VACATION TOP SPOTS

R.I.P. Ballooning Brazilian Priest

admin — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 04:06:09 +0000

Father Adelir Antonio de Carli was found off the Brazilian coast this week. The priest had taken flight in April via hundreds of helium-filled balloons to “help raise money for a chapel for truckers in his highway parish,” Reuters reports.

Related on World Hum:

* Lawn Chair Ballooning: Serene or Idiotic?

A tale of a sail on the Queen Mary 2

admin — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 04:03:26 +0000

USA TODAY’s Gene Sloan recounts a lovely trip across the Atlantic last week with his family on Cunard’s flagship, the Queen Mary 2.

Storm-tossed cruise was ‘like a disaster movie’

admin — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 04:03:26 +0000

Passengers aboard the Pacific Sun this week when it hit a monster storm in the Pacific say it was one of the most harrowing experiences of their lives.

A380 Makes Landmark U.S. Flight Today, But ‘White Tails’ Could Still Ensue

admin — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 04:02:07 +0000

An Emirates A380 is scheduled to touch down at JFK this afternoon, marking the behemoth A380’s first commercial journey to the U.S. But that doesn’t mean all is well in the airline manufacturing industry. And that leads us to our travel lexicon lesson of the day, courtesy of the New York Times. “The spreading downturn causes some analysts to wonder if aircraft makers will be left with ‘white tails’—industry slang for planes that are built without customers to accept them, leaving their tails unpainted.” It’s like the airplane equivalent of an unpainted Easter egg. That’s just wrong.

Related on World Hum:

* The Airbus A380: ‘The Mother Load’

Photo by frielp via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

Has Paris Become a ‘Backwater’?

admin — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:47:37 +0000

This New Zealand Herald story asserts that, when it comes to arts and culture, Paris has become “second string” to Berlin, New York and London. Catherine Field writes, “[T]he worshippers these days are consumers, not creators. They are mainly foreign tourists who come to see the eternal Mona Lisa, post-modern American artists, the French Impressionists and Moliere. The city chemistry that produced rawness, dynamism, change and challenge seems absent.” This comes on the heels of Donald Morrison’s Time magazine piece, The Death of French Culture.

Related on World Hum:

* David Sedaris on Flea Markets and Foods Courts in Paris

Photo by izarbeltza via Flickr, (Creative Commons)

Hola from Pensacola!

admin — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:47:28 +0000

I just visited the Pensacola area, a sun-bathed, nature-lover’s paradise that features white sand beaches where you can indulge in almost any water related activity. There is so much to do in the area that listing all of the possibilities is out of the question, but I’ll list some of my favorites. . …

Final Flugtag Update

admin — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:47:28 +0000

If you are one of the zillions of people who have been breathlessly reading my blog you will know that my friend Bobby Bailey designed a glider to fly in the Red Bull Flugtag held last weekend in Tampa. I had to post about it one more time because his glider won!
The team he designed it for, the Tampa Baywatch, took home top honors with a final distance of 109 feet. It would have flown further if Bobby was piloting it but it still trounced the others –the second place winner only snagged 32 feet. …

New fees bump up the cost of cruising

admin — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:36:02 +0000

Cruises, by their inclusive nature, are lauded as dollar-stretching vacations. But along with fuel surcharges, which continue to soar, cruise passengers could soon be hit with a host of other charges as municipalities increasingly slap new fees on cruise passengers and cruise lines.

NTSB to release findings on Empress of the North grounding

admin — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:36:02 +0000

The National Transportation Safety Board will hold a public meeting to discuss the probable cause of the May 2007 grounding of the Empress of the North in Alaska, more than a year after the incident occurred.

Dave Barry in Costa Rica: ‘A Nation Located in South or Central America, or Possibly Europe’

admin — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:35:52 +0000

The Pulitzer Prize-winning funnyman has apparently figured out where it is, because he’s been blogging from Costa Rica about his travels. He’s seen lots of monkeys, and he went zip-lining, “which is a sport where the object is to look like the world’s biggest dork,” he writes. “I was very good at it.” Judge for yourself.

Related on World Hum:

* Onion Video: Andorra is ‘Not in Africa’