Intelligent Travel

A Look at the Best Travel Stuff in 2007

This has been a big year for travel, and for IT. We relaunched the blog in June with a sustainability and authenticity focus, and have loved bringing you travel news, destination guides, and fun tidbits from our magazine's writers, editors, and readers in the time since. And since Traveler  worked hard bring you the World's Islands Rated in our year-end issue, we decided to root through the best of the Web's year-end travel offerings as a resource to our readers.

Hotels

• Trip Advisor travelers chose the Ten Most Luxurious Hotels. Hotel Chatter got the scoop on where to find WiFi on the road, while Forbes previewed "Ten Must-Visit European Hotels."

Reading

• Travel books reviewed by World Hum, Chicago Tribune, and the Times Online's "50 Best Travel Features of 2007."

Websites

• CNN, the Times, and Transitions Abroad, and Travel-rants all highlight the best of the Web.

Geekery

• Pierce Mattie and CBS.com checked out hot gadgets and Vagabondish took a hilarious look at useless gadgets including the Pillowig and the wearable sleeping bag.

Video

• Neat site Travercial scoured the Web and posts the top ten streaming travel videos of the year on their homepage.  

• Matt Brisbane continues to be a YouTube traveling sensation, with his "Where the hell is Matt?" video topping 8.5 million views.

World In Focus Photo Contest Winners

Our annual Photo Issue, now on newsstands, features the World in Focus contest winners drawn from over 27,000 entries. The Grand Prize went to Mark Unrau of Ontario, Canada, for this haunting image. Unrau snapped this image on the train that runs from Beijing to Lhasa, Tibet. The rail line—one of the world's highest railroad routes—had been completed just a month earlier. Many Tibetans feel the train is bad for their people and culture, but the Chinese have hailed it as a major technological achievement and said it will promote tourism. Unrau wanted to document the controversial new train. He took the photograph early in his 26-hour journey. "The woman was sitting in front of me for the duration of the ride," says the photographer, "and was glued to the window staring out at the expansive scenery."

Visit our website to see more winners from this year's contest. And add your own photos to our Flickr pool to have them featured on the blog.

Photo: Mark Unrau

Inside the Shaolin Temple

The Shaolin Temple in central China, recognized as the birthplace of both Zen Buddhism and the martial arts, doesn't give up its secrets easily. American photographer Justin Guariglia made repeated visits over five years just to get permission to photograph the monks who live there. Watch Traveler Editor in Chief Keith Bellows' One-on-One interview with Guariglia now:

Tour Guide: Canada's North

Frontiers North Adventures offers guided tours to the most remote destinations in Canada.

At the Elu Inlet Lodge, located just south of Victoria Island in Nunavut, Canada, a knowledgable guide takes guests in a five-passenger skiff to explore islands in the Elu Inlet, and on nature hikes to see archaeological sites of ancient tent rings, kayak stands, and fire pits. Guests will also have a chance to learn about the cultural arts from local Inuit artists.

What we like about the tour is that the Elu Inlet Lodge is owned and operated by Inuit, which means your money is going to help locals. (Frontiers North Adventures was nominated for Parks Canada Sustainable Tourism Award in 2006 for its efforts to encourage appreciation of Canada's cultural, natural, and aesthetic heritage.) The tour price includes two nights at Cambridge Bay, five nights at Elu Inlet Lodge, most meals, and round-trip airfare.

Frontiers North has many other tours around the far reaches of Canada, including tours to the Hudson Strait, Igloolik (to see walruses), and Cape Churchill (to see polar bears). "We've got the best access in the world to wild  polar bears," John Gunter, Frontiers North general manager, told IT. Because of that, they're able to provide one of their Tundra Buggies, as well as lodging and a wireless transmission to the cameraman for National Geographic.com's live Polar Bear Cam -- check it out!
 

Image: © Frontiers North Adventures

Photo Gallery: My China

Check out some of the amazing new photos we just put up online in the My China Photo Gallery like this shot of Mongolia herders on camelback by Adam Wong. The slideshow accompanies the cover feature for this month's issue.

Photo: Adam Wong

My China: Now on Newsstands

The January/February issue of Traveler is now on newsstands. Our sixth annual photo issue features a portfolio of pictures taken throughout China, and the winning entries from the World in Focus photo contest. It also has a bounty of great new online goodies for you to enjoy, which we'll be showing off this week:

• Check out the My China slideshow, featuring pictures from photojournalists with strong ties to the country and the stories behind the shots.
  

• Watch Keith Bellows' video interview with Justin Guariglia, a photographer who got amazing access to the monks living in the Shaolin temple. His pictures also appear in his new book Shaolin: Temple of Zen.

• Laura Morelli's newest column for The Genuine Article, where she explores the ancient art of Chinese silk.

• Test your geography skills in the latest WorldWise quiz.

• Stay classy with San Diego's Destination Guide.

• Check out our latest Free City guide to Seattle.

And if you're desperate for a last minute gift - don't forget a subscription to Traveler this year. Our two for one deal means you can give one and get one for yourself!

Happy Holidays from National Geographic Traveler and the staff at Intelligent Travel!

Sinterklaas and Santa Claus: An Ocean Apart

Contributing writer Cathy Healy was in Amsterdam this year to see some of the festivities that surround the arrival of Sinterklaas - or the Dutch Santa Claus.

If you’re naughty, not nice in the Netherlands, Santa’s helpers will stuff you in a sack and take you back to Spain. This is a threat? A free trip to Spain in December! But why Spain, I wonder? The real St. Nicholas was a bishop in Turkey and his bones are buried in Italy. A holdover from when Spain ruled Holland, during the Elizabethan era? But that’s another mystery to search out.

Today's mystery lies in the Sinterklaas traditions, experiencing which, on a scale of 0-10, hovers around 7 for culture sleuths. If Sinter and Santa started out as the same saint, how did they end up so different?

Sinter is welcomed to Amsterdam in mid-November, before our Thanksgiving, and leaves on his birthday, December 6, after his helpers have spent the night, climbing down chimneys to leave gifts. The Dutch separate Sinterklaas and gifts from Christmas and Christ. (I like that. Why should we bundle everything into one single day?)

My Dutch friends think they have the answer. They believe that Santa Claus was created by Coca-Cola, while Sint was a real man who is widely emulated for his gift-giving. Coca-Cola? Nope, that’s an urban legend, I tell them. They laugh and we sip our hot chocolates. It is December 3 and we're at Corlaer College near Nijkerk, where a crowd of good little boys and girls of the staff are greeting Sinterklaas and his helpers, who are called Black Piets. We’re fascinated.

A French Christmas Recipe

I learned at a young age that starting international or multicultural holiday traditions can be fun (and delicious). Every Christmas, my Russian great-aunt, who taught high school French in New York City for years, used to bake a bûche de Noël, the traditional French "Yule log" cake. Starting back in the 12th century, the French burned a hefty Yule log all through Christmas night on the fire. As stoves were popularized, the French kept the tradition going by placing a candle-lit log on the table for decoration. Today, it has become a log-shaped cake eaten after the traditional Christmas meal, or réveillon. 

As cakes go, it is pretty easy and lots of fun to decorate. Here are two recipes for the bûche. A tip from my mother, who carries on the tradition, is to use angel food cake mix. She says:

(1) Take two pans with half-inch sides (a jelly roll pan) and line them with tinfoil. Grease and flour the tinfoil. (2) Make a package of angel food cake and pour into the jelly roll pans and bake. (3) Turn the baked angel food cake onto a moist towel and carefully pull off the foil. (4) Frost the entire flat pieces of angel food cake (with your choice of chocolate frosting) and roll them up like a jelly roll. If you want, you can cut the "log" at an angle to make it look like a piece of cut wood. (5) Cut your second log into pieces for the branches that come off the cake. (6) Ice the entire cake, and streak it with a fork to make the frosting look like bark. You can also create knotholes by making a circular design with the fork. (7) Shape marzipan into mushrooms and dot with cinnamon or cocoa powder to look like dirt. (8) Place them strategically on the log.

Apparently Austria and Germany have their own versions of the bûche, called a baumkuchen, or "tree cake" that is roasted on a spit over the fire. Chances are you don't have a spit or an open fire, so here are two more recipes we found for a more practical version. Bon appétit, and have a wonderful time making those marzipan mushrooms -- I think my aunt loved this part the best. She used to pick wild mushrooms and actually eat them, much to everyone's shock! As these Flickr photos show, the bûche allows you to get really creative.

Happy Holidays from IT!

Photos:  distopiandreamgirl, bredlo 

Elvis, Je t'aime

Those of you still lamenting the demise of the Elvis is Alive Museum take heart, as you can always head across the pond to get more of the charismatic crooner. The International Herald Tribune reports that the Elvis My Happiness boutique, located not far from the Louvre, offers up a variety of objets for fans of "Le King." The store is run by a French fan club, and it's proprietor believes that Elvis' European fans are more passionate than their American counterparts, in part because he never performed in Europe (though he visited Paris on a tour with the U.S. Army). Check out this video for a slice of that passion.

Going Dutch

Cathy Healy's post on her favorite Amsterdam hotel reminded me of my favorite Dutch photographer, Jurjen Drenth, whose work has appeared in the Dutch edition of Traveler. I discovered him while fact-checking a story about Delft a while back. When he's not doing his commercial photography, Drenth hunts down the locations of famous paintings of the Dutch masters, and reproduces them, with a modern twist, in his photographs. On his website, Drenth explains that he "concentrates on the almost forgotten or hidden parts of Dutch culture." The photo above is take from his Vermeer series, and shows some of what's left of Vermeer's View of Delft landscape. 

Drenth also reproduces Dutch landscapes and interiors from the paintings of Van Gogh and Rembrandt. If you want to see the real Dutch masters, note that the main part of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is closed for renovation until 2010, but a wing of the musuem remains open, with highlights from the permanent collection. It will not, however, include this Photoshopped portrait of Marge Simpson as The Girl With the Pearl Earring.