Is this a trip to help prevent piracy? Is it a trip where you can pay to hunt humans? This one scares me.

Paying Money to Murder: Russian Luxury Yachts Offer Pirate Hunting Cruises

In a brilliant–if deeply disturbing–stroke of entrepreneurial genius, Russian luxury yachts have begun to advertise adventure cruises where passengers pony up almost $6,000 USD per day to cruise from Djibouti to Mombasa in search of pirates.

The yachts trawl at a deliberately slow speed, hoping to attract pirates. If attacked, the cruise passengers are ready to respond with heavy machinery: machine guns and grenade and rocket launchers. And if they want to tack on an extra $8.00 a day, passengers can hoist their very own AK-47. Ammo, though, costs an extra $11.50.

And the best thing about getting services from ex-cons is that it will only cost you a pack of cigarettes. (OK I made that part up).

City’s ex-cons to help Naples tourist

Tourists in Naples are being welcomed by ex-convicts who help them cross the streets in the hair-raising traffic, offer information and even escort them through the city’s more dangerous alleyways under a initiative by the Campania region.

Wearing yellow jackets, caps and ID cards, around 70 former prisoners have been posted at points around the city including the port and the station.

Score one for the math nerds (yes I was one as a kid). Researchers think they know how to resync your body clock.

A Mathematics Cure For Jet Lag

Plagued by jet lag? If we can send a rocket to the moon why can’t we figure out how to fly to different time zones and still be fresh? Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the University of Michigan say they have developed a software program that prescribes a light exposure regimen for avoiding jet lag.

Sometimes truth is just much funnier than fiction.

New airline Pet Airways’ only passengers to be four-legged

Soon, pet owners who live in a handful of large U.S. cities will have the ability to do that. Pet Airways plans to begin service on July 14 as the USA’s first pets-only carrier — no human passengers allowed. The introductory fare: $149 each way. For that, pets will be flown in individual crates in lighted and pressurized plane cabins, with a human attendant checking them every 15 minutes. They’ll board, just like people, from their own airport lounges and get overnight lodging accommodations on long-haul flights. Their owners can track their whereabouts at all times online. They can even earn “pet points” as frequent fliers.

The only thing clear about the Clear program is that it is clearly over.

Clear Registered Travel Program Shuts Down

Clear, the biggest private-sector “registered traveler” program in the nation, shut down suddenly last night, and a quarter of a million customers are waiting to find out whether their cards will ever get them out of security-line hell again. (It’s not looking too good right now.) The biggest mystery is not why it failed, but why it hung on as long as it did given the open hostility to the venture displayed by both the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the airlines.

I am not sure if being associated with the criminal justice system is the legacy that Jackson wanted but…

Tourists flock to see 1,500 Philippine inmates perform Jackson tribute

More than 1,500 Philippine inmates at a maximum security prison on Saturday performed a Michael Jackson tribute for the public with a dance routine that has become a global Internet hit.

Hundreds of spectators arrived at the jail to see the convicts, including murderers and drug-traffickers, put on the show two days after the music icon collapsed and died.

Other stories that I thought were interesting:

• Royal Caribbean plans 11-night Arctic Circle cruise from Copenhagen
• First hybrid RV to hit the road this summer
• 2009 Airline In-Flight Entertainment Status Update

I have always liked this picture of Piazza San Marco taken looking down on it from the campanile on the square. I loved the black and white nature of the scene offset by the brightly color umbrella of a vendor selling food for the pigeons.

Except on the one occasion where I saw Piazza San Marco in the light of pre-dawn the piazza seems always filled with both pigeons and with tourists content to be pigeon perches. In the pre-dawn the square is so completely empty as to unrecognizable.

This is a transcript of an episode of the Amateur Traveler focusing on traveling to the Netherlands and Belgium.

• Travel to The Netherlands and Belgium - Episode 98 Show Notes
• More blogs posts about Europe
• More podcasts about Europe

Welcome to the Amateur Traveler. I’m your host Chris Christensen. Normally at this portion of the show I’d give you news but obviously I have no idea what the news is, even world news, because I’m still on vacation. I’m recording this while sitting on the balcony of the International Youth Hostel in Grindelwald, Switzerland looking out at the rain so I’ll catch you up more on that story in a few weeks after I get back when I put together at least three episodes, I believe, on the current European trip as well as several video episodes.

Chris: I’d like to welcome to the show Daniel Perez who’s come to talk to us about a recent trip to Belgium and the Netherlands. Daniel, welcome to the show.

Daniel: Thanks a lot Chris.

Chris: And Daniel is another member of a new organization that he and I have been working on which is the Travel Podcasters Network. And Daniel has probably one of the more unusual travel podcasts. You have the Gamer Traveler.

Daniel: Yeah.

Chris: I’m going to let you explain it.

Daniel: Basically, it’s a show about gaming and travel both rolled into one. I’m a role player and a gamer of, you know, many, many years. And when I was trying to figure out a podcast that I wanted to do mostly for my gaming interest, I didn’t want to rehash what other people were doing so I went for the weirdest angle that I could find and I decided to combine it with my love of travel. It was originally a segment in another podcast, like a feature segment, and I would talk about a small location and then you’d tell ways of using it in a role-playing game or setting or anything like that. And eventually I decided to go ahead and take it solo and it’s been doing very well.

Chris: So you recently were on a, I think you said, a 10-day trip to the Netherlands and Belgium.

< !– google_ad_section_start –>One of the images that I often see on the tourism brochures for Istanbul and Turkey is this image of the town of Ortaköy at the base of the Bosphorus Bridge on the European side. This picturesque and relatively modern mosque is bright on the inside and the exterior makes a wonderful counterpoint to the bridge. The bridge reminds me a great deal of San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge, especially at night when they light it up with lights that change color. Around the pigeon-filled square are a number of cafes with outdoor seating. This picture is from a beautiful day in February and I can only imagine it is more lovely when the trees have not lost their leaves. Near Ortaköy you can catch a boat to cruise up the Bosphorus to the fortresses, one on the European side and one on the Asian side, built by Mehmed the Conquerer and his father in preparation for the successful siege of Istanbul in 1453.< !– google_ad_section_end –>

see video of Ortaköy at the end of Dolmabahçe Palace, Istanbul Turkey - Amateur Traveler Video Episode 16

This is a transcript of an episode of the Amateur Traveler focusing on traveling to the Netherlands and Belgium.

• Travel to The Netherlands and Belgium - Episode 98 Show Notes
• More blogs posts about Europe
• More podcasts about Europe

Today the Amateur Traveler goes to Belgium and the Netherlands.

Chris: I’d like to welcome to the show Daniel Perez who’s come to talk to us about a recent trip to Belgium and the Netherlands. Daniel, welcome to the show.

Daniel: Thanks a lot Chris.

Chris: And Daniel is another member of a new organization that he and I have been working on which is the Travel Podcasters Network. And Daniel has probably one of the more unusual travel podcasts. You have the Gamer Traveler.

Daniel: Yeah.

Chris: I’m going to let you explain it.

Daniel: Basically, it’s a show about gaming and travel both rolled into one. I’m a role player and a gamer of, you know, many, many years. And when I was trying to figure out a podcast that I wanted to do mostly for my gaming interest, I didn’t want to rehash what other people were doing so I went for the weirdest angle that I could find and I decided to combine it with my love of travel. It was originally a segment in another podcast, like a feature segment, and I would talk about a small location and then you’d tell ways of using it in a role-playing game or setting or anything like that. And eventually I decided to go ahead and take it solo and it’s been doing very well.

Chris: So you recently were on a, I think you said, a 10-day trip to the Netherlands and Belgium.

Daniel: Yeah. It was actually a year ago right now.

Chris: Ok and can you tell us where you went? First, lets lay out the itinerary.

Daniel: Sure. We flew from Miami to Brussels. And we spent three days in Brussels and we went up to Amsterdam, spent a couple of days there. I think it was three or four days in Amsterdam. Then, went back down into Belgium to visit Brugge. Spent a few days there, then went back up into the Netherlands to the town of Delft and one more day in Amsterdam before returning back to the states.

Chris: Ok. And then lets take those, kind of, one at a time and hit the highlights of the different places. So you started in Brussels?

Daniel: Brussels.

Chris: So what were the highlights of Brussels for you?

Daniel: Actually the city itself. We had read up on our destinations. We usually do that. We’re nerds like that.

Chris: Well, you’ve come to the right place.

Daniel: But we didn’t really know what to expect out of Belgium in general because it’s usually one of these like, ‘Oh you know there’s France and England and Germany and oh yeah, there’s Belgium over there.’ So we sort of knew the highlights and we’ve seen our videos and everything but we weren’t really ready for what we encountered there and it was a very nice surprise. Brussels is a very international city. It’s very laid back, very quiet. Kind of French in that sense. But it certainly has a lot of that Dutch entrepreneurial sense of, you know, the merchant’s core of the city. It was very interesting. Very welcome surprise to our trip. Very good start too.