Intelligent Travel

This Week's Bloggers

Emily King, Traveler's assistant to the editor, and researcher Jessie Johnston would like to thank all of IT's readers for making our first year a success. They plan to blow the year's profits on tickets to free Shakespeare performances.

IT's Top Ten

We're not at our desks this week, and we suspect you aren't either, so rather than casting our pearls into the abyss, we thought we'd end the year with a list of our favorite posts of IT's inaugural year. Here they are in chronological order. We love all our children equally:

IT's All Happening at the Zoo: IT shares a timeless tale of monkeys, cell phones, and sticky substances.

Friendlier Skies: Andy Isaacson gives a first-hand account of flying on ultra-luxury Eos Airlines.

Bard in the Yard: IT rounds up your options for free outdoor Shakespeare in the summer.

Chinatown Bus 101: The lowdown on the latest craze in traveling on the cheap.

Extreme Italy: Naples and the Amalfi Coast

After stops in Milan, Venice, Florence, and the Cinque Terre, IT revisits the boot with a post from Genevieve Contey so saucy we're running it alone:

For many Americans, southern Italy conjures up emerald grottoes, cascading bougainvillea, capri pants, and Casanovas on every corner. It's all true. It's also true that Italians north and south are notorious for having made chaos cool, disorder fashionable and, as Italian journalist Beppe Severgnini discusses in his book, La Bella Figura, traffic lights negotiable. Many tourists never see this Italy from behind the rose-tinted tour bus windows. Guides, buses, and baggage handlers are their buffers against the unpleasant Italy.

To navigate southern Italy is to trek through a land of extreme opposites: Its geography, and its people, are as volcanic as they are disarmingly hospitable. It's the land of hot tempers and big hearts, of marathon meals and shapely figures, of reckless driving and languorous evening strolls.

Tricks of the Train

Despite its high prices, Amtrak's ridership is up and it's easy to see why: It's much less hassle than schlepping out to the airport and waiting forever to board (as Jessie will tell you about really soon, we promise), and lots roomier and rather more reliable than the dirt-cheap Chinatown buses.

Here are some tips for getting a good seat on the train:

1. Reserve ahead by phone (+1 800 USA RAIL) or online. If you call you'll have to talk to the annoyingly cheerful Julie but you can get around that by staying silent, saying "agent" or pressing 0, and she'll connect you to a real reservations agent. They'll hold your reservation without a credit card if you don't want to buy over the phone.

Holiday House Swap

National Geographic Traveler magazine covered the trend months ago in our "Trading Places" article (April 2006), but only now is Hollywood tackling house swapping, in Sony Pictures' recently released film The Holiday. The movie tells the story of two women—played by Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz—who swap their homes in England and Los Angeles as a way to take a break from their faltering romantic relationships. As luck would have it, they both find new men (and true love) in their temporary homes.

While IT can't promise such happiness (we've had both good and bad experiences in others' homes—none of which included romance), we do think house swapping is an interesting and generally inexpensive way to travel. The characters in the movie coordinate their swap using Home Exchange (see below), but what other companies offer such services? Here we post Ingrid Ahlgren's profiles of seven leading agencies—originally printed in last April's print issue:

This Week's Bloggers

Traveler researcher Jessie Johnston keeps promising to share her Thanksgiving tale of airport woe on this blog, but has yet to spill the beans. Assistant to the editor Emily King wishes she'd spit it out already.

Time Flies

As we mentioned last week, some of us (Jessie) have been spending an unpleasant amount of time in airports lately. We also promised to share her tale of airport woe this week, but she's not quite up to reliving the trauma through writing just yet, so we're going to tide you over with a useful tool to help you spend as little time in airports as you possibly can.

A recent Lifehacker post alerted us to a not-so-new but new-to-us website. The TSA's Security Checkpoint Wait Times page allows you to search by U.S. airport and day of the week for average and maximum security line wait times based on historical data.

Turkey Trot: Trekking Through Central Anatolia

Cure Center and Spa at the Patalya Thermal Resort near Kizilcahamam, Turkey.

IT loves off-the-beaten-path treasures, especially when they come to us from English-teaching, novel-writing, Turkey-trotting dispatchers like Michael Lukas. Here, he sends up some tips from his apartment in Ankara, Turkey:

When the Fulbright Commission told me that I was going to be placed for a year in Ankara, I can't say I was very excited. A utilitarian and mostly concrete city of nearly four million—nearly half of them bureaucrats—Turkey's capital (for the last 83 years) is routinely the butt of travel guides' unkind jokes. But although Ankara pales in comparison to Turkey's major tourist sites—Istanbul, Cappadocia, and the Mediterranean coast—it is the perfect trampoline for exploring Central Anatolia, an untrampled region brimming with vineyards, thermal baths, and stunningly well-preserved Ottoman houses.

Royal Flush: The World's Best Bathrooms

Since we haven't given you a potty post  for months (gasp!), IT welcomes Andy Isaacson's  report on the world's best and worst toilets:

There are certain elements of travel that can be properly plotted and planned for (an aisle seat, ocean-view room) and those that cannot (good restaurant service, sunny weather). Unfortunately, the time and place of nature's call would fall into the latter category—making the Bathroom Diaries, a website that reviews over 8,000 of the world's public toilets, not the most practical travel resource. Nevertheless, the site is the world's most complete review on the sanitization, safety, and aesthetics of loos/WCs/little-boys-and-girls-rooms from Arkansas to Zimbabwe. What's more, the database—as yet unavailable in Zagat paperback form—can be downloaded to a cell phone, via Vindigo.

The Maine Attraction

Feel like winter just crept up on you? Not quite ready for the holidays? Herewith, IT provides the ultimate antidote to light-festival-and-Christmas-market overload, a description of photo editor Linda Meyerriecks's summer vacation in Maine:

We rented a house on Rackliff Island not far from Rockland, in the middle of Wyeth country. One of our favorite museums in Rockland, the Farnsworth, houses much of the Wyeth family's famous artwork, and we try to visit every time we're in Maine. Last summer, though, we were surprised and delighted to find Victoria Wyeth giving a tour of her uncle Jamie's paintings when we arrived. Victoria, who leads tours at the Farnsworth during July and August, provided a whimsical look into her uncle's work, their family's life in Maine, and Monhegan Island, where Jamie spent a lot of his time painting.  We were able to follow the local children growing up in his paintings; the boy with the Dead Cat Museum was especially intriguing.

Chill out in Vienna

As per usual, chief researcher Marilyn Terrell has led IT to yet another interesting locale and offers an alternative antidote to jet lag:

If you happen to be waiting around in the Vienna airport for a connecting flight and you don't have time to take the cool 16-minute nonstop City Airport Train into town, and it's 9 a.m. Austrian time and 3 a.m. your time, and you want to reset your internal clock as quickly as possible, here's a convenient place to sit in the sun and soak up those jet-lag-reducing rays.

Wired Wanderlust: Family Travel Blogs

Mozart in her flamenco outfit

Family travel doesn't necessarily mean piling into the station wagon with armloads of Mad Libs, granola bars, and pillows anymore. IT has scoured the Web to nab some of the best family travel blogs floating around in cyberspace.

Reader Lisa Dee wrote in to share her favorite travel blog, Soul Travelers 3, which "is a great portrayal of a traveling family." This family of three from Santa Cruz is currently traveling the world with stops including Brussels, Provence and Egypt (soon!). As this risk-loving couple travels the world with their six-year-old daughter nicknamed "Mozart," they document their journeys with colorful photographs and vivid descriptions.

Away in a Market: European Christmas Shopping

Locals and tourists alike love Europe's year-round open-air markets for their fresh produce. In December, many European cities (especially in Germany) take the concept to the next level with the opulence of their annual Christmas markets. IT asked part-time Belgium resident Amy McKeever to round up three of her favorites:

Nuremberg, Germany, describes itself as a "true Christmas city" and proves it with its formidable market, from December 1 to 23. You can browse for tree ornaments and buy "Nuremberg Plum People"—figures made from prunes and walnuts—at any of the over 150 tastefully decorated red-and-white stalls. The city, which frowns on use of plastic fir garlands as decor, presents the most beautiful stalls with gold, silver, and bronze "Plum People" awards. The Christmas Angel, with her long golden curls and dress, opens the market each year and makes many charitable appearances in the run-up to Christmas.

IT's Healthy

As we've said before, IT is all about healthy eating. We've also recently spent a lot of time in airports and planes (more on that next week), so we're thrilled about a couple of new studies on healthy eating for air travelers.

Two weeks ago the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (described by the Washington Post as "a medical group that advocates for vegetarianism") released its annual Airport Food Report, surveying 13 major U.S. airports. The report bases airports' scores on the percentage of their restaurants serving "at least one vegetarian entrée that is low in fat, high in fiber, and cholesterol-free." Overall there was a 13-percent improvement over last year, with all but one of the previously surveyed airports showing a higher score (last year's number-one Chicago O'Hare went down a point). Top-rated was Orlando, with a score of 97 (up from its eighth-place 76 last year), and described by PCRM as offering "a bounty of healthy choices."

This Week's Bloggers

While she hates Delta's cheese spread, Emily King, Traveler's assistant to the editor, loves the Biscoff cookies served on their flights. Researcher Jessie Johnston wishes airlines would stop giving vegetarians margarine for their rolls. "We eat butter!"