Today we introduce the Travel Story Hall of Fame, an occasional series in which we honor the best in travel writing new and old.
Title: The Lonely Planet Guide to My Apartment
Author: Jonathan Stern
Publication: The New Yorker
Date: April 24, 2006
Nomination Speech: I first read Jonathan Stern’s Shouts and Murmurs piece in “The Best American Travel Writing 2007,” but its tone, its language and sub-heads were all weirdly familiar, as though I’d read the story before. That eerie sense of recognition is a sure sign of a well-executed satire.
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Guide, Lonely Planet, Lonely Planet Guide, Planet Guide
A traveler thinks that transfers are included in his river cruise package, thanks to the company’s vague promotional copy. Will the cruise company cover the costs to help keep this vacation afloat?
Ground transfers are supposedly included in Robert Brown’s Viking River Cruise . But he supposes wrong, and now he’s being asked to pay extra for them. Is that right?
Q: My wife and I are booked on a Viking River Cruise. We plan to go from Washington to Moscow three days early, take the river cruise to St. Petersburg and remain there for three days before going on to a four-day stopover in Paris en route home.
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River Cruise, Transfers
Brazilian tourists in Central Florida spend the day shopping at the Orlando Premium Outlets near Disney World.
Orlando — “Oi — Sejam bem-vindos!” — meaning “Hi, welcome!” — is a Portuguese phrase heard more and more these days at Florida’s tourist spots.
That’s because Florida is the top U.S. vacation destination for Brazilians, who are taking advantage of a favorable exchange rate and low prices. Brazilians outnumbered all other international travelers to Florida in 2011, up 41% from the previous year, according to state tourism officials.
And there’s no sign of this Brazilian invasion slowing down: The U.S.
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Florida, Florida Tourism
There is a very old advert for electricity being re-run on RTE television at the moment called ‘Coming Home’ which depicts the emigrant (prodigal) son being picked up by his Dad at the airport and driven home to his doting (Irish) Mammy who is busy preparing the house for his arrival.
The beautiful old house is lit up like a Christmas tree, the immersion is on, so himself can have a hot bath while the electric blanket warms up his bed and something nice has just been popped in the oven.
No wonder its striking a chord nationally and globally thanks to YouTube etc as it evokes perfectly what Christmas means not just to the Irish, but universally, that elusive warm fuzzy feeling of coming home to the perfect family set up which so seldom happens in reality?
It’s been a tough year in Ireland and to be honest we’re barely holding it together and while we have no choice but to work our way out of this recession there will be a lot of broken hearts this Christmas with so many families fragmented by emigration. There i Full post…
Coming Home, Home
Jelle Oostrom is a travel writer and photographer based in the Netherlands, and has interesting photo galleries of his journeys to Morocco, Andalucia, Thailand, Portugal, Italy and Indonesia.
In common with most photographer who travel to Morocco, Jelle’s gallery of this country is predominantly of streetscapes, landscapes and, with a couple of exceptions, of people from a distance (as most Moroccans dislike being photographed for cultural reasons).
I especially liked Jelle’s photographs of Chefchaouen; the well known “indigo blue” town close to Tangier and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.
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Jelle Oostrom, Morocco