Best in Travel: Review of the Week ending 4 June
In the week that the Colosseum announced plans to open its famous underground passages to the world, a bizarre story emerged about the Russian man who is creating his own subway tunnels underneath his home. Equally bizarre was the amusing precedent set by a Swiss court, which upheld an Appellenzer hiker’s claim that he should be allowed to hike naked.
Meanwhile, the adventurers of the world were not on the mountains but on the high seas. Crazy Scotsman Don Lennox is not only attempting to break the record for the fastest row across the Atlantic; he will then run coast to coast across America, hoping to complete both feats in under 100 days and raise $1m for charity in the process.
Further North, Norwegian explorers Borge Ousland and Thorleif Thorleifsson will soon embark on a daring attempt to sail around the North Pole, which was previously thought impossible. All of that must seem like an awful lot of effort for Jonathan Trappe, who leisurely floated across the English Channel under a bundle of helium balloons.
One wonders if similar methods might end up being a last resort for the $22m project to get Concorde airborne again.
Concorde Jet
If there is any British Airways cash in the Concorde project, it’s likely to be withdrawn. The airline has already lost over $150m from industrial action as the second wave of strikes was launched this week, and the mistakenly printed ad featuring Osama Bin Laden in a company magazine will have done nothing for public relations.
However, anyone thinking of switching to economy airlines, beware! Your plane is much more likely to be grounded than planes with a high percentage of business passengers.
And all airline passengers are more likely to be bumped from overbooked planes this year: nearly 800,000 overbookings are expected in 2010.
But the Obama administration has flexed its muscle, attempting to raise the fines to up to $650 for a wait of up to 2 hours and up to $1300 for longer delays. Which is good news for ardent US soccer fans who are off to the World Cup in South Africa: they are the most supportive fans in the world, according to Skyscanner.
Elsewhere in the Americas, spare a thought for the people of Guatemala who have been devastated by the tropical storm Agatha. This extraordinary image is indicative of the destruction.
Sinkhole in Guatemala City / Photo: AP
Lastly, have a look at this controversial new $4m Tourism Australia ad, which has created quite a buzz around the web since it was released last week. It’s been panned by the Aussie media and social commentators, who bemoan its hackneyed stereotypes…but it is expected to increase international tourism. A bigger audience for these drunken parrots can only be a good thing.