GADLING’S TAKE FIVE: Week of November 26

by Adrienne Wilson on

Am I the only one who can’t believe it is December 1st? Where did November go? Where did the year go? How time flashes! If the end of the week managed to sneak up on you as fast as it got me you might want to review some of these posts found here over the week.

5. ABBA Museum to Debut in 2008:
Come on! You can’t tell me you’re not excited by the news. Get your dancing feet to this one to find out the details on the new Sweden based museum.

4. Maps of the World:
Erik brings our attention to the poor quality of maps too often found in guidebooks and then provides some good resources to finding good maps to take on your trip. AAA and another site new to me called, Just Maps are the only two that he mentions, but it’s a good starting place if you’re completely lost.

3.Magnifique Martinique:
Considering how popular the islands become once winter storms start pounding less tropical lands I thought this piece on the French Caribbean island of Martinique needed extra mentioning. It’s high on my travel agenda for that particular region of the world.

2. Garlic Card:
As a child I was never a fan of garlic, but this is mostly due to my aunt draping it in my window to protect me from vampires. I kid you not. However, some people can’t go a day with seasoning their food with a pinch of garlic. Neil brings us information on a Garlic card that can be used to help bring extra flavor and taste to your meals while camping in the great outdoors. I’m sure it will protect you from vampires in the woods as well, if you buy into that stuff.

1. Space Tourism Details Start to Fill In:
Everyone ready to go to space? More and more details are starting to come in on Space Tourism and it even looks somewhat affordable. If you think about $200,000 is a lot more affordable than $20 million bucks.

Virgin’s 101 Things to Do in London

by Erik Olsen on

London is a sprawling city whose bustle and thrum can sometimes be overwhelming to the uninitiated. You step off the plane in Heathrow and throw yourself into its maw, and without some guide to help you navigate the winding, car-infested streets, you can quickly get yourself lost…which might not be so bad, truth be told. But let’s say you don’t want to get lost and you are looking for a quick and dirty list of the best things to do in the city. Well, you can always get your hands on a good guidebook, i.e. Lonely Planet’s guide to London. Or you can check out this list of the 100 things you MUST do in London. The list was compiled by the good folks at Virgin and while it contains lorry-loads of basic tourist stuff like visit Big Ben and see Notting Hill, there are also some more creative ideas like taking a lunch or dinner cruise and checking out Spitalfields.

Altogether, it’s a decent little list and face it, 100 Things is a lot of, well, things. So you can pretty much bet that you’ll never get through all of them, but trying to do so would be half the fun.

US Worst in Travel Headaches

by Erik Olsen on

It’s such a bummer that America’s image in the world has suffered lately. I’m constantly meeting people who tell me that while they once had nothing but admiration for America, their esteem has declined significantly since, well, you know. Recently, I’ve heard an earful from people who came here merely for tourism, who were brought nearly to tears describing the hassles they had to go through just to visit and see the country. One of my friends came with his family, and their top priority was to see Disneyland. They made the visit, but said the whole experience was soured by how hard it was to get through security. Turns out these problems were not isolated to them.

According to a new study of international travelers by a tourism business lobby, the United States visa and immigration entry system was rated the “world’s worst.” Interviews with 2,011 non-US. residents who had traveled outside their home continents over the last 18 months. So what are people all huffy about? Well, the rating was based on the ease of obtaining travel documents and the “respectfulness” of immigration officials. Rather sad and certainly interesting. But in regards to the later issue, I do have to wonder whether many of these folks just happened to come through New York, in which case immigration officials have pretty much always been that way.

George Packer on Lagos

by Erik Olsen on

Once again I feel I have to screech to the heavens and beg for an answer why the best magazine in the world has such a lousy Web presence. As Mike Meyere s might say: this one is crraaap! Don’t David Remnick and Company get the Internet? Or are they playing some kind of teasing game with us, playfully holding back so we drool and gnash out teeth and finally PAY to get some kind of decent New Yorker Web site. Or worst of all, are they like Larry King? Oblivious to the internet and its possibilities to help them spread the word…nay, their obligation to do so…and by “Word, I mean that literally, since no one on the planet is better with the word than the New Yorker.

Well, whatever their reason (another possibility: being part of mega-magazine behemoth Conde Nast, for whom the online world is a cannibal in sheep’s clothing?), whatever the reason, I am sad because I read an article by George Packer in last week’s issue (or was it the one before? Holiday season, ya know. Hard to keep up) and it can’t be found online. George Packer writes on Lagos, the sprawling, hellish, bizarre, nauseating, but ultimately charming-in-its-own-sick-way MEGAcity in Nigeria. The article is one of the looong typical New Yorker pieces, but ultimately a delight to read. It’s far to complicated to go into much here, so try to get your hands on it. And if you happen to drum up the courage to go, well, by all means tell us about it.

Walking in His/Her/Its Foot/Tentacle Steps

by Erik Olsen on

While no one has yet come up an atheist themed trip yet, there are plenty tourism operators that cater the to devout…or at least the devoutly curious. for example, a company called Global Passages offers a “in the Footsteps of Lord Buddha” package tour that takes you through a good part of India including Delhi and the Taj, and that in the end (of the trip, that is) deposits you in the mesmerizing city of Varanasi, which I can say first hand is one of the most fascinating and spiritual places you will ever visit. And that’s coming from a devout agnostic.

This piece over at Frommers takes a look at a host of other religion-based trips, and tries its best to cover the Big Three as well as a few others. No trips were listed for following in the tentacle steps of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but I imagine someones working on such a thing…perhaps in Italy.