Tourists’ flight to wrong country

A family who were bound for a week’s holiday in Lanzarote are back home after a check-in desk mix-up meant they caught a flight to Turkey instead.
Charles Coray, his wife Tania and their nine-year-old daughter Phoebe did not realise the mistake until they landed and a hostess said “welcome to Turkey”.
They were issued the wrong boarding passes by a ground handling worker at Cardiff airport on Sunday morning.

Flight attendant wins trip into space - on Rocketplane!

Mathilde Epron was working her daily flight schedule when she grabbed a quick Kit Kat snack, tossed the wrapper in the garbage and went on about her normal duties. Suddenly, struck with a feeling that she should have checked the wrapper, she went back to the trash two hours later, dug out the refuse lo and behold, won one of the first trips into space on fledgling space tourism company, Rocketplane.

Qantas jet lands with gaping hole in fuselage

The 346 passengers were cruising at 29,000 feet Friday when an explosive bang shook the Qantas jumbo jet. The plane descended rapidly. Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling as debris flew through the cabin from a hole that had suddenly appeared in the floor.

It wasn’t until they were safely on the ground after an emergency landing that they realized how lucky they had been: A hole the size of a small car had been ripped into the Boeing 747-400’s metal skin and penetrated the fuselage.

Five hurt during Pamplona bull run finale

You get the basic idea. News Flash: running with bulls is not safe.

Enter the My Favorite Disney Parks Memory Contest

Just upload a video (up to one minute long) of your favorite Disney Parks memory. It can be actual footage of your Disney vacation, a re-enactment or any creative expression of your memory. And it can be a memory of any Disney Parks property: Disney Cruise Line®, Adventures by Disney, Walt Disney World® Resort, Disneyland® Resort, etc.

Iraq opens airport aimed at tourism

I think we would have to rate this one as adventure travel.

The 30 Busiest Passenger Airports in the World

The busiest airport is Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport which had 84,846,639 passengers arriving or departing according to 2006 data.

5 Ways Travelers Can Avoid Being Caught With Drugs

The only obvious suggestions that this article missed is “don’t carry drugs”.

13 Things Your Waiter Won’t Tell You

Splitting entrées is okay, but don’t ask for water, lemon, and sugar so you can make your own lemonade. What’s next, grapes so you can press your own wine?

Seriously? Do people do that?

Popularity: 56% [?]

Rape alert campaign on Greek beaches

An anti-rape campaign has been launched by the [British] Foreign Office in resorts in Greece following alarm at the numbers of attacks on female British tourists. More rapes and sexual assaults are reported by British nationals in Greece than in any other tourist destination, according to research by the FCO. British consular officials around Greece were made aware of 39 cases of rape last year, compared with 17 in 1998. Greece is visited by 3 million UK citizens annually and many of the attacks on British female visitors are carried out by fellow Britons.

Zeppelins fly over London

The Star Over London Airship Sponsored by Stella Artois – to give it its full and laborious title – will be sailing over the capital until August 21, offering aerial views of the city previously seen only by blasé pigeons.

The Star has been licensed to fly up to eight trips a day from its base at an airfield in Upminster, Essex. An hour’s ride following the river into town, past Charlton Athletic football club, past city airport, past Canary Wharf and on to within spitting distance – not that you would, obviously – of Westminster, will set you back just £360. Yup, £360.

Munich takes best airport in Europe award for fourth straight year

For the fourth year in a row, Munich Airport has been named the winner of the
“Best Airport in Europe” award in an international survey of 8.2 million passengers worldwide. The annual Airport Survey conducted by Skytrax, an independent, London-based aviation market research firm, is the largest international customer survey of airport quality standards.

Ads to be printed on airline boarding passes

Six international airlines have opened the door to advertisers with a new initiative that will allow ads to appear on boarding passes printed following online check-in.

Tourists to see buried Egyptian solar boat via camera

Zahi Hawas, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that a huge screen will be put in the solar boat museum, which is on the southern side of the great pyramid. The screen will show the boat which lies 10 metres below the surface.

Fuel crisis boosts Eurostar sales

The cross channel operator reports a 24.7% increase on ticket sales between January and June this year compared to last with traveller numbers reaching 4.63 million, an 18.3% year-on-year increase.

European High-Speed Train Tickets

Find and book London tours and activities on Viator.com. Book ahead to save time and money!

Popularity: 75% [?]

How do you feed as many people as you will find on a large cruise ship like the MS Volendam from Holland America? The last time we were on the Voldendam we took a tour of the kitchens on the ship. An impressive number of people man the dining room and kitchen.

The dining room staff includes:

The kitchen staff includes:

And during an average week the ship’s passenger’s will consume:

Other resources

• More video episodes from the Amateur Traveler.
• Holland America Cruise Discounts - Save up to 75%!
• MS Volendam - Holland America Cruise Ship Tour Video
• Here more about our cruise on Amateur Traveler Episode 113 - Theme Cruise to Panama (Shakespeare at Sea / MacMania)

Popularity: 62% [?]

As the two actors Michael Elich and Christopher DuVal made a pass at each other with swords the audience was perhaps more nervous than usual. Stage fighting requires preparation but how do you prepare for the stage rocking back and forth with the movement of a cruise ship? The actors were performing one of three one act plays that were a part of the Shakespeare at Sea cruise. Shakespeare at Sea was a collaboration between the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Insight Cruises and is part of a growing trend for theme based or education based cruises.

Theme cruises have two main advantages over a normal cruise.

• Interesting Activities - Instead of playing shuffle board, bingo or gambling in the casino imagine that you could fill the time at sea with whatever you personally find most interesting. If you are a baseball fan you can cruise with Ken Griffey Sr. and Andre Dawson. If you are a classical music fan you can attend concerts. If you are interested in science you can attend a cruise with writers from Scientific American.
• Interesting People - Imagine a cruise ship filled with people interested in the same things you are interested in. On the Shakespeare at Sea cruise we sat at dinner with other people in that program and had interesting conversations with interesting people. Obviously what interests you may be different from what interests me. I have considered a podcaster cruise and attended a Mac user cruise. Perhaps you would rather go on a Betty Boop fan club cruise

Adding a theme onto a cruise may add additional cost depending on the depth of the programming of activities. The Shakespeare at Sea cruise doubled the price of the cruise but for me more than doubled the value as well.

I have not found a great directory of themed cruises yet so if you have a hobby or interest try googling for that hobby and add the word “cruise”.

More information about theme cruising can be found in the Amateur Traveler Episode 113 - Theme Cruise to Panama (Shakespeare at Sea / MacMania).

Popularity: 52% [?]

The tires spun but the car slowly lost all forward momentum and started sliding backwards back into the darkness. I put on the brakes and that slowed but did not stop the backwards decline. I had been dreading this moment for a few days. After an occasionally white knuckle experience driving on Crete it was the parking garage for the last hotel that looked like it had defeated me.

Our first challenge with driving on Crete was navigation. We had taken the ferry into Heraklion and had a rental car dropped off the next morning at the hotel. With some creative double parking by the rental car agent that went without incident. We drove to the ruins of the palace of Knossos north of Heraklion without incident. Since the car was dropped off with an almost empty tank we did have to find a gas station before going to far.

It was the return trip through Heraklion that vexed us. We followed the signs to the national highway but soon found our selves in unmarked streets and alleys in Heraklion. I have a very good sense of direction but the roads did not seem to go where we wanted to go. Finally I started following cars more or less at random like the main character in Douglas Adam’s Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. I would pick the larger road that seemed to head north and west until we finally found the national highway.

The national highway towards Rethymno had its own set of challenges. The highway is a wonderfully newly paved two lane road. That is to say that it is striped as a two lane road with one lane in each direction. It is driven as a four lane road. When you are not passing you drive with your right tire, and occasionally your left tire as well, to the right of the white stripe marking the right shoulder. There is nothing quite as invigorating as the adrenaline rush that comes from seeing a truck coming at you mostly in your lane.

The people of Crete decorate the highways with small shrines to the drivers who failed this driving test. The shrines are small recreations of Greek orthodox churches decorated with flowers and other reminders of the unfortunate driver. As a Lamborghini passed me while strattling the center line I wondered if the small Lutheran church that they might put up upon my demise would look out of place.

After surviving all of that, I found myself sliding backwards down the incredibly steep ramp of the hotel’s parking garage. Parking garages in old European towns and I don’t always get along. I was a passenger when a former boss took out the side of a VW Westfalia in a parking garage in Bremen Germany. I had nearly done the same trick on more than one occasion. Just last Summer it smelled like I burned out a clutch escaping the clutches of a similar steep and cramped garage in Nice France.

My wife and daughter got out of the car and wished me luck as I took on the ramp one more time. After a running start I found the escape velocity of the garage in Chania. My legs shook for 5 minutes with the dose of adrenaline that my body thought might help with the situation. I had conquered driving in Crete and would live to tell of the experience.

Popularity: 55% [?]