Travel

Space Tourism to Rocket?

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

(Sorry about the headline, couldn’t resist.)

Some academics who specialize in the tourist industry (yes, there are such people) are predicting that space tourism is about to take off (oops, did it again). Apparently by somewhere between 2010 and 2015 space holidays will be affordable (a mere $80k) and by 2025 there will be space hotels. Just like in those funny sci-fi stories.

And who will take these vacations to the stars? Will it be people brought up on Kirk and Spock? Apparently not. It will be “extreme tourism” fanatics who no longer find anything on Earth dangerous enough. Ah well, as long as they grow the market and bring the price down for the rest of us. (And not too many of them manage to get themselves killed.)

Worldcon Flight Booking

~ Cheryl

I have just booked my flight for Worldcon. Southwest have return flights to Denver from Oakland at a mere $219 (including taxes). The best I could get out of United was $390. Lots of flights per day too. I’ve got really good times.

Island Life

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Today’s Independent has a feature on life in The Isles of Scilly, a beautiful location off the south-west tip of Cornwall. But this is not a tourism story, it is pointing out just how hard it is for the islanders to earn a living. Island life is always hard, but at least if you live on an isolated rock off the north of Scotland you can be pretty sure that no one else will want to live there. Scilly, on the other hand, is a prime holiday home location, and consequently the price of housing is well beyond most of the locals. I’ve spent a lot of holidays on Scilly, and when you stay B&B you get to know the islanders fairly well, so none of this is a surprise to me. As I recall, Fraser Hicks, who is interviewed in the Independent, was one of the stars of the local gig racing teams in his youth.

I really don’t know what can be done. You can’t stop going there on holiday. That would only deprive the islanders of their major source of income. And if you encourage more people to go there then the place is likely to be bought up by people wanting to build hotels and holiday cottages. Sometimes you can’t fix things. But I do hope that one day I will be able to go back, and take Kevin with me so that he can see what a beautiful place it is too.

The Economist on Visas

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

This week the UK newspapers have been busy printing scare stories about how the US is about to abandon the visa waiver scheme for European passport holders. This is, of course, all diplomatic brinksmanship and highly unlikely to happen as The Guardian might wish, but it is a real row. The Economist puts its version of the story out here. US readers might want to take note of this:

…this reporter has spoken to a fair number of European security and counter-terrorism officials over the years, none of them softies and many of them instinctively pro-American. But they all had horror stories about the arrogance and aggression of their American counterparts. A senior American official, asked by this reporter about this a few months ago, groaned, and said he could do nothing about his colleagues from the Department of Homeland Security, who were, in his words, beyond reasoning with.

I think you need a new government, guys.

Foreigners

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Over at Fantasy Magazine, Tempest Bradford talks to Justine Larbalestier and Ekateria Sedia about being foreign writers in America. It is good stuff, and there’s a lot I can relate to there.

Of course we must get some things straight, Justine. Let’s be clear about this. Melbourne and Sydney are totally different places. Why, they are as different as… well, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Sick

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

It appears to have been food poisoning, presumably from breakfast. That’s about 7 hours of my life vanished. Ah well, thank goodness it didn’t happen tomorrow when I’d be spending 11 hours on an aircraft.

City Life

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

For lunch yesterday Karen and I tried a Thai restaurant across the street from Borderlands Books. It was a place called Osha, and it turns out that they have five restaurants in San Francisco, but none anywhere else. Tough on the rest of the world, because it was very good, and the lunch combos were remarkably good value. Recommended.

Valencia Street is, of course, full of good places to eat. I’m also very found of Sunflower (Vietnamese) and Limon (Peruvian). Cafe Ethiopia is pretty good too. So many interesting cuisines in such a small space.

I also took particular note of an advert on BART (the subway system). In how many cities in the world would you find companies advertising their support for gay marriage as a means of selling their product? I love San Francisco.

Home at Last

~ Cheryl

I did my usual trick on the plane – I was asleep before we left the ground. When I woke up two hours later I looked up at the screen and paused to think: just what movie would feature a young man in old-fashioned clothes walking across a green field towards a hole in wall? Yes, it was Stardust, and I had slept through most of it.

Ah well, it looked quite fun. I’m kind of impressed that Michelle Pfeiffer signed up for a gig that involved her being made to look that ugly.

My flight was late in due to a mechanical problem that delayed take-off (much better than having your undercarriage collapse when you land, I think) and Kevin’s was early, so by the time I had got over to Terminal 1 he was on the ground. We stopped off at Chipotle on the way home to pick up dinner and the staff seemed impressed by how well we got on together. The girl guessed that we had been married for 30 years. I suppose it is good to know that we look happy together, but I’m not sure what it says about how old we look.

Home Again

~ Cheryl

Back in California at last. Too tired to write anything interesting. I can say, however, that Ekaterina Sedia’s The Secret History of Moscow is a very fine read. So Moscow is Viriconium, in a very Russian way. Of course it is. Everywhere is Viriconium, and Viriconium is everywhere, if only you are desperate enough to see it.

An End to One Bag Madness?

~ Cheryl

The Guardian reports that the UK may finally be thinking of lifting the insane “one bag” rule that has caused so much chaos at airports over the past year. About time too. As far as I can see, the restriction does absolutely nothing to increase security. From my point of view all it does is encourage me, yet again, to buy a new carry-on bag so that the things I used to carry on in two small bags now fit into one bigger one, and waste a lot of time while I put everything in one bag prior to going through Terrorization, and take it all out again afterwards. Of course it does stop people from trying to board carrying two maximum-sized roller-bags, which makes for a lot more room in the overhead bins, but this is a matter of volume, not of the number of bags.

Update: I spoke too soon. According to the BBC, the UK government is planning to screen luggage at major railway stations. How? With many services it will take longer to screen the passengers than the gap between trains. Screening all of the luggage on a busy intercity service leaving London will take at least half an hour, probably longer. And how does this improve security if all the terrorists have to do is make sure that they board the train at one of the less busy stations that isn’t deemed worthy of a bag-screening system?

Hotel Choices

~ Cheryl

For the past two nights I have been in an upmarket Westin in the center of Boston. This was because we were using their function space for a meeting and we got a block of rooms cheap. But I don’t like staying there. It is a very comfortable hotel, but it is way too expensive for what it provides, and I’m terrified to touch anything in case I incur an extra charge. Top quality hotels should not need to stoop to littering your room with things that look great but cost extra if you use them. That’s the sort of behavior I expect from Ryanair.

So today I moved to a rather downmarket Doubletree. As US hotels go it isn’t great, but it is a US hotel so there is masses of space and the bed and shower are good. There’s no restaurant, but that just means I’ll eat in the city before coming back here. The wi-fi is a bit temperamental, but it works. It is $120/night cheaper. It still has enough pillows to terrify John Scalzi. And most importantly, it has one of those nifty alarm clocks that allows you to plug in your MP3 player and play your own music. That, my friends, is civilization (and it is something the Westin can’t manage).

Oh, and I get more Hilton points…

On the Road

~ Cheryl

I am in Boston (again). My flight was late (again). I have to be in a meeting at 6:00am (CA time) tomorrow. The hard drive on my laptop is making Noises. Ah well, at least I got a lot of reading done.

Travel Schedule

~ Cheryl

Deep breath.

This evening Kevin and I head off for San Jose where we will be attending ConStruction, a local con-running convention. Plans for the now-seated 2009 World Fantasy Convention will doubtless be discussed. On Saturday I will be on a panel talking about outreach.

On Sunday I fly to Boston (again). I have a couple of urgent projects on the go and am unlikely to have much free time (or possibly sleep). I fly back next Friday.

And on Saturday 17th, assuming I have any energy left, I need to be in San Francisco for the latest SF in SF reading. I’m trying not to think beyond that.

More Train Adventures

~ Cheryl

So, I am back in New York, and very buzzed that some people actually read the live WFC coverage. Getting here was Interesting.

First up, huge thanks to Andrew Wheeler for driving me most of the way back. He lives in New Jersey, so he dropped me off at a commuter rail station that would get me into New York. The station was at a place called Mahwah, which is presumably home to mad scientists and would be Evil Overlords.

At this point some of you might be wondering what I’m doing catching a commuter rail train on a Sunday evening, but this part of the world has a functional railway system, which is just as well, because trains were delayed on parts of the system for various reasons, and if services had not been frequent I would have been screwed. I’m particularly impressed with the New York subway whose definition of “late night” services is “after midnight”.

Anyway, I’m safely back in Astoria, and hopefully the crazy lady who got on the train half way through the journey from Mahwah has either sobered up, or been given medical treatment for whatever it is she has taken, because between then the train conductor and the policeman who had to come to remove her were very unhappy.

Saratoga Ho!

~ Cheryl

Well, here I am. Amtrak was only an hour late on a 4-hour journey. Most of that was stuck in Penn Station waiting to leave. But it was an easy journey as the train was packed with people going to the con. I spent the entire journey chatting with Sheila Williams.

Free wi-fi in my hotel.

Gotta go to the con now. IHG Awards starting soon.

Back on the Rails

~ Cheryl

Having spent much of the morning catching up with emails and blogs, it is now time for me to start heading out for Saratoga Springs. Here’s hoping that Amtrak manages to get me there in time for the IHG Awards. Save a seat for me in the bar, y’all.

The Goddess and The Pit

~ Cheryl

Today I have been a tourist in New York. I have seen the Very Big Statue. I have seen the Island of Entry. And I have seen the Very Big Hole.

Looking at a map of New Your it is easy to assume that you can see Lady Liberty from where the World Trade Center once stood. Doubtless you could see her from the top. But this area is some of the most expensive real estate in the world. There is a veritable forest of office and condo blocks between Ground Zero and the water. Maybe we should knock them all down too. Then we might remember that we have lost faith in the Goddess with her bright torch, and instead have taken to worshiping a steaming pit.

I Still Call Australia Home

~ Cheryl

OK, so I am in New York for the first time in my life. What did I do with myself? First of all I had to catch up with La Gringa and find my out to her delightfully book-filled apartment in Astoria. This is near Queens, so I keep thinking to myself that I ought to be eating refried beans, but I had other priorities this evening. I had a party to go to, in the Australian Consulate.

Yes, really; my good pals Trevor and Deb and Jonathan had arranged a splendid bash and invited a whole load of New York literati. There was free Aussie wine. And it was all paid for by the Australian Government, as part of their drive to export fine Aussie speculative fiction to America. Nobody tell John Howard, OK. Although hopefully his days of being able to be outraged and able do something about it are almost over.

It was a good evening. I met lots of good folks, many of whom I already new well, and others for the first time. I discovered that Australia really does have Cultural Attaches. I got to talk to Margot Lanagan. Garth Nix apologized profusely for the failure of the Australian rugby team to beat England. And afterwards I got dragged off to an Italian restaurant by Ellen Datlow, which was very impressive, though even here they don’t do zabaglione. Italian restaurants are not what they were.

Tomorrow I get to play tourist and go shopping in New York. I already have the subway sussed. I have Spidey Sense when it comes to cities.