Gadling reads the Sunday travel sections

by Jeffrey White on

I’m getting to this a little late today, I know — I’m on the road, and without a reliable Internet connection.

Nevertheless, a few things caught my eye (though not all positively) in this week’s travel sections.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Patrick O’Neil reports on an arduous, long bus ride through the Andes in Bolivia, a country, he says, “where protest is the only way of interacting with the state. Where nothing works, you’re not sure what food you’re eating, buses never leave on time, most highways are unpaved and, frankly, no one even expects anything to go right.” I’ve been to a few countries that fit this description.


The Times of London juxtaposes genres today, sending its classical music critic, Richard Morrison, on a classical music-themed cruise through the Baltic Sea.

Toronto’s Globe and Mail asks whether it is really possible to stay for an extended visit with friends who are living abroad without ruining the relationship. Writer Sandra Martin says, in a word, yes — and details her visit with close friends who have recently moved to Malta, a warm, sunny place where I would very much like to be right now.

The New York Times publishes a special travel section today devoted to Asia-Pacific travel, with this lead piece from writer Henry Alford about going for luxury along the southern coast of Cambodia. Hope as I did that Alford would not fall back on the tired “once known only for the Khmer Rouge…” cliche in describing Cambodia as an up-and-coming travel destination, he does — in the first paragraph.

The Washington Post publishes a cross-country dispatch from writer Melanie D.G. Kaplan, which proved pretty entertaining, despite the fact that it features her co-pilot — a dog. I’m always skeptical of writers who relate trips they take with their pets, because it’s so easy for them to fall into anthropomorphism. Kaplan is not that guilty of this. However, sentences like this one should elicit groans from all armchair travelers: “I was awed by our country and its beauty, its open stretches and big sky, its spectacular parks and the remarkable highway system that makes these trips possible.”

Felicity Long writes in the Boston Globe about a “girlfriend getaway” in the footsteps of the so-called Pirate Queen, Grace O’Malley, in County Mayo, Ireland.

Finally, the LA Times features another dispatch from the dialogue-averse Susan Spano, this one detailing the joys of off season Italy (specifically Sienna) with her sister, who doesn’t manage to get a word in edgewise throughout the nearly 2,000-word story.

Gadling reads the Sunday travel sections

by Jeffrey White on

Haven’t had as much time this morning as usual to pore over the Sunday newspaper travel sections, but a few stories did catch my eye.

A few papers got the idea this weekend to run articles on train travel in the United States. In the New York Times, writer Andy Isaacson, a veteran of long distance international train travel, decides to cross the US on Amtrak and discovers, among other things, the unexpected sight of Amish travelers doing nearly the very same thing. The Dallas Morning News writes about a slightly less ambitious trip, taking Amtrak’s Heartland Flyer from Forth Worth to Oklahoma City.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch puts together a long feature on whale watching off the coast of Baja California. Now, this isn’t an original topic, to be sure, but writer Tom Uhlenbrock turns out what is a pretty exhaustive report, and provides plenty of nice detail that at times puts us right on these boats, feeling the spray of a gray whale.

With the economic crisis deepening, it seems that Wall Street has become something of a travel destination, an oddity, rather like how one might go and visit a former war zone. The Orange Country Register runs an Associated Press feature about a walk through the now shamed halls of American capitalism.

(And on a somewhat related note, the LA Times gives us this tour through Depression era art in San Francisco.)

On to a more convivial subject: the Boston Globe anticipates St. Patrick’s Day with this slide show of New England’s 10 best Irish Pubs (and I was psyched to see an old stomping ground of mine — the Snug in Hingham — make the list).

In terms of international travel, a piece of note is this one from Catherine Watson in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Watson heads to Bahrain and winds through oil fields and dodges security guards in search of the Tree of Life.

The Financial Times has an interesting, first-hand report about taking a volunteer vacation in Kenya, where writer Michelle Jana Chan gives her time over to helping count elephants for the Earthwatch conservation project.

Easily the oddest travel story of the week belongs to the Wall Street Journal Europe’s weekend edition, with a dispatch from Patti McCracken on finger wrestling in the Alpine corners of Austria.

Lastly, for those who might have missed it, Slate ran a good series about a week ago on modern day St. Petersburg by writer Matthew Polly (and for one of the best pieces I’ve ever read on Russia’s second city, check out this dispatch by the Boston Globe‘s Tom Haines on the city’s 300th birthday back in 2002).

Lastly, wanted to give a quick shout out to a Prague friend, Evan Rail, a noted writer on food and beer, who has a piece in today’s New York Times on an East German shoe brand that is making something of a comeback these days.