GADLING’S TAKE FIVE: Week of August 20

by Adrienne Wilson on

Last Friday of the month folks and it’s time for a little review. Strap on your seatbelts and get ready for a take five ride.

5. Travel Trivia:
Nothing beats testing your travel knowledge. I’ve always been pretty confident in my geography skills, landmark knowledge and some historical facts, but pretty confident doesn’t always get you a 100%. Ugh! Time to hit the books or do you think you know enough to score perfect marks on this MSNBC travel quiz. Find out.

4. Red Corner: Vodka Hangover Cure:
Funny piece pointed out by Neil on the joys of toasting to new Russian friends and journeys abroad with Vodka. For the Russians the beverage is like water, but how does a foreigner peer-pressured into drinking to friendship handle a vodka hangover? From the pre-drinking stage to the actual event and next morning here is your guide to some effective cures!

3. Inside Africa Vol. 1 & 2:
TASCHEN has some new books out and these Inside Africa volumes are very much worth your attention if you’re into dwellings and living around the continent.

2. One Hundred Very Angry U.S. Cities:
Shocking piece from Men’s Health on the top 100 angry places around our United States. Florida cities rank very high on the charts, but what about your state or city?

1. Farecast Launches:
Probably one of the biggest travel buzzworthy pieces comes from Erik and his plug on Farecast. What started off as a two city travel search and airfare prediction / watch engine has expanded to 55 cities. Can’t wait to see if it’s worth all the buzz

Friday Funny: Peter Sellers for TWA

by Erik Olsen on

–

Today’s Friday Funny some to us via YouTube, courtesy of Jaunted, and is a marvelously campy old commercial done for TWA featuring the late, great Peter Sellers. If this doesn’t make you laugh out loud and close your eyes for a moment of silence for the prodigious talent of Sellers, well, something’s wrong with you. Marvelous.

Travel Nightmares

by Erik Olsen on

It was when I first started doing gadling that I wrote some posts about how awful it is to travel with kids…not your own, but someone else’s. Someone who’s sitting right behind you and has a screaming toddler. There is nothing that can ruin a trip quite like a baby that’s wailing as if its lungs are being shredded inside its little chest…OK, plummeting down from 35,000 feet into a fireball on the ground is worse, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, I have done a lot of complaining about crying kids on board, and went so far as to invent the Baby Cone of Silence (patent pending). And yet, now that I have a baby of my own, I know how hard and miserable it can be to fly with a little one. Well, I felt as if I could understand both sides of the issue when I read this series of travel nightmares over at MSNBC. From babies crying to lost connections, it’s a nice litany of problems that ,if you’re like me, help you feel less alone in the world. You learn everyone has these problems.

Well, for those who want to learn more about how to travel with kids, here’s a site with the kind of info that can help…OK, not really. There’s not much you can actually do short of drugging your child, which most parents are reluctant to do. But I offer it anyway.

Farecast Launches

by Erik Olsen on

Both Neil and I blogged about the new Seattle startup Farecast, whch allows you to watch the price history, predictions and buy/wait recommendations of flights. What had been up was the beta site with just two cities available. But today the company’s airfare prediction technology went nation-wide with flights departing from 55 US cities that are now available for viewing. The site also offers RSS feeds for automatically tracking fares and predictions over time. Pretty sweet. eager to give it a whirl.

Get Theeself to Hawaii

by Erik Olsen on

Always a fan of the islands, I keep my eyes open for deals that come and go frmo the various airlines. Just came across this one from the good folks at American Airlines. They are offering sale fares to the glorious and lovely Hawaiian islands Travel through September 30, 2006. Fares are running as low as $403 from San Francisco to Kauai, and you save a bit more if you book through AA.com.