Welcome to The Window Seat: a blog for every traveler.
Why The Window Seat? Because if you're a traveler, it's how you take in the world around you. And because it's the best seat in the house, the one with the most captivating view - and that is precisely what this blog is about. Sharing travel perspectives and experiences.
Looking for adventure through the aloha lens? The Hawaiian islands are the stuff of legends for a reason. By sea, by sky, and by tropical rainforest, Hawaii’s got you covered--with a pineapple twist. This past week in Hawaii I pushed my adrenaline meter to the limits with zodiac-rafting, zip-lining, and waterfall diving, and learned some very intriguing island facts along the way.
"The Screamer" zip-line course in the West Maui Mountains.
Aloha from the Hawaiian islands! I am writing live from the Hawaii Superferry on my way between the islands of Maui and Oahu. To my right, I see the open Pacific Ocean, and to my left lies the green mass of Molokai. So far, on this trip, I have visited both the islands of Kauai and Maui and have done everything from zodiac-boating along the dramatic Na Pali coast and zip-lining down the West Maui Mountains to indulging in luxuriant lomi lomi massage treatments and swimming beside rainforest waterfalls.
Along the way, I've been learning a great deal about Hawaii's history and culture from the first Polynesian arrivals to the missionary days. I've eaten strawberry-guava straight off the tree, rubbed noni fruit juice into my sunburn, and squeezed fresh awapuhi into my hair in an attempt to see first-hand the island's healing and restorative powers. I've also spoken with many people about what the island is doing to protect its treasures, from saving the coral reefs to safe-guarding the monk seals and sea turtles.
In blog posts to come, I'll fill you in on the details of my adventures. Wish you were here -- the weather is fine!
Photo coutesy of IgoUgo member creekland.
We’re in the heart (or should I say, eye?) of hurricane season right now, and every other week it seems the National Weather Service issues a new alert. So far this year we’ve seen Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly, and, currently, Edouard (we hope you’re okay Louisiana and Texas!). Officially, the hurricane season begins June 1 and ends November 1, which is a long time if you plan on just hunkering down at home until it’s done. My advice? You can keep on traveling to regions prone to hurricanes as long as you use common sense. Keep in mind that the vast majority of people who travel to these regions during this timeframe see nary a hurricane. In fact, in most places right now, the weather is pretty darn lovely.
But if you are traveling toward the storm, here are some recommendations:
Photo courtesy of Samantha Berg.
Issues, issues… sure they're important. But let’s talk about what really matters on The Window Seat: How well do the candidates travel? As this year's jam-packed media schedule proves, most campaign-trail maps point straight to the sky. Accordingly, both Barack Obama and John McCain have their own customized, American-manufactured Boeings to take them from baby-kissing stump stops to whirlwind meetings with foreign dignitaries.
But who has the better bird? Let’s take a look at each and see how they stack up.
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member RoBoNC.
Last Wednesday, as California's inland temperatures crawled toward the 100-degree mark, I joined some colleagues on a jaunt to the Napa Valley. Despite dry, smoke-hazed air from all of the state's wildfires, and despite a sun so big and bright it’d scared away all the clouds, I was not going to let anything like a little heatstroke deter me from doing the number-one thing people come to the Napa Valley to do: savor that exalted wine.
The day turned out to be a total treat and the heat barely registered, thanks to the following tips:
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member Sierra.
Last week was my first time. I was a little nervous at first, but the purple lighting and house music quickly got me in the mood. As I sunk into leather, strapped myself in, and got ready for a long ride, a safety video showed me that this could be easy, even fun, and relaxed me for what would be the rest of my cross-country flight with California-based airline Virgin America.
Now I’ve been with a lot of airlines in my day, but Virgin America does it different. From the aforementioned mood lighting to gate-agent-led games before boarding to the interactive chatting feature in-flight, I stayed busy from start to finish. Like JetBlue, each seat onboard in economy class gets its own TV screen and channels to surf, but Virgin America goes much further, offering an in-flight entertainment system called “Red,” with a choice of movies, games, music videos, radio stations, and even on-demand menu options—plus I had my own remote control!
Mood-lighting photo courtesy of Virgin America.
Allow me to channel Andy Rooney as I attempt my first Window Seat rant. I’ve paid for my share of snack packs, shelled out for movie headsets, and purchased a glass of wine on an international flight with nary a complaint. But when I heard a couple weeks ago that I’d have to pay for checking my first bag--my only bag--well, I got miffed.
Now I understand that the airlines face gas prices that are 77% higher than they were a year ago, so system-wide fare increases are a necessary answer to keeping the airlines in business. I don’t like it, but that totally makes sense to me. But what I don’t get is trying to recoup losses in a fashion that discriminates against certain customers, which is what a checked-baggage fee essentially does.
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member Raymond Longaray.
Do you have a vacation spot that has been a constant in your life? A place that you’ve returned to again and again at different ages and vantage points?
For me, my vacation constant was always Bethany Beach, Delaware. When I was little, my family went there every summer in August, for vacations filled with magic sandcastles and holes to China, fireflies and glowsticks, outdoor crab feasts and locally-made blueberry cobbler served up hot in the salty air. Each summer, I'd let the sun turn my hair nearly white while my face became a fireworks display of freckles.
Photo courtesy of Samantha Berg.
To many people, Memorial Day signals the unofficial start to summer, a time to scrape off that grill, fill up the kiddie pool, and get that first glimmer of tan. And even though tens of thousands will hit the road and the skies, if the upcoming three-day weekend stretches before you without a trip to look forward to, you’re not alone. According to Reuters, Memorial Day holiday travel in the U.S. will shrink for the first time since 2002.
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member Valerita.
With Memorial Day weekend just around the bend, it’s time to start planning your summer beach reading list. Yesterday, the AP came out with a list of books that “blend food and travel,” including the appetite-worthy titles of Hamburger America and Clotilde's Edible Adventures in Paris, the latter of which the author blogged about here on TWS just last week.
As far as my list is concerned, I’ll kick off my summer with Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, which is my book club’s next selection, but beyond that, I’m not sure. Should I go with a Pulizter Prize winner, the best-seller list on the New York Times, or one of my friends’ picks on the book recommendation sharing web site Good Reads?
If you’re looking for a suggestion, here are five books I’ve recently read that I think will pair well with sandy toes:
Let’s say you get the flu as soon as you step out onto the beach. Or, your romantic hotel room is right next to a family with screaming toddlers. Often, you can find hidden opportunities in these small tragedies. Maybe the flu that keeps you inside also keeps you from getting sunburned like the rest of your family. Or, the screaming toddlers later befriend you in the hotel pool and you spend a giggle-filled afternoon seeing the world through their eyes.
Just over three weeks ago, my friend Brooke and I set out from Denver for a Vail vacation. Brooke and I have known each other since college at U of M, and we spent much of the nighttime Rocky Mountain drive catching up with one another. One minute, we were laughing and reminiscing, and the next minute we hit a spot of black ice, lost control of the car, smashed into the left guardrail, spun across the interstate in circles, got hit by two other cars, and finally landed front impact in a snow bank. We were stunned, terrified, badly banged up and bruised, and very lucky to be alive.
Obviously, this wasn’t supposed to happen.
Editors’ Note: To celebrate Earth Day on April 22, The Window Seat is devoting this week to exploring some of the world’s natural environments, hereby declaring this Nature Week. Through our Nature Week posts, we hope to inspire all travelers to get outside and interact with nature no matter where they happen to be. For more ideas, visit our collection of Children & Nature road trips and volunteer opportunities.
It’s ironic. Animals like sea turtles, penguins, elephants, and reef fish draw tourists from all over the world, and in so doing, bring in so many well-intended gawkers like me that many of their habitats have been irreversibly changed.
When I was in St. John last year, after I finally figured out how to operate my snorkel breathing tube in a way in which I wasn’t involuntarily gargling salt water, an entire otherworld opened up. With sounds muffled and body buoyant, I wondered at the novelty of sensation with the keen awareness that I was the alien intruder into a bustling, day-glo colored society of gills that thrived completely oblivious of me, yet symbiotic. And I couldn’t help but notice that some of the corals beneath me had gone gray and abandoned.
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member adman2u.
In May 2006, President George W. Bush was asked what was his best moment in office so far. After admitting he’s had “a lot of great moments,” the moment he chose referred not to his daily duties as commander-in-chief, but to his cherished vacation time: "I would say the best moment was when I caught a 7 ½-pound largemouth bass on my lake.”
It’s hard work to preside over the home of the free and the brave, which is why vacation was built into the presidency since the start of the nation. George Washington had his beloved Mount Vernon plantation; John Adams his Massachusetts farm. More recently, we’ve gotten used to hearing about George W.’s vacation compound in Crawford Ranch, Texas, with his stocked fish pond, river canyons, and sprawling, single-level home visited by everyone from Vladimir Putin to Lance Armstrong.
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member Susie Go Go.
Here’s the situation: I have only skied twice in my life in conditions that many West Coasters would sneer at. Both times were many, many years ago, in fake machine-generated snow, on soft and forgiving East Coast slopes. In one case, I fell so spectacularly (cartwheeling head over skis into the air) that a person on the ski lift above actually shouted down at me to make sure I was okay.
In a couple weeks, I head to Vail, Colorado, where the snow is the real deal, and the mountains are thousands of feet higher than those in Pennsylvania’s White Tail and Virginia’s Wintergreen. I’ll be going with friends who currently reside in Colorado, and who spend every weekend that they can snowboarding. While they shred the triple-zillion black-diamond runs and conquer the K-12 a la Lane Myer, my plan is to take a lesson and baby my days away on the bunny slope. But what I can’t decide regarding my lesson is, skiing or snowboarding?
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member NSXEatr.
Last week was a bizarre one for travel-related news. In India, a pregnant woman on a train thought she was making a routine bathroom visit and instead gave premature birth to a babylet who fell through the toilet and onto the train tracks--and the baby survived. In Egypt, a study-abroad student lost one-third of his body weight after boarding with a host family who, allegedly, didn’t give him enough to eat during his stay. And, tragically, in the waters off the Bahamas, an Australian tourist was fatally bitten by a shark during an encounter in which bloody fish parts were used to attract the predators to tourists who shelled out the big bucks for a cageless dive.
As far as U.S. vacation spots go, beauty-queen Oahu, social-butterfly Manhattan, and flamboyant Key West always grab the limelight first. But what about the best American islands that you’ve never been to? Read on for five unique and close-to-home island getaways rich in Americana and natural treasures.
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member Reiflame.
Right now, we’re riding the crest of cruise wave season, the heaviest time of year for cruise bookings and prime time to find steals and deals on ships both large and small. When you factor in that all your meals and much of your onboard entertainment is included in the cruise price, it truly is one of the best bargains in vacationing today.
Now I know there are a lot of people out there who think “cruise” and roll their eyes (are you one of them?), but as someone who previously doubted she’d ever be able to find anything to like about sea legs, I’ve been proven wrong again and again.
Richard Branson, Virgin entrepreneur extraordinaire, wants to bring space travel to the masses. Well, sort of. He wants to bring space travel to the moneyed masses. For $200,000 and at least a $20,000 deposit, you too could sign up for glory hereby only experienced by the world’s astronauts.
Oh, but what glory it is! Imagine being rocketed up into the upper-most regions of the sky until you get a true alien’s-eye view of the Earth. From space, you’d be able to see cloud masses and continents, bodies of water and polar ice. The g-forces would be extreme, but once you’d hit weightlessness, you’d be able to float around for a full five minutes, taking everything in, before returning to your home planet.
If you’ve ever heard or uttered any of the following on the road, my guess is that you were in the midst of a stress-induced, sleep-deprived travel meltdown: “I hate you.” “I can’t believe you’re being this mean to me.” “I can’t handle this anymore.” “All you do is freak out.” “There’s hatred in my blood right now.”
This season, on the Amazing Race, team Nate and Jen have responded to every stressful travel situation by completely unraveling into shouting matches, name-calling, and even shoving. Yet somehow, they’ve managed to eke through the finish line week after week. Sunday night, after making all the above quotes in the course of just one episode, they finally met their elimination with Jen confessing sadly, “I think we killed our relationship along the way.”
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member globalroamer.
It’s an unfortunate truth that the average American isn’t going to get to the African savannah to watch a wildebeest, the Mongolian Steppe to see ibex, or the Antarctic shelf to ooh-ahh at penguins. That’s why so many cities proudly flaunt their zoos as a way to showcase and preserve exotic and endangered creatures.
Years ago, while staying with a host family in Uruapan, Mexico, I had the opportunity to visit the zoo in the nearby Michoacan state capital of Morelia. This was not the cushy Smithsonian Institution Zoo that I’d grown up with in D.C. Amid a frenzy of balloons and lime-chili-chip vendors, I stood in front of a tiger cage that stank of raw meat and watched a magnificent cat pace back and forth in an intensely dense cloud of flies. Echoing my thoughts exactly, the father of my host family lamented aloud, “pobrecito, el tigre” (poor little tiger).
National Zoo tiger photo courtesy of IgoUgo member Reiflame.
In the Beatles hit, a young Paul McCartney wondered, “will you still need me… when I’m 64.” The answer is increasingly, yes. The over-60 crowd is sharper and fitter than ever before, and they’re not about to fly into greener pastures with a golden watch on the wings of a forced early retirement.
This played itself out last week as congress, the senate, and then our commander-in-chief approved fast-tracked legislation to raise the mandatory retirement age for pilots from 60 to 65. The ease with which this legislation passed undermines a fierce debate about airline pilot age that’s been going on for decades.
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member John Spreitz.
If it’s true that you can attract more bees with honey, then can you attract more tourists with… aliens? That’s the crux of a controversy in the state of New Mexico right now, where they are considering the further release of a round of ads starring aliens to ratchet up tourism to the Land of Enchantment. No doubt, there’s an interest out there for UFOs and other unexplained mysteries--just ask Dennis Kucinich and Shirley MacLaine.
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member jurko.
Calling all Thanksgiving travel warriors!
You braved the crowds, went shoeless through the x-ray machines, ate the airport food, and spent untold hours doing sudoku in the stratosphere--all for some cranberries, turducken, and a lipstick print on the cheek from Grandma.
Since we were so busy at the nation’s top airports reporting on travel conditions last week, now it's your turn. We want to hear your stories, so please tell us how it all went.
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member MilwVon.
Editor’s Note: It’s “holiday week” on The Window Seat, and our editors get into the spirit of the season with a series of articles exploring the many facets of this busy travel period.
When a giant cargo ship crashed into the San Francisco Bay Bridge and spilled 58,000 gallons of oil into one of the nation’s top tourist attractions last week, the volunteer response was so overwhelming that wannabe do-gooders had to be turned away from the oil-slicked beaches.
The busiest travel time of the year may be best known for frosty snowmen and red-nosed reindeer, but--as the Bay Area so amply demonstrated--‘tis also the season of giving. A Travelocity poll shows 11% of travelers planned to volunteer during their vacations in 2007. Also known as voluntourism, these trips can run the gamut from working with orphaned children in Ghana, to saving Costa Rican sea turtles, to just cleaning up a local park.
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member Jose Kevo.
Every cloud has a silver lining, even when you’re passing over it at 30,000 feet while running late, shoved in the middle seat between two strangers, and worried about the possibility of lost luggage. It’s true! Read on for my list of five good things about taking to the skies today.
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member paolo1899.
This weekend, as wildfires raged across the southern half of California and Governor Schwarzenegger channeled The Terminator to warn all arsonists that he will “hunt them down,” I fled to the east and atop the jack-o-lantern laden Sierra Nevada mountains for my annual “girls weekend” at Lake Tahoe.
Now put your frozen-bra and pillow-fight illusions aside. This fall tradition began about five years ago, when we didn’t even know it was going to be a tradition, just a generous invitation to a friend’s family cabin in the woods with views of the lake, mountains, pink-valentine sunsets, and a woo-hooo witchy-woman moon glowing through the giant glass windows.
Photo: One of the Angora Lakes before this year’s fire.
Breakfast at Tartine in San Francisco’s Mission District is a journey--its flaky pastries and café au lait transport you to Paris the instant they touch your lips. On a foggy morning, I met there over the most beautiful and butterscotch-ey bread pudding to be regaled by travel tales and discuss this winter’s hottest food trends with Jen Catto, Travel Director of Gourmet Magazine.
Jen had recently returned from a trip to France in which she tried something she never had before. On the beaches of Brittany at this time of year, large amounts of algae wash up onto shore. It used to be that this algae was only used for bath salts, but local restaurants in St. Malo made the algae into a butter and then used this butter to prepare fish. The aromatic and briney taste that resulted is something that could only come from that particular region, anchoring the dining experience firmly and wonderfully in France at that season and place.
Photo courtesy of Jen Catto.
With two levels of passenger seating, the new Airbus A380 super jet is bigger than anything we civilians have seen yet. Yesterday, Airbus officially delivered its first A380 to Singapore Airlines.
A typical A380 with three cabin classes accommodates a whopping 525 passengers. Take out the first and business classes and make the plane all economy, and that number of passengers soars to over 800 (imagine that boarding process!). By 2011, this plane will be able to take off and land in 70 airports around the world.
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member alancf.
Karaoke might be the perfect ice breaker for travelers. Whereas 100 years ago, travelers used to gather around the inn piano for a good old-fashioned singalong, we now can find an instant sense of camaraderie beneath disco lights and the LCD screen. Plus, even if you’re a total bomb at the mic, the beauty of karaoke on vacation is that you never have to see any of your audience again.
Today you can find karaoke almost everywhere (except for North Korea, where they banned it in July). Finland, of all places, holds the world record for the most people singing karaoke together at one time (imagine 80,000 people singing heavy-metal hit “Hard Rock Hallelujah” in an attempt to usher in the “arockalypse” to Helsinki).
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member angelsil.
What do Cher, Whoopie Goldberg, and Kate Bosworth have in common? Apparently, they’re all afraid of flying. According to FearlessFlight.com, your chances of being in an air accident are just one in 11 million. To me, this statistic doesn’t make soaring along the jet stream any less freaky, though. My airplane nerves used to keep me on hyper-alert for potential problems—as if there was anything I’d be able to do about a catastrophe.
Whenever I traveled with my sister, I was even worse. Each of our fears would foment the other’s, egging each other on to new heights of hysteria. Even in a pre-9/11 world we had our eye on all the passengers, ready to hit the call button for suspicious behavior or grab our armrests to steel ourselves through turbulence at a second’s notice.
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member rokiss.ch.
If you've ever done the Eurail trip through Europe, you know that train travel can be an adventure in and of itself. Now Europe has a new option. The high-speed Eurostar train that used to whisk you along from London to Paris in a sluggish three hours has now outdone itself. Today, a Eurostar train traveled between Paris and London in just two hours, three minutes, and 39 seconds, at one point reaching speeds of 186 miles per hour, according to ABC News.
For the record attempt today, the train had the track all to itself, and had stripped off unnecessary weight to achieve even more speed. Passengers will be able to have croissants and coffee in Paris and be in London for an early fish and chips lunch starting in mid-November, and should expect the journey to take a nice two hours and 15 minutes.
Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member monbryn.
It’s an amazing thing to witness: many people undergo complete transformations of personality while on vacation. Ordinarily shy people become chatty. Reserved executives find themselves entering themselves into a cruise ship hairiest chest contest. Dieters indulge in chocolate fantasies and couch potatoes find themselves running with glee from attraction to attraction. Everybody, it seems, has a vacation alter-ego.
Photo courtesty of IgoUgo member Sail Army.
With almost two-thirds of all Americans living in a household with a pet, it’s no surprise that our furballs are taking to the roads, skies, and seas in increasing numbers. And since Americans are projected to spend over $40 billion on their four-legged friends in 2007, pet travel is going beyond being just a niche industry.
The appeals of traveling with a pet are many. You don’t have to hire a dog-walker or kennel and worry that they’re getting enough exercise and play time. Bring a dog out on the beach, hiking through the woods, or even on an afternoon kayak excursion, and their spirit of adventure is infectious.
Photo of Hector the Dog courtesy of Eric Eisen.
Could there be two more dreaded words in the traveler’s vocabulary than “flight delayed”? This week, it’s been all over the news: It’s officially the worst time for flight delays in 13 years. To put that in perspective, the last time we had it this bad, O.J. Simpson was white Bronco-ing it along the Los Angeles freeway.
Deep in bluegrass country where horse-stu
Postcard From Hawaii
Edouard Alert: Hurricane Season Travel Tips
Election 2008: Which Candidate Has the Poshest Plane?
A Game Plan for Hot-Weather Wine Tasting
Virgin America Does It Different
Baggage Fees: What’s Fair, What’s Not?
A Lifetime of Bethany Beach Vacations
Are You Traveling This Memorial Day Weekend?
2008 Summer Beach Reading
When Vacations Don’t Go Exactly As Planned
When Animals Are Tourist Attractions
Vacation and the Presidency
What’s Better for an Out-of-Shape Rookie: Skiing or Snowboarding?
Strange Headlines in Travel News
Isles Away From Ordinary
It's Cruise Wave Season
Virgin Galactic's Space Ship for Tourists
The Travel Meltdown
Do You Zoo?
Pilot Age: How Old is too Old to Fly?
UFO Tourism: An Alien Idea
Share *Your* Thanksgiving Travel Tales
Voluntourism: Be a Holiday Travel Superhero
5 *Good* Things About Air Travel Today
Girls Weekend at Lake Tahoe
Winter Foods, Local Wonderlands
Is Bigger Really Better? The New A380
Karaoke Tourism
Nerves on a Plane: How to Remain Un-rattled
London to Paris in Record Time
The Vacation Alter-Ego
Traveling With Pets
Flight Delays: Cope or Mope?
The Kentucky Bourbon Trail
August 18, 2008