Destination: San Miguel de Allende

by Pat Perrin on

Year-round near-perfect weather, picturesque colonial setting, perpetual flowers, and relaxed ambiance draw visitors from all over the world to San Miguel de Allende. But be warned, many who come for a brief vacation never manage to tear themselves away; you’ll find them here among the permanent residents.

Founded in 1542 by Friar Juan de San Miguel (who named the town after the favorite arcangel), centuries later San Miguel became a center of Mexico’s long struggle for Independence (1810–1821). “De Allende” was added to the name in honor of the native-son war hero, Ignacio Allende. In 1926 the Mexican government named San Miguel de Allende a National Monument, which meant that the colonial buildings and cobblestone streets would be carefully preserved. An influx of artists followed the opening of the Instituto Allende Art School in the late 1930s. The lively expatriate community is now a mix of early retirees, artists, musicians, writers, and small business owners. The town was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2008.

Keep in mind: San Miguel is situated at 6,400 feet, so if you’re not used to high altitudes you might feel tired at first. As in any town where strangers mingle, keep your wallet tucked safely away, don’t flaunt valuables, and don’t wander side streets or parks alone late at night. To avoid illness, it’s best to forego the tempting foods sold on the street. Carry smaller bills and coins, because some shops and taxis never have any change.

This is a town of many festivals. If you can plan your trip for Semana Santa (Easter holy week), the Dia de las Locos (mid-June), Independence Day (September 16), Christmas, or New Year, you’ll be treated to parades, performances, and delightful local traditions. Also check ahead for chamber music or jazz and blues festivals and for literary events. But magical things happen around town at all times, and fiestas break out with little warning. Current activities and searchable maps are available.

[Photo credit: Flickr, Easter in San Miguel, TR Ryan]English is spoken in many shops, galleries, restaurants, and hotels, and if your Spanish is tentative, the locals are pretty adept at understanding foreign accents. In-town taxi rides run $25-30 pesos, more at night. You can easily hail a taxi on the street or have your hotel call one for you (which costs more). You should discuss out-of-town fares with your driver in advance. If your Spanish isn’t up to that, ask your hotel clerk what to expect for specific trips.

Begin your first day in El Jardin, the main town square with trimmed trees, abundant benches, and a gazebo. The area is dominated by the towering Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel-a painted pink granite parish church that’s a masterpiece of mixed architectural styles. Buy the Atención newspaper if it’s available.

Sit on a park bench or at a cafe table, browse the newspaper for possibilities … and watch. You’ll likely view locals, tourists, expatriates, performers, animals, and people selling all kinds of things. In the Jardin, you can get your shoes shined while you listen to a medley of languages and often to live music. Inquire at the tourist booth for information about walking tours and sightseeing rides on a couple of trolley-type vehicles ($60 pesos).

Lots of attractions are within easy walking distance of the main square if you’re wearing sensible shoes-the only practical choice on stone streets and uneven sidewalks. The Jardin is surrounded by great shops, restaurants, and cafe. San Miguel offers many good choices for meals; these are nearby and recommended:

Breakfast, lunch, or dinner: Mama Mia, half a block away on Umaran, Mexican breakfast buffet ($90 pesos) and delicious specialties (up to $250 pesos), frequently accompanied by live music. The Café de la Parroquia (at night becomes Le Brasserie) at Jesus 11 ($120 pesos) adjoins El Tecolote, an English language bookstore. Lunch or dinner: For unhurried authentic Mexican cuisine in a colonial courtyard, the Bugambilia is 2 ¼ blocks north at Hidalgo 42 ($200 pesos up).

Evenings: the Berlin Bar, Umaran 19, Mexican and German menu (up to $200 pesos), and terrific botanas (snacks). Harry’s New Orleans Café, Hidalgo 12, has a popular bar and Creole, Cajun, and Mexican meals (an evening for two, $250–400 pesos). Tio Lucas, Mesones 103, is the place for jazz and steaks (Chateaubriand entree for 2, $370 pesos).

Don’t miss:

The Biblioteca Pública, Insurgentes 25, a colonial building with a large bilingual book collection, offers classes, community services, lectures, music, movies, performances (English and Spanish), and publishes Atención. Their Cafe Santa Ana is good for breakfast or lunch. Sign up in advance for the often-spectacular Sunday House and Garden Tour, $200 pesos.

Bellas Artes, Hernández Macias 75, a gorgeous 18th-century former convent with a large courtyard garden and murals inside, now a major art center with exhibits, classes, and theatrical events. Try their Las Musas–Café Italian for snacks or lunch.

If there’s something on stage at the Teatro Ángela Peralta on Mesones, the grand 1873 neoclassic theater is well worth experiencing.

The Mercado Ignacio Ramirez up on Colegio is a huge, colorful local market. Wander back down through the multitude of crafts stalls in the Mercado de Artesanias.

Parque Juárez has a playground for kids, shady walking paths, sculptures, flowers, fountains, basketball courts, and sometimes music, art exhibits, and sales of plants or organic produce.

Fabrica La Aurora on the north side of town in a handsome renovated factory building offers fabulous art, craft, and furniture galleries, plus the excellent Food Factory restaurant. Take a taxi there, perhaps walk back.

Other options:

For relaxing, visit one of the hot springs near town. La Gruta features caves, pools, changing rooms, and a restaurant. Admission is $80 pesos; taxi one-way $80-100 pesos; have the taxi return for you or take the bus back.

For leisurely walking or hiking, Jardin Botanico El Charco del Ingenio (Botanical Garden) has an enormous collection of cacti, lovely canyons, hiking trails, and guides. Uphill from town, you can take a taxi there and walk back down.

Pat Perrin is co-author of The Jamais Vu Papers She has written, edited, or contributed to some 65 books, mostly in collaboration with her husband, Wim Coleman. Pat and Wim live in San Miguel de Allende. Read her blog on Red Room.

[Photo credit: Flickr, Jesus Guzman-Moya]

Grantourismo blogger on guidebooks and travel writing

by Meg Nesterov on

Last week I posted a Q & A with blogger Lara Dunston and her husband and partner Terence Carter about their travel project and blog Grantourismo. In addition to good advice about renting a vacation apartment and getting “under the skin” of a place when traveling, they had a lot of interesting things to say about guidebooks, both from their experiences writing them and how they see travelers using them wrong.

Read on for more on the guidebook writing process, how you can use them best on vacation, the changing media landscape, and which bloggers and publications offer the best content for travelers.How did this project stem from your experiences as travel writers?
Grantourismo began as a personal travel project that developed from our frustrations, firstly, with our own work as travel writers, and secondly, with how many travelers rely so much on guidebooks. Terence and I wrote, updated or contributed to around 50 guidebooks for Lonely Planet, Footprints, Rough Guides, DK, and others, and what we loved most about guidebook writing was when we worked on a city guide and rented an apartment for a month or two and really got beneath the skin of the place.

So many writers who aren’t residents of a place ‘parachute in’ to a destination for a few weeks and do crazy 18-hour days ticking off sights/bars/restaurants etc in a frenzy and leave. We didn’t start travel writing to live like that. However, what we disliked was the tedious stuff – ensuring the post office was in the right spot on the map, checking bus timetables, etc. We’d also been doing lots of feature writing, especially profiles, for magazines and newspapers, and what we loved about that was experiencing places through their people.

What’s the difference between guidebook and feature writing?

With guidebooks, unless Terence had a photography commission for the same book we were writing, we mostly traveled anonymously. As feature writers we could contact people, doors would open, and we’d have incredible experiences, and come away feeling like we’d really learnt something. For instance, for a story on Michelin-star chef Pierre Gagnaire’s Dubai restaurant, we spent a night in the kitchen, Terence cooking and me observing and notetaking and – Terence ended up cooking a dish for Pierre! Grantourismo was an attempt to develop a project that would give us the opportunity to have more of those kinds of experiences and have the best of both worlds, of guidebook and feature writing. We also wanted to inspire travelers to travel in the same way, to engage more with locals and explore their own interests when they travel. This desire grew out of a frustration with seeing how obsessed people were with their guidebooks and witnessing travellers miss out on amazing opportunities because they would only go to places their guidebooks recommended.

I’ll never forget going to a great little stand-up seafood tapas place in Barcelona and seeing a young American couple sitting on the doorstop next door frantically trying to figure out if it was in the guidebook. The place was heaving and it was full of locals! Just go in! There’s also another famous tapas bar in Barcelona which once had a great reputation but it fairly mediocre now but because it’s in every guidebook, people line up for it an hour before it opens. Yet there are 20 other better tapas bars in the surrounding streets! We’d rather see people leave their guidebooks closed occasionally, talk to locals more and pursue their interests. If you’re passionate about food and cooking, why not go to a place and do a cooking course, stay in a vacation rental and shop at the markets and cook? If you love a restaurant get tips on where to eat from the waiter, and if the restaurant is quiet, why not ask to see the kitchen and chat to the chef?

So can travelers still rely on guidebooks for basic info?
Guidebooks are great for background information on a wide variety of topics on a place. What’s the alternative? Lugging around half a dozen books on the history, politics, geography, culture etc of the destination? Or load those books onto a Kindle or iPad, although of course not all travelers can afford hi-tech gadgets or even want to take them to some destinations. The ‘front/back matter’ in guidebooks can usually be relied upon – sometimes the stuff is written by subject experts, or it’s written by authors who do a great deal of research, it’s fact-checked, and it doesn’t date quickly.

Where guidebooks can be unreliable on the other hand is in the perishable information – reviews of hotels, restaurants, shops, cafés, bars, their addresses, phone numbers, prices, opening times etc. It’s not necessarily the author’s fault. Businesses move or close down, things change. It’s the fault of the publisher and their long production schedules – sometimes a year or 18 months can pass from the time the author has done the research to the time the books hit the shops. Some places never change or change little, like small country towns, but cities like Shanghai or Dubai change constantly.

We once worked on a first edition guidebook that took two years from the time I submitted the manuscript and Terence submitted the photos to reaching the bookshops. I wrote the first edition of one guidebook and updated the second edition, but I know that book has since been reprinted twice without further updates. How can travelers rely on those books? In some cases, I think the publishers have a lot to answer for, particularly when new museums or significant sights would make a ‘Top 10’ list but haven’t been added.

Any guidebook series you do like for local recommendations?
We like niche guidebooks, such as Hedonist’s Guides, which uses authors that really know their stuff when it comes to restaurants, bars, and hotels.Hedonists also come in a cool hardcover book as well, so they don’t fall apart, and as iPhone apps that are updated much more frequently than the book.

This year, on our Grantourismo trip, we’ve been on a mission to find locally produced guidebooks in each place we’ve visited, and when we’ve tested out a book and loved it we’ve interviewed the publishers/editors and showcased the book on our site, such as the arty and rather philosophical ‘My Local Guide to Venice‘ and the straight-talking ‘Not for Tourists‘
in New York. We want to encourage travelers to look for these books because they bring a uniquely local flavor and multiple perspectives on their destinations, unlike the big mainstream global guidebook publishers where the authors’ personalities are never allowed to shine.


What can user-generated content like TripAdvisor offer travelers compared to traditional media?
I think user-generated content supplements books and travel features in newspapers/magazines but can never replace quality guidebook authorship or travel journalism. While user-generated content wins out in terms of currency (the reviews have dates), guidebook authors and travel journalists are professionals with expertise. It’s our job to assess hotels, restaurants, bars, sights, and so on. Having slept in thousands of hotels across all budget categories, eaten tens of thousands of meals at all kinds of restaurants, visited thousands of museums, etc, gives you a degree of experience and expertise that the average traveler who has 2 weeks (in the USA) or at most 4-8 weeks (in the UK/Australia/Europe) holiday can never hope to match. If a guidebook author tells me the XXX hotel is the best in Milan and a reviewer on Trip Advisor tells me the YYY hotel is the best, I know whose opinion I’m going to trust.

If the traveler writing on Trip Advisor focuses on describing in detail their very specific experience of a hotel or restaurant, that kind of information can be helpful when weighed up against other reviews by travelers and experts. Where it can be detrimental is when the Trip Advisor reviewer starts making claims about a certain hotel being the best in the city or the cheapest or friendliest or whatever. What I want to know is how many hotels have they stayed at or inspected to be able to compare their hotel to? A guidebook writer specializing on a destination might have stayed at a dozen hotels in that city over a number of years, and inspected 50 others. So when it comes to user-generated content, my main issue is with the authority of authorship. There are also plenty of games being played out behind the scenes with
manipulation of reviews (both positive and negative) of properties. In a recent destination we visited a local foodie who told us to simply ignore the top 10 places listed on Trip Advisor as they’re rubbish. And she was right. We’ve personally seen scathing reviews of hotels and restaurants that we know are some of our favourites in the world – so who are you going to trust? The user ‘britney_1537’ or a professional travel writer?

Where do you see travel journalism going?
I can’t see travel journalism in magazines or newspapers changing significantly because it hasn’t changed in its genre, form or structure a great deal at all. What has changed is that there are far more journalists working for broadsheets and travel magazine these days that are doing trips ‘courtesy of’ a tourism body or travel operator – and it’s apparent from the first paragraph, even if it’s not declared. There has definitely been a trend toward publications redefining and narrowing their focus and we’ve seen wonderful new niche travel publications born in the last year or so such as Wend and AFAR – a magazine after our own hearts and minds!

I can see traditional travel publications embracing more user-generated content in the way that some of the UK newspapers have been doing by incorporating reader’s travel writing and tips and linking to those on their main travel pages. I love how The Guardian in the UK engages its readers on Twitter and I dig the Twi-Trips that Benji Lanyado does, which are kind of mini-versions of that fantastic journey the Twitchhiker did that had us all engrossed in his journey halfway round the world relying totally on the hospitality of strangers.

I also think we’ll start to see more travel writers like Terence and I who have worked across traditional media platforms entering into direct relationships with companies as we have with HomeAway Holiday-Rentals and producing content on their own websites and blogs or on the company’s blog, as say, David Whitley has done for Round the World Flights in the UK. But it will only work if the writer can negotiate editorial control as we did with HomeAway Holiday-Rentals. As long as writers maintain their integrity and apply the same ethics they would to a story for a newspaper or magazine, it’s a good thing. But how many travel companies are willing to give writers this freedom? If you look at our last few posts on Cape Town and our first posts on Kenya – which are both reflective and critical – you have to ask yourself how many travel-related companies are willing to let writers produce this kind of content that doesn’t gloss over the situation on the ground?

How can travelers benefit from the changing media landscape?
Travellers can benefit by content that is more creative and less restricted by a publications editorial style or writing guidelines, by content that is more freewheeling in spirit. A perfect example is Pam Mandel who blogs at Nerd’s Eye View, who has a unique, intimate, chatty style of writing that wouldn’t work for a lot of newspapers for instance – but she’s heading off to Antarctica soon on a sponsored trip and I can’t wait to see how she brings her own singular brand of writing to that adventure. What’s important with these gigs, like Grantourismo, is that travel writers continue to be upfront, honest, critical and opinionated in their writing. They need to maintain their integrity and ethics. Travelers in turn need to expect that of the writers they’re reading – if they’re seeing ‘sponsored story’ or company widgets/logos on their blogs (both travel writers and bloggers), they need to look for an editorial policy. It’s only by writing critically that writers will win readers’ trust in the long term and projects like Grantourismo will succeed.

Check out more on Grantourismo on their blog and Twitter page.

All photos courtesy of Terence Carter.

The assassination of Jesse James

by Sean McLachlan on


After 1876, life wasn’t the same for Jesse James.

That year he and his gang got badly shot up while trying to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota. The Northfield Raid left three gangmembers dead and three more in jail. Only Frank and Jesse James got away. Frank left for the East, swearing he’d go straight, and left Jesse very much alone. Most of his friends from his Civil War days were dead or disappeared, and as he gathered a new gang he had to pick men of lesser caliber: two-bit horse thieves and petty crooks who dreamed of making the big time. Among them were brothers Charles and Robert Ford.

Jesse’s only comfort in his later years was his family. He had married his first cousin, Zerelda. She had been named after his mother, so Jesse called her “Zee” to differentiate between the two Zereldas. Their uncle presided at their wedding. Jesse also had a young son, Jesse James, Jr., and a daughter named Mary. Neither child knew their real names. They thought their last name was Howard and that their father was some sort of businessman. Zee knew the truth, of course, and she also knew that she didn’t trust the Ford brothers.

Charlie may have helped Jesse rob a train at Blue Cut in 1881, but Robert was as yet untested. Some biographers say the brothers had been avid horse thieves before meeting Jesse, but despite these credentials Jesse never seemed to trust the Fords. He kept a close eye on the two as they shared a house with him in St. Joseph, Missouri.

He was right to mistrust them. Robert Ford had secretly met with Missouri governor Thomas Crittenden and agreed to kill Jesse in exchange for a pardon and the $10,000 reward on Jesse’s head. This was a huge sum at a time when a decent horse went for $100 and a good farm sold for a few thousand. The Fords kept quiet and waited their chance. Days stretched into weeks as they stayed under the watchful eye of the famous outlaw. They knew they were no match for him in a face-to-face fight, yet they got no chance to surprise him.

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Jesse was planning a bank job with the Fords when on April 3, 1882, the news came that Dick Liddel, a former gangmember, had been arrested and given a full confession. Jesse’s suspicions of the Fords grew as he wondered why the Fords hadn’t told him the news before he read it in the newspaper. As Robert Ford later recounted, he knew he had to kill Jesse now or never. Jesse had killed gangmembers before, and wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.

Then the Fords witnessed a miracle. It was a hot day, and Jesse removed his coat. This revealed the revolvers strapped to his belt. Not wanting to arouse the suspicions of his neighbors, he did something the Fords had never seen him do before: remove his weapons. Even better, he got up on a chair to dust a picture.

With Jesse’s back turned, the Fords had their chance. Both drew their weapons. Robert was faster and shot Jesse in the back of the head, killing him instantly. Leaving Jesse’s family to mourn his death, they hurried to a telegraph office and sent a message to Crittenden saying the job was done. Much to their chagrin they were arrested, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to hang. The governor quickly pardoned them, but they never received their full share of the reward money.

Public reaction was mixed. While Jesse James’ popularity had dropped, most people thought the Fords were cowardly for shooting him in the back. A popular song called Robert Ford a “dirty little coward”. In all fairness, the Fords could have never taken Jesse in a fair fight, and Jesse had killed his share of unarmed men.

Jesse became even more of a legend after his death, while the Fords went down in history as traitors. Jesse James books and photographs sold like mad. The one above is a stereoscopic image of Jesse in his coffin. Stereoscopic photos could be put in a special viewer and appeared as 3D images. Many families had one in their living rooms with images of foreign lands and natural wonders. Now people could buy images of the dead outlaw for a bit of grisly after-dinner entertainment.

The Fords went on tour re-enacting the scene of Jesse’s assassination, but sometimes they were booed. Charles later killed himself and Robert moved to Creede, Colorado, a mining town where he opened a saloon. There on June 8, 1892 Edward O’Kelley, a local criminal who had had a couple of fights with Ford, walked into his saloon with a shotgun and killed him. He served several years in jail but was eventually pardoned. O’Kelley himself was killed in Oklahoma City in 1904 with police officer Joe Burnett. The policeman died a peaceful death, thus ending a cycle of killing stretching back more than twenty years.

The Jesse James home is now a museum displaying memorabilia from his life. There’s also a bullet hole high up on the wall that was supposedly made by Robert Ford’s gun. This is yet another bit of myth-making that’s grown up around Jesse James. The coroner’s inquest clearly stated that the bullet lodged just above his eye. Still, it’s a fascinating museum for any fan of the Old West.

Don’t miss the rest of my series: On the trail of Jesse James.

Coming up next: The unquiet grave of Jesse James

[Photo courtesy Library of Congress]

Top Five Strip Club Restaurants in the United States

by David Farley on

There once was a time–so I’m told–when the only feast at strip clubs was for the eyes. And when food eventually popped up it was in the form of a lunchtime buffet: the greasy fried things, limp hot dogs, and meatballs of questionable provenance sitting for hours in a hot dish left visitors with a flaccid appetite. But that’s changing, as strip club owners have realized that all that ogling can build up quite a hunger. And why deprive these “dance aficionados” a good meal.

As a result high-quality, titillating grub has emerged in various strip clubs around the country. Sure, some eaters might have a hard time taking any restaurant seriously when it’s served a few feet away from where women named “Roxy” and “Cherry” are gyrating against a chrome pole. But a few strip clubs have added some edibley enhanced menus that could rival restaurants where people (normally) keep their clothes on. So, here, without further ado, is the highly subjective list of the top five strip club restaurants in the United States.

Just to get you in the mood, click here for a striptease soundtrack for your reading enjoyment–if you’ve never seen someone remove their clothes to this song then you haven’t been, uh, eating at enough strip clubs yet.

[Flickr photo by PinkMoose]


•Robert’s Restaurant at Scores, New York City

“Where else can you have a hot topless woman literally feed you a great piece of steak?” said Scores manager Edward Norwick when he was explaining why having a great in-house restaurant is an excitable experience in more ways than one. Welcome to Scores, where topless women from three elevated pole-studded posts writhe and chef Will Savarese cooks up hearty man-food for the big-spending clientele at Robert’s Restaurant, located inside the club (with views of the rest of all the action). Savarese, who has manned the stove at acclaimed restaurants Le Cirque, Aureole, and Le Cote Basque, is masterful with brick-thick cuts of juicy steak as well as creamy truffle-oil risotto, miso-glazed Chilean bass, and tender Moroccan-spiced lamb chops.

•Alluvia at the Cheetah, Atlanta

Sure, some randy Atlantans are lured to this strip club for reasons other than eating (food), but get a whiff of chef Bill Toro’s dishes and another part of your body might soon be rumbling. Think pan-seared duck with caramelized garlic risotto, pastrami-crusted tuna and lobster dumplings doused in a Vietnamese pho broth, and, of course, what’s stripclub grub without a juicy 16-ounce filet mignon–all in a white-table-cloth atmosphere. Reserve the chef’s table for some special attention and eye-popping sightlines of the main stage.

•Delilah’s, Philadelphia

Skip the evening buffet of finger foods and go directly to the restaurant at this Philadelphia riverfront strip club, which takes itself seriously enough to lure the Zagat folks in for a rating (at least we assume they stopped by to dine). Dishes like lobster ravioli sprinkled with a Cognac-cream sauce, steamed little neck clams, and–fittingly enough–a melt-in the-mouth 12-ounce strip steak will dazzle even the most impotent taste buds. And if that doesn’t do it, the gooey, decadent warm lava chocolate cake is the happiest of endings.

•Casa Diablo, Portland OR.

It’s not as demonic as you might think at this Portland, OR club/restaurant where Girls Gone Wild and PETA have collided to make one of the coolest strip club dining experiences in the country. The club’s motto, “The meat’s on stage, not on the plate,” should be a clue as to what you’re getting into here. As the tattoo-clad ladies gyrate in their sexy pleather getups, guests munch on things like veggie burgers, “meatball” sandwiches, and tofu nachos. That’s right, no animals were harmed in the making of libido-laden experience. The fare here isn’t going to win any Michelin stars (and let’s face, it vegan cuisine never will), but Casa Diablo wins points for having the courage to eschew the meat = masculinity formula.

•Sam’s Hofbrau, Los Angeles, CA.

As with the case of Casa Diablo, not every restaurant–or, strip club restaurant, for this matter–needs to serve highly stylized, elevated cuisine to get the attention of flesh-loving foodies. Enter Sam’s Hofbrau. Located near downtown Los Angeles, Sam’s, as the name suggests, serves up a hearty bite of mitteleuropa to go along with the dancing Heidis. But it’s not all Teutonic all the time. After all, this is southern California, so guests can indulge in a carne asada burrito or variations on the theme of taco while ogling the dancers. Wash it all down with one (or two) of the 24 beers available, but leave your lederhosen at the door.

Zagat survey: five ways customers say they hate airlines … in their own words

by Tom Johansmeyer on

It’s almost sport for customers to describe how much they hate airlines. Sure, there are a few that do well from time to time, occasionally delivering high levels of service or eschewing ancillary fees. But, the overwhelming trend tends to be one of customer dissatisfaction.

Zagat, which is in the business of measuring and publishing value and taste, has taken a shot defining the highs and lows of the airline business, and the results aren’t all that positive. Well, let’s be frank: there’s nothing pleasant about flying.

The survey results aren’t all that shocking, and you can get them here from Zagat. What’s more fun is the stuff Zagat wouldn’t print … on the advice of its lawyers, the company announcement claims with an implied smirk.

How bad can it be? Let’s look at five insights from the Zagat airline survey … with customer claws bared in all their gory glory:1. Akin to an execution: Zagat’s surveyors seemed to spend a lot of time talking about death. One noted, “The only thing missing is a blindfold and a cigarette.” Another said, “At least they haven’t killed me yet.” Get the message? In case you don’t, one called air travel, “A violation of the Geneva Convention.”

2. Service with a scowl: again, it’s not much of a shock that customer service didn’t score all that high. One surveyor summed it up: “Unwelcome aboard!” But, if you think that’s the most creative, you’re out of your mind. I did enjoy the comment, “My bags get better service, but they pay extra.” Nothing, however, beats one disgruntled contributor who asked, “Who made them mad at their customers?”

3. Not even money can buy you happiness: do you think the rich have it better? Well, not in the skies they don’t! According to one Zagat surveyor, “The only difference between economy and business classes is a shrimp on your salad.”

4. Training is key: and this is what led one to muse, “Flight attendants seem to have trained with Frau Blucher.” Yes, but what instruction guide was used? That’s where another chimed in: “Staff must use Orwell’s 1984 as a training manual.” Ouch.

5. Get comfortable? Get real: the fact that passengers don’t get a lot of space didn’t escape notice. One surveyor says, “I don’t love getting up-close-and-personal with the head of the person in front of me.” Notes another, “Seats make an iron maiden seem comfortable.” It gets worse: “Like a cattle car, except the cows are mercifully slaughtered at trip’s end.”

[photo by joiseyshowaa via Flickr]