Seven Kinds of Travel Stories You Should Be Able to Tell Before You Die

by Adrienne Wilson on

Here’s a cutesy travel piece out of the San Francisco Chronicle. I missed the first installation, but the author John Flinn sets the premise that it’s not enough to just go, do, and see all the wonderful places found in the New York Times best seller 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. In order for your travels to have some type of street cred, you’ve got to come back with some cold hard traveler’s tales. I’m almost certain Mister Flinn isn’t suggesting you go out searching for tales to tell or to create them. They should just sort of happen. In last’s week edition he talked about the first two which were Third World bus stories and bathroom stories. This week he adds scary air and animal stories while sharing two of his own. I have to admit the scary air tale he told tops many that I’ve heard and I don’t know where he got the balls to get in a plane with a pilot like that.

What do I know? If you’ve got to be some place bad enough I suppose you’d take chances with any pilot. Go take a peek and see if you’ve got some real travel stories of your own to tell. If not, maybe it’s time to take a ride on the wild side and look out for next week when he goes over a hotel story, a food story and a guide story.

P.S. The sheep in the bag in the back of the jeep is from an animal tale of my own, but really, it wasn’t that eventful.

Urban Lowdown Seeking Interns

by Adrienne Wilson on

Now I’m not one to gossip (usually), but word around the web is Urban Lowdown is looking for people with interests in marketing, developing, design, and writing to contribute to their website. If you’ve been searching for a travel website to contribute to this could very well be the one provided you fall into what I imagine to be a strict clique of travel know-it-alls or insiders as they like to put it. Go now for the lowdown on being apart of the Lowdown.

Airbus 380 Delayed

by Iva Skoch on

Gadling blogged about Airbus’ flagship plane A380 before. Looks like we are going to have to wait six more months before Airbus deliverers their first A380. The first plane was supposed to have been delivered to Qantas in October 2006, but Airbus pushed it back to April 2007. Qantas is “disappointed.”

Interestingly enough, none of the American airlines have expressed real interest in the A380. According to BBC, among the biggest customers so far are Emirates (43 planes ordered), Lufthansa (15) and Qantas (12).

Timing aside, does Qantas honestly need planes that fit 800 people? Will they be flying the entire population of Australia back and forth every time they fly this thing? Does anyone need a plane to fit that many people? The prospect of boarding 800 people in a timely fashion scares me. I can just imagine it now: “Now boarding passengers in rows 120-140…”

Wasn’t this plane supposed to make flying easier?

The Payphone Project

by Adrienne Wilson on

I once took a very spectacular photo of a friend of mine at a payphone in Barcelona and as gorgeous as she is, it was the payphone that surprisingly stood out. Thinking back on that particular shot I could see how one could develop a habit of photographing phone booths across the world. It was so foreign, so exotic and so un-American and I captured it all by accident. But that’s just Barcelona and surely there are more striking, alluring, photo-worthy booths around the globe in places like Sri Lanka, Oman and maybe even Estonia.

Well thanks to Jim Benning over at WorldHum, I’ve recently learned of the Payphone Project. He notes that the site began as a way to promote “random contacts among complete strangers” by publishing the numbers of payphones around the United States and encouraging people to call them. Today the website has grown into something bigger and is the virtual home or gallery of payphone photos from Peru, Senegal and Antarctica!

I’d say it’s a wonderfully unique project, but you decide for yourself and tell us what you think. Waste of travel planning time or mini world travel masterpieces?

Miss Tourism World 2006

by Adrienne Wilson on

Um, yeah. Someone please explain Miss Tourism World to me because I do not quite comprehend. Call me slow if you like, but what exactly are the qualifications? Is this another pageant dedicated to nothing other than beauty or does Miss Tourism World have some type of hospitality background as well? Are they roving vagabonds, tour guides, or translators in everyday life? I wonder if any of the contestants are travel bloggers, hmm?

Anyhow, if you’re interested in seeing a slew of exotic beauties duke it out for the title of Miss Tourism World 2006, mark October 5th on your calendars and tune in. World finals will be held in South Africa, but should one not be fortunate enough to root their favorite on in person, you can do so by watching the live web stream. Check out all the pretty contestants here.

Last year’s winner was Zuzana Putnarova from the Czech Republic.

via meniki.com