501 Places

Worst flight ever?

Despite the statistics that show how safe flying really is, those who fly often enough will have some stories to tell. The vast majority of us will never experience the trauma of an actual air crash, but we will eventually travel on a flight where we are glad to get out in one piece.

I have experienced aborted take-offs, missed approaches and even a bizarre episode in Detroit where the pilot of a 747 had to turn the plane to face the right way to allow the fierce wind to help start the engines (I don’t get it either; I’d rather he hadn’t told us). One flight however stands out for me, even though it’s now ten years since it took place.

We had spent a week at the Grand Canyon and were flying on to Las Vegas on our way to Salt Lake City. The plane was a little 30 seater, and we had seats in row 1. In the front seats on the other side of the aisle were a middle-aged Japanese couple, who fell asleep within moments of boarding the flight.

We were in trouble soon after we became airborne. We hit our first air pocket early in our ascent. There’s a horrible sensation you get when the plane suddenly rises on a thermal. It’s quite distinct from the normal ascent, and as you know that what comes up must come down, there’s a sharp fall to come. Sure enough, moments after the lift came the drop. Very much like a rollercoaster, we fell for a couple of seconds and then we were heading up again, stomachs in mouths.

And so it continued. Sudden lift, inevitably followed by free falling. An unpleasant cycle that that repeated relentlessly for the hour and a quarter of the flight. Occasionally the flight attendant would smile at us. I grimaced back, all the while thinking “yeah, I know, I’m an wimp. It’s ok for you to smirk. You do this every day”. What made us feel even more inadequate was that in contrast to us feeling sick and hanging on grimly to the seat for the duration of the flight, the adjacent Japanese couple did not stir once. They must have been drugged up to the eyeballs. It’s their only excuse, I thought.

So much for trying to get a glimpse of the Grand Canyon from the air. Landing at Las Vegas I couldn’t wait to get off and smell the fresh air, thankful to have emerged unscathed.

Before collecting our bags we did learn one thing that made us feel a whole lot better. We hadn’t looked round at our fellow passengers throughout the entire flight. If we had, I would have felt far less of a wimp as a result. The flight attendant confided to us once in the baggage hall that the four of us in the front row had been the only ones on the plane not have made use of our air sickness bags (I’m assuming she didn’t include herself and the flight crew). I’m not the best flyer, and will think twice before heading over the Grand Canyon at the time of day where the thermals work wonders for hot air balloons and gliders, but not so much for light aircraft.

This week’s guest post on 501 Places is written by Gwen McCauley. A Canadian who fell in love with Portugal on her first visit to Europe in 1975, Gwen has more recently made the country her second home. Here she shares a story from that first trip with us and describes the moment where she realised she was going to be a lifelong traveller.

This old memory remains a favourite, showing how life’s miserable travel experiences can become our best stories and fun memories.

Light mist on the hills

I was 26 in 1975, traveling alone and in Europe for the first time. I was as unsophisticated as they come: green as grass! It is hard today to realize just how different travel was then. Travel guides were few; blogs, websites and today’s flood of information didn’t exist.  No credit cards. Even simple travel was an adventure.  My  quest was to spend a month in a country where I knew not a soul, didn’t know the language or currency and had no real way of connecting with anyone back home.  I was proving myself to myself.

So here I was, two weeks into my trip in the little resort town of Sesimbra, and it was time to head to the Algarve by train.  Remember, hardly anybody spoke English and I spoke no Portuguese.  Somehow my desk clerk made me realize I had to be up at 4 a.m. to take a bus to get me to the train.

Our bus rambled down narrow roads in the dark, twisting and turning and finally heading into thick dark fog. After about 2 hours we got to town.  The bus driver pointed me down a small street where I’d find a station several blocks away.  Sure enough I discovered a tiny ticket booth.

Foggy hills fade into the distance

I showed the teller my itinerary with my Algarve destination.  “No, no, no” she insisted with an emphatic wag of her finger.  She pointed out into the fog and sent me on my way.  About 10 minutes later, in fog so thick that I could barely make out the other side of the street, I knew I was lost.  Being an enterprising sort, I noticed a cop directing traffic and asked him where the train station was.  He pointed me back in the direction I’d come from.  So I trudged dutifully back, got in line and received a puzzled frown from the agent.  “No, no, no” she wagged again and sent me back off.  I got a little further in the dark and fog but still couldn’t find a station.  At this point I began to feel panic.  It was dark, I was cold and tired and feeling dreadfully alone. The streets were filling up with people on their way to work and I unsuccessfully asked a few well-dressed men for help.

I began to think I wasn’t up for this adventure travel business, that I should wait for the fog to clear, hop the bus back to Lisbon and stay in the city for the rest of my trip, safe but knowing that travel wasn’t for me.  Suddenly I became indignant; my spine stiffened.  I decided I wasn’t about to be defeated by darkness, fog nor lack of language.

As I stood on that street corner, I noticed some schoolboys.  In Lisbon I’d often heard young men dressed like this practicing their English. So I approached them to discover they spoke  “A few words”, which actually was quite a lot!  They assured me that the little train booth was my best option.

Trees and farmhouse disappear into the mist

So, armed with this help, I headed back –again!  This time the exasperated agent sighed deeply and sold me a 5¢ ticket. Before long a single, tiny railcar arrived.  The agent told me to get on and then followed.  In 5 minutes we arrived at a large station where she signaled me to get off.  After getting myself oriented I stepped up to a booth, laughing when I discovered the same clerk was there to serve me!  At least I didn’t have to tell her where I was headed.  I got my ticket then wandered out on the platform.

By this time the fog had lifted, the sun was shining but I was completely uncertain that I was on the right platform: Portuguese signs, of course.  I spied a couple of very blond folks with backpacks, hoping they were British.  Turned out they were Aussies heading for Faro who assured me I was in the right spot, so I relaxed and we chatted until the train arrived.

Those few moments of connecting with people I could talk readily with completely restored my equilibrium.  And that one-hour experience of being ‘lost in the fog’ showed me that by remaining calm and using the small lessons I’d learned I’d get my needs met.

So here’s to fog and other travails of travel.  They really teach us so very much! And they call up the true traveler in us.

Gwen McCauley is a Canadian Life Transition Coach, author, artist and facilitator of secular retreats and culinary experiences in the Algarve, Portugal. You can learn more about off-the-beaten-track Algarve from her two blogs: http://algarveexperiences.com and http://myalgarve.wordpress.com. Follow Gwen on Twitter

Last night the BBC Panorama documentary focussed on the issue of digital piracy. According to research cited in the programme around 7 million people in the UK engage in illegal file sharing of some sort. As more and more content becomes available to us we are increasingly expecting our access to this wealth of online information to be free and unrestricted. It is a fundamental right, we are told, to be able to access the internet. By extension most of us expect those rights to extend to the content we find while we are online.

Which brings me to the world of blogging. I love writing my blog. It gives me a great deal of pleasure and over time I hope it is enabling me to sharpen my own writing skills. But can it ever make enough money for me to call myself a blogger? Or is the content of the hundreds of millions of blogs just part of that free flowing stream of words and sounds that people have come to expect is theirs to access if they want?

Like countless others, I started off with a dream that a successful travel blog would make me some money and might even allow me to travel more. Monetisation was the magic word. Over time reality struck, and despite a modest cheque from Google (thank you Google people, we’ll raise a glass to you as we eat our meal) I have not yet managed to retire on the back of 501 Places.

So I tried to apply some of the few theoretical lessons I remember from business school to the world of blogging. A few points stand out, and I hope that others will disagree with some of this and add their own thoughts:

1. The market is saturated with suppliers (bloggers), and devoid of buyers (people who will pay for content). There are a few exceptions, but not enough for the vast majority of bloggers to get a sniff.

2. Buyers can pretty much dictate what they want and someone will do it. Many suppliers even offer their services for nothing: an extremely lop-sided situation.

3. A large part of the customer base (readership) comes from within the market itself (other bloggers); an unusual situation in any industry. In any case almost none of the customers are buying (paying) for the content on offer, nor will they ever do so.

4. The main way to monetise a blog is via advertising, whether through Google Ads or via private arrangements with companies. With so many tens of thousands of travel blogs jostling to be heard, where does an advertiser place his limited budget? Again, with more suppliers out there, the market share of any one blog is tiny so the value of placing an add on one particular site is diminished, and in addition the advertiser can drive a hard bargain. ‘If you don’t like my offer, there’s hundreds of others who will take it’.

There are some great bloggers out there. I’ve been lucky enough to meet some of them and I count them as friends. Some tell me that they are making a living from their websites. The number of ads on their sites suggests they have reasonable revenue coming in. I believe them and given the hard work that they do they deserve every success. They are in a minority however, and for every one making some money there are thousands who are trying to emulate the real high-profile bloggers who travel the world for ‘free’.

I make my modest living writing for publications that are about as far removed from the world of travel as it’s possible to be. But I have eventually found where my blog does sit within my business. On one hand it is my shop window. More than that though, it keeps me disciplined to write on a constant basis and allows me to try and articulate new ideas. Most of all it allows me to communicate with so many people around the world from whom I can learn so much.

Blogging does have a great place to play in connecting people, in sharing thoughts and exchanging knowledge. But as a get rich quick scheme? You’ll be lucky.

Memorial by St James Park, London

Walking through London yesterday, I was struck by the very high concentration of war memorials scattered across the city. We are all familiar with the imposing monolithic stones across the city that serve as a focal point on Remembrance Day. Less well known are the hundreds of statues, plaques and sculptures that mark the achievements of a particular soldier or serve as a monument to one of the many nations that fought alongside the British in a campaign. They can be found in every public park, on street corners and even on traffic islands.

So why this emphasis on commemorating our war dead, and how does it reflect on our society? What are the motives for spending money and using a valuable city space to erect a statue that relates, on the face of it, to another era?

Korean War Memorial, Washington DC

At a superficial level, a monument becomes a piece of public art and a tourist attraction. Wandering along the Mall in Washington DC it is impossible not be fascinated by the many sculptures, statues and buildings that mark America’s conflicts throughout the 20th century. Stopping to comtemplate the tragedies that affected those on all sides of those wars is where these visually striking objects become so much more than mere art.

Young troops pause at the Menin Gate, Ypres

Memorials of all types also serve as a public focus for ceremonies that remember the sacrifices that troops have made in fighting their nation’s battles. None is more poignant than the Menin Gate in Ypres, where every night come rain or shine the Last Post is played and wreaths are laid at the monument for the hundreds of thousands of men who died in the first world war. We visited on a bitterly cold autumn night and there were hundreds in attendance. It was hugely moving to see the old veterans of other wars make their way to this Belgian town to show respect to those who had not survived their war.

New Zealand Memorial, Hyde Park, London

And the small monuments, often reflecting a particular nationality’s contribution or an individual soldier, must carry great meaning to those who identify with them, whether by shared citizenship or by family links. In many of Britain’s wars the British troops fought alongside many from other parts of the commonwealth and those conscripted from its colonies. It is fitting that these are prominently remembered in many of the memorials in the UK.

I have no doubt that for many councils the question of public relations with their constituents plays a major part in commissioning a memorial. Wacky modern scultpures will elicit complaints of ‘wasting our money’ but there is rarely an outcry over a war memorial. Indeed the failure to commemorate a particular link to a group of fallen citizens can provoke a lot of anger. This was witnessed recently in Bethnal Green, where an ongoing campaign to have a memorial for those who died in the wartime tragedy on the stairs of the tube station continues.

The new Memorial Gates, London

While our cities rush headlong into mass regeneration and modernisation, it is more important than ever to remember our past. It’s reassuring that the monuments to those who fought and lost their lives for our nations are still considered sacrosanct.

The vast majority of those of us alive today have not fought in a war. We have been blessed with decades of relative peace in western Europe, and north America. Most of our young people will hope to leave their legacy through the many bold and striking symbols of the 21st century that surround us; it is more important than ever that we remember those of past generations who lived in altogether harder times and who left their legacy with the ultimate sacrifice.

It's always exciting to explore a new city

‘How do you eat yours?’ So asks the successful ad campaign for Cadbury’s (or should that be Kraft’s?) Creme Eggs. The point being that faced with eating the same egg shaped piece of chocolate, people will adopt a disturbing diversity of approaches to the task.

And surely the same observation applies to visiting a new city. You arrive at your accommodation and drop your bags. The day is still young and it’s time to explore. What is your strategy? Here are just a few of the most obvious approaches. Maybe you fit into one of these. Or maybe there’s a big group I’ve missed out entirely?

1. The military general. The map is pulled out in the hotel and double checked. A series of points have been carefully marked out, and a line drawn to join the dots. You know exactly where you’ll go and what you want to see, and you will follow this route come hell or high water. You have even chosen a place where you will eat, and know the time at which you will reach this spot. Reservations booked of course.

2. The bar hopper. You have the names of the favourite hang-outs as listed in your guidebook, and you immediately head for these watering holes. You’ll step out for some fresh air and visit the nearby sights if you have time, but if the craic is good then what’s the point? It’s the people who make a place memorable and you’re surrounded by a great crowd already, so why leave?

3. The tourist in denial. You have read the many stories warning you not to look like a tourist. So you have your map, but you never look at it in public, only letting it see the light of day when safely locked in a toilet cubicle. You won’t ask for directions in case people pick up that you’re not from round these parts and cart you away to be slayed as a human sacrifice. So you go from memory, having studied the map in detail before you left, and rely on frequent trips to the bathroom to recheck your coordinates.

4. The fearless wanderer. Not for you the predictability of a map or a guidebook. You’re straight into the heart of the action, and the smells and sights will guide you on your way. You don’t care if you won’t see the must-see sights. Within an hour you’ll be deeply engrossed in a conversation with local people, sharing photos of your family and being invited to eat the insides of a goat that will be slaughtered in your honour at a mountain cabin.

5. The useless planner. You want to be organised, and you’ve spent ages reading the guide books and studying the maps. You set off with a strong idea of what you want to see and how you are going to get there. And then it all goes wrong. You get distracted by a food stall that serves something you can’t resist, and then you get lost and end up somewhere you shouldn’t be. When you get out your map you realise you’re miles from where you thought you were, and you end up looking at glum suburbs and getting back to your lodgings exhausted and having seen little of what you’d planned.

I suspect we can identify a little of ourselves in many of these styles. For myself I would have to confess to fitting mostly into the last category. I don’t know why I bother planning. Last year we arrived in Damascus and as we were staying less than a mile from the Old City I decided to leave the guide book in the hotel and just make our way there and explore the narrow lanes and the souk. We spent over an hour wandering a series of narrow lanes, thinking that it really wasn’t that nice and wondering why there were no tourists. It eventually clicked that we were in the wrong part of the city altogether! Thankfully we had three more days to find the real Old City…