Travel Tweets Cue Thought, Savings

by Chris Owen on

A great amount of travel information is available on twitter, much more than the standard 140 characters might elude to. Some is straightforward, a simple statement of facts, making who we follow the key to travel info riches. But sometimes, thought provoking travel tweets can prompt a search for knowledge that brings a learning element and along with it, more meaningful information.

@united, the Twitter handle for United Airlines, posed an interesting question recently

“Our longest nonstop flight is 8,065 miles. Do you know which two destinations it connects?#avgeek”

Following up later, @united answered

“EWR to HKG is our longest nonstop route. “


That made me wonder, “so is that the longest non-stop flight in the world?”

Not even close.

Singapore Airlines Flight 21 claims the title of having the longest regularly scheduled non-stop flight in the world. Also flying from Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) to Singapore Changi Airport (SIN) Singapore Airlines uses an Airbus A340-500 for the 9,534 mile trip in about 18.5 hours flight time.

That knowledge led me to check that tag, #avgeek, for more. That search revealed a plethora of information about aviation-related topics including this video, posted by who explains some otherwise very technical information about jet design in an understandable way.




Of the video, @clemensv says

“I’m a software dude, not an aerospace engineer. But I’m an aviation geek with a bit of 1950s aerospace engineering envy. Because: unlimited money.

Therefore please excuse my amateur attempt at explaining the Area Rule of supersonic jet design completely without resorting to math but rather in the sand and showing it off on a F-86, F-102, F-106, and F-5.”

Perhaps better yet, tweets by travel-related service providers such as @Airfarewatchdog, @livingsocial, @ViatorTravel (or @ViatorGear), @SmarterTravel and others can make for big savings on travel and travel-related products.

[Photo credit – Flickr user eldh]

The Historic Homes Where Jimi Hendrix And George Frideric Handel Were Neighbors (250 Years Apart)

by Sean McLachlan on


When walking in London, keep an eye out for the Blue Plaques. These historic markers will tell you where famous people once lived, and occasionally make for strange combinations.

One blue plaque at 23 Brook Street in the exclusive Mayfair neighborhood tells how Jimi Hendrix lived there from 1968-1969. Next door at number 25 is another Blue Plaque, this time for Classical composer George Frideric Handel, who lived in the house from 1723 until his death in 1759. Sadly, there’s no record of what Jimi thought about living so close to an earlier and slightly different composer.

The upper stories of these two homes are now the Handel House Museum, which, as the name implies, is dedicated to Handel and not Hendrix. The house has been refurnished with period furniture and paintings and contains a collection of Handel’s personal items. The museum hosts many special events and concerts throughout the year, including weekly recitals. My wife is a big Classical music fan and taking her here to listen to a string quartet is something she still talks about years later.

One disappointment was not being able to see where Jimi Hendrix stayed. He loved London and loved his place, calling it his first real home of his own. At that time he had no neighbors and so he could practice his music as loudly as he wanted.

When the Handel House Museum opened in 2001, his apartment was restored to look like it had when he lived there, minus the large amount of drugs scattered about. Sadly, the apartment is now used as museum’s administrative offices and isn’t generally shown to the public.

[Photo courtesy David Holt]

Meet The Reclusive American Billionaire Who Bought Lonely Planet

by Megan Fernandez on

Last year, the Wall Street Journal called Brad Kelley “the man with a million acres.” Now the American billionaire and land addict has expanded his kingdom to include the world’s biggest travel-guide publisher. Kelley’s NC2 Media bought Lonely Planet from BBC Worldwide in a deal announced yesterday.

Most of the headlines focused on the huge loss BBC is taking by selling the company for about $78 million. It paid double that to buy the Melbourne-based publisher a few years ago. Some travel insiders are wondering if NC2, a small firm based in Nashville, Tenn. and specializing in digital development, will continue to publish the familiar blue-covered guides while devoting energy to digital expansion. NC2’s chief operating office, Daniel Houghton, made some routinely vague comments about being committed to the brand’s roots in publishing in a Q&A with Skift Travel. NC2 also produces “Outwild TV,” a story-rich Web series on adventure travel:

A fair amount of the chatter surrounding the news questions whether NC2 will have any more luck than the BBC did with the brand, which was portrayed as struggling financially and with digital innovation. But Kelley surely knows what he’s doing. He didn’t become a billionaire by making bad deals. (Actually, he earned his fortune in the cigarette business.)

Kelley, who’s on the Forbes 400 list of the world’s richest people, must know a promising brand when he sees one. Lonely Planet is the world’s largest travel-guide publisher with 40 years under its belt and 120 million books sold. The BBC grew it from the third most-popular guidebook series in the U.S. to the first.

Kelley, though, is the anti-Trump, with about as much flash as the Amish. The Wall Street Journal called him “deeply private” and claimed he doesn’t use Twitter or email (as of last fall). His hobbies, according to the article, include making bourbon and raising exotic animals; he’s also passionate about conservation. Most of his land – which is concentrated in Florida, Texas and New Mexico and in total outsizes Rhode Island – is devoted to ranches, and his holdings make him one of the top three or four land owners in the country, right up there with Ted Turner.

According to the WSJ, Kelley grew up as the son of a tobacco farmer in Kentucky and bought his first piece of land at 17. He maintains his primary residence in Franklin, Tenn., a town with about 65,000 residents.

That description might seem to cut against the image of an innovative digital firm and the exotic locations on which Lonely Planet is an authority, but in the WSJ Kelley talked about his land habit in financial terms, not romantic ones: “It’s a nonperishable commodity and it’s as good a place as any to put my money,” Mr. Kelley says. “It’s better than derivatives.” The article reported that “the national average value of U.S. ranchland rose 12% compared with five years earlier; in Texas, it is up 30% compared with five years ago.”

Lonely Planet is now based in a state that doesn’t warrant a blue-spined guidebook of its own, but it may well be in better hands.

[Photo credit: Joshua Alan Davis via Flickr]

Travel Through The World of Music At Phoenix’s Musical Instrument Museum

by Libby Zay on

My expectations weren’t very high when I visited Phoenix’s Musical Instrument Museum (MIM). I imagined a small collection of dusty drums and pan flutes along with a guitar or two donated by famous musicians. Boy, was I ever mistaken.

The MIM is actually a mammoth museum whose collection and quality rival that of a Smithsonian Institution. Founded by Robert J. Ulrich, the former CEO and chairman of Target Corporation, the museum’s mission is to represent the musical instruments of every country in the world-and Ulrich apparently had enough dough to not only send curators around the globe to collect more than 15,000 instruments, but to also document the traditions and history that surround them via videos.

Galleries, which are organized into geographical regions, take visitors all over the world to learn about that magic of music. Instruments include the 40-stringed zither, a xylophone from the Philippines called the gabbing, a 12-foot-tall octobass (a string instrument that takes two people to play), a gamelan orchestra from Indonesia (pictured at the top) and a collection of strange-looking harmonicas. Also on display are costumes traditionally associated with the music, including a whirling dervish outfit from Turkey and a dragon dance costume from China.

There’s also a mechanical music gallery with instruments that “play themselves,” including player pianos, tiny mechanical birds and other automated instruments that use barrels, cylinders, discs and other technologies to operate. And then there’s the artist gallery, a shrine to music legends such as Elvis Presley, Dick Dale, Carlos Santana and Taylor Swift, where you’ll also find the piano John Lennon used to compose “Imagine.”

But it’s not only the collection that is impressive. It’s also the technology available to each guest via a special audio guide. Instead of a run-of-the-mill guide that forces guests to follow along on a cookie cutter tour, MIM’s guide synchs up with whatever display you’re standing in front of. This allows you to choose to browse things you find interesting, and also ensures that your experience doesn’t bother those around you (if you take your headphones off you’ll notice everyone is essentially walking around a the museum in complete silence).

Before you leave, be sure to stop in the experience gallery, where you can test your chops by strumming and banging instruments from all corners of the world, including a Burmese harp and Chinese gongs. And in the event you can’t make it to Phoenix but just want to learn more about world music, check out MIM’s YouTube page, where you can hear and see many of these instruments being played.

[Photo credit: Annie Shustrin]

Souvenir Of The Week: Kooky Korean Socks

by Megan Fernandez on

In South Korea, everyone will see your socks because it’s customary to remove shoes in most public places. That might be why Jonathan Kramer, Gadling’s resident Kimchi-ite, tipped us off about the assortment of cheap, colorful anklets everywhere you go there. You might even find a sock vending machine. Designs are heavy on cartoons and bears, but hardly any motif is spared – the gamut runs from staid argyles, polka dots and stripes to sassy statements like boy bands, American cigarette logos, mischievous babies, Obama, schoolyard insults (“stupid”) and your favorite global megabrands (Starbucks).

First person to find a pair of Dennis Rodman socks wins!

[Photo credit: Todd Mecklem via Flickr]