire! There’s a gallery of photos to accompany the story here.
– Tagged: Fiji
– “Tribewanted.com’s Fijian eco-experiment opens”
– “Tribe Wanted: Welcome to Vorovoro” (National Geographic Adventure)
Buenos Aires
– “Making the Most of Those Long Argentine Nights” (NYT)
Dictatorial Vanity Projects
– “Beauty is in the eye of the dictator” (Sydney Morning Herald)
Mexican Beaches
– “Staying ahead of the crowd on the Nayarit coast” (SF Chronicle)
The US/Mexico Border: The Theme Park
– “Run! Hide! The Illegal Border Crossing Experience” (NYT)
Spring Break Planning!
– “Spring Break Is Closer Than You Think” (NYT)
Strasbourg, France
– “At the Crossroads, Between Red Tape and Red Hot” (NYT)
Large portions of the cities of Chicago and Indianapolis will be on the move this weekend, along with scores of other Americans, traveling to Miami to watch the Bears face off against the Colts in Super Bowl XLI. Needless to say, airfares are through-the-roof from either of the competing cities, check out today’s episode of The Map for the full story. There are still hotel rooms to be had, though, if you have another way to hie yourself to Florida before Sunday. Hotel Chatter has been running for play-by-play of the latest Miami room rates all week – as of this morning there were still rooms for $199 at the Summerfield Suites, only 19 miles from the stadium.
Americans overseas face a different challenge: in most other places in the world “Football” means the World-Cup variety, and the locals can’t be bothered to watch or screen the NFL version. Expat Yanks with broadband access, can always watch the game online –PC World has the lowdown on how to find streaming coverage–as long as they’re willing orient their Sunday night/Monday morning schedule around the kickoff time. But if it just won’t feel like the Super Bowl if you’re not in a sports bar with a brew in hand and a crowd of other screaming Americans, here’s a list of links to expat bars and parties around the world:
Budapest
Buenos Aires
Copenhagen
Frankfurt
Hong Kong
Lima
London
Melbourne
Paris
Prague
Shanghai
Tokyo
– The Map: Super Bowl Weekend
– Tagged: Sports
– “Around the globe, it really is a Bears world (Chicago Tribune)
– “Super Bowl Weekend in China? No Problem!” (PC World)
– “Super Bowl: Show me the money” (Guardian)
Unsurprisingly, Punxsutawney, PA’s rodent-in-residence has predicted an early spring this year. As if the cherry blossoms blooming in Brooklyn and the flowers springing up in the Alps in January weren’t already clear signs. If you couldn’t be among the masses who traveled to witness the forecast firsthand, you can still get your groundhog fix courtesy of this bizarro viral ad campaign from Visit PA. Watch humans decked out as Phil and his “shadow” journey across the country to make it back to Pennsylvania in time for this morning’s proceedings.
Travellerspoint was started by brothers Sam and Peter Daams in 2002 as a travel community resource, and a way to find folks that you’d met and lost in transit. In the past four years the site has attracted a devoted following of 80,000 from all over the world, and added blogs, accommodation reservations, and a “travel helpers” network of people who agree to be a resource for others on a particular destination. Their hot new feature is a travel mapping tool that ties together route maps, blog posts and photographs into one visual document. Sam tells me: “The really cool thing is that we integrate users’ blog entries and photos, turning the map into a virtual diary of your journey. Maps can also be inserted into blogs, allowing you to show your readers where you have recently travelled.” They’ve also added video capability to their blogs, including (hint) uploads from Travelistic!
Reported on CNN: Leaders in the US travel industry met in Washington yesterday to discuss the decline in overseas travel to the US since 9/11, and delivered the following message to the Federal Government: “stop treating tourists like terrorists.” (ouch)
”’International travelers will tell you that they find that they are treated like criminals, that they are barked at by U.S. officials,’ said Geoffrey Freeman of the Discover America Partnership. ‘They simply feel unwelcome and that is leading them to choose other countries.’
The travel decline is also hurting the United States’ reputation, and the good will travel can engender, the group said.”
Discover America is a group made up of representatives from normally smiling, friendly-family operations such as Marriott, Disney, and Visit Florida, which makes this news even more dire. Travel to the United States from countries other than Canada and Mexico has dropped 17% since 2001, while in 2006, more people traveled internationally than ever before. Even the Germans, who collectively spend the most per capita on foreign travel, are coming in smaller numbers, 1.8 million in 2000, versus 1.4 million last year. Discover America says that difficult visa procedures and understaffed and backed-up immigration checkpoints, not dislike of US foreign policy, are to blame. Troubled times, indeed.
– Travel industry: U.S. losing out on international tourism (CNN)
– Tagged: Airport Security
– Tagged: Politics
