In the mood for a thrill ride? Mapquest has modified its maps for Halloween. Go to the map for your destination city, then click the shrieking ghost icon on the right-hand tool bar to display all the haunted houses, creepy corn mazes, and ‘screamparks’ open for business through Halloween. You’ll find happenings like Austin House of Torment, Cleveland’s 7 Floors of Hell, or the haunted house at Pennsylvania’s de-commissioned and ultra-skeevy Eastern State Penitentiary.
The Danes have come up with an unusual way to lure travelers to their country. They’re very happy, and if you visit, it might rub off on you! (And save you some money.)
The claim of joyfulness is based on scientific surveys, not merely on, say, an interview with a Copenhagen resident after a few glasses of schnapps on a Friday evening. In one recent research endeavor—the World Values Survey, the work of a global network of social scientists—Denmark came out on top when it comes to the happiness of its residents.
If you ask any of my closest friends, they'll tell you that, while I may be a spontaneous, even adventurous, person, I'm not much of an extreme thrill seeker. You won't catch me on any of the frightening rides we reported on last summer. Think you can convince me to jump out of a plane? Not a chance. And tethering myself to a bridge and hurtling myself off? You can't be serious.
That being said, I'm a little shocked by my intense fascination with a certain natural attraction: "The Devil's Pool" in Zambia. You can't even begin to fathom the magnitude of scariness/awesomeness that comes from this naturally formed pool of water. Enter YouTube:
In a scene reminiscent of a really really good Hollywood disaster movie, Sydneysiders woke up Wednesday to find their city had turned red overnight.
A freak unprecented storm carried an estimated 5 million tons of Outback dust that settled over buildings, parks, and beaches; it even set off a cacophonous chorus of smoke alarms in Business District and almost totally obscured Sydney’s famous Opera House and Harbour Bridge in a ruddy Mars-like haze.
When I was a little kid in Los Angeles, my dad would take our family of 7 on long Sunday drives. Once he drove us over a desert pass to a ranch Hollywood had used for old Westerns and where he'd heard there were pony rides. When we pulled off onto the dusty road, it became clear that the decrepit ranch was no longer open for tours.
Dad blithely drove into the movie-set town, wooden sidewalks and Western building facades attached to the fronts of battered house trailers. He made a U-turn and drove back through. "John," my mother hissed, "Hippies!" A few very scruffy men had ventured out onto the sidewalks and more faces appeared in windows, watching our Ford wagon hightail it back to the highway. Months later, from news coverage of the Sharon Tate murder trial, my parents realized that those hippies out at the Spahn Movie Ranch had been the Manson Family. Thus, my first (and only, to date) true-crime road trip adventure.
We’ve all heard of Oktoberfest, that annual two-week-long beer- and wurst-fueled party—though party seems a bit of an understatement, no?—held in Munich, Germany. But what some of you may not know about is that the U.S. has its own pint-sized version of the celebration in Cincinnati, OH—renamed "Zinzinnati" for the event.
The streets of Reno, Nevada, resembled the final scenes of a Quentin Tarantino bloodfest this weekend by the time the local fire department arrived to hose down the squishy red residue of 50,000 pounds of squashed tomatoes left clinging to the sidewalks and shopfronts of the Biggest Little City in the World. More than 5,000 people wound up their pitching arms on Saturday to hurl tomatoes at one another and at city officials in what is being called the largest food fight in North America, La Tomatina.
Ever wondered what Europe smelled like before plumbing? I’m discovering this very thing in the recently published The Smell of the Continent: The British Discover Europe (Pan Macmillan, $32), which recounts 19th-century British travel to Continental Europe. Oxford historians Richard Mullen and James Munson get into the less savory details of sanitation (a scarcity of bathtubs in France; flea-infested sheets in Sicily; four toilets in a 60-room hotel in Germany).
Pardon us for being a bit tardy on this, but when you’re on the kangaroo beat here at Carry On you don’t really expect to handle much in the way of news. Sometimes, honestly, we’re caught napping. So you’ll forgive us if the following tidbit is several weeks old.
A few months ago we reported that a number of kangaroos had escaped from an Australian theme park in southern France (yes, that’s correct) and gone romping through the countryside near Carcassonne before they were rounded up and returned to their rightful roost. We’re not sure if that was the beginning of a trend, but several weeks ago another rebel ‘roo, this one named Will, flew the coop from his home in the village of Gente.
Summer’s here and the time is right for packing your towel and sunscreen, hailing a cab to the heart of town, and hitting the beach. Four of our favorite (faux) city beaches: Paris-Plage, a network of three sandy oases set up every July and August along the Seine’s Right Bank, complete with chaises longues, boules courts, and palm trees.
Copenhagen’s Havnebadet (“harbor baths”), an industrial pier in Islandsbrygge converted into a beach club and park with space for 600. Barbecue pits, a volleyball lawn, and great city views add to the scene—and you can actually swim in the newly cleaned-up harbor.
Istanbul’s Suada, a chic swimming club by day and bar/disco/sushi restaurant by night with an Olympic size pool—floating in the middle of the Bosphorus.
And, not least, the latest incarnation of New York’s Water Taxi Beach, this one on Pier 17 next to South Street Seaport, in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge (the original WTB, pitctured above, is across the East River in Queens). The new location, which opened Memorial Day weekend, has the same trucked-in beach sand, picnic tables, and DJ’s after dark, but it also offers an expanded menu that adds fish tacos to the usual burgers and dogs, plus—wait for it—mini-golf and skeeball. If that doesn’t release your inner 10-year-old, who knows what will.
(For the best real city beaches, check out this slideshow.)
Peter Jon Lindberg is Travel + Leisure's editor at large.
Photos courtesy of Rui Pereira (Paris-Plage) and Isuru Seneviratne (Water Taxi Beach, Queens)
The Danes have come up with an unusual way to lure travelers to their country. They’re very happy, and if you visit, it might rub off on you! (And save you some money.)
