Seattle is Smartest

by Erik Olsen on

Sorry, just got to throw this out
there…an interesting little piece about my old town, Seattle. Turns out, just like we all thought, Seattle is the smartest place around. Or at
least the best educated. According to a recent analysis by The Associated Press, Seattle was the best-educated city in
2004 with just over half the adults having bachelor’s degrees. Yeah! Then, limping along behind, were San Francisco,
Raleigh, N.C., Washington and Austin, Texas. Of course, it’s easy to stay indoors and read and drink coffee all day
when it’s raining outside.

 

Top 10 Travelers

by Neil Woodburn on

Proud
of the places you been?  Fancy yourself quite the explorer?

Well, take a moment to see how you compare with
the “The 10 Greatest Travelers of all
Time” as compiled by The Independent (UK) and Wanderlust Magazine. 

I was
quite surprised by the list myself.  I expected, but did not find Marco Polo.  Instead, the list includes a
handful of virtual unknowns who did quite amazing things long before planes, trains and automobiles made this a much
smaller planet—such as Ibn Battuta, a 14th-century geographer who covered more than 120,000 kilometers from
Europe to Asia while fending off pirates and bandits along the way. 

While you may have never heard of
Battuta and some of his other honored colleagues, you will recognize at least half of the remaining names on the list,
including the only traveler mentioned that is still alive today: Michael
Palin. 

Casas Rapa Nui on Easter Island

by Erik Olsen on

It seems to me the whole luxury hotel in exotic
places thing has taken a turn for the weird. Not that I haven’t always wanted to visit Easter Island, which lies
waaaaay off the coast of Chile, but it just seems kind of lame to put some luxury accommodations there. I mean, I
thought the whole point of Easter Island is its remoteness and simplicity. But maybe I’m just a reactionary. Off course
they’re going to build luxury hotels in a place like that. People will pay for it, and when people pay, they build.

And so we have Casas Rapa Nui, on Easter Island, probably the most remote speck of land on the
globe. Run by the company Explora, who also has lodges in Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park, the hotel offers nine
spacious rooms and an ornate dining room and bar that cooks up fresh fish caught that very day from the seas around you.
And yet there’s more. By the end of next year Explora will finish a 30-room lodge with a swimming pool and sprawling
terrace restaurant with gaping views.

So if you’re interested, and I confess I am, despite my grumpiness
about bulding the place, you can check out LAN Airlines and book three to seven nights
at Casas Rapa Nui from around $1,200 per person.

Red Corner: Stalin’s Bunker Opened to Public

by Neil Woodburn on

A company which bought a plot of land in the suburbs of Moscow has discovered that they also bought Stalin’s wartime bunker buried below their new property. Thankfully, being the wise businessmen they are, they decided to open up it up for tours.

I haven’t had the opportunity to check it out myself as it has only recently been opened, but I have come across the following article detailing the tour. And boy does it seem cool. Original statues, maps, tables and a conference room with a domed ceiling are just a few of the items still intact amongst the 200 square meters open to the public. What truly fascinates me, however, are the other 142,800 square meters that remain closed. This is a huge amount of space, enough to hold 2,000 people and a column of tanks.

Apparently access to the bunker was via a secret subway that runs directly from the Kremlin. Tourists, however, enter from a different entrance as this subway has long been legendary and officially does not exist.

Wow. Show me who I can bribe. I would love to have a few days wandering through those subterranean chambers on my own.

Mustang: Hidden Kingdom of Nepal

by Karen Walrond on

From CNN.com:  Pasang Gurung, a Tibetan
monk from Nepal’s desert of Mustang, has accomplished something no person from Mustang has done before:  he’s made
a film of his region, hoping of attracting Westerners to his beautiful, but impoverished region.  The video is 42
minutes long, and featurers scenes of Mustang’s desertlands, as well as shots of life in the area — pictures of
temples and monks, and even yaks.

"I want money to come to our … monastery. I want more money to come
to our region, because then local people will get employment, and living standards will go up," says Gurung.
"Tourism is the only way out because our beautiful land is all we have."

The monk’s life story is an amazing one, as
is his mission.  It makes me want to travel to his homeland myself — and I haven’t even seen the film.