Travel’s With “Lapham’s Quarterly”: Christopher Columbus Will Trade Cotton For Gold, 1493
Christopher Columbus wrote to his investors in Portugal in 1493 after arriving in the New World. Born in Genoa in 1451, Columbus first took to the sea as a boy, later serving in the Portuguese merchant marine and working as a chart maker in Lisbon. The Spanish Crown funded his voyage to the…
Dan Brown’s D.C. Deficiency
Maybe I’m an old-school travel writer, but I’ve always felt strongly about a vital Rule of the Road: Remain responsible to your destination. At a time when ethics sits way behind carelessness and the bottom line, I sometimes see this Code of the Craft violated in ways both lurid and…
Mad Men Hotels: Will Draper Make Them Boring?
One of the more intriguing aspects of AMC’s Mad Men, the over-marketed, over-blogged-about, and overly fetishized (and fetishizing) TV drama that returned this year partnering with Banana Republic and Hilton hotels, is how it has portrayed the travel and more fantastically, the hospitality world…
France Travel Tips for Roman Polanski and Other Fugitives
Poor Roman Polanski.
The 76-year-old, Paris-based director couldn’t travel to Switzerland from his elegant hideout city this past weekend without getting arrested. Shameful, considering that nearly everyone, including the now-adult woman he drugged and shagged in ’77 (when she was 13 years old)…
My Funship to Egypt (1913)
I had left Europe for no reason except to discover the Sun, and there were rumours that he was to be found in Egypt.
But I had not realised what more I should find there.
A P. & O. boat carried us out of Marseilles. A serang of lascars, with whistle, chain, shawl, and fluttering blue clothes,…
Why America Needs Trains (and Other New England Observations) [Vermont, 1892]
After the gloom of gray Atlantic weather, our ship came to America in a flood of winter sunshine that made unaccustomed eyelids blink, and the New Yorker, who is nothing if not modest, said, ‘This isn’t a sample of our really fine days. Wait until such and such times come, or go to such and a…
UPDATED: Dan Baum’s Twitter Guide to Becoming a Foreign Correspondent (Part 2)
[Ed. note: Author Dan Baum (@DanielSBaum) is currently telling his Twitter followers the story of how moving to Africa launched his journalism career. This is the second and last part in a TFT series of his collected tweets. Read the first post. Or jump to Part 2's *updated* second half.]
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Dan Baum’s Twitter Guide to Becoming a Foreign Correspondent (Part 1)
[Ed. note: Author Dan Baum (@DanielSBaum) is currently telling his Twitter followers the story of how moving to Africa launched his journalism career. This is the first in a TFT series of his collected tweets.]
I am about to tell another long story in tweets. Some of you like that, some of…
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My Priceline Staycation (Part III)
This is the third and last installment of “My Priceline Staycation.” Read the previous episode or start at the beginning of the series.
III.
Arabian Nights and Corned Beef Days
What’s funny about Dubai, I realized in the wee hours of my second morning in the country, is that it never…
America’s Worst New Trend in Entertainment — and Other Surprises in Salt Lake City
The whirlwind tour of Utah continues! Gather ’round and I will share with you a terrifying tale of America’s worst new trend in entertainment, a fad that is sweeping the country by storm and absolutely must be stopped for the sake of our children and grandchildren. But first, some history,…
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