Explore five cities with a “bad rap”

by Katie Hammel on

I grew up in Detroit. I love my city and will be the first tell anyone who thinks it’s nothing but a boarded up hellhole just how wrong they are. But I know Detroit’s bad rap comes not only from suburb-dwellers and business travelers who just breezed through, but also from the media that portrays it as a city with nothing to offer other than casinos and a punchline. But maybe the tide is changing. Anthony Bourdain went to Detroit – and liked it! And now Jaunted has included Detroit on its list of Five Cities with a Bad Rap that are still worth visiting.

Detroit is recommended for its passionate people and Motown soul, along with great food from every culture. In addition to my hometown, the list includes Kingston, Jamaica – for the hospitable people and cheap flights, Madrid, Spain – which despite its reputation as a haven for pickpockets still lures visitors with fine art and tasty tapas, Naples, Italy – where the government is making an effective bid to clean up the ancient streets, and Oakland, California – San Francisco’s little sibling, where the crime to culture ratio doesn’t lean in the direction you might assume.

With the exception of Madrid (which still sees hundreds of thousands of tourists per year), one benefit of visiting these traditionally shunned-by-tourists cities is that there are fewer crowds and a cheaper cost of travel. Plus, your tourism dollars can help the city governments invest in infrastructure, make the cities safer and cleaner, in the hopes that one day they can shed their bad reputations.

British Airways plane grounded after tarantula sighting

by Scott Carmichael on

A London bound plane was grounded in Edinburgh after a passenger spotted a tarantula walking through the cabin.

The plane was filled with 100 passengers, and the sighting forced BA staff to evacuate the plane. An exterminator was flown in from London Gatwick, but the spider was nowhere to be found.

Eventually, the plane was flown back to London without any passengers. According to a British Airways spokesperson, if the spider is still on the plane, they’d need to pull the whole thing apart in order to find it. Surprisingly, this would be the second time in a week that a British plane was involved in a lost item that required things to be torn apart.

Personally, I hate spiders, and I’d gladly leave the plane if someone thought they spotted a tarantula. Tarantula bites won’t kill you, but they will cause several days of pain, something I’m no big fan of either.

Tarantulas are found all over the world, but British Airways staff are baffled how the spider made its way onto a domestic UK plane. Sadly, since passengers regularly try and smuggle all kinds of items on their flight, it could have been something as “innocent” as someone trying to bring their pet on a trip.

Neighbors bothered by naturist B&B

by Sean McLachlan on

Neighbors of Domain Farm, a recently opened naturist Bed and Breakfast in Staffordshire, England, are complaining about seeing more than they want to of the guests.

The B&B is a converted farm and features a sun deck, hot tub, and barbeque area, and while it’s set in a rural landscape, it is within sight of other homes. This brings it into the ongoing controversy, not limited to naturism, of where to draw the line between individual liberty and consideration of others. The owners are busy planting trees and shrubs around the property, but their efforts aren’t quick enough for the locals.

Despite the weather, naturism or nudism is quite popular in the UK. British Naturism, the official naturist organization, reports a membership of more than 16,000. There are numerous clothing-optional beaches in places like Brighton, and naturists are encouraged by the fact that there is no law explicitly banning public nudity, only indecent exposure. What this breaks down to in reality is that if you bare all in front of Buckingham Palace, you’ll be hauled away. If you hike in the nude, you’ll probably be fine. In fact, British naturists say nude hiking is quite popular, although I’ve never seen any on my hikes.

I have, however, seen nude hikers at Seven Falls in the Catalina Mountains near Tucson, Arizona, where nudity is clearly not legal. The falls are several miles up a rugged canyon far away from public view, so the cops don’t bother doing anything about it. What with all the car thefts and meth labs in the city, they have better things to do.

So if you like to get your kit off, as the English say, don’t dismiss the UK as a travel destination. The Naturist UK Fact File has tons of information. It may get cold and rainy, but at least you won’t have to deal with the desert sun and cacti like those Arizona naturists!
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Photo courtesy of Peter Rivera from the Gadling flickr pool. These are statues in the Louvre, not pasty-skinned British nudists after a long winter.

Great drinking and dining at London’s gastropubs

by Sean McLachlan on

The pub is a fine British institution, but the eating is rarely as good as the drinking. When you order food at most pubs, what you get is a preprepared meal that’s heated up in a microwave, not something that’s cooked especially for you.

Some pubs do have good kitchens where they make everything from scratch, like The Fir Tree, my local in Oxford, but it can be hard to tell just by looking at a pub whether the food is good or not. If you want to get some good dining with your real ales, either ask a local or go to a gastropub.

Gastropubs are just what the name implies–pubs that pride themselves as much on their kitchen as on their bar. Last week I tried the Anchor and Hope, named by the folks over at Square Meal and several other reviewers as one of London’s best.

I must admit I wasn’t going in with the clearest state of mind, having just flown in from Missouri that morning and done a full day’s work at the British Library. (Ever read medieval manuscripts while jetlagged? Neither had I) The meal soon perked me up.

It was a Tuesday night but the place was packed and noisy. My friend and I didn’t bother trying to get a table and simply sat at the bar. Service was quick and we enjoyed watching the chefs do their thing in the open kitchen. I ordered the braised hare, and my friend ordered the fried eel, peas, mustard, and bacon.

The braised hare was tender and rich, and I found my friend’s dish pretty good too, even though I am by no means an eel fan. Both dishes came with plenty of flavorful sauce and we cleaned our plates with some sourdough bread. For dessert we had custard fingers. They were good too, but nothing special, so after the excellent entrees they were a bit of a letdown. Our two meals, three pints of Bombardier, and dessert came to just 43 pounds ($70). That’s good value in a city infamous for overpriced and mediocre food.

Other dishes on offer included Foie gras terrine and poached quince; pot roast partridge; braised cuttlefish and chickpeas in ink; and whole roast sea bass, fennel and anchovy dressing. As the night wore on items were crossed off the menu. This is a good sign because it means they only had limited quantities of quality ingredients, but it can lead to disappointment. I’d gone in with my heart set on the wild rabbit, tomato, anchovy, and almonds.

Located at number 36, The Cut, the Anchor & Hope is conveniently close to Waterloo station and the Old Vic and Young Vic theatres, so give it a try when you’re in town, or try one of the many other recommended gastropubs listed at Square Meal.

The word “gastropub” was coined back in 1991 by the owners of The Eagle in Clerkenwell, pictured here. Gastropubs, like many other aspects of English life, are very class-specific. Working-class types tend to dismiss gastropubs as being full of toffs who don’t know what a real pub is, and I have to say there’s a bit of truth to that statement. The gastropubs I’ve been to tend to be a bit less social and attract fewer of the regulars that make traditional pubs into little communities. The three times I’ve lived in England I always had a local pub where I was a regular, but I’ve never become a regular at a gastropub.

Now if someone opened a gastropub that served Ethiopian food, that could change. . .

Ship graveyards from around the world

by Kraig Becker on

Eco-friendly website Environmental Graffiti has an interesting story on their site today that details some of the top cargo ship graveyards from around the world. The article also includes some amazing photos of the rusted out shells of former cargo and cruise ships that have been left to rot in a variety of sun baked locations.

All told, there are five graveyards on the list, including the infamous Skeleton Coast in Namibia, as well as a others along the Aral and Red Seas, the Sahara, and off the coast of Greece. Most of these dumping grounds are desolate, remote deserts that remain uninhabited and mostly unvisited altogether. This, of course, makes them perfect places to deposit these obsolete vessels, but one can’t help but wonder what kind of environmental disasters we’ve created in these places.

Reading about these ship graveyards is sobering to say the least, but it is the excellent photographs that really delivers the story. Seeing these once proud vessels reduced to dilapidated shells left to wither away slowly is kind of sad, and you can’t help but wonder what kind of interesting stories some of these ships have to tell. Looking at them now, it is difficult to think that at one time they roamed the seas, delivering cargo and passengers to exotic locations around the globe. This is kind of an ignoble end to their tours of duty.