Road trips seem to be a very American activity. Driving cross-country, family vacations to national parks and the like. However, road trips are popular around the world. Caravanning (what we would call RVing) is quite popular in the UK. Also, because European countries are so much smaller than the United States, driving within a country or to neighboring nations is pretty simple. This video shows off the 96km drive from Brussels to Bruges. It’s oddly comforting to know that highway driving in Belgium is pretty similar to interstate driving in the United States.
Live like your favorite ‘Downton Abbey’ character with this chic hotel package
Fans of the Masterpiece Classic PBS program ‘Downton Abbey‘ have even more reason to be excited. Not only did the cult fave show return to television in the states for its second season last night, but now you don’t even have to escape to the UK to live like your favorite characters.
New York‘s Oheka Castle, located on the historic Gold Coast, is offering a special “Aristocratic Escape Package,” that includes overnight accommodations, afternoon tea, a bottle of Champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries in your room, continental breakfast and a copy of Season I of the show on DVD. The overnight package $695 and includes an optional $100 upgrade per room category.
Here’s the real question – have you already managed to sneak a peek at the rest of the season online?
Oh Ranger! ParkFinder guides you to public parkland
I often forget the amazing wealth of national parks, hiking trails and historic sites within easy access of my home. For instance, did you know there’s 260 sites within 100 miles of Brooklyn, NY? In fact, iPhone users can now find out for themselves just how many great outdoor sites are near their hometown using a great smartphone app called Oh Ranger! ParkFinder.
The American Park Network, a publishing company that creates visitor guides for national parks, is behind Oh Ranger, a searchable database of outdoor activities ranging from cycling to historical sites to camping to bird watching. In addition to their free web database, they’ve released Oh Ranger! ParkFinder for iPhone and iPad Touch, a fantastically useful mobile extension that makes it easy to track down your favorite activity at a park near you. Once you’ve downloaded the app, you can easily search for parks based on favorite activities, search for a specific park, or use your iPhone’s location to find sites nearby.
Whether you’re a die-hard outdoor lover or simply looking for some great weekend or daytrip getaways, Oh Ranger! Parkfinder is a nifty, convenient way to find it. You give it a try for free by downloading from the iTunes app store. Although there’s not yet an Android version of the app, the Oh Ranger website utilizes the same park database.
SkyMall Monday: Beard Cap
I’ve been a bit cranky in this space recently. I’ve railed against the Nuddle Blanket and the Ponchillow in the last few weeks. Many of you, I’m sure, have begun to worry that I’ve lost my zest for SkyMall. Rest assured that I remain optimistic about our favorite in-flight catalog and that there are still countless products that leave me engorged with excitement. In fact, SkyMall Monday headquarters is abuzz over this week’s featured invention. As you might know, I typically sport a beard. I’m a bit of a follicle aficionado and, as such, appreciate all things whisker-related. I understand, however, that not everyone can grow out their facial hair. Women, pre-pubescent boys and many Asians lack the ability to cultivate a thick, luxurious face garden. Thankfully, there is now an alternative. As winter clutches us in her icy grip, stay warm and sport the chin mane of your dreams with the Beard Cap.Beards are sacred and personal things. In a perfect world, we would also have flowing locks dangling from our faces. Sadly, that is not nature’s way. Beards can be fickle and there are those who conspire to remove them through nefarious means. The Beard Cap allows you to sport a beard when needed and hide it when danger presents itself.
Think that a cap with a beard is a waste of fabric? Believe that there are better ways to protect your face from the cold? Well, while you figure out how to put on a balaclava, we’ll be reading the product description:
Gray and black cap has attached mustache and beard.
1 size fits most adults.
It is what is says it is. Isn’t that the mark of any good beard – real or otherwise? Beards lack pretense. They’re the working man’s facial hair. They’re not for everyone (one size fits “most” but not all) but everyone is for them. Think about it.
Don’t let your lack of testosterone or ethnic makeup keep you from sporting the beard that you so richly deserve. Ignore the aspersions cast by those who would rather see you “clean shaven.” There is nothing dirty about beards (except for when you cupcakes and chili dogs) and you have every right to grow or buy your own. Even if the one you buy makes you look like an atomic ginger.
Check out all of the previous SkyMall Monday posts HERE.
Bowermaster’s Adventures: Running out of water in the Maldives
Kunahadhoo Island— On a very hot, very typical, mid-morning in the Maldives I walk the streets of this tiny island just north of the equator.
Most of its 800 residents had gathered at the shoreline to greet visitors from a nearby island. While they focused on a first-of-a-kind beach clean-up along the rocky coast, accompanied by a drum band and dancing, I took a small walking tour looking for something the Maldives doesn’t have much of: drinking water.
(A late morning visit to its elementary school provided another interesting glimpse into island life; while most of the students raised their hands said they knew how to swim, yet virtually none had ever worn a mask and snorkel, so had no idea of the rich life that surrounded their island home.)
It was quickly evident from the jury-rigged plumbing systems fitted to the exteriors of most of the one-story cement homes that the options for delivering clean water were few. Some homes had barrels for collecting rainwater; others had wells dug into the rocky island terrain. Most of them, they admitted, leaked.
Everyone on the island also admitted that if it weren’t for the arrival of the weekly cargo boat, and its bottles of water in plastic, they wouldn’t last a week on what they had in storage.
A recent news story from another Maldivian island group exemplified the problem, reporting that a dozen islands had nearly run out of water completely.”I am very upset with the government because we need water,” 42-year old Jameela Aboobakuru from Gaafaru had explained to the Maldives Bug. “We ran out of water, so we borrowed water from our brother. When he ran out of water we started buying bottled water imported from Male’.”
She said her 12-member family was spending $22 a day to buy bottled water for drinking and cooking, on a combined daily income of just $26.
That means 85 percent of their income was going to buy fresh water.
The response from the government in Male was that it was installing water makers in a boat that could travel from island to island to help out in such emergencies.
Just two days before my walk around Kunahadhoo, the tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu had actually declared a state of emergency due to a severe shortage of fresh water. Officials in that Indian Ocean island group were reporting that some parts of the country had only two-days of water left. Its tiny island of Nukulaelae in the Tuvalu’s reported it had just 60 liters of drinking water left for 330 people.
Like the Maldives, Tuvalu relies almost exclusively on rainwater collected from the roofs of homes and government buildings to supply a population of 10,000.
Speaking at the WaterWoMen conference I was attending on the neighboring island in Laamu Atoll, Dr. Jacqueline Chan, president of Water Charity, which helps communities around the world find clean water and sanitation (SEE VIDEO), reminded us all that the lack of clean water was certainly not a problem faced by the Maldives or Tuvalu alone.
“There are 884 million people in the world without access to safe water,” she said. “That’s the equivalent of the populations of the U.S., Vietnam, Germany, the U.K., Kuwait, Russia, Thailand, France, Italy and Qatar combined.
“If all those countries had no water, would we do something? Or just stand by and watch?”
In a lively debate that concluded the day Indian filmmaker Shekhar Kapur (Elizabethand Elizabeth: The Golden Age) was specific in his prediction about the planet’s future when it comes to clean water: “Long before we run out of water, we’ll go to war over it.
“Nature loves cockroaches and algae as much as it does people, and it’s possible only they will survive.”
[flickr image via Ian Sane]