Topic - Gadling

Filed under: North America, United States, Video When using his GoPro to capture grizzlies in Alaska, Brad Josephs got a little more than he bargained for when one of the bears tried to eat his camera. As the curious bear tried to decide whether or not to eat the camera, Josephs caught some eerie footage of the inside of its mouth. "Amazingly there was no damage to the camera," said Josephs on the YouTube page for the video. With all those teeth, it seems pretty amazing to me, too. For those ...

Filed under: Activism, Arts and Culture, Europe, United Kingdom A famous skate park on the South Bank of London may be turned into yet another stretch of retail sameness. Underneath the Southbank Centre, which is home to several performing arts centers, is a covered area that looks like a cross between a cellar and an overly graffittied parking lot. It's been a meeting ground for skateboarders for 40 years. Every day you can see them doing tricks on the concrete ramps and benches while touris...

Filed under: Biking, Arts and Culture, Hiking, Paddling, Skiing, Photos, Stories, Europe, United States, Camping, Budget TravelWho wants to move to Bend, Oregon, with me? Oh, I know what you're thinking. I already have a perfectly good place to live. Why would I need to move to a small city in Central Oregon? If you're asking yourself this question, you've probably never been to Bend, because it's one of those places that gets under your skin. Drop by for four or five days, as I did earlier t...

Filed under: Hiking, Skiing, Photos, Stories, North America, United StatesWhen you think of wintery weather, Oregon might not be the first state that comes to mind. It certainly wasn't for me until I visited snowed-under Crater Lake National Park and other snowy, high altitude spots in the Beaver State last week. It was 76 degrees and sunny on the day we left Klamath Falls, Oregon, for the park, which is only 70 miles to the north, and even though I'd been told that Rim Drive, the scenic rout...

Filed under: North America, South America, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, United States, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay Before beginning his doctorate in biomedical sciences, "Alex the Adventure Biker" took a break to realize his lifelong dream: to ride a motorcycle through the Americas. Over the course of nearly a year and a half, he rode his bike through 22 countries as he made his way from El Paso, Texas, to Argentina ...

Filed under: Arts and Culture, North America, Canada, Video It's official, we Canadians rock. If William Shatner and Bryan Adams aren't enough for you, there's Chris Hadfield. He's an astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency and has become hugely popular with his videos about life aboard the International Space Station, answering such profound questions as how to cut your nails in space. Now Hadfield is coming home. He's turned over command of the ISS to Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and...

Filed under: North America, United States, Theme Parks As amusement park rides go, there are roller coasters and then there is the Gatekeeper, where riders sit as if on the wings of a plane 170 feet above ground. Experiencing sharp turns, inversions and rolls, Gatekeeper creates the feeling of weightlessness, sending riders turning and twisting at speeds of nearly 70 miles per hour. Gatekeeper is the latest ride at Ohio's Cedar Point amusement park, voted the Best Amusement Park in the World ...

Filed under: Israel, Video, Middle East When the news talks about the people of Jerusalem, it's usually to highlight their differences. While those certainly exist, there's more to it than that. People all have their own opinions and priorities and the folks living in Jerusalem are no exception. In this video, a group of Jerusalem residents are asked all the same question: if you had one wish, what would you wish for? Their answers are surprising, and cut across religious, political and ethni...

Filed under: Brazil, The Cockpit ChroniclesThe adage goes something like this: The worst day of fishing beats the best day of work. Years ago, I knew I found the right job when I was a co-pilot on a charter flight in a 15-seat Twin Otter for a day of fishing on an Alaskan beach. I remember thinking of that adage, and telling everyone that it was the best day of work and the best day of fishing. How could it ever be possible to top that trip? Well, I think I just did it. First, a little backgr...

Filed under: Antarctica, VideoYou wouldn't think that watching a massive ice breaker slice through the ice in the Ross Sea off the coast of Antarctica would be all that interesting. But the video below condenses two months of time spent aboard just such a vessel into a five-minute clip that is simply mesmerizing to watch. Shot aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer, the video captures the stark beauty of the Southern Ocean and the seemingly never-ending sheets of ice that cover its surface. Sometimes...

Filed under: Arts and Culture, Festivals and Events, Stories, North America, CanadaAfter driving for miles on a dirt road through the pitch darkness and seeing no signs of life anywhere, I was certain we were lost. It was a perfect early August evening in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and we were looking for the Thursday night square dance in Glencoe Mills, a blink-and-you'll-miss it hamlet in Cape Breton's untrammeled interior. The road was so dark and so eerily quiet that when I finally saw ano...

Filed under: Europe, North America, Switzerland, Mexico Think of your aspirations and goals in life. Do they involve jumping off very high things and generally "running amok"? If so, Chris "Douggs" McDougall is living your dream, the lucky bastard. But if that's not your thing, you still have to hand it to the jovial veteran wingsuit pilot, who is living something of a GoPro fantasy in the Swiss mountains, jumping off very high things indeed in a webbed superhero costume and dubstepping happi...

Filed under: Airlines, The Cockpit ChroniclesThe MD-80 just might be the Rodney Dangerfield of the airline world. It just can't seem to get any respect. But for those who really get to know the airplane, it offers some features, and admittedly a number of quirks, that has made it near and dear to many pilots. Against all odds, this Boeing pilot has fallen in love with the Mad Dog. Passengers either love the airplane or hate it. And much of those feelings depend on where you're sitting. A perc...

Filed under: North America, United States, Airlines, News If you travel when you're single, the following scenario may sound familiar: You get a friend to drop you off at the airport early, you make it through security and grab a coffee or a pre-trip beer, you wander to your gate and board, scoping out the people around you. You sit down in your seat - damn, how did you get stuck sitting in the middle row again? - and you secretly cross your fingers hoping for someone attractive to sit next t...

Filed under: Biking, North America After a long, wet winter, I needed some dirt. With the mountain bike trails around my Indiana home too muddy to ride, I picked up my buddy Jimmy and pointed the Forester south to Nashville. The temperature was about 10 degrees warmer than what we'd been suffering through this Hoosier farce of a spring, and from what I could tell from the Internet chatter, the Tennessee trails seemed to be in fairly decent shape. A little over four hours later, under overcast...

Filed under: Hotels and Accommodations Welcome to this week's edition of "Hotel News We Noted," where we discuss the best trends, openings and news of note in the industry. We love to hear from you, so please leave comments below or alert us to tips via email. Kimpton Gets Quirky With Wellness Marketing Hotels across the country have jumped on the wellness marketing trend, but Kimpton does it better than most, offering fitness rooms and gratis workout equipment for guests. We love the new vid...

Filed under: Asia, Europe, India, United Arab, United Kingdom, Middle East Extreme sports videos don't get enough credit as artistic travelogues. For all the flinch-inducing, jaw-dropping athletic skill on display, the real star of extreme sports videos is often not the stunt-happy main character - it's the backdrop. Take for instance Danny Macaskill's rampart-flipping, phone booth-hopping mountain bike riding on the Isle of Skye. The video's fine-grained camera work and textured shots show o...

Filed under: Paddling, Scuba Diving, Surfing, Food and Drink, Photos, Stories, North America, Mexico, Hotels and Accommodations, Caribbean, Luxury Travel I was in Mexico last December, just before the 21st of the month. The date would come and go without catastrophe, of course, but the fringe theories had brought Maya culture to the forefront of the media and I took the opportunity to learn a bit about the ancient and modern Maya myself. My time spent in Merida was grueling, but rewarding. My...

Filed under: Festivals and Events, North America, South America, United States, Budget Travel, Central AmericaThe Miami Beach Polo World Cup is an annual event that draws players and spectators from around the world. Each year, more than 10,000 fans and competitors come from South America, Russia, Switzerland, Malaysia and other countries to be in and be seen at the world-class event. Done Miami-style, complete with fund-raising events, exclusive parties and fashion shows, tickets run up to $...

Filed under: Asia, India In India there's a man for everything - the wallah. The chai-wallah dispenses your tea. The auto-wallahs drive the ubiquitous auto rickshaws. The dhobi-wallah does your laundry. They are India's indefatigable industrious core and the exact opposite of a jack-of-all-trades. The mastery with which these wallahs perform their one task is often mesmeric to watch. A chai-wallah mixes his liquid ingredients with a balletic grace, launching a pot full of boiling spiced tea a...

Filed under: Asia, Europe, North America, Italy, United States, Budget Travel, Central AmericaI'm addicted to "House Hunters International," the HGTV reality show that profiles people who are moving to another country or buying a vacation home outside the U.S. Aside from the fact that the program whets my appetite to visit the places that are profiled, I love the way it plants seditious seeds in my head about places that were never previously on my radar. If you watch enough HHI - and the sho...

Indiana might not immediately pop in your mind when you think of great mountain bike destinations, but after riding Brown County State Park, it will. Located less than an hour south of Indianapolis, Brown County is the crown jewel of Midwestern trail riding. After the International Mountain Bicycling Association bestowed Epic status on the 25-mile trail system in 2011, riders within a day's drive of the trails began turning up in droves. On a pleasant spring day, riders will spot license plat...

Filed under: Photos, Europe, Greece, Budget Travel, Consumer ActivismEveryone who can afford it should visit Greece this summer. That was the conclusion I reached after reading a heartbreaking story about malnourished children in Greece on the front page of Thursday's New York Times. According to Liz Alderman's piece, malnutrition is a serious and growing problem in Greece, where the unemployment rate has reached 27 percent and even those who are employed have seen their wages slashed due to ...

Filed under: Europe, Spain, VideoLooking for a dose of adrenaline to get your day started right? If so, then look no further than the video below, which features wingsuit pilot Alexander Polli pushing the limits of good sense to the absolute edge. On a recent visit to the Roca Foradada Mountains, located near Montserrat, Spain, Polli came up with the idea of attempting to fly through a small cave on a rocky outcropping. The extreme athlete from Italy was reportedly going 155 mph when he blast...

Filed under: Arts and Culture, History, Learning, Israel, Video, Middle East Jerusalem is one of those cities that clings to you long after you leave it. The mix of faiths, the musky scents of the markets, the muezzin's call ... once you've been there you can't forget it. It's prominent in the imaginations of many who haven't even been there, so it's no surprise it was one of the first travel destinations filmed in the first years of motion pictures. In 1896, a crew from the studio of Auguste...

Filed under: Arts and Culture, North America, United States We love music here at Gadling, and this month is Public Radio Music Month, which is why we're teaming up with NPR to bring you exclusive interviews from NPR music specialists around the country. We'll be learning about local music culture and up and coming new regional artists, so be sure to follow along all month. Today we're headed to the birthplace of jazz: New Orleans. But New Orleans offers a whole lot more than jazz, and the lo...

Filed under: Hiking, Learning, Europe, North America, United States It's not so much where we travel, but what we do when we get there that matters. For those who run in real life, there is nothing better than doing so at a remote location. Like to hike? Getting away from the normal routine to engage a totally different terrain can bring new life to your passion for the sport. But we don't need to be into skiing, surfing, biking, climbing or backpacking either. Many travelers find the first s...

Filed under: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Egypt, Ethiopia, Zambia, China, North Korea, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Nicaragua, United StatesRichard Bangs, the host of the television show "Adventures with a Purpose," has been called the "father of modern adventure travel" by Outside magazine. So when he makes a list of ten great destinations for 2013, it's a good idea to take notice. In the video below, Bangs shares his suggestions for some of the top destinations to visit this y...

Filed under: Surfing, North America, United States If history is any indicator, the North Shore of Maui is the tinkering ground for the world's next generation of watersports. Both stand up paddling and kitesurfing can trace their roots to this fabled stretch of coastline, and new footage coming out of the Valley Isle shows some of Hawaii's best watermen testing out what could potentially be the world's next watersport. In a weird, hybrid cross between jet skiing, race car driving and surfing...

Filed under: Festivals and Events, North America, Vietnam, United StatesFire-breathing dragons are nothing new. We saw one of those briefly over Disney World not long ago, celebrating the opening of new Fantasyland, Disney's largest expansion in 41 years. Interesting bridges are more of a permanent attraction, and we took a look at the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge, a Gadling Photo of the Day, just last week. But what about a bridge that is also a fire-breathing dragon? Now that's something d...

Filed under: Arts and Culture, History, Learning, Photos, Stories, North America, United StatesIf you want to feel better about your job, take a tour of the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine in Beckley, West Virginia. On a recent tour of the vintage mine we learned about the extreme dangers and hardships miners faced a century ago when hundreds of thousands of people in Appalachia eked out a living mining coal underground. On a brilliant Saturday morning in March, I took a seat next to my wife and...

Filed under: Europe, Greece, Budget Travel For budget travelers, there's never been a better time to visit the Greek capital. Despite being on the Euro, the country's debt crisis has made this popular tourist center dramatically more affordable than the balance of the European Union, making once expensive resorts now surprisingly reasonable. As unemployment and other economic problems take their toll, Greeks have all but stopped taking vacations, which means most of the city's tourism booking...

Filed under: Europe, North America, United Kingdom, United States, AirlinesPiloted by an F-18 fighter pilot, we see just what the Boeing Dreamliner can do when put to the test. Stretching the aircraft and pushing it to the limit of its ability, the pilot guides the 787 to climb and soar at a degree and rate that passengers (hopefully) will never experience. Boeing has been working to get the 787 Dreamliner back in the sky after two battery-fire incidents in January forced the FAA to ground al...

Highclere Castle, the picturesque home of the famous television series "Downton Abbey" and current home to the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon, has been sold to an Chinese-based hotel investment company that plans to turn the famed historic estate into a luxury boutique hotel, scheduled for opening in early 2015. First Class Holdings, LLC, the property's new ownership group, says that the new property will have fewer than 100 rooms, including a presidential suite in what was formerly the Earl ...

Filed under: April Fools PostsI'm incredibly lucky. On my first day as editor-in-chief of Gadling, a highly reliable source sent us this memo. Too good to be true? Absolutely. As a hopelessly loyal frequent flier, I'm definitely gonna be lining up for this new program. If only I could get a blog on BoardingArea, my life would be complete. (OK, I'd settle for a blog on Upgrd, too!) EMPLOYEE BULLETIN: INTRODUCTION OF GLOBAL SERVICES PLUS ELITE FREQUENT FLIER LEVEL Confidential In an effort to r...

Filed under: Climbing, Video At Gadling we know a thing or two about flying. We've seen flying spiders in the sky over Brazil, flying people in New York City, flying rhinos in South Africa, even a flying fire-breathing dragon over Disney World. We've talked about flying to Mars, being afraid of flying, flying drunk and flying when you're a person of size. We know how to travel around the world without flying, where to find a flying casino and what it takes for humans to fly. But a flying drum...

Filed under: United States, NewsAfter completing a 26-hour long flight in 2010 and going from Switzerland to Morocco completely under solar power last year, the Solar Impulse is set to take on its next challenge later this spring. The high-tech plane, powered completely be the sun, will attempt to fly coast-to-coast across the U.S. starting in May. On Thursday, Solar Impulse pilots Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg announced that they will take off from Moffett Air Field at NASA Ames Rese...

Filed under: Skiing, Surfing, Africa, Asia, Europe, Mozambique, South Africa, Cambodia, Iran, Thailand, Turkey, Croatia, Estonia, Sweden, Middle East, Montenegro It's the great hypocrisy in the mind of every traveler that they want to tour a place free from other tourists. Grumbling that a place is overcrowded isn't without grounds, though. Who hasn't wanted to pull a Dr. Manhattan on the tour groups that take group photos with every single person's camera? And boy, what we wouldn't give to d...

Filed under: Finland Your passport has many uses beyond getting you in and out of a country. It can serve as a travelogue of sorts, showing you where you've been and taking you back in time as you relive trips stamp by stamp. It can also be a form of identification, or a way to remember what you looked like five years earlier, when you had that flattering (or not so flattering) photo taken. Now, if you live in Finland, it can also be entertainment. Their new passport works like a flip-book. E...

Filed under: Scuba Diving, Africa, South Africa, Video Last week in Gansbaai, South Africa, a man almost became an afternoon snack for a great white shark when the predator forced its way into a protective shark diving cage. A video uploaded by YouTube user Bryan Plummer shows a large shark ignoring the bait put out by tour operators and instead going straight for the main course: diver. After jamming its head into the cage through the viewing portal, the shark thrashed around and then swam a...

Filed under: North America, United States, Theme Parks Decades before the dawn of 3-D printing and resulting wonders like self-portrait gummy bears, Mold-a-Rama vending machines were pressing hot wax into tiny figurines delivered in seconds. These vintage contraptions still exist at zoos and other attractions, where miniature keepsakes cost only a couple of dollars and smell like melted crayons. At the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit, machines magically make models of Rosa Park's bus and wee wax...

Filed under: Arts and Culture, Festivals and Events, Photos, Stories, Europe, North America, South America, Greece, Italy, United States, Central AmericaAt the stroke of midnight, fireworks light up the night sky on the Greek island of Naxos. In a square outside a centuries old church, half the island's population gathered to celebrate the occasion. Children ran around and threw firecrackers, senior citizens occupied all the choice benches and everyone was dressed to the nines and holding lit...

Filed under: Hiking, History, Learning, Africa, Asia, Congo, Afghanistan, Video, Camping, EcotourismIf you still haven't settled on an amazing adventure for 2013 then perhaps you'll want to take a look at some of the trips that Wild Frontiers has to offer. The adventure travel company that operates out of the U.K. specializes in unique, one-of-a-kind tours to a number of great destinations on the planet and this year two of their itineraries are unlike anything you'll find elsewhere. The firs...

Filed under: South America, Brazil, Video If you're still haunted by the sight of spiders raining down on a Brazilian city, as we brought to your attention last month, this heartwarming nature video might be a palette-cleanser. Captured by the BBC, fire ants in the Amazon adapted to a flood by ganging together and turning themselves into a raft for their queen. Braving all manner of threats (speedboat on your left!), the colony clung to each other for dear life in the shape of a lily pad for ...

Filed under: Arts and Culture, Business, Food and Drink, Stories, North America, United States, Budget TravelIf Rebecca Bierman gets an urge for a Big Mac, she has at least four options to satisfy the craving. "I can go to Pierre or Sturgis, here in South Dakota," says Bierman, a farmer and rancher who lives in Glad Valley, South Dakota. "Or I can go to Dickinson or Bismarck in North Dakota." The McDonald's in Pierre is 142 miles from her home, the Sturgis branch is 147 miles away, and the go...

Filed under: Photos, United Arab, Photo of the Day, Video, Middle East Today's Video of the Day could pass for footage from a futuristic sci-fi movie, but it was taken recently in Dubai by photographer Sebastian Opitz. Opitz's surreal, almost comic book-like images were shot on a rare foggy morning as the sun rises. The time-lapse video was taken over four hours, at the end of which, the clouds seem to melt away, but the landscape still seems like a scene from the not-too-distant future. Chec...

Filed under: Arts and Culture, Photos, Stories, Nicaragua, Ecotourism, Budget Travel, Central AmericaStepping over a dead boa constrictor with flies buzzing around it wasn't what I had in mind when I hired a guy named Carlos to take us to see Volcán Masaya, a national park in Nicaragua where you can drive right up to the crater of an active volcano. But when we piled into his Toyota Corolla on a sizzling hot morning in late February, Carlos wanted us to see much more than just the smoldering ...