A friend just sent around one of those little e-mail questionnaires where you ask your friends a bunch of random questions to try to find out stuff that you never knew about them. One of the questions was: Where do you want to retire? My first answer: Paris.
Why? The fooooood. Like this little list of the best boulangeries there:
Link.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Backblogging - Japan, Day Two
Monday, December 16, 2002 11:39 p.m.
The morning started out at 5 a.m., when we went to the Tsukiji fish market. It was quite amazing, with millions of dollars of fish being auctioned off. We at at one of the stalls there - fried oysters before dawn! Back for a nap, then off to Ginza for more Xmas shopping. My favorite was the Mistukoshi department store, very much like Harrod's. We played with an Aibo at the Sony store. Almost done with Xmas shopping - have to buy Jason a few more things. We had a few drinks at the Kirin City beer garden, the pack to Shinjuku for pachinko, which is very weird - although Jason won a ton - and the great drum video game. Got snacks at am/pm for dinner to complete the teen boy night.
Perhaps not so teen boy in retrospect, since we now have a pachinko machine and the drum game at home. We're maturing into 13-year-olds.
Gas - or should I say petrol - price survey
Yep, it's Friday. So how much is it going to cost you to take a little jaunt in the car this weekend? Here's some average gas prices from cities around the world - the currency exchange was done by XE.com and math is hard, so bear with me. (And sorry this is so U.S. and Euro-centric - I couldn't find any of those wiki cheap gas web sites from anywhere in Asia, South America or Africa. Perhaps because I'm stupid? Anyone know of any?) There are 3.78 liters in a US gallon.
Los Angeles: $3.35 per gallon
Chicago: $3.15 per gallon
New York: $3.10 per gallon
Madrid: .95 euro per liter = $4.88 per gallon
Dublin: 1.03 euro per liter = $5.29 per gallon
London: .87 pound per liter = $6.47 per gallon
Munich: 1.25 euro per liter =$6.42 per gallon
Paris: 1.18 euro per liter = $6.06 per gallon
Rome: 1.20 euro per liter = $6.16 per gallon
Los Angeles: $3.35 per gallon
Chicago: $3.15 per gallon
New York: $3.10 per gallon
Madrid: .95 euro per liter = $4.88 per gallon
Dublin: 1.03 euro per liter = $5.29 per gallon
London: .87 pound per liter = $6.47 per gallon
Munich: 1.25 euro per liter =$6.42 per gallon
Paris: 1.18 euro per liter = $6.06 per gallon
Rome: 1.20 euro per liter = $6.16 per gallon
Flying Dutchman!
If there's something creepy on the Discovery Channel, I'll happily watch it. It doesn't matter who silly it is - Most Haunted is almost appalling in how lame it is ("DID YOU SEE THAT???" "What?" "THAT BLINKING LIGHT!!!" "That's my cell phone.") but still goofy fun.
So stories like this one on the BBC I find endlessly interesting. Three people are missing from the boat - which was found with its engines running and the table set for dinner - south of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The sails were up, but one is pretty ripped up. The life jackets are still on board.
Other interesting ghost ships:
The Mary Celeste is the famous one, mostly because Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a story, J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement, that envisioned all these great (but fictional) details - like when the ship was found the tea in cups in the dining room was still hot.
The SS Valencia gives me the heebie jeebies, just because one of its life rafts was found - in good condition - almost 30 years after the ship sank. Sailors still report seeing the ship floating around Vancouver Island.
More recently, in 1990, the Fisah Ketsi was found off the coast of Brazil, with no registry, no crew, and the cargo doors open. The ownders were never found. Maybe it was being towed somewhere for scrap and abandoned en route?
So stories like this one on the BBC I find endlessly interesting. Three people are missing from the boat - which was found with its engines running and the table set for dinner - south of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The sails were up, but one is pretty ripped up. The life jackets are still on board.
Other interesting ghost ships:
The Mary Celeste is the famous one, mostly because Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a story, J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement, that envisioned all these great (but fictional) details - like when the ship was found the tea in cups in the dining room was still hot.
The SS Valencia gives me the heebie jeebies, just because one of its life rafts was found - in good condition - almost 30 years after the ship sank. Sailors still report seeing the ship floating around Vancouver Island.
More recently, in 1990, the Fisah Ketsi was found off the coast of Brazil, with no registry, no crew, and the cargo doors open. The ownders were never found. Maybe it was being towed somewhere for scrap and abandoned en route?
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Backblogging: The Japan trip
About two years ago, I mentioned on this here blog that I was going to transfer some of my print travel journals online, just to have a duplicate record, and because they're kind of fun to revisit. With that in mind, let's go in the wayback machine to when Jason and I went to Japan in 2002. Here's what I wrote at the start of the trip:
Friday, Dec. 13, 2002 - Saturday, Dec. 14, 2002 1:16 p.m. Tokyo time, somewhere over the International Date Line:
About 2.5 hours left to go on the flight. Very long seeming, much more so than way en route to London. Probably because I know what to expect now. JAL nices, movies, games per individual. Food is good; everything is in Japanese and English. The vast majority of people on the plane are Japanese. I liked the Bird's Eye cam from the front of the plane.
Sunday, Dec. 15, 2002
4:40 a.m.
We're officially here at the hotel after a jetlag night of sleep. Customs took a while at Narita, but getting the bag and getting the bus was easy. Wanted to stay awake on the bus to "see" Tokyo for the first time as we drove in; conked out immediately. Got to the hotel - very nice, we're on the 24th floor. Asleep at 8:30 p.m.
8:24 p.m.
Since you gotta do Christmas shopping, you might as well do it Tokyo. Woke up 4ish, as evident by that previous entry. Had breakfast at the hotel, then walked to Shinjuku. The stores don't open until 10, so we wandered around Kabukicho and saw a little person and a big guy coming out of a love hotel. Eventually went to Odakyu department store and dropped about $300 on presents. After lunch there, went to Akihabara, where dropped even more money. A lot of fascinating stuff out there - why can't America have pink refridgerators and bright orange dishwashers? Dinner was room service sushi - so tired, again!
Math + travel = pointless. But then again, I hate math.
The number one most e-mailed story on The New York Times right now (It's just New York day around here, I guess) is about how several travel web sites are tracking the airlines' historical trends on how much airfares cost to a particular place on a particular day. I'm a big fan of Kayak.com, which does this. But I can't honestly say that knowing the airline is charging me $100 over the average for that date is going to change my mind about booking a ticket - when you gotta go, you gotta go, right?
Link
Link
The New Yorker travel issue
I have a very set in stone method of reading The New Yorker. I take it out to the mailbox, immediately flip to the back, and see if Anthony Lane is the movie reviewer for the week. If he is, I read him on the way up in the elevator, then continue with the magazine inside the house. If it's David Denby, I sigh sadly, head back to my apartment and put the magazine down until I receive the next one, at which point I freak out, sit down, and try to read the entire older issue in one go.
With that in mind, I started in on The New Yorker's travel issue (Denby reviewed Grindhouse and The TV Set) last night. I read the first two pieces - Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk on the tale of getting his first passport as a kid, and Nick Paumgarten's look at commuting in the U.S.
Pamuk's piece is lovely, a look at how moving to Geneva as a non-French speaking kid scarred him so that he didn't leave Turkey for years afterwards. My first passport was attained for much less exotic circumstances - Bridget and I got our passports to go on a game show called Don't Forget Your Toothbrush, which if I remember correctly, basically involved making a fool of yourself to go on a trip that left right after the show finished filming. We had to bring a packed suitcase to the studio. Sadly, we did not win. (It was hosted by Mark Curry of Hangin' with Mr. Cooper fame.
And, in typical snotty New Yorker (the citizen, not the magazine - although both apply) fashion...the commuting article brushes off L.A. in favor of the horrors of Atlanta commuting with this: "Los Angeles, the country's most sprawling megalopolis, may boast a more dizzying array of horrible commutes, but many of them are the result of a difficult landscape-ocean restricting growth on one side, mountains on the other." OK, let me wave the bullshit flag here. The hideous commutes in L.A. are not because of natural features - uh, that little mountain range in the middle of the city? Doesn't stop anything. Check out any of our widely-used canyon roads that go over them if you want to see a gnarly commute. And the ocean doesn't really stop anything, since we outline the coast with PCH, which is jammed, as well. Judging by the Atlanta commute in the article, I'd lay wages that the drive from Palmdale to mid-Wilshire - and I know several people who make that commute - is far much sucky than what's experienced by the reporter. And there's not an ocean or a mountain range in the way there. L.A. is jammed because of a failure of urban planning, and an expectation that the city was going to stay mostly orange groves in the Valley. A little research, please. Siiigh.
Since The New Yorker is also a magazine with some damn web strategy sense (Me, bitter? No.) not all the content from the week is available for free online. What there is, is here. Including Denby.
With that in mind, I started in on The New Yorker's travel issue (Denby reviewed Grindhouse and The TV Set) last night. I read the first two pieces - Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk on the tale of getting his first passport as a kid, and Nick Paumgarten's look at commuting in the U.S.
Pamuk's piece is lovely, a look at how moving to Geneva as a non-French speaking kid scarred him so that he didn't leave Turkey for years afterwards. My first passport was attained for much less exotic circumstances - Bridget and I got our passports to go on a game show called Don't Forget Your Toothbrush, which if I remember correctly, basically involved making a fool of yourself to go on a trip that left right after the show finished filming. We had to bring a packed suitcase to the studio. Sadly, we did not win. (It was hosted by Mark Curry of Hangin' with Mr. Cooper fame.
And, in typical snotty New Yorker (the citizen, not the magazine - although both apply) fashion...the commuting article brushes off L.A. in favor of the horrors of Atlanta commuting with this: "Los Angeles, the country's most sprawling megalopolis, may boast a more dizzying array of horrible commutes, but many of them are the result of a difficult landscape-ocean restricting growth on one side, mountains on the other." OK, let me wave the bullshit flag here. The hideous commutes in L.A. are not because of natural features - uh, that little mountain range in the middle of the city? Doesn't stop anything. Check out any of our widely-used canyon roads that go over them if you want to see a gnarly commute. And the ocean doesn't really stop anything, since we outline the coast with PCH, which is jammed, as well. Judging by the Atlanta commute in the article, I'd lay wages that the drive from Palmdale to mid-Wilshire - and I know several people who make that commute - is far much sucky than what's experienced by the reporter. And there's not an ocean or a mountain range in the way there. L.A. is jammed because of a failure of urban planning, and an expectation that the city was going to stay mostly orange groves in the Valley. A little research, please. Siiigh.
Since The New Yorker is also a magazine with some damn web strategy sense (Me, bitter? No.) not all the content from the week is available for free online. What there is, is here. Including Denby.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Yay, oppression...
Now, I promise this blog is not going to be me crabbing about catalogues all the time...but it's two days in a row that I had a "What the hell?" moment. This time, it came from The J. Peterman Catalogue, which I generally find sort of sweetly hilarious in their descriptions. (Remember Elaine's job on Seinfeld? Same place.) Take, for instance, this one for the Lucy Honeychurch Hat on page 12: "A young Edwardian lady required a proper hat to shade her from the Italian sun as she explored the monuments of the Grand Tour. This one would have been the perfect compliment to her lingerie dress of fine white cotton lawn. The same hat Miss Honeychurch wore in A Room with a View, her thick hair tucked back, encouraging George to concerntrate on her face."
OK, you're namechecking E.M. Forster? Score! And then, by contrast is the description of The Owner's Hat (you can tell this isn't going to end well, already, can't you?) on page 8: "Some of use work on the plantation. Some of us own the plantation. Facts are facts. This hat is for those who own the plantation."
I ask you. And the cotton you're wearing was picked by those who work on the plantation. Jesus.
Link
OK, you're namechecking E.M. Forster? Score! And then, by contrast is the description of The Owner's Hat (you can tell this isn't going to end well, already, can't you?) on page 8: "Some of use work on the plantation. Some of us own the plantation. Facts are facts. This hat is for those who own the plantation."
I ask you. And the cotton you're wearing was picked by those who work on the plantation. Jesus.
Link
AIA: Two Week Turkish Cruise
A while ago I signed up with the Archaeological Institute of America to receive updates on their travel trips - they always seem fascinating, although priiicey. But look at what you get:
Emperors, Conquerors, and Saints: Exploring Turkey's Cappadocia & Turquoise Coast
November 1 -13, 2007
*Enjoy the ambience of a private yachting experience aboard the 17-cabin Callisto.
*Stay in the unique cave suites at Anatolian Houses in Cappadocia
*Explore UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including historic parts of Istanbul and Goreme
*Discover the ancient necropolis tombs of Anamurium.
Um, yes, please. Wait, how much does it costs? Yeeeah, there's the rub - it starts at $6,995. Not including airfare. Maybe, at some point, I'll be rich and nerdy instead of poor and nerdy, and then I'm so there.
Archaeological Institute of America
Great Danes?
"For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart...."
Or...not? That's from Hamlet, the chipper tale from Elsinore. But an article in The BBC Magazine suggests that Denmark actually has the happiest people in Europe. It's an interesting article - are the Danes happy because they have an outstanding social welfare system - or are they happy because they're content with not being ambitious? The comments, in particular, are hilarious - like this one from Joe Spencer in London: "If I lived in a country populated by 6ft blonde bombshells, I'd be pretty happy too."
Link
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
I mean, really.
I got this in the mail the other day - it's the TravelSmith catalogue, a compendium of travel-friendly clothing (mmmmmm...microfiber doesn't wrinkle.) However, the cover of this one cracked me up - it's a big illo for their "Ultra-Slimming Swim Wear" - and the woman picture not only proportionately has a huge ass, but the bottom of her bathing suit is polka dot. Ultra-Slimming, but still not flattering! Just what I want!
How to Flee: April 17, 2007
As part of my recent spate of lining up freelance jobs, I've been carrying my passport around with me in order to fill out the sundry required paperwork. When Jason found it in my glove compartment, he laughed and asked if I was keeping it close in case I had to flee.
Not a bad idea, actually.
So an occasional morning feature around here will be to pick a random location, figure out how much it would cost to get there one way from LAX, and how long it would take. In case today is the day Dick Cheney is regenerated enough to be released from his pod for more than a few hours.
Today: Sofia, Bulgaria. I just interviewed someone who is working on a movie there - he said it was lovely. When you're fleeing, do you need a bigger recommendation than that?
And, it's cheap - albeit not totally efficient: Take United 136 from LAX to O'Hare at 11:52 p.m. this evening, arriving at 5:42 a.m. Putter around O'Hare for 11 hours and 43 minutes, then take LOT Polish Air at 5:35 p.m. to Warsaw, arriving at 9:50 a.m. Leave Warsaw at 11 a.m., arriving in Sofia at 1:55 p.m. Total travel time is 28 hours and 3 minutes...for $790.
Oh, why the hell not?
In light of recent events - I was laid off from my day job in early March - and at the encouragement of several friends, I've decided to revamp good ol' Planes, Trains and Automobiles just a bit. Instead of it being a travelogue for friends and family, I'm going to make it a broader travel blog with (hopefully) daily news updates, information on fare deals and various amusing ramblings. In other words, my very own travel publication. I always wanted to be a travel writer - and now I can.
And yes, I am doing other work that makes real money and will keep the cat in kibble.
And yes, I am doing other work that makes real money and will keep the cat in kibble.
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