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4 Great New Books for Travelers

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Looking for some good reads while you’re on the road? Here are some new travelogues written by travelers, for travelers.
The Perfect Meal: In Search of the Lost Tastes of France, by John Baxter (On sale now, Harper Perennial Press). Following the 2010 decision by UNESCO to declare French formal dining a part of humanity’s “intangible cultural heritage,” Baxter journeys around the country to recreate the type of meal UNESCO deemed so significant. Full of humor, insight, and mouth-watering details, The Perfect Meal is a delightful tour of “traditional” French culture and cuisine.
 
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The International Bank of Bob: Connecting Our Worlds One $25 Kiva Loan at a Time, by Bob Harris (On sale March 5th, Walker & Company). Hired as a freelance writer to tour the most luxurious destinations on earth, Bob Harris could not get over the disconnect between the ultra-deluxe hotels and the impoverished laborers who built them. Afterward, Harris loaned his earnings to individuals around the world through Kiva, a charity that uses the Nobel-prize-winning approach of micro-financing to lessen poverty. Heartwarming and fascinating (and also laugh-out-loud funny), The International Bank of Bob chronicles Harris’s globe-trotting journeys on which he meets the recipients of his $25 loans.
 
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Here, There, Elsewhere: Stories from the Road, by William Least Heat-Moon (On sale now. Little, Brown and Company). An anthology of nearly thirty previously published travel stories, this collection by the best-selling author of Blue Highways explores the notion of discovering the “elsewheres” of the world. Journey with him as he searches for Faulkner inMississippi, chats with Japanese World War Two veterans in Nagano prefecture, and witnesses Mayan magic in the Yucatan.
 
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Access All Areas: Selected Writings 1990-2011, by Sara Wheeler (On sale now, North Point Press). Another anthology, Access All Areas compiles smart and engaging travel essays by Wheeler in celebration of her fiftieth birthday. The prolific British travel author (and member of the Royal Society of Literature) has selected an eclectic mix of pieces that reflect her many varied experiences while traveling. At times tragic, and at other times hilarious, Wheeler’s Access All Areas covers almost all areas of the world, from pole to pole, with stops in Poland in between.

by Peter Schlesinger an editorial intern at Travel + Leisure.

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The Amangiri Resort and Spa

The Amangiri Resort and Spa, located on a 600+ acre site in southern Utah, is a collaboration between three architects: Marwan Al-Sayed, Wendell Burnette and Rick Joy.

Amangiri is located on 243 hectares (600 acres) in Canyon Point, Southern Utah, close to the border with Arizona. The resort is tucked into a protected valley with sweeping views over colourful, stratified rock towards the Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument.READ MORE

A tale of luggage gone wrong and it’s not because airlines lose a lot of bags

The poet Maya Angelou once said you can tell a lot about a person from the way they respond to three things: a rainy day, tangled Christmas lights, and lost luggage.

Maya, Maya. Where were you at 2 a.m. the dark night I arrived in Paris without my bags? I needed my suit for the next morning, not folksy aphorisms or your musings on why the caged bird sings. Personally, I find the caged bird sings most beautifully when he has his laptop charger and toothbrush.

We’ll never know quite how Dr. Angelou would cope with the news that a vacation’s worth of clean underwear has been flown to the wrong Portland. But she’s right to suggest READ MORE

Barca – Fed up with having to deal with gawping, autograph-requesting male cabin crew.

One of our favorite travel story of last week involved players from Barcelona football club, and their request for all-female cabin crew when flying with the team’s official carrier, Turkish Airlines. The pampered millionaires (a cliché appropriate for such occasions) are apparently fed up with having to deal with gawping, autograph-requesting male cabin crew.

Spanish football giant Barcelona has requested all female cabin crews during official sponsor Turkish Airlines flights due to the extreme interest male attendants usually show in the players, Airporthaber has reported.

The male flight attendants constantly asked for autographs and jerseys from globally-loved players like Lionel Messi and Andres Iniesta, which eventually became a problem for the team officials.

Turkish Airlines has therefore granted Barcelona a handpicked crew, made up of 20 female flight attendants, to accompany the players during their flights.

Source the hurriyetdailynews.com

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Special Challenges for Business Travellers

How to survive a convention, inauguration or SXSW

EVENTS like national political conventions, major sporting events, inaugurations and the like present a special challenge for business travellers. Even the best-run cities strain under the pressure of tens or even hundreds of thousands of extra visitors. With an entire metropolis in chaos, it’s especially important to find the right place to stay and have a good way to get around. Otherwise, you won’t get any work done. Here are some tips:

  • Penny wise, pound foolish: there’s no point saving $50 a night on a hotel outside the city centre if you’re going to be spending that much taking taxis to and from the heart of the action. There’s always a temptation to scrimp on lodging, but where you stay often determines how successful (or stressful) your trip turns out. Remember the estate agent’s motto: location, location, location.
  • Make multiple plans, and look for new lodging the day the event starts: have a back-up reservation that you can cancel closer to the date of the event. Organisers of major conferences like the Democratic and Republican conventions reserve huge room blocks months in advance; often there will be nothing available downtown unless you go through official channels (ie, have connections). But if you have a back-up reservation, you can afford to wait until the first day of the event, when room blocks are released and you can often find rooms at even the best hotels. When in doubt, telephone; hotels might have rooms available that aren’t listed on sites like Orbitz and Kayak. Whatever you do, don’t pay $899 a night, like one Charlotte hotel was asking the week before the Democrats’ gathering.
  • Look into hotel alternatives: some of the best lodging for big conferences like South-by-Southwest (SXSW) can be found on sites like Craigslist and AirBnB. Sometimes you can even find a bargain—and get far closer to the action than you might if you go down the hotel route. The airBnB rental I got for Charlotte came complete with gym access and a stocked beer fridge. It doesn’t get much better than that.
  • Book your flights as early as possible: big events are stressful enough without worrying about connecting through Chicago or Detroit. The good thing about major conferences is that you usually find out the dates at least a year in advance; that gives you plenty of time to find and book a direct flight. Don’t trust flight-price predictors like Bing for big events unless they’re in the same city every year; the algorithms that make the price predictions are unlikely to be able to predict the dramatically increased demand as the big event draws near. Don’t risk losing out on a direct flight for a slim chance at a $40 or $50 fare-price drop: buy early. You’ll be relaxing all the way there while everyone else is scrambling to make their connections.
  • Check walkability and don’t count on cabs: as I mentioned yesterday, walkability score is a good proxy for whether you’ll want a rental car in a city you’ve never visited before. Remember: it’s the neighborhood walkability score, not the entire city score, that you should consider. You don’t want one in Manhattan, Washington DC, or San Francisco; you definitely need one in Houston or Tampa. If you get a car, reserve early and scout out parking options in advance, either online or by calling. If you’re going without a car, don’t count on being able to take taxis; everyone else has the same idea. Try to find a location where you can walk or use public transport to get where you need to go; if you must rely on taxis, try to call a driver in advance and offer to pay double if he or she will pick you up as needed. You don’t want to be stuck looking for a ride at 2am. If you or your company has the resources, consider booking a car and driver for the duration of the event. Though if you’re paying for that, you might as well spend the money on a hotel closer to the action.

Source the Economist.
Sep 4th 2012, 10:30 by N.B. | CHARLOTTE

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LAN completed its takeover of TAM – LATAM

LAN, the Chilean flag carrier, completed its takeover of TAM, the biggest airline in Brazil, during the Summer to create a new aviation giant. LATAM, as the company will be known—rather conveniently given its Latin American sphere of influence—serves 150 destinations in 22 countries. Its constituent airlines carried 60.3m passengers in 2011, which puts the new company just outside the world’s top ten, but way above any competition in South America, where it has hubs in São Paulo, Santiago, Lima and Bogotá. Most striking, though, is the total market capitalisation of LAN and TAM, which at $13 billion is bigger than any other carrier’s (Air China in second place has a capitalisation of $10.7 billion).

The deal, which was first announced in August 2010, was approved by antitrust regulators in Chile and Brazil last year. It should deliver synergies of $600m-700m within four years, according to a company statement, with 60% coming from revenue increases and 40% from cost savings. The networks of LAN and TAM appear to fit well together, which just a 3% overlap, says the Wall Street Journal. The two brands will continue to operate in parallel from their headquarters in Santiago and São Paulo, and Bloomberg points to one challenge for the new company: ensuring that LAN’s investment-grade credit rating does not suffer from association with TAM, which only gets a B+ rating from S&P. No decision has been announced as to which airline alliance the new company will join: LAN is in oneworld, TAM in Star Alliance.

South American airlines
LAN, TAM, merger plan
Jun 26th 2012, 11:39 by A.B.

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