Archives for June, 2009
Your Photos, Your Issue
Posted by Janelle Nanos on June 30, 2009 Images can create intrigue, bring wonder, and cause laughter or inspiration. They’re something we’re known for here at National Geographic, and since March 2006, we’ve enabled our readers to share their own visions of the world with us through our “Your Shot” online gallery. So we’re excited to announce that National Geographic’s Your Shot Special…
GrassRoutes Travel with Serena Bartlett
Posted by cwei on June 30, 2009 The East-Coast-in-Seven-Days tours are the stuff of my nightmares: traipsing from monument to monument at the crack of dawn, shoveling in food at all-too-crowded restaurants with the entire entourage, and learning about dead people rather than meeting live people. Enter Serena Bartlett, a seasoned traveler from Philadelphia who has lived in and visited over 25…
Jenss Family Travels: Costa Rica
Posted by Rainer Jenss on June 29, 2009 Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they’re blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys’ Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids. When our TACA flight from Lima finally touched down in the capital city…
Maira Kalman on Monticello
Posted by Meg Weaver on June 26, 2009 I was trying to explain to my non-American husband the other day why we should go to Monticello this summer. It’s incredibly unique and fascinating, I said, but I was met with a blank stare. I faltered and whimpered, “Well I was there when I was a kid and…and…it was cool. He invented a lot…
I Heart My City: Nellie’s Singapore
Posted by I Heart My City on June 26, 2009 Good day, city-lovers! Nellie Huang is a freelance travel writer who wants the world to know about the great city of Singapore. Want to see your city on IT? Copy and paste our list of fill-in-the-blank questions into an e-mail, fill in your answers, and send your responses to IntelligentTravel@ngs.org. And if you’re still waiting…
Retro Venice By Airstream
Posted by Marilyn Terrell on June 26, 2009 As we mentioned earlier, the National Geographic Museum in DC has just opened a wonderful free exhibit called “Kodachrome Culture: The American Tourist in Europe,” featuring big, luscious blowups of travel photos that appeared in the pages of National Geographic magazine (we call it NGM for short) in the 1950s and ’60s. I particularly liked…
What’s for Dinner, Hon?
Posted by Janelle Nanos on June 25, 2009 There may be no better way to end a weekend than by paying a visit to the Cafe Hon in Baltimore’s Hampden neighborhood. After driving seven hours home from the Catskills this past weekend, I was starving, and recalculated the iPhone map to direct me to the eclectic eatery. Replete with a life-sized Elvis statue,…
The Talk of Saratoga
Posted by Intelligent Travel on June 25, 2009 Contributing Editor Andrew Nelson gathers the gossip from his recent trip to Saratoga Springs, New York. Longtime patrons will warn you, traversing the Saratoga Springs Farmers’ Market is not for the fainthearted. At 8:30 a.m., a half hour before opening, parking is already scarce along High Rock Ave. where the market is held every Wednesday…
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival
Posted by Intelligent Travel on June 25, 2009 The 42nd annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival kicked off yesterday down on the National Mall, among D.C.’s iconic monuments and beloved museums. The festival will run this week through Sunday, June 28th, and picks up again Wednesday, July 1st through Sunday, July 5th for the Fourth of July weekend. Each year the free outdoor festival (see…
Kodachrome Tourism
Posted by Marilyn Terrell on June 25, 2009 A new exhibit opened today in the National Geographic Museum here in DC at the National Geographic Society headquarters. It’s called “Kodachrome Culture: The American Tourist in Europe” and it features wonderfully retro travel images from the pages National Geographic magazine. Here’s one of my favorites, a photo of people lounging on the rocky beach…
New Acropolis Museum and the Elgin Marbles
Posted by saldrich on June 24, 2009 The New Acropolis Museum, a project that the New York Times called “one of the highest-profile cultural projects undertaken in Europe in this decade,” is celebrating its opening day on Saturday after years of planning and labor–33 years in all, eight since the design was chosen. The stunning modern building, designed by New York architect…
In NYC this Afternoon? Watch Steve Nash Play Soccer
Posted by Janelle Nanos on June 24, 2009 Steve Nash – ‘The Player’ from meathawk on Vimeo. My football-fanatic fiancé (that’s European football, mind you) tipped me off to a great charity event happening this afternoon in New York City’s Chinatown. The second annual “Showdown in Chinatown,” which is coordinated by the Phoenix Suns’ Steve Nash, pits international pro soccer players against an…
A Holy Monastery Hidden from the World
Posted by Janelle Nanos on June 24, 2009 Guarded by giant seven-headed serpent gods high on an obscure mountain, in backcountry disputed by Thailand and Cambodia, is an ancient sacred site that’s not on the regular tourist map. Surrounded by landmines and bunkers from the Khmer Rouge era, and still caught up in today’s border disputes, Preah Vihear, or “Holy Monastery,” is a mysterious…
The Legend of Kodachrome Flat
Posted by Dan Westergren on June 24, 2009 Ever since Monday’s announcement by Kodak that they’re discontinuing production of Kodachrome film, professional and amateur photographers this week have been busy discussing its demise. Kodachrome was known for its rich color saturation and was widely used by National Geographic photographers in the first decades that the magazine printed in color. In fact, it was…
Welcome to Blog Wild!
Posted by Janelle Nanos on June 23, 2009 We’re always excited when a new National Geographic blog enters the fray, and for the past few weeks Blog Wild editor Ford Cochran has been publishing some seriously great content at a steady clip. Blog Wild covers all of the missions-related news at the society – from the work our explorers are doing out in…
Italian Grandmas Take Over NY Restaurant
Posted by Marilyn Terrell on June 23, 2009 I spotted this NY Daily News story on ColdMud, an aggregator site I love that scours the Web for interesting food news. (Researcher note: “Cold Mud” is diner slang for chocolate ice cream). Tired of cooking only for their own sometimes unappreciative families, eight Italian grandmas are taking turns in the kitchen of Enoteca Maria…
The Outer Banks Brewing Station
Posted by Intelligent Travel on June 22, 2009 It worked for the Wright brothers, but what can wind do for beer? Sam Boykin shares the secret of the country’s first wind-powered brewpub. It was the Outer Banks’ strong and steady winds that attracted Orville and Wilbur Wright to North Carolina’s Kill Devil Hills. And while the Outer Banks Brewing Station may never measure…
Garrison Keillor’s Top Ten State Fair Joys
Posted by Janelle Nanos on June 19, 2009 For some, it’s kitsch, Americana, and corn dogs. For others it’s the pinnacle of summer. And for Garrison Keillor, host of widely popular radio show Prairie Home Companion, it was an assignment unlike any other. In this month’s issue of National Geographic, Keillor shares the lessons he learned while visiting six state fairs last summer,…
Jenss Family Travels: Exploring Peru
Posted by Rainer Jenss on June 18, 2009 Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they’re blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys’ Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids. “Welcome back” were not the words we wanted to hear with six weeks…
It’s Munich in a Box!
Posted by Janelle Nanos on June 18, 2009 Our colleague Lynn Ackerson recently flew through the Munich airport, where she encountered two odd, futuristic-looking cubes in Terminal 2. Intrigued but exhausted, she curled up across a few chairs in the waiting area during her layover and said she’d investigate after her nap. Too bad she didn’t look first. The gleaming white boxes are…
We’ll Always Have Paris…Texas
Posted by Intelligent Travel on June 17, 2009 Traveler photographer Bob Krist recently paid a visit to Paris… Paris, Texas that is. Here, he shares some of the charms of the city on the far, far, left bank of the Seine. It may not be the City of Light, but the world’s second biggest Paris, in northeast Texas, is “worth a sidetrip” (as…
Top Ten Volunteer Vacations
Posted by Janelle Nanos on June 17, 2009 Need a rewarding getaway this summer? About about 100 getaways? Author Pam Grout has gathered a wide selection of fantastic–and fulfilling–trips to choose from in her book The 100 Best Volunteer Vacations to Enrich Your Life. Here are some of her favorites, with the full book excerpt here on Traveler’s site. Want the whole book?…
I Heart My City: Nadi and Ming’s Kuala Lumpur
Posted by I Heart My City on June 17, 2009 Greetings, city-lovers! Nadiah and Ming live in Kuala Lumpur, and they tell us that their city is bursting with things to do, see, and eat. Want to see your city on IT? Copy and paste our list of fill-in-the-blank questions into an e-mail, fill in your answers, and send your responses to IntelligentTravel@ngs.org. And if…
Catch Some Zzzs at the Zoo
Posted by Meg Weaver on June 17, 2009 It’s summertime and the living’s easy. Why not spend the night at the zoo, drifting off to sleep to the hoots of owls and the growls of lions? Zoos across the country host overnight sleepover events where kids and their families, Scout troops, and school groups can pitch their tents, snuggle in their sleeping bags,…
Russia Creates New Polar Bear Habitat
Posted by Janelle Nanos on June 16, 2009 Are you a fan of polar bears? (Who isn’t?!) Well there’s some good news from our friends over at the NatGeo News Watch blog: Russia will create a new 3.7 million-acre (1.5 million-hectare) park in the Arctic, a central area for the Barents and Kara Sea polar bear populations, WWF said today. Announcing the park,…
Get One Year for $10 »