The Bollywood blockbuster of the summer, Zindagi Na Milegi
Dobara(You Only Live Once) is a cinematic love letter to Spain, following
three buddies on an epic bachelor trip that takes them from Barcelona to
Seville and beyond. But lest you jump to the inevitable comparisons, the Indian Hangover it is not—ZNMD (as it's now called) has a lot less raunch, a lot more soul, and plenty of beautifully shot musical sequences.
For megastars Hrithik Roshan, Farhan Akhtar, and Abhay
Deol, filming was an epic adventure all its own—they spent three months on the
road and even re-created Buñol’s famed Tomatina festival (with 16 tons of tomatoes!)
and the running of the bulls, in Pamplona. Granted, these events don’t appear in
the film in chronological order, but this is Bollywood after all, so defying logic goes
with the territory—especially if it creates scenarios "ripe" for spectacular
song-and-dance productions.
I know that as an editor at a travel magazine I really
should have more refined tastes. But secretly, I’ve always wanted to ride a
Segway around a city. Whenever happy tourists have whizzed past me in D.C. or San
Francisco, I’ve been a little jealous, but my travel companions are generally
of the type who would rather walk barefoot on burning asphalt than be caught
dead on the funny-looking two-wheeled contraptions.
The holy month of Ramadan, which involves fasting from sunrise to sunset for 30 days, began on Monday. While this may sound grueling, most Muslims have created their own cultural ways to celebrate. But a pair of New Yorkers have managed to come up with one of the most quintessentally American ways yet: a road trip, of course!
When this package came across my desk, I couldn't help but be intrigued.
Turns out it contained my set of orders for RevQuest: Sign of the Rhinoceros, a new alternate-reality game going on through the end of the August at Colonial Williamsburg. Geared toward "spies" ages eight and up (though history-geek adults like me apparently make up a huge chunk of the players), RevQuest begins with a top-secret mission that is explained in hushed tones by Agent 368 at Mr. Prentis's Shop.
Baby showers aren’t typically something we cover here at
T+L, but I went to an adorable one recently that I simply had to write
about. The excited parents-to-be are major globe-trotters, and so the theme
chosen by the hostesses was, fittingly enough, Tiny Traveler.
Whenever I head out of town, I turn to my small but trusty band of Twitter followers for recommendations in my destination, but I really discovered the power of social media during my visit to San Francisco last month. As has become the norm for me now before any of my trips, in the days leading up to my departure I hashtagged away to glory and beseeched strangers and friends alike for tips.
Soon an itinerary was taking shape (many thanks, @PaperDaydream, @JasleenK, @streetno8, @BeautyNDFeast, @LettuceVeg, and @chiratsu!), incorporating classic landmarks like Lombard Street with restaurants and neighborhoods I never would have found in my guidebook. One place that kept making its way onto my Twitter timeline was a sandwich shop called Ike’s Place (3489 16th St.) on the fringes of the colorful, mural-bedecked Mission District. It generated so much buzz in response to my queries that the first thing I did was plug the address into my GPS to make it my starting point.
Did you know that a Turkish cartographer drafted one of the oldest surviving maps of the Americas? That a Muslim woman in Morocco founded the world’s first modern university, which still holds classes today? That a man named Abbas ibn Firnas tried to invent a flying machine... more than a thousand years before the Wright Brothers finally succeeded? That the word candy came from the Arabic qand?
With the recent congressional hearings on Muslim Americans and the furor surrounding the community center near Ground Zero, it’s easy to overlook all the positive contributions Muslims have made to modern society. So “1,001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World,” which opened May 27 at the California Science Center, in Los Angeles, couldn’t have come at a more opportune moment.
I’ll be honest—when I first heard Travel+Leisure was doing a feature story on Hyderabad, I was somewhat…perplexed. The sixth largest city in India is where my parents are originally from, and though my history-buff father has regaled me with its legends for years, I’ve never thought of it as a major tourist hub—but then, T+L is always ahead when it comes to mining hot off-the-radar destinations. Working on “Jewel of India” for March made me view the city through a new lens. And in a serendipitous twist, I was scheduled to take a long-delayed trip to Hyderabad right after we closed the issue.
Lobby DJ’s are so last decade. The latest amenity: live concerts at hotels by Grammy Award–winning musicians.
As part of Renaissance Hotels’ new program RLife Live, guests may very well check in while listening to musicians—Thievery Corporation, Solange Knowles, or the Neon Trees—perform live. To know who’s playing where, visit rlifelive.com (dates are posted two weeks in advance). One recent showstopper: Bruno Mars’s New Year’s Eve concert at the R Lounge Times Square, with a certain crystal ball as the backdrop.
After devouring T+L’s delectable July Food and Travel issue, I stumbled across the perfect literary accompaniment: journalist Richard C. Morais’s debut novel, The Hundred-Foot Journey (Scribner). The title is somewhat misleading—this “journey” is actually one of many thousands of miles, tracing the improbable rise of an Indian chef, Hassan Haji, from Mumbai to Paris, as we follow him from his humble roots at a ramshackle family-owned Indian restaurant to his enviable position as one of France’s most celebrated chefs, the acquirer of three coveted Michelin stars.
