This Week At The Airport Bar In 41 Tweets

by Gadling Staff on

While AOL Travel has been exploring the intersection of booze and travel this week, we’ve been eavesdropping on the world’s airport bars. As anyone who’s ever overpaid for a pint while killing a three-hour delay knows, airport bars are curious places. They can be sad and infuriating and lonely. Or places of wonder and serendipity. Sometimes they’re just places where the tipsy and bored tweet.

Also, you just never know who you might meet.

Here then, in 41 tweets, is how the past week looked from the stools of the world’s airport bars.

Gadlinks for Friday, 1.8.2010

by Katie Hammel on
Happy Friday, faithful Gadling readers! Here are a few more travel tidbits to send you on your way to the weekend.
‘Till Monday, happy travels!

More Gadlinks here.

Layover: Seattle

by Katie Hammel on

Despite being the largest airport in the Pacific Northwest and serving as the hub for Alaska Airlines,(and its subsidiary, Horizon Air) Seattle’s Sea-Tac Airport is surprisingly easy to navigate. Airport Revenue News honored it with the Best Overall Concessions award, and it does offer some great restaurants and shopping to keep you busy on a short layover.

If your plane isn’t delayed on arrival (as is often the case due to heavy cloud cover) and you have a longer layover, you can hop a 30-minute bus from the airport to downtown and spend your time exploring the “Emerald City”. You can even store your carry-on luggage at the airport.

Short Layover (2 hours)
You’re pretty much confined to the airport with a short layover, but that doesn’t mean you’re limited to spending your time face-down in a mug of beer at the airport bar…unless of course you want to be. If that’s the case, there are choices in every concourse, from beer at the Seattle Taproom to wine at Vintage Washington to margaritas at Case del Agave. You’ve got plenty of options for food too – full-service, casual, or to-go. Anthony’s Restaurant and Ivar’s Seafood Bar, downtown Seattle favorites, both have outposts at the airport and local celebrity chef Kathy Casey offers fresh-made sandwiches and salads with local ingredients at Dish D’Lish.

If shopping is more your thing, there are a few stores worth checking out. In addition to browsing the standard Borders Books and Hudson News, you can wander over to the Made in Washington store for last-minute Seattle souvenirs and Pacific Northwest food products or pop into Discovery Channel to play with educational games and toys.

Got work to do? Charge your cell phone for $3, or get online for $7.95 (for a 24-hour pass). If you’re too stressed out, you can relax with a massage, manicure or pedicure for very reasonable rates.

Longer layovers (4 or more hours)
With a little more time, you can spend your layover in downtown Seattle. The express bus, #194, departs from the airport every 15 minutes or so and takes about half an hour to reach downtown. If your layover is on the short end, it’s best to stick close to the bus stop and limit your exploration to a stroll through Pike Place Market, but if you have more time, you can see most of the major sites in the city in one afternoon. Here are some of the highlights.

Pike Place Market
Combine lunch and sight-seeing with a visit to Pike Place Market. This hundred-year old farmer’s market sells plentiful fresh produce and cheap, colorful flower arrangements, but there’s so much more to it than that. In a matter of minutes you’ll pass by countless stalls of fruit and vegetables, handmade jewelry, organic soaps, local honey, and fresh seafood. And that’s just in the main market. Wander down to the arcade and you’ll see antiques, comics, and magic supplies, and across the street you’ll find an olive-oil boutique, jerky shop, a Piroshky seller, wine shop, French bakery, truffle cafe, crumpet shop, and cheese-maker. The Market is also home to the original Starbucks and the Pike Place Fish Market, where the fishmongers famously throw fish around whenever an order is placed.

Pioneer Square
The oldest part of Seattle, Pioneer Square is an historic district with lots of art galleries, and plenty of vagrants. The square is part of the downtown “Ride Free” zone where buses are free, and it’s just a short ride from the rest of downtown. The big attractions here are the Smith Tower (which is much shorter than the Space Needle, but costs less and provides a different view), and the Underground Tour, a fascinating hour-long tour of the city-beneath-the-city. When the majority of Seattle was burned in 1889, a new city was built of stone and brick on top. The tour, which nearly always sells out in high-season, takes visitors underground and gives them a unique look at Seattle history.

Waterfront
Seattle’s waterfront is admittedly kitschy. It’s from here that sightseeing cruises depart and there are always tons of tourists milling about, coming and going from the Aquarium and Waterfront Arcade, and browsing in souvenir shops. But the views of Puget Sound really are something to see, and there are some great restaurants scattered further north towards Pier 70 (which was the pier the Real World kids lived on way back when and now houses the Waterfront Seafood Grill). A trolley runs the length of the waterfront, up to the new Olympic Sculpture Park.

Monorail, Seattle Center, and Space Needle
From downtown, you can take a bus or the waterfront trolley (or even walk about 20 minutes) to the Seattle Center, but for a more memorable ride, try the Monorail. The Monorail was built for the 1962 World’s Fair and, when it’s not being repaired after another crash or break-down, it ferries passengers on a 1-mile ride from Westlake Mall to the Center. The Seattle Center, the downtown area’s main park, is home to the Pacific Northwest Ballet, several theaters, the Children’s Museum, Pacific Science Center, and the Space Needle. To see the 360-degree views of Seattle, Puget Sound and its islands, the Olympic Mountains, and Lake Union, you’ll need to pay $16 for adults. But if you have the time and money, you can enjoy a meal in the revolving restaurant, Sky City. Like most observation-deck dining establishments, it’s expensive and the food is just a touch above average, but the views are spectacular.

Actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers arrested in Paris airport after allegedly assaulting bar staff

by Aaron Hotfelder on

If Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth, the airport bar might well be the unhappiest. The drinks are watered-down and overpriced, the food is bland, and the customers and staff seem to be in a constant competition for the coveted honor of “Who Can Be More Surly.”

And this year’s award goes to… (fumbles with the envelope)… Jonathan Rhys Meyers!

Rhys Meyers, the 31-year-old star of The Tudors, was arrested yesterday at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris after he assaulted a waiter in an airport bar. Rhys Meyers allegedly shoved the waiter and punched him in the face after the waiter refused to serve him more alcohol. Witnesses say Rhys Meyers could be heard shouting “I’ll kill you all!” to the other members of the staff.

The Irish-born actor was charged in a French court with “willful violence, outrage, hitting, and threatening death.” He has several prior episodes of drunken bad behavior, including public drunkenness and breach of the peace at an airport in Dublin. Rhys Meyers, who claims he didn’t start drinking until he was 25 and has only been drunk “a dozen-and-a-half times,” says that when he drinks, he’s “like Bambi.” “I’m all over the place, hopeless, like a 16-year-old kid,” he says. “People notice.”

More here.

The Best Worst Airport in the US

by Josh Lew on

Frequent and casual travelers have their favorite airports. The ones that are easy to navigate and usually not too crowded always make the list. And then there are those airports where you have to use all your willpower just to deplane. These sprawling terminals are usually inhabited by a staff whose goal in life is seemingly to make your trip through their turf as nightmarish as possible. Overstatement? Perhaps, unless you’ve just come through customs at Chicago O’Hare.

Yes, O’Hare is one of those airports on my “worst” list. It is difficult to navigate (unless you have a PhD in Geography or a very good hand-held GPS unit) and perpetually crowded. The customs and immigration folks there have given me the most hassle of any airport in the country. If it was just me, I’d guess that I fit some sort of profile. But everyone seems to have trouble. On my last trip, I witnessed a little Japanese grandmother being pulled out of the customs line after she couldn’t answer (or perhaps even understand) a customs agent’s eloquently posed question “How much Yen you got?”

At the same time, there are certain corners of O’Hare that I love.One is the bar in the corner of the international terminal. The bartender on my previous trip was not only generous with her pours, she knew the status of every flight coming into and out of the terminal seemingly aided by some sort of sixth sense that must come from a lifetime in airport bars. And her yarns about the airport life were almost enough to make you want to work there. I’ve always found this particular bar to be staffed by equally laid back and knowledgeable people.

At the nearby hot dog stand, they might serve you a hot dog with a dismissive frown, but as a last meal before heading off overseas, it can’t be beat. Hell, a trip to this little corner of the massive monstrosity that is O’Hare might even have you thinking fondly of the place. But don’t worry, there is always plenty of swearing businessmen ready to push you down if no one is looking, surly staff dishing out the attitude and cavity-searches to keep you in touch the reality.

I’m always happy to leave O’Hare. But that’s one of the points of travel, isn’t it? Being happy to leave where you are and looking forward to where you are going.