I have several friends who work for Google, and here I never even knew they did anything having to do with travel. Take a look at this new site they’ve got worked up. Called Green Summer Tours, the good folks at Google have created these very easy and short round-ups of environmentally-friendly activities that you can do in several major cities. They include advice, information and links (and video) on parks, hotels and restaurants in popular US cities like New York, San Francisco, Orlando, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The videos are well done and the overall organization, perhaps obviously, uses Google Maps and other Google technology. The feature also offers tips on searching for environmentally-friendly travel topics and access to Google’s Green Travel Group, where you can interact with other green travelers. Rather cool.
International Drivers License Scam
The good folks over at Travelpost give us a heads up about a scam that seems to be rampant enough that the AAA is warning people about it. Looks like travelers abroad are being lured into scams to purchase international drivers licenses for amounts as $350. Of course, these are fake licenses, people, and would likely do you no god even if you got pulled over in, say, Italy. The reality, it turns out, is that to get your international driving permit all you need is your U.S. license, $10 and two original passport-size photos, which they will even take for you at the AAA office. In fact, you don’t really even have to go into the office at all. You can apply for your permit in person or by mail.
Why do you need one? Well, it helps if you want to do any driving while overseas. And the permits are valid in 150 countries for up to a year.
Gay Travel Phrase Book
Everyone here knows I’m into learning as much and many foreign words as my brain can possibly soak in, which is why this particular book caught my eye. I’m a straight woman so I don’t know how far some of the phrases in eight different langs will take me in some place like Portugal, but I find it might help someone. I saw this one over at Get Lost Books and laughed at first because I don’t know any of my gay pals that would use this book. (Unless they’re secretly doing so.) According to the short blurb on Get Lost Books the most interesting part of the book are the euphemisms for being gay in different lingos with literal English translation. For example: “he’s from third parish” or “slipped an okra.” That was in English and I’m still confused.
Oh well.
MSN’s Top 10 Museums to Make You Go Hmm…
I like the term off-the-beaten track because it doesn’t necessarily have to mean running off to Cambodia or some place far away, usually costing hundreds of dollars. Using that same term you can apply it to small and big city excursions in the beautiful land of America. MSN has a great top 10 list to prove it. Their list feature’s what their editors consider the top 10 most bizarre museums in the country and trust me they are weird! The only one I’ve heard of was the Museum of Bad Art, but there are several others are new and strange to me. Hanging out in Houston? Go to the National Museum of Funeral History. Crazy about Mardi Gras? Check out Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World in Algiers, LA.
Others include a Giant Shoe Museum, Untidy Museum, and Mutter Museum to name a few. See their full list and start exploring some very off-the-beaten track museums.
Japan and Baseball
Nothing goes together quite so nicely as baseball and apple pie. Except maybe baseball and sushi. And sake. Or so the Japanese would certainly have you believe. The fact is, while we love our national pastime, lots of other countries out there share our passion for that little stitched, white ball, and among them, Japan may one of the more interesting. This article over at the Continental in-flight Magazine is all about the Japanese fascination, if not obsession with baseball.
It offers some scintillating insight into how and why the sport has become such a big deal over there ,and how they play the game a little bit differently. One thing that didn’t surprise me, but that I thought was cool ,was that there are fewer “stars” over there ,as the Japanese way favors teamwork over superstardom. that’s a fine idea, and one would guess that might also lead to fewer ejections for steroid use (hello!?). I had though that baseball was a relatively new phenomenon in Japan, but it turns out that it was brought to the island in 1872 by Horace Wilson, an American teacher at what is now Tokyo University. Japan’s first team was called the Shimbashi Athletic Club and was organized in 1878 by Hiroshi Hiraoka, who worked as an engineer on U.S. railroads and returned home with a suitcase full of gloves. (OK, I don’t know if that’s true, but it could be).
Anyway, as a nice dose of a different culture this morning, I figured y’all would like the article.