Skywalk at the Grand Canyon

by Erik Olsen on

If you’re like me, every time you go to the Grand Canyon, you don’t think, wow, what a glorious testament to the passage of time. No, you say to yourself instead: hey, why can’t someone come up with some cheesy new tourist attraction here like some kind of glass bottom trail.

And so it goes. A new attraction called the Skywalk is being built over the Grand Canyon. It is horseshoe-shaped (several pirate ship versions with a plank were rejected) and will jut from the canyon’s lip to offer a straight-down 4,000 foot, vertigo-inducing view of the canyon floor. How much would such an attraction cost, you might be wondering. A mere $30 million. And just so you libertarian watchdog types don’t get your panties in a knot, the Skywalk will be financed by a Las Vegas businessman. So you can also be sure that the cheesiness factor will be really low. In fact, the women wearing pasties and collecting your money are being trained to say “Hello” AND “Thank you!”.

Of course, this being America, lots of folks don’t like the idea. For example a group of Native American elders is debating whether the Skywalk will disturb sacred ground. What, disturb it more than 3,000,000 over-weight tourists carrying plastic Happy Meal gew gaws already do?

(Another) New Record for Travel This Year

by Erik Olsen on

Folks heading out on vacation this year beware: this promises to be the worst year for travel ever. EVER. Of course, they say that every year, but this year they really mean it. The reason, it is said, has to do with affordable (albeit still quite high) airfares and gasoline prices. The numbers are thus: About 65 million people will undertake journeys between December 23 and January 2. That is about one-fifth of the population and a bit more than the record 63.5 million who traveled last year. The info comes from the Travel Industry Association and the AAA. To count as part of the survey, a journey counts as any trip of at least 50 miles from home. This will clog up roads and be sure to make security lines at the airport like waiting for a new license at the DMV.

Lonely Planet’s Blue List

by Erik Olsen on

Here at gadling, we’re all about finding new travel ideas. And equally, we’re about pointing you to places where those ideas are most abundant. Well, where abundance is concerned, I have just closed the covers on a cornucopia of ideas that, frankly, has me feeling a little exhausted right now.

Lonely Planet’s new edition of its Blue List series is a compelling page turner that, if you’re like me, will cause an immediate shortage of yellow post-its. Those post-its now cling to the inside pages of my Blue List guide, making it look a bit like a paper peacock flattened by a semi.

The Blue List guide, subtitled “The Best in Travel 2007” provides page after page of sumptuous photos and informative text about interesting places and things to do in them all over the globe. The ideas start off with a calendar section that groups together events by month. For example, December has the Festival of the Oases in Tunisia and the Hornbill Festival in India. Chances are, you’ll have to Google these for more info, but they’re a fine start.

Other recommendations in the book are broken out by activity, so if you are, for example, a fan of scuba diving, you can get a good idea of the top trips for bubble blowers. The books lists the Cocos Islands in Costa Rica and Chuuk lagoon in Micronesia among their top spots. Or let’s say you have long believed in UFOs and want to design a trip for you and your ET-loving friends? Well, you can do that, too, with their paranormal trips section.

Then savor my favorite section, called the Go List, which breaks out LP’s top picks for places to visit in the coming year. We’re NOT talking Florida and Vegas here. We’re talking about exotic, less-explored locales like Maluku, Indonesia and Gabon. Then there’s a section on gadgets and the best places to wed and dark travel and, well, more and more.

If I have any complaints, it that while the book really whets your appetite, you don’t leave feeling completly satisfied. In fact, you leave a bit hungrier than before. But as I say, maybe that’s what Google, or LP’s country-specific guides are there for. Either way, keeping to their fine tradition of helping you REALLY get out there, the good folks at Lonely Planet have done a fine job with this new book.

Culture in Sydney

by Erik Olsen on
Sydney, Australia is probably best known for its lovely beaches, hilly parks and, the glittering harbor. But the fact is, Sydney is a city rich in culture and history. Everyone is familiar, of course, with the shell-shaped Opera House. It serves as both a beacon to shuterbug tourists, but also serves as a locus of high-brow music and events. But more than that, for the visitor who just wants to wander all over, there are museums galore in Sydney, where you can experience a thriving art scene, and take in some science and history while there. A good place to start is the lovely Art Gallery of NSW, probably the best-known museum in Sydney. They are currently featuring an exhibit called Goddess: Divine Energy that takes a look at female expressions of divine female power (Barbra Striesand?). And there is also the Museum of Contemporary Art that is worth checking out. The Australian Centre for Photography is also a good place to check on after you’ev wated giga-pixels on the Opera House. And for natual hstory buffs, don’t miss the Australian Museum and the Historic Houses Trust of NSW.

Of course, you can also just sit on the beach and read a good book with a Fosters in your hand. Not a bad alternative either.

Best Travel Writing Anthologies

by Erik Olsen on

I am a big fan of travel writing anthologies. The nice thing about them is that you can sit down for a brief period, say a subway ride, and consume a story about someone’s adventure abroad and for just that brief period, be transported to someplace far away. The other thing about these anthologies is that the stories tend to be crisp and extremely well-written, largely because they have been selected by expert editors who have culled through mountains of stories to bring you the select few they deem worthy of publication in a book. I’ve recently taken a look art two wonderful anthologies that I highly recommend.

The first is The Best American Travel Writing 2006 edited by Tim Cahill. I brought this along with me on my Baja trip and consumed each story with relish (and a dollop of salsa…ha!). Seriously, the stories here are wonderful and they just keep coming. From Michael Behar’s thoughtful and at times harrowing piece on finding lost tribes in the rain forests of West Papua to a splendid piece on the quirky founders of Lonely Planet, this series never fails to both entertain and inspire. If you’re like me, you will find yourself constantly taking notes on new places you want to visit, let alone scribbling marginalia to remind yourself about wickedly clver turns of phrase to help your own writing. Take, for example, George Saunders hilarious journey through Dubai, where he encounters perhaps the most bizarre examples of conspicuous consumption on the planet: a series of lavish, luxury-laden hotels that belong in an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story about impossible human comforts. There is hardly a single story in this book that will not leave you either smiling or checking prices on kayak.com for flights to, say, St. Petersburg (see Gary Shteyngart’s piece on that subject).

Another fine collection comes from the good folks at Travelers’ Tales who every year compile their take on the year’s best travel writing for their Best Travel Writing 2006 anthology. I’ve read this anthology a few years running now and always find the picks both mind and soul-nourishing. They can also be quite funny. One of the great things about the editors’ choices here (the book is put together by TT’s Larry Habegger, James O’Reilly and Sean O’Reilly) is the passionate focus on story.

It may seem obvious that a “story” be the key feature of a travel tale, but the fact is, many writers tend to forget that what keeps us interested and eager to keep reading, is the desire to know what is going to happen next? TT’s Best Travel Writing is filled with tales that make you want to turn the page to find out what happens next.

Take, for example, Patrick Symmes’ “The Book”, a story that ran in Outside about a legendary travel guide compiled by vagabond Israelis that became a kind of Talmud of Travel. Having traveled myself in Latin America, I heard of this book, but more or less pooh-poohed the possibility that it actually existed. Turns out I was wrong.

Another wonderful story is Joel Simon’s “Fiji Time,” which opens with the joyful Fijian word of welcome “Bula!”, but then ends with a guy nearly getting his leg bitten off by a shark. These are just two of many, many fine stories that I could spend an entire day writing about here.

One of the great things about TT’s anthology is that the choices here are truly eclectic, and come from people and publications that are far from mainstream magazines. The America’s beset series ha a few of these, but TT does a better job, I think, of finding stuff that you’ve probably never seen.

So if you’re a traveler and are still hunting around for some good reading for yourself or perhaps a gift for a wanderlusting friend, consider one or both of these excellent books.