If you're a nervous flier, you already have plenty to worry about: turbulence, the seemingly "fuzzy math" of aerodynamics, and flight attendants who may, at any moment, go rogue. But here's a new issue to obsess over: UFOs.
A recent US News and World Report story explored the unnerving possibility that UFOs are zipping around the skies and distracting your airline pilot when he or she should be totally focused on A) flying safely to your destination and B) turning on the intercom to point out the Hoover Dam or Dollywood outside your window.
No more fighting over that coveted stretch of chairs at the airline gate—you know, the ones without the spine-bisecting armrests.
Two major U.S airports are making the tacit admission that there's a good chance that you'll get delayed while under their roofs, but they are at least offering you a spot to stretch out in peace. "Minute Suites" are now available in Concourse B at Atlanta-Hartsfield International Airport, as well as at the Terminal A-B Link at Philadelphia International Airport.
The suites are outfitted with a day bed, pillows and blankets, a TV and the all-important Internet access. SFO plans to introduce its own version of the napping suites next year, upping the ante with groovy curved walls to make you feel like you have more space (or, to give you the surreal jet-lag-exacerbated sensation of sleeping inside an egg).
"Minute" may be a misnomer with the Minute Suites: they start at $30 an hour—but that still beats sleeping face-down in the airport CinnaBon.
The election has only been over for a few days, and so far there have been no reports of disappointed Romney voters booking, en masse, one-way airline tickets to Canada.
That said, there may still be a post-election windfall coming to the travel industry, at least for two U.S. destinations: Washington and Colorado, which both passed ballot measures legalizing recreational marijuana, and possibly opened the doors wide for mary-jane-seeking tourists.
Here's a bucket-list trip for the kooky trainspotter in your life.
New Zealand–based tour operator Forgotten World Adventures invites folks to drive "rail carts" along the old Stratford to Okahukura Railway Line, which was originally built between 1901 and 1933, and which runs parallel to the Forgotten World Highway.
The "rail carts," however, are not velvet-draped sleepers from the glamorous heyday of rail travel. They're souped-up golf carts, imported from the U.S. (Georgia, to be exact). Their little steering wheels don't work now—probably a good thing—but you can still can stop and go with the pedals, all the better for enjoying the views, or posing for camera-toting rubberneckers.
Are the bunnies going Bollywood? The first Playboy Club of India—a 22,000-square-foot hotspot set along Candolim Beach in north Goa—will open this December. Fun Playboy Club trivia: It's the first Playboy Club ever on a beach, and plans are for seven more clubs to pop up around the nation over the next three years.
But hold onto your fluffy tail: Given the nation's tough rules regarding decency, there will be some big things missing from this new Playboy Club. Like, the corset-based bunny outfit. Or any nudity, for that matter.
We’ve always loved walking through a Vegas casino in the morning: the calm determination of the early-riser slot-machine lovers, armed with their large coffees, and the trickle of tousled, hungover, partiers squinting their way to the lobby to go find their cars.
It turns out that near dawn is also the perfect time to pull off a big heist. Las Vegas Police are looking for a Palmdale, Calif., man who allegedly took $1.6 million in chips at The Venetian casino on Oct. 10. He supposedly walked into the casino at about 6 a.m., and with no staff nearby, picked the lock on a cabinet full of chips and strolled away with his haul.
We Americans often feel insecure when we can't speak other languages when we travel overseas. Granted, maybe not insecure enough to actually learn another language—but smiling, nodding, and frequently yelling "Merci!" is a good start, right?
The good news: It turns out we may not be the world's biggest linguistic laggards. According to a recent TripAdvisor survey of Europeans, the British ranked as the worst at speaking another tongue when traveling. Only 11 percent of those surveyed could speak another language fluently, while 22 percent of them couldn't speak even one word in another language. Plus, a whopping 74 percent of Britons expected people overseas to be able to speak English.
So what about those stats that say that half of all Europeans are fluent in another language, compared to the 18 percent of Americans? That holds true in Italy and France, where 51 and 50 percent, respectively, can speak fluently in another language, according to the survey. The Germans, meanwhile, blow the curve, boasting 70 percent who are fluent in another language (and only 1 percent is clueless in another tongue).
In defense of the Brits (and ourselves), we could say that the other Europeans are just making it too easy for us to be linguistically lazy, at least in the Eurozone. It's a good bet, after all, that the second language all those Germans, French and Italians speak is English.
Good news: Camel safaris have entered the 21st century.
The Times of India reported the other day that officials in Jaisalmer, in India's Rajasthan, are implementing a user-friendly way of booking one of the popular, days-long camel safaris in the neighboring Thar Desert: pre-paying beforehand, the same way you would pre-pay for a taxi at a train station.
Hats off to Sriwijaya Air for keeping the mystery and spontaneity alive in travel.
On October 13, a flight on the Indonesian airline left from Medan in North Sumatra and was headed to Minangkabau. Except—oops—the plane landed at Padang’s Tabing airport instead.
An exciting turn of events for travelers, right? What new adventure might await beyond the runway?
The terms "centenarian" and "cashing in" are rarely used in the same breath among tourism officials, but that may be changing—at least in a remote county in the Guangxi Zhuang region of China.
