Gadling

Remember the coffee revolution of the Nineties, when what used to cost 25 cents at some crappy diner suddenly cost $3 at a snooty cafe? Well, at least instead of drinking what looked and tasted like dishwater you now got something that tasted like actual coffee. Ah yes, I was in graduate school then and the coffee revolution came along just at the right time! But coffee has been around a lot longer than that, as a new/old coffeehouse at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia shows.

Americans have been drinking coffee since before they've been called Americans. A local wigmaker and caffeine junkie named Richard Charlton opened a coffeehouse at Williamsburg more than 240 years ago, when Virginia was still a colony. Today Colonial Williamsburg, an interesting and authentic recreation of a Colonial town, has reopened this coffeeshop on the same site. You can sit in 18th century style while sipping a coffee, chocolate, or tea. You're not allowed to dump the tea into the sea, that was in Boston, but Charlton's coffeeshop was the scene of angry colonists confronting the British-appointed governor of Virginia colony to protest the Stamp Act in 1765.

This wasn't surprising. Coffeeshops were places to meet and discuss politics. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson drank coffee at Charlton's shop. There's no record of what they talked about over a good cup of Joe, but we can imagine. Did hepped-up caffeine addicts create the superpower we know today? Stranger things have happened. . .

EasyJet has apologized to everyone who will listen over a fashion shoot that appeared in its inflight magazine.

Did the models wear too little? Did they look like fourteen year-old cokeheads? No, none of the usual stuff; they happened to be posing at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial.

Yes, some fashion photographer decided the concrete blocks known as the "Field of Stelae", properly called the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, would be a cool place for slinky women to show off designer duds. The editor of the magazine at INK Publishing thought it was a pretty neat idea too, and easyJet didn't notice until too late.

Now they've yanked the issue from all their planes and are "reviewing their relationship" with the publisher.

This was probably an honest oversight by easyJet, who acted quickly and appropriately when the issue came to their notice, but what about the magazine's editors? Or the photographer? Or the models? Didn't anyone stop and say , "Hey, millions of Jews died in the concentration camps. Perhaps we should take these photos somewhere else?"

Nope, apparently not.

We're less than a week away from Thanksgiving (gasp!). One thing I'm thankful for: Thanksgiving doesn't involve giving gifts. I still have another month to thinking about gifts (thank God!). Here are some other things to be thankful for.

• Since the weekend is upon us, it's time to PARTY! If you're a party goer, you definitely need to check out the world's top 10 party towns. [via Sydney Morning Herald]
• Backpacking and technology haven't really gone hand in hand, but here are 5 ways in which they do. [via Art of Backpacking]
• Traveling may not solve all your problems, but here's why it's still worth it. [via Twenty-something Travel]
• I love China, and I love street food. A match made in heaven. [via SoSauce]
• I also love finding and collecting sea glass, but this interview tells us how that hobby may just be a thing of the past. [via NPR]

'Til Monday, have a great weekend!

More Gadlinks HERE.

Two North Korean diplomats tried to claim diplomatic immunity when they were arrested in Stockholm for smuggling cigarettes.

The man and woman, who were caught driving their tobacco-filled car off a ferry from Helsinki, have been taken into police custody. Apparently, they have diplomatic status in Russia, but no accreditation in Sweden. Also, they allegedly had 230,000 Russian cigarettes.

"If you come to Sweden and commit a crime, you're just like any other foreign national," Sweden's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Cecilia Julin told Reuters.

What on earth two North Korean diplomats need to smuggle Russian cigarettes from Finland to Sweden for, we have no idea.


[via Reuters]

Tipping is a really complicated issue in the US. What was once introduced as a way to reward good service, has now turned into a way for patrons to actually pay the salary of restaurant workers. One of my biggest pet peeves with tipping is the mandatory tip on groups. This used to be added to groups of 12 or more, then it dropped to 8 or more, and nowadays most places consider a group of 6 people to be large enough to warrant a mandatory 18% tip - no matter how lousy the service.

Leslie Pope and John Wagner encountered this stupid rule at the Lehigh pub in Bethlemen, PA. Their group was served by a pretty useless waitress who made them wait over an hour for their order, forced them to refill their own drinks and even navigate the restaurant to get their own napkins and silverware.

When it came time to pay, they were presented with a $73 check, plus a $16 tip. When they refused to pay the tip, the pub called the police and had them arrested. They were actually handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car.

American food blog "eating the road" has come up with one of the best uses for a flowchart I have ever seen. By answering some simple questions, you'll be told where to go for your daily dose of crappy fast food. The chart points west coasters to the stores the rest of the country dreams of getting, and sends all Canadians to Tim Hortons.

The chart covers 16 of the most popular US fast food chains, and even takes your sobriety into account (only drunk people will survive sliders).

Click here for the full version of the chart

Visits from outside the United States continued their slide in August. The U.S. Department of Commerce reports that 5.4 million people visited the United States from other countries in August this year. Unfortunately, that's a drop of 9 percent from August 2008. And, the smaller number of people is spending less money when it comes here. In August 2009, international visitors spent $10 billion. This sounds like a lot, but it's off almost 21 percent from last year. For the first eight months of this year, spending by foreign visitors reached $79.5 billion, down 17 percent year-over-year. The fact that the year-to-date decline isn't as bad as what we saw in August suggests that the situation has been worsening.

Trends in visits from Canada and Mexico are consistent with the global trend. Canadian visits fell 6 percent in August and are off 8 percent for the year through August. Meanwhile, visits from Mexico surged in August, gaining 23 percent, with land arrivals up 37 percent and air arrivals down 7 percent. This wasn't enough to change the situation for the year, however. For the first eight months of 2009, visits from Mexico fell six percent relative to the same period in 2008.

When the five people who ranged from an R& B singer moving to NYC to seek her fortune-- to a young man trying to get to Hartford, Connecticut and his sick grandmother as quickly as possible, sidled up to the Greyhound ticket counter in Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan, they weren't itching for a fight. What they wanted was some compensation for their Greyhound induced travel woes.

See, the bus they had taken from Cleveland had arrived two hours late. It's not unusual for a bus to be late. Traffic, weather and a bus breakdown can occur. Their bus's lateness was due to driver error. The driver, after a scheduled rest stop, had headed the bus back towards Cleveland for more than 70 miles.

What made this snafu feel worse is that they would have arrived earlier than the scheduled arrival time if it wasn't for the driver's mistake. If you've ever been on a road trip that has been lengthened by the wrong way, perhaps you'll recall that jumpy nervous twitch that ensues--the kind of feeling where any moment you could LOSE YOUR MIND.

As written in the previous post, Gadling knows these details because Gadling was there. Here's the rest of the story. What happens when a passenger does complain? Airlines take notice.

After a year of "travel slumps," "staycations" and other cringeworthy words and conditions, let's plan to get out on the road next year. Hey, economists are saying that the recession's already over, and the job market's recovery can't be too far behind. So, there's your motive. Opportunity? That's your vacation time; you probably have enough. All that's left to pull the perfect trip together are the means ... which Intrepid Travel is happy to provide.

Intrepid Travel has big news for next year, from green travel to exciting excursions in Iceland and North Africa. So, if you're looking for some ideas for 2010, check out the five below. Intrepid's definitely making it interesting.

1. Travel green: carbon offset
Intrepid Travel is moving more than 500 of its trips to "Carbon Offset" next year. In 2009, the company played around with the idea on 38 excursions, after having announced in December 2006 that it wanted to be carbon neutral by the end of 2010. With next year's offering, Intrepid is certainly making progress.

2. Timor-Leste: tops for adventure
Spend 15 days in Dili and its markets, trekking out to Mt. Ramelau and wandering the Suai-area rainforest. Timor-Leste hasn't been swamped with tourists yet, redefining "off the beaten path." If you're looking for the sort of experience where Intrepid excels, this is it.

Gallery: Reykjavik up close

There is no denying that we live in a connected world - and cruise ships are no exception. What used to be an opportunity to get away from everything and just sit back and relax, has changed into yet another place where you can keep up with the latest in your Facebook account or Twitter page.

This past weekend, I took a 3 day trip on the Carnival Dream, and spent a little time going over its various technologies designed to keep you connected with the mainland.