News & Topics

  Ok, it’s not really all that simple or exciting—but it’s more fun this way. See, about 20 years ago, some enterprising burglars with excellent taste broke into Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum disguised as policemen and made off with 13 paintings including three Rembrandts and a Vermeer—a total value of between $250 and $300 million. Not bad for 81 ... Read More »

  Quick, go stream the music from the White Stripes’ upcoming tour documentary, “Under The Great White Northern Lights” before they turn off the tap! (Vulture)   Saucy opera star Renee Fleming is now promoting an album of covers including songs by Band of Horses, Arcade Fire, Death Cab for Cutie, and The Mars Volta. Curious. (Guardian UK)   Those ... Read More »

  Let’s give one last great round of applause to the Oscar winners last night. While the show itself was a tad dull, being the creators of a travel-guide series that tours you through the world’s most famous film locations, we were thrilled by the virtual global voyage the Academy Awards offered. while James Cameron’s “Avatar” picked up scores of ... Read More »

  Don’t have time to get to the Armory Show? Browse through the best of it with this slideshow tour. (World’s Best Ever)   For those of you who are more familiar with “The Legend of Zelda” than New York geography, this 8-bit map of the five boroughs should be fairly straightforward. (Gothamist)   All those frequent-flier miles you’ve racked ... Read More »

  If you’ve ever thumbed through an edition of our “Music + Travel: Worldwide” guidebook to musical scenes from around the globe, you’d know that we have a soft spot in our hearts for the bouncing Afro-Pop beats that flowed out of the Africa starting in the 1970s. Specifically, we’ve dedicated an entire chapter to “Ethiopop”, the heady mix of ... Read More »

  We’re just a few days away from the official release of our next volume of globetrotting goodness—our “Art + Travel Europe: Step Into the Lives of Five Famous Painters”. We’re so excited about the launch of this title, which walks you through the lives of artists like Goya, Van Gogh, Vermeer, Caravaggio, and Munch through walking tours of the ... Read More »

  Japan Airlines’ stewardess uniforms are a big hit with the public, but for all the wrong reasons. (BoingBoing)   A member of the Queen’s Guard, famous to tourists for being as stoic and steady as statues, proves his mettle by vomiting mid-march and not missing a single step. (HuffPo)   Architect Frank Gehry got fed up working on designs ... Read More »

  For his new, effects-heavy “Alice in Wonderland”, Tim Burton spent a relatively short time filming real-world locations, sticking to the beautiful Antony House in Torpoint, Cornwall and the nearby Charlestown Harbour for the movie’s early scenes. Once Alice falls down the rabbit hole again it is, as you can imagine, mostly CGI-created environments and Hollywood stage sets from there ... Read More »