Intelligent Travel

IT Hits the Beach

IT's friend and on-call beach expert  Laurel Kellner took an off-season jaunt to the Virginia coast, and came back with sand between her toes and tips on the brain:

Waking up in Virginia Beach during the off-season you realize this: It's one of the best times to enjoy the place. Tourists? Few to none. Room rates? We found as low as $49 (plus tax) at the Best Western just a few blocks from the boardwalk. A spectacular sunrise over the sea enticed us to enjoy the morning merits of more than two miles of flat sandy beach—perfect for strolling and scoping surfers riding the early waves.

This Week's Bloggers

Now that they have a new year's worth of annual leave to schedule, Traveler's assistant to the editor Emily King is fantasizing about following a camel train through Mauritanian desert, while researcher Jessie Johnston has her sights set on Kobe, Japan.

Introducing AirTroductions

In a conversation over the holidays, Jessie's father told her about an online service he'd read about that allowed air travelers to connect with people booked on the same flights; sort of Match.com meets the Mile-High Club. Hoping he was providing her with blog fodder rather than not-so-subtly hinting about her deficient love life, your intrepid blogger trolled the internet and found AirTroductions. The site is set up like dating and social networking sites, allowing members to create profiles and then search for other users who have seats booked on the same flights. Registration is free, but there is a $5 fee per itinerary to contact other members. If you hit it off online, you can contact the airline and request to be seated together (the site provides tactical suggestions). Even those skeptical of the romantic possibilities of air travel might want to give it a look; AirTroductions explicitly markets itself as a way of making both personal (not necessarily romantic) and business networking connections.

Topflight Memorial

Even though our offices are only a few blocks from the White House, IT often forgets it lives in such a tourist mecca. On a recent Saturday—with help from her sight-seeking family—Emily King ventured past the Potomac to visit the newest addition to D.C.'s myriad of monuments (now one of her favorites): the United States Air Force Memorial:

For months (since mid-October when it opened), I've been intrigued by the memorial—specifically, the three stainless steel spires you see when crossing the Memorial Bridge or driving south on Interstate 395. From afar, the spires look like thin moon crescents—or, as I've heard them better described, jet streams. And while they certainly merit a look from the distance, up close—at the base of the memorial—they elicit a sort of magical, even dizzying awe as you gaze up at their massive curvature.

Civilization as We Know IT

Like most Canadians, IT (half-Canuck, after all) has had issues with Air Canada in the past (a New Year's Eve spent alone in the Best Western Toronto Airport West was a particular low point in the relationship). That said, we have always been huge fans of the airline's enRoute magazine, in which, for example, we were first introduced to sudoku years before the current craze. One of our favorite features of the magazine was the longstanding Civilization Index department, which scored 24 of the world's great cities on five different criteria meant to determine their level of sophistication. Cities were originally analyzed in pairs, then placed on the continuum of all cities rated to date. The final ranking was published two years ago, but IT hadn't even been conceived yet (we barely knew the word blog), so, in the spirit of better late than never , we thought we'd share this beloved time waster with you.

Amtrak to the Rescue

We love it when chief researcher Marilyn Terrell shares her family's travel tales and tips. This week, she gives the scoop on unaccompanied minors on Amtrak:

Have you ever had a week when your friends abandon you and refuse to sit with you at lunch? Well, our sixth-grader James recently had a week like that, and my husband and I were trying to think of something that would cheer him up when his big sister Emma (who lives in New York) called with the perfect solution: She had scored two awesome seats to the Giants-Eagles game that Sunday afternoon in the Meadowlands, and asked if James would like to go. The problem was getting him to New York and back. His older siblings had flown alone when they were nine and ten, but further away than New York. A train made more sense from D.C., but they have multiple stops with people getting on and off, and there are no flight attendants; who would keep an eye on him?

Train Trance: Zug's Psychedelic Bahnhof

If you take a train to Zug, a lovely Swiss town that's become a ritzy suburb of Zurich, it's best to arrive at night. Although you'll miss the view of Lake Zug and the mountain (the Zugerberg), you'll be able to appreciate the subtly shifting light installation in their recently redesigned train station. Built mostly of glass, the five-story bahnhof starts off glowing blue, then almost imperceptibly turns purple, then pink, then sunset orange, then red, then slowly back to pink, purple, and midnight blue, all in the space of two and a half minutes.  An American artist named James Turrell designed the permanent light show, which contrasts strikingly with the traditional Swiss architecture of the town. When Traveler's chief researcher Marilyn Terrell was there this fall, several photographers had set up cameras on tripods to catch the changing lights, so she was surprised to find not a single YouTube video of this phenomenon. She contacted Zug Tourism and the Swiss Railways, but although they had still shots, they had no video.  Still shots can't capture the effect, so she asked her brother who lives in Zug with his family to shoot a short video, which he graciously provided here: an Inside Traveler exclusive! (Warning: not much happens between 0:40 and 1:40. Take a minute to meditate.)

Shake IT, Baby

IT digs the Bard . So we drooled a little on our doublet when we heard about the Kennedy Center's six-month-long Shakespeare in Washington festival (though we do wish they'd come up with a catchier name…Shakespeare is Capital?). The fest kicks off on Saturday (this year's bona fide twelfth night) with a free reading of Will's eponymous play in the Kennedy Center's Concert Hall, directed by the Shakespeare Theatre Company's artistic director. From that point on, more than a hundred performances and exhibits will proliferate throughout the D.C. area including offerings by local outfits like Woolly Mammoth, the National Symphony Orchestra, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. More exotic presenters during the course of the event include the Kirov ballet and opera, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and jazz doyenne Dame Cleo Laine. For a non-traditional take on the exploits of everybody's favorite Danish prince, we recommend the Tiny Ninja Theater's interpretation starring plastic vending machine figurines, the Studio Theatre's production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead or Hamlet's trial, as presided over by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. If your ears don't perk up at either iambic pentameter or the dulcet tunes of Cole Porter, perhaps you will find the accompanying exhibits at the National Building Museum and various other local galleries more to your liking. And if none of this floats your boat…why on earth did you read this far? You must have a crush on us or something.

United We Fail

IT co-founder Jessie Johnston had a rough time getting to London for her vacation over Thanksgiving, thanks primarily to United Airlines' poor customer service. It took her a while to put the trauma down in words, but she finally has. Here's her story:

I arrive at Dulles Airport at 4:00 p.m., for a flight departing an hour and 37 minutes later. I had actually tried to be earlier, but the vagaries of the D.C. Metro had resulted in my missing the shuttle I'd planned to catch by about 30 seconds, so I arrive a half hour later than planned. Turns out this is only the first of many mishaps.