Content Section

Latest Updates

Seeking: Vacation

New Playland Motel Hipster Paradise

New Playland Motel Hipster Paradise Spencer Platt/Getty Images

New spot in Rockaway offers beach getaway for the urban crowd.

For those adventurous hipsters seeking a vacation outside of Williamsburg, a new beach getaway in New York's Rockaways will be opening just before July 4 festivities. Offering three bars (hopefully with Pabst-centric happy hour), two restaurants, and 12 seasonal rentals, the Playland Motel is sure to be an instant hit. The motel’s Rockabus runs from Battery Harris in Williamsburg to Playland, ensuring easy access for its target demographic. Of course, you’ll want to arrive as early in the summer as possible, that way you can claim you knew about it way before everyone else.

Read it at Gothamist

Efficient Travel

Float That Luggage

A Brazilian group’s plan to treat suitcases like air-hockey pucks beat out 617 other proposals to win Airbus’s student contest to promote more efficient air travel.

One of the world’s largest aircraft manufacturers thinks the key to the best flying experience might come from green technology and is hoping that the next generation of scientists will discover it.

Belgium Airport Strike

Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP

On Friday Airbus announced the winner of its biennial Fly Your Ideas challenge, a competition that encouraged college students to brainstorm and sell their ideas on innovative and green improvements to the airplane industry.

“We want to fly at the minimum cost and also in a more environmentally friendly approach. This is why we do the initiative: to look at future endeavors and develop a vision,” said Charles Champion, the executive vice president of engineering at Airbus. “It’s a means to engage the generation of students today in order to make them part of the solution and engage them in awareness around aviation.”

Just Like Rodman

Visit North Korea!

Take the vacation of a lifetime—in beautiful North Korea? That’s the pitch of Uri Tours, which organizes trips to the Hermit Kingdom. CEO Andrea Lee offers Lloyd Grove a sales spiel, concentration camps not included.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea might well be the most repressive totalitarian regime on earth, consigning two thirds of its nearly 25 million citizens to malnutrition, starvation, or worse, and 200,000 of its political undesirables to concentration camps, where human-rights groups estimate that 400,000 people have died from torture, executions, disease, and other causes.

North Korean Tours

Uri Tours President and CEO Andrea Lee in North Korea. (Uri Tours)

But it is also, believe it or not, a delightfully fascinating tourist destination.

That, anyway, is the sales pitch of Andrea Lee, whose Fort Lee, N.J.-based Uri Tours is one of a handful of Western travel agencies with access to the planet’s most isolated pariah nation, which has been ruled for nearly seven decades by the bizarre and belligerent Kim family dynasty.

gallery

Summer Road Trip 101

gallery

Father’s Day Travel Ideas

on the road

Amazon Unveils Curated Travel Books

Amazon Unveils Curated Travel Books Fulvio Zanettini/Laif/Redux

For all seven continents.

Before you pack your bags for a summer trip, check out Amazon's latest curation: "Around the World in 80 Books." The easy-to-navigate global list encompasses seven continents’ worth of place-specific literature. From a missionary's perspective on Africa in The Poisonwood Bible to following a South American family's lineage in One Hundred Years of Solitude, this reading list is a must-have for getting you in the mood to adventure before, during, and after that long-awaited respite.

Read it at Amazon.com

How They Lived

D.C.’s ‘Downton Abbey’ Mansion

With a brilliant art collection and lush grounds, The Hillwood Estate is a must-visit any time of year. But now, visitors can also sneak a peek into the life of its richest owner.

Always dreamt of visiting a European estate but can’t afford the flight? For Americans, there’s a solution closer to home.

The Hillwood Estate and its new exhibition Living Artfully: at Home with Marjorie Merriweather Post, gives visitors a behind-the-scenes look at how the insanely wealthy lived in the Mad Men era.

Clockwise from left: Marjorie Merriweather Post & Daughter Dina Merrill,The Japanese Garden, Hillwood Estate

Clockwise from left: Marjorie Merriweather Post & Daughter Dina Merrill,The Japanese Garden, Hillwood Estate (Hillwood Museum & Gardens)

Nestled within the leafy confines of Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park, the estate was the home of Post, the heiress to the substantial Post Cereals fortune which made her the richest woman in the world during her lifetime. She was an avid collector, and the range of art and precious objects she left behind at Hillwood is sure to whet the appetite of every sort of tourist, from those interested in Imperial Russian art and French porcelain, to those who want to see her fine jewelry collection and walk the Japanese gardens.

Street Artists

So You Think You Can Busk

Three Portuguese friends decided to quit their jobs and take off in an RV for Europe's major cities, finding and documenting the best street artists along the way. Nina Strochlic on Hello Europe's mission.

Troubadours strumming their guitars on street corners. Breakdancers flipping around subway poles. Magicians pulling reluctant passersby into their juggling tricks. Whether viewed as an earsore or a vibrant addition to urban life, street entertainers have been a constant presence in major cities all over the world.  And, as all metropolis dwellers know, they run the full gamut of talent. But every once in awhile you stumble across buskers who are so incredible you wonder why they’re on a street corner and not headlining a world tour.

Par7575997

A street musician plays the violin in downtown Rome. (Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty)

In Portugal, a group of three friends are preparing to set out on a 100-day, 20-country, social-media fueled search to discover the best of the best of these largely unknown street artists. The project, called “Hello Europe,” was started last summer, when friends Guilherme Duarte, Ivo Tavares, and João Mendes decided they had grown tired of their day jobs (as a software engineer, chef, and product designer, respectively). “I really started to feel an urge to change my life, to try other things and find my way,” the 28-year-old Duarte says. “We started thinking about what would make us happy.”

The three decided they wanted to create a project that would give them an opportunity to travel. While brainstorming, they realized each had spent a good chunk of time photographing and videoing street artists. A few years before, Duarte remembers, he and Tavares watched a performer in Amsterdam climb a lamppost while juggling a soccer ball, and the group ended up playing a pick-up match on the street. It was a moment they always remembered, and it contributed to their decision to focus the project on promoting Europe’s most talented street artists, who generally receive little recognition. “We see life with the same eyes,” Duarte says of his co-founders.

NEVER MIND

TSA: No Knives on Planes

TSA: No Knives on Planes Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Drops proposal allowing them after backlash.

The TSA was planning to let passengers carry small knives on planes for the first time since September 11, when Congress put the kibosh on it. After a backlash from lawmakers, airlines, and the public, the TSA tells the Associated Press it won’t be moving forward with the plan. A bipartisan group of 145 House Representatives wrote a letter to TSA head John Pistole last month urging him to reconsider the proposed changes, calling them “dangerous, unnecessary and irresponsible.” The new guidelines, originally announced in March, had already been delayed since April.

Read it at The Associated Press

Africa-Bound

How to Safari with Kids

conde-nast-inline-logo-new

Born in Zimbabwe, Peter Godwin has returned to Africa time and again as a journalist and author. But he’d never taken his New York City–raised sons with him—until now.

We stop for lunch on a sandy, shallow bend in the river in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, overlooked by a pair of curious buffalo. As our boat, the Lily, bobs in the water, our guide suggests a swim. What, in this crocodile-infested river? “We’ve swum here before,” he says, “and we’ve never lost anyone yet.” My two sons—Hugo and Thomas, ages ten and thirteen—are champing at the bit.

I imagine how this will look if it goes wrong: He allowed his children to do what? But I remember all the times as a kid I swam in the Savé River in Zimbabwe—which probably has a higher croc count, to say nothing of bilharzia—so I cave. The boys leap off the Lily into the water. Up on the observation deck, I stand solemn sentinel.

130603-safari-kids-tease

Peter Godwin, his wife, Joanna Coles, and their sons, Thomas and Hugo, on Bazaruto Island, in Mozambique’s Bazaruto Archipelago. (Cathrine Wessel)

Clever

Ecuador Unveils Banana-Centric Tourism Plan

Ecuador Unveils Banana-Centric Tourism Plan

A QR sticker encourages visitors to the country.

Don’t be so quick to discard that sticker on your banana. Ecuador’s new tourism-boosting plan, called the “Banana Ambassador,” revolves around those easy-to-ignore stickers. Utilizing Ecuador’s status as the world’s largest producer of bananas—exporting 24 billion tons annually—the tourism ministry has swapped out the old labels on the fruit for a QR code and country logo. Scan it with your phone and the code takes you to a promotional video encouraging you to visit to the official tourism site. “Now, every time someone eats a banana, he or she will be closer to visiting Ecuador,” the ministry’s video says.

Read it at Skift

gallery

Cool Green Cities

Fear-Mongering

He Wasn’t Going to Crash

The New York Times magazine has been catching a lot of flak for its ‘Lives’ piece about a near-death experience—for good reason, says Clive Irving. It wasn’t a near-death experience.

The last thing the world needs is a new outbreak of fear of flying. But that is the unhappy consequence of a spat between James Fallows of The Atlantic and Hugo Lindgren, editor of The New York Times magazine.

Fear of Flying

Getty

Fallows and others pounced on an essay in the magazine by Noah Gallagher Shannon with the attention-getting headline “The Plane Was About to Crash. Now What?”

Shannon’s white-knuckle prose described circling over Philadelphia for two hours to burn off gas because the pilots believed the landing gear was jammed and they would have to make a belly landing.

Gnarly

When Waves Became Cool

Surfing’s Gnarly Golden Age

Surfing’s Gnarly Golden Age

He’s a photographer who was lucky to grow up during Australia’s surf revolution. The pioneer talks to Josh Dzieza about his new book.

Island Time

Adventures in Puerto Rico

No Shirt, No Shoes ...

No Shirt, No Shoes ...

Kara Cutruzzula combs the beaches—and blackjack tables—of Puerto Rico for the meaning of ‘vacation.’

Directions

A Love Letter to New York

Maps of the Heart of Manhattan

Maps of the Heart of Manhattan

In ‘Mapping Manhattan,’ explore the city via 75 New Yorkers’ personal geographies. By Allison McNearney.

Around the World

Spotlight on the City

Bristol, Bridge to the Wide World

Bristol, Bridge to the Wide World

Travel writer Sara Wheeler, famous for her stories of polar expeditions, returns home to her city: Bristol.

In a Name

Please Call It Bombay

Perth

Australia's Outpost at the Edge

St. Petersburg

The Miracle on Marshland

Not for Amateurs

Tackling São Paulo

conde-nast-traveler

Globetrotting

Plan Your Next Trip!

12 Places to See in 2013

12 Places to See in 2013

Need to plan your next grand adventure? From Burma to Cuba, 12 places to see this year. By Nina Strochlic.

Travel