You can smell the tanneries in Fez, Morocco, long before you can see them. The stench comes from the diluted bird excrement used to soften animal hides as they’re turned into leather. The soft leather is then dyed in these large vats by men working hours at a time on each hide in harsh summer heat. Then the hides are hung to dry on the roofs around the old quarter.
Flickr user Mark Fischer captured this image of a tannery worker in the dyeing vats from the balconies surrounding the tannery. It’s basically an assembly line at ground level, so tourists aren’t allowed in, but the smell is often enough to keep most people at bay.
If your summer travel budget is feeling a little skimpy at the moment, then indulge your fantasies for a minute and imagine you’ve got $100K to blow on your upcoming vacation. What does it look like?
Luxury travel company Abercrombie & Kent is giving 50 travelers the chance to find out. The company, which offers high-end travel services to those with deep pockets, recently relaunched their private jet journeys in which travelers hop across the globe without ever having to come into contact with an economy class seat or gelatinous airplane meal.
In their latest (and most expensive) offering, Abercrombie & Kent’s founder Geoffrey Kent will accompany the passengers on a round-the-world adventure, which will take them to nine countries on a Boeing 757 decked out with plush business class seats, a lounge area, and a bar.Pit stops include an Amazonian river cruise, a visit to the Moai on remote Easter Island, dinner with diplomats in Sri Lanka’s Galle Fort, a game-viewing expedition on the Masai Mara, a swanky party in the wealthy nation of Monaco, and more.
How do you pack for a trip like that? Well, it doesn’t matter what you bring really, because you won’t exactly be wrestling for overhead bin space. Not to mention that joining the tour group is a traveling Bell Boy whose job it is to wheel your handmade Globetrotter suitcase around the planet. Nice, huh?
The 26-day tour departs from Miami next October … so you know, there’s still time to save up.
This summer, Americans are expected to spend a whopping $84 billion dollars on summer hotel stays, with the average traveler booking just over seven nights this season, states new data from Room Key.
What are travelers seeking? Price (72%), hotel amenities (58%) and brand (43%), as well as the ability to earn points and rewards (31%), something we’ve previously seen travelers pay less attention to. Room Key’s survey finds that leisure stays will average $1,134, and most state that this is about what they spent last year. The infographic below details other key facts about summer travel.
Are you in line with the average American’s summer travel plans? Leave your thoughts below.
A Maya ceremonial center that has stood in northern Belize for approximately 2,300 years was destroyed when construction crews chipped away at it with backhoes and bulldozers to extract rock for a road-building project, Associated Press is reporting.
The news outlet detailed how construction crews demolished parts of a pyramid in the Nohmul complex, the most important Maya site in northern Belize, near the border with Mexico. There are 81 structures in the complex, but the destroyed pyramid was the ceremonial center, as well as the namesake structure for the complex. Now the once large structure has been whittled down to its core, and the limestone that was extracted will be used for gravel roads in a nearby village.
Although the land the pyramid sits on is privately owned, laws in Belize maintain any pre-Hispanic ruins are under government protection. According to the Associated Press, police said they are conducting an investigation and criminal charges are possible.
Taking the skeptical point of view on travel apps can be dangerous. But with so many apps from a variety of sources doing their rendition of the technology du jour, it is easy to dismiss the lot of them as more of the same. Sometimes though, tiny updates to existing apps can make them a valuable addition to our soft travel gear.
Travel Plans In One Place, Now With Ground Options
Subscribers to TripIt, the intelligent travel plan organizer, now have access to a new feature that might make the service more valuable. Already, TripIt users create a trip by defining a travel window period of time in which it occurs. Filling in the details can be as easy as forwarding an email copy of airline, hotel and/or rental car reservations to Plans@TripIt.com, which reads and understands your plans with a high degree of accuracy.
Now, new TripIt feature Groundlinkenables users to add ground transportation, coordinated with existing travel plans, from a smartphone. The app has a Track Your Ride feature that Glympse users will feel comfortable with. Groundlinkusers will pick their drop-off point from a map generated by Groundlink using nearby venues, addresses, ride history or airports. Already armed with up-to-date details of user flight plans, Groundlink will monitor user travels and advise ground transportation services if it looks like their ride might be delayed. Right now, Groundlink is offering 20 percent off rides booked via the TripIt Mobile App.
Connectivity Worldwide Now With Easy Payment Boingo, worldwide connectivity company with over 600,000 hotspots worldwide, announced recently that iOS users can now use their secure iTunes account to buy a Boingo subscription. Making the app easier to use than ever, users can activate the new plan on multiple iOS devices, allowing customers to quickly connect to unlimited Boingo Wi-Fi without entering account information.
Behind The Scenes Update For A Better Experience Airbnb is an online service that allows “hosts” to rent unoccupied living space and other short-term lodging to guests. Testing the service here at Gadling has had mixed results. In the article “Important Warning For Anyone Using Airbnb,” Gadling’s Kyle Ellison warned, “if you plan on renting out a room or serving as a host, be sure you’re aware of the local laws, lest you receive a knock on the door that isn’t from a paying guest,” after discovering that many localities do not allow subletting. In “Airbnb Reconsidered,” Gadling writer Alex Robertson Textor highlights some communication problems inherent with the service that can be problematic.
In response to these concerns and others, Airbnb released a new update reported in techcrunch aimed not at users but at those who host them. One new feature will allow hosts to better communicate with potential users by pre-approving, denying, or requesting more information from guests. The hope is that the new features will increase the speed with which bookings can happen. Another feature will give hosts improved ability to update calendar listings, ensuring that the most current inventory can be seen by users.
Not Just Your Air, What You See Below Delta Airlines, like most other carriers, has an app that will check you in, track your frequent flier program miles and more. Nothing really exciting there. But Delta’s Glass Bottom Jet is a unique app for iPad that brings users a bird’s-eye view of locations they are flying over. Users can explore the area with photos, landmarks and Wikipedia pages and tell you which Facebook friends you’re flying over. Check this video for more on Delta’s Glass Bottom Jet: