Gadling

There is no telling when a photo will show up as a Photo of the Day. Ultraclay! posted this one December 1, 2006. Why now? Why today? These tango dancers, one a blur, but for the clasp of a hand, evokes a romantic dream--the type of shot that can only be captured at the right instant.

Great!

Send your captured moments our way at Gadling's Flickr Photo Pool. Who knows? Next week --, tomorrow, or two years from now, it could show up as a Photo of the Day.

There is a newly published Forbes.com article on the top 10 cities for making a living in the United States. Each has something to offer travelers as well. Here are the top cities and one place to go to in each. These are the first places that immediately came to mind. It's an odd assortment.

1. Houston, Texas. I've been to the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles and found it incredibly worthwhile and moving. From the description of the Holocaust Museum in Houston, it sounds similar, although there is a section that includes first person accounts of the Holocaust survivors who live in the city.

2. Minneapolis, Minnesota. As I've posted before, the outdoor art in Minneapolis is fantastic, particularly, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

3. Boston, Massachusetts. The Freedom Trail that winds through the old part of Boston highlights the important places during the American Revolution. Here's a tour that looks like a fun way to take it in. When I walked the Freedom Trail in Girl Scouts, we were on our own. I wish we had been on this tour.

I don't want to laugh but this is too funny: A 78-year old Swedish woman misunderstood check-in procedures at Stockholm-Arlanda Airport and along with her bag, she also stepped onto the conveyor belt and fell down the baggage chute. She was rescued by baggage handlers and taken back to the terminal. The conveyor belt was unmanned at the time so no one was there to stop her.

Luckily, she came out with no injuries and in time to catch her flight to Germany.

Poor lady, such an innocent mistake. I hope atleast she enjoyed the slide down.

With the new onslaught of baggage check fees upon us, many people are looking to creative ways to package special items into their carry on. My friend Bruce tried to bring back a cooler full of lobster on one transcon trip a few years back. That ended up tipping over and leaking water all over the guy in front of him.

Something similar happened on Irish carrier Ryanair earlier this month. A passenger trying to transport frozen mushrooms stowed a package in the overhead compartment, but briefly after takeoff the package melted and sauce dripped all over an adjacent passenger.

In this case, however, this passenger had an allergy to the sauce and started to have an adverse reaction. Complaining of problems in his mucous membranes, the passenger became ill and the crew decided to divert into Frankfurt to offload the passenger and send him to the hospital.

Take heed, transporters of food, a little bit of vacuum sealing always helps to keep your food fresh, protected and in its place.

Salvador Dali once demanded that a horse be delivered to his hotel suite in Paris, along with sheep, which he liked to shoot with blanks. Mariah Carey requires the faucets in her hotel rooms to be gold and the toilet seats replaced with new ones. Britney Spears once demanded that a hotel in Glasgow, Scotland cancel the reservations of all other guests while she was staying there.

Such is the strange world of celebrities and their hotels, as detailed in a pretty funny round-up at Concierge.com.

You think you were a pain in the rear when demanding a room that didn't actually smell like smoke? Or sending back that hamburger to room service -- for a second time -- for being overcooked?

That's nothing on these 15 celebrities singled out here, who demand room alterations, weird candy, and sometimes make off with expensive linen.

Russell Crowe once punched a hotel receptionist in the face...with a telephone. Nicole Kidman gives hotel staff a multi-page instruction manual for making her bed. Amy Winehouse treats her rooms like crack houses.

And who can forget Michael Jackson's predilection for dangling babies from hotel windows?

This celebrity who's who in unwelcome hotel guests reads like a tour of some of the world's poshest penthouses, and the people hoteliers would rather not see return.

Despite the rise of regional airlines aimed at budget-minded travelers, SilkAir, one of Southeast Asia's original low-cost carriers, remains at the top of the game. Even with competition coming from the likes of Bangkok Airways and AirAsia and with high fuel prices, SilkAir managed to post a profit for the last quarter.

Perhaps SilkAir's lineage has something to do with its success. It is wholly owned by Singapore Airlines, which is consistently rated as one of the world's best carriers. Aside from the in-flight services and amenities that come from being associated with a high quality brand, SilkAir often carriers Singapore Airlines customers on shorter, regional flights.

The main competition comes from AirAsia. It flies many of the same routes (Singapore to Phuket, for example). However, unlike SilkAir, it has no sugar daddy to feed it passengers and give it a reputation for quality.

SilkAir also code-shares with Malaysia Airlines and Garuda and flies to cities in insular Southeast Asia as well as vacation hot-spots.

But, the best reason to fly SilkAir: the in-flight meal of Hainanese chicken rice is nearly as good as you'd get in a Singapore hawker center.

Matt Gross, the New York Times' "Frugal Traveler," seems to have everything-- a dream job, plenty of money, a talent for travel writing, and dozens of interested women. So why, in his revealing new essay in Nerve, does he claim to be so sexually frustrated? Because, oh yeah, he's married.

We often stereotype travel writers as being rootless, wandering singles who bounce blithely from one location to the next. But this isn't the case for Matt Gross, who writes that being a married travel writer is often an "exercise in sexual frustration."

One of the great things about travel is the sense of adventure it brings, the willingness to try anything-- consequences be damned. But that only extends so far for the Frugal Traveler. He writes:

"Travel is about embracing new experiences: foods you've never eaten, languages you've never spoken, religious rituals you've never even heard of. To decline any offer at all - a spontaneous wedding invitation in Pondicherry, a swig of rice wine from an unmarked flask in a Saigonese goat restaurant - is to deny the very spirit of voyaging, and so I decline nothing. Except for it. The fact that I can't take part in it, that most hallowed ritual of travel - sex with strangers - frustrates me on a philosophical level as well as a primal one."

Read the whole entertaining essay here.

[HT: Our good friends at World Hum]

Today is the first day of school for my children. My daughter waltzed out the door at 7 a.m. this morning after showing me the piece of cheese she was eating--(she plays soccer and I'm adamant that she eat some sort of protein), to catch her ride. She's a 10th grader.

For my son, who is now a first grader, the anticipation build-up of last year is much less. We know our routine. Kindergarten left a lump in my throat. First grade is old hat, but he still wants me to drive him and walk him in for the first day. After today, he heads out on the bus.

This first day of school got me thinking about schools around the world and what a gift having a school to go to is. When I was in the Peace Corps, I worked with my village primary school on certain days to do health education. In The Gambia, at the time, most kids did not go to school. The primary school in my village was the only one for miles around.

We often like to mock the sleuthing abilities of the Transportation Security Administration, or lack thereof, since its security screeners can get confused over a misshapen tube of toothpaste or a computer with no drives.

But as far as I know, the TSA has never become addled over bacon.

I cannot say as much about the crack security screeners at the airport in Linz, Austria.

Recently, a man on summer vacation hurrying through screening there was stopped when a security worker noticed something suspicious in his carryon.

The man fessed up. "Da ist Speck drinnen." There is bacon inside.

This is recounted in a pretty funny article on the Austrian news site Nachrichten.

Seems that security authorities were not satisfied with the man's direct, not to say a little flip, explanation. They made him go into a bomb proof room and prove it was really bacon. An interesting little detail in the article says that police waited outside the room for fear that something might detonate.

Now, Austrians and Germans alike eat their fair share of bacon and other pig products. They couldn't somehow recognize this without virtually calling in the bomb squad?

One screener tells Nachrichten, "During security screening, we look at the density of atoms, and bacon has the same molecular density as Dynamite."

I've eaten a few meals in Germany that would corroborate that statement.

Luckily, the man was let go, with his bacon.

This article goes on to praise other successes the Linz security folks have had foiling threats recently. They stopped another man for having an electronic shoe buffer in his carryon, similar to the one you find at hotels or clubhouses at posh golf courses. The man knew nothing about it -- his wife had packed his suitcase -- and he wasn't likely to ask her, since the two had just had a major fight.

And a bag was recently found unattended at the Linz airport. X-raying it, screeners saw an unidentifiable object inside. Its owner could not be located, so authorities blew the bag up, only to find the charred remains of a doll inside.

(Update, looks like the deal is dead already, sorry about that!)

My daily deal for today is for the Flip Ultra series digital camcorder. This digital camcorder features a built in flash memory card for up to 30 minutes of video. Once you are done recording, the small flip-out USB connector allows you to instantly transfer the recordings to your computer.

The Flip Ultra has a 1.5" color screen, a 2x digital zoom and an output for displaying your movies on TV, a video cable is included in the package. The Flip camera is perfect for short video clips on your trip, as it runs off regular AA batteries and is very durable.

If you enjoy underwater activities, then you'll love the Flip underwater case which can be found on Amazon for under $30 (check the "other" vendors listed on the right side of the Amazon page). The combination of the Flip camera and the underwater case make this the cheapest underwater video camera available on the market.

This camera normally retails for $149, but if you order it from Dell.com, you'll get an instant $50 off, plus an additional $50 instant rebate, bringing the price down to just $50. To make the deal even better, you'll even get free ground shipping!

To get the additional $50 off, you will need to enter coupon code KGJQ72S6F0H828 on the checkout page. The coupon code should be valid till September 3rd, but Dell often ends promotions early so don't wait around too long.

(Source: Fatwallet)