Solar-powered plane flies at night

by Sean McLachlan on


An airplane that relies entirely on solar energy has flown for 24 hours straight, cruising along happily through the darkness and emerging into the dawn with three hours left in its batteries. Once the sun rose, of course, the batteries immediately began to recharge.

The Solar Impulse is the product of the same great minds that brought you the cuckoo clock–the Swiss! The entire wingspan is covered with 12,000 solar cells that power four electric engines. Average cruising speed is 70 km/hr (43.5 mph). You can see complete stats on the plane here.

The next step for the engineers is to make the next generation of the plane, one that will fly around the world by 2013. The Solar Impulse is not the first solar-powered airplane, only the first to complete a manned night flight. Scientists and engineers have been experimenting with solar-powered planes since the 1970s and manned flights since the 1980s. This new leap forward will add impetus to a field of study that has so far received little attention from the press.

While this technology is still in the experimental stage, the potential impact for the airline industry and the environment is obvious. Airline emissions pose a major environmental threat, and G8 leaders have called for a 50 percent reduction in airline emissions by 2050. That’s a tall order, but it looks like the Swiss have shown the way forward. Of course the Solar Impulse’s slow speed and small cockpit mean the age of solar-powered 747s is a long way off, think of it as the modern equivalent of the Wright Brothers plane. It was only a generation after Kitty Hawk that passengers started flying to international destinations.

Cheap eats in Paris: dining in the Japanese quarter for under €10

by Amy Chen on

Eating well in Paris isn’t hard to do, but it can easily cost more than you originally budgeted. After a week of dining on foie gras, duck, and cheese plates, I was ready for something simple — and cheap.

Less than a five-minute walk from the Louvre, the Japanese quarter is just that kind of place. With most of the ramen houses centered on rue Sainte-Anne in the area between Palais Royal and Opéra Garnier, the long lines outside the restaurants seem to be a reflection of the tiny eating spaces as well as the universal appeal of affordable meals.

I first heard about the Japanese quarter by following the culinary adventures of ex-pat food blogger Meg Zimbeck, who recently started the website www.parisbymouth.com. Though I was originally looking for restaurants that were actually open on Sunday, I ended up checking out the neighborhood on a Friday and Saturday night. By 9 p.m., most of the shops had already closed, but the lines outside the restaurants were just beginning to ramp up. Here are two places where I had dinner for well under €10.

Naniwa-ya (11 rue Sainte-Anne)
This tiny space has six tables and a bar, where I sat with a view of the chefs preparing the noodles. When I asked a man sitting to my right for tips on what to order, he was nice enough to tell me that the noodles tasted better than the donburi. Seeing that he had completely emptied his bowl of noodles, I followed his cue and ordered the ramen. Before the man left the restaurant, he told me to help myself to the tea, which was stationed near the door. For a mere €6.50 ($8.20), I was content with the noodles, hard-boiled egg, slices of pork, and miso broth. As you can tell from my bowl, I wasn’t disappointed. I wanted to try more of the menu, but was too stuffed to fit in anything else.

Hokkaido (14 rue Chabanais)
In this deceptively small restaurant, a narrow staircase took me downstairs to the overflow room, which was painted white with an arched ceiling. After asking my server which ramen dish was the most popular, I happily slurped up the Champon Ramen. At €8.30 (about $10.50), this version had a little more substance than the one I’d tasted the night before at Naniwa-ya: one-inch strips of pork, Napa cabbage, carrots, mushrooms, and just the right amount of sesame seeds.

Unfortunately, by the time I’d inhaled the bowl of noodles and downed most of the soup, I once again wasn’t hungry enough to be able to sample anything else — that’s one of the drawbacks of dining solo; it’s much harder to eat your way through a menu. Looks like I’ll just have to go back on my next trip.

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Why Luxembourg matters

by Andrew Evans on


Europe has lots of tiny countries. The rest of the world reminds itself of this fact periodically, almost as a running joke. How Vatican City is the smallest “independent” state, but (come on people), is it really a country? Andorra sounds charming, too, until you go there and discover it’s only the European Union’s largest outlet mall. Likewise, Monaco‘s just a casino with a racecar track, and Liechtenstein‘s a drive-thru bank for dodgy Russians with Austrian passports.

Despite the less-romantic realities of present-day Europe, we travelers still get a kick out of these nifty, little hold-out principalities and monarchies. Somehow, they’ve prevailed in the tempest of European history, avoiding absorption into their larger neighbors all the way into the 21st century when we can ironically celebrate quirky existential nationhoods in the face of supranationalist sentiments.

I first visited Luxembourg on a whim–hopped a train in Brussels and three hours later, stepped off somewhere deep in the Ardennes. I was young, brave, and poor and it was late at night. I walked away from the one-room station in Arlon and disappeared into the forest, bumbling in the woods until the sounds of passing cars disappeared. When I found a comfortable spot, I pushed away the pine needles and lay down on the cold ground, using my lumpy canvas backpack as a pillow.I woke up well past midnight to the softest sound–approaching footsteps? A gentle, rhythm-less pit-pat all around me. It took me several minutes to figure out that all I was hearing were leaves–dead autumn leaves falling from ancient trees and hitting the ground, one by one. That is the silence of Luxembourg–you can hear each leaf hitting the ground.

A louder rustling woke me a few hours later–a little louder, a little closer, and a little more disconcerting. Panic, then peace set in: it was only a doe in the forest, rummaging, peeling bark from the pine trees and stepping timidly closer and closer to my little clouds of breath rising from the ground.

I shivered in the forest until dawn, then hiked back to a road where I fell asleep at a bus stop like a grungy homeless person. I woke up bleary-eyed and asked one of the more respectable citizens nearby if this was Luxembourg. It was.

This was long after the EU but also long before Google Maps. Nowadays you can just google Luxembourg and see how a thin grey line–an international border–simply traces the length of a road, jumps a stream and cuts corners through some farmer’s field (“Well, nine-tenths of my wheat’s right here in Luxembourg but the other tenth is over in Belgium”).

Somehow in the night I had entered this new country and now I was determined to explore it to the fullest extent. Using my finger and a map, I determined that Luxembourg’s fullest extent was around 30 miles–the length of road between Belgium and Germany. Thirty miles is nothing, really. I could walk that in a day, I thought. And so I did. I started that morning and ended at sunset when a bridge crossed the Moselle and I came to a polite, little square sign (chest-high) that barely announced “Deutschland”.

To figure out my to total walking distance across Luxembourg, I retraced my steps online. After punching in my start and end points, Google Maps shouts a stern warning in a yellow box: “Use Caution–This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths.” Indeed. My jaunty one-day trek across one of the smallest countries in the world was performed without the assistance of sidewalks or pedestrian paths (or a compass or a map). Most of the time I spent walking in open fields, loving the quaint freedom of fenceless Europe.

By walking, I saw tiny Luxembourg up close and personal. As countries go, it’s a good one. Much of it is very green, divided into forests, fields, and hills. Light yellow stone cliffs and the deep gorges offer a sense of wild landscape, untamed even by these most European of Europeans. Perky castles stand out in the countryside–real life castles where people live and a mailman still delivers the mail. Palaces fill the capital–grandeur and pomp without any particularly urgent purpose. (Remember, this is a country run by a duke, a nobleman who’s latest headlines involve his birthday party and a tumble dryer catching fire in his palace basement.)

Only half a million people live in this country–an odd mix of imported Eurocrats, happy farmers, tax refugees, rich people with titles, and polyglot investment bankers. Maybe it’s not the twee world we had hoped for (black-booted princes on horseback or whistling peasants sticking pitchforks into haystacks), but even in the midst of today’s bland supermarché EU Europe, Luxembourg retains its heirloom personality in its customs, unique government, thousand-year old culture and its even odder language.

In the city of Luxembourg, I attended a Catholic mass read in Luxembourgish (aka Lëtzebuergesch, Luxembourgeois, Luxemburgisch) and found myself delighted by the strange mashup of French and German pronounced like guttural Dutch. Geez, I thought, it’s a whole different language spoken by fewer people than live in the Tallahassee metropolitan area.

Luxembourg’s national motto is Mir wëlle bleiwe wat mir sinn or “We want to remain what we are.” The meaning is clear and pretty much sums up every country’s deepest patriotic longing. Because Luxembourg, too, is the red, white, and blue. Well, the red, white and light blue (turquoise?). This is a Grand Duchy folks–the only sovereign duchy left in the world–and the average American traveler to Europe overlooks it like they overlook high-fructose corn syrup. In the rush from Paris to Amsterdam to Munich and back, Luxembourg is the no-name brand of Europe that fails to inspire the uninitiated vacationer.

It’s a terrible mistake though, because honestly, nowhere is Europe more alive than in little Luxembourg. There is no Eiffel Tower or Oktoberfest or legalized marijuana but there is a glint of Europe as it once was–as it still is. Where quiet and pastoral comforts are much valued, where Sunday strolls pass over stone bridges and alongside flowered hedgerows, where no matter where you’ll look, you’ll find a tiny castle poking above the treeline in the distance. It’s nice.

In a time of megacities and mega-construction, we should be glad for a country like Luxembourg. Downtown Shanghai is larger than Luxembourg–Los Angeles County is four times as large. A lot of places are bigger than Luxembourg . . . and yet Luxembourg is the perfect size for travelers: big enough to be an actual country but still small enough to walk across in a day. Epcot Center attempts a similar feet with their 11-country World Showcase, but even your kids aren’t fooled by that set-up. Luxembourg, on the other hand, is the real deal.

I will be going back to Luxembourg–someday–and this time it won’t be for bragging rights. I can already say that I’ve walked across the entire country, but there is still so much of the country I have yet to see, for example, the North. Perhaps I will find a new route using Google Maps–a new, wandering path down the length of one of the smallest countries in the world; a long-winded itinerary that comes with a stern warning, “Caution: This Route May Be Missing Sidewalks.”

(Flickr Photos: Andrew Michaels [Flag], Hendrik [Yellow Field])

Take a cycling tour with Trek Travel

by Kraig Becker on

If you’ve been watching the Tour de France this week, you’ve no doubt seen Lance Armstrong and the rest of Team Radioshack riding their beautiful Trek bikes as they’ve rolled across the Netherlands, Belgium, and of course France. Perhaps it has even motivated you to dust off the Huffy and hit the road yourself. But did you know that Trek offers cycling tours to exotic places around the globe? Tours that would put you on one of their amazing bikes, while exploring a country like you never have before.

Trek Travel offers adventurous and active cyclists a host of options to pedal their way across Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. These trips have a little something to fit everyone’s needs, including private tours, group excursions, and custom made itineraries. Additionally, the tours can be geared for families, as well as riders of a wide variety of skill levels ranging from beginner up to avid cyclists. Accommodations can be at the luxury level or a simple, no frills option to fit a variety of budgets too.

One of their most popular offerings is the Lance in France Tour which are actually going to be taking place during the Tour, as fans of the sport follow Armstrong and the other riders on two different legs, one in the Alps, and the other a ride from the Pyrenees to Paris. The highlights of those two tours include not only getting to watch the Tour de France, but ride some of the popular stages in the mountains as well.

Of course, it is too late to sign up for either one of those rides, but other cycling tours include the Tuscany Explorer which sends riders on an amazing trip through Italian wine country, and the Yellowstone and Tetons Multisport, which combines cycling and kayaking in one of the most iconic national parks in the U.S. My personal favorite would be the mountain biking tour through South Africa and Zambia.

One of the best parts of these tours is that you can be as active or inactive as you want. You decide how much you want to ride on any given day, and if you’re feeling a little tired (or hung over!) from the night before, you can take it easy on the team bus or at your next lodge, while your companions spend the day in the saddle. You’ll also get to ride some of the best Trek bikes in their catalog. The road tours will put you on a Madone, not unlike what Lance himself rides, while mountain bikers will be treated to a similar level of off road machines.

If you’re looking for a unique and active way to take a trip, perhaps a cycling tour is just what you need. It truly is a perfect way to see the sights while cruising through some of the world’s best landscapes. Check out the Trek Travel catalog for some excellent travel opportunities.

[Photo credit: Trek Tours]

1,000 year-old turd goes on display

by Sean McLachlan on

The Gloucester City Museum & Art Gallery has a truly crappy new exhibition.

A 1,000 year-old piece of feces has people lining up to visit the English museum. It was originally found in 1991 and dates to Anglo-Saxon times. When it was recently put on display, curators were surprised at its popularity and now plan to make it part of its permanent display.

The turd has mineralized and has no smell. Mineralized crap, scientifically known as coprolites, are actually not that rare. Dinosaur coprolites are found quite frequently, like the one pictured here from Canada. For a time in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, coprolites were even mined for their high phosphate content. Human coprolites are less common and are important for what they can reveal about ancient diet and parasites.

The Gloucester City Museum & Art Gallery is currently celebrating its 150th anniversary. It traces local history from the age of the dinosaurs up to the present day. Artifacts include a beautifully preserved Celtic mirror, a Roman city wall, and a medieval backgammon game that is the world’s oldest complete set.


Photo courtesy United States Geological Survey.