Travel the World with Oscar

by Willy Volk on

In years past, local tourist boards saw generous spikes in traffic after popular movies featured the locations they tout. For example, both Alberta and Wyoming enjoyed gobs of slack-jawed, cash-carrying visitors last year after Brokeback Mountain won all those accolades. If you want to travel to the locations in which this year’s Best Picture-nominated films were set, here’s where you’d have to go.

The nominees for best picture are:

  • Babel — To visit the locations in this whirling dervish of a film, you’d better make sure your passport is current. After all, you’ll be heading to Morocco, Japan, and Mexico.
  • The Departed — Set in Boston, lucky movie-set-hunters may also get to see where Good Will Hunting was filmed.
  • Letters From Iwo Jima — Next month, Military Historical Tours will visit Iwo Jima on the 62nd anniversary of the historic Battle.
  • Little Miss Sunshine — Road trip!!! Follow the dysfunctional Hoover family’s path along Route 66. Just be certain to have a more dependable vehicle.
  • The Queen — Filmed in Scotland, the movie mainly uses stand-ins for the locations on film, but persistent travelers can book cottages at Balmoral Castle.

Personally, I’d like to visit Uganda, but The Last King of Scotland didn’t get a nod for Best Picture. Nevertheless, the 79th Annual Academy Awards are this Sunday. You can book your travel any time you like.

How to Bargain Abroad: The Right Way

by Adrienne Wilson on

There aren’t too many situations on the road where I need someone to hold my hand or baby me, but when it comes to bargaining abroad I stink. I hate bargaining. Just tell me what the item is worth, don’t cheat me and I’ll pay up. That’s how I like to do business, but the rest of the world does not operate this way and to avoid getting ridiculously ripped off I usually recruit a local or friend to walk me through the process. While I’ve watched several buyers score some amazing goods at jaw-dropping, super cheap prices I’ve also seen some bargaining foreigners receive ill looks from the seller. Some prices are insultingly too low. So how does one bargain the right way?

This is where I point you to this WorldHum piece titled the Art of the Deal. Readers walk with Peter Wortsman through the stalls of Marrakesh as he masters how to go about naming the right price and playing a good game. It’s a real good read especially if you’re way out yonder looking to collect gifts for your loved ones or maybe you’re just planning on heading to Macy’s this Black Friday, either way you may learn a thing a two from Peter’s Moroccan encounters. As for me – I’ll never be fond of the bazaar bargain biz.

Jeffrey Taylor in Morocco

by Erik Olsen on

The travel/current events writer Jeffrey Tayler has got an excellent piece in this month’s Atlantic Magazine
(sadly…subscription required). After the New Yorker, the Atlantic is the best magazine in the country, and this fine
travelogue that takes you up the coast of North Africa in Morocco is filled with the kind of writing that makes you
want to book your ticket to Marrakesh and hang out for while.

Actually, Tayler spends more time on the
coast, visiting towns like Rabat and Casablanca, though no word on whether he dropped in at Rick’s. I have been to a
couple of the places he writes about, and very much enjoyed his recollections of some of these places. But he goes much
further afield than I did, visiting places like Azemmour and Doukkala, while I confined myself to the coast near Rabat.
Now, that said I had one advantage during my trip, in that I got the royal treatment. I was there visiting a father of
a friend, a well-connected former government minister, and so rode arouund the city in a limo and had several of the
finest meals I’ve ever had.

North Africa fascinates me, and it is too bad that it currently has a
reputation for Muslim extremism. The country is beautiful, and with the exception of a very strange, near-violent
encounter in Tangier (a wretched hive of scum and villainy) I found the people of Morocco to be amazingly friendly and
generous. No doubt, Tayler would agree.