Travel news you may have missed (aka water pistols at the Gritti Palace?): Travel Weekly

Richard Turen

Richard Turen

Stories about the pandemic and all those about the influence of Russia’s assault on Ukraine are, we can all agree, totally newsworthy. And every single is influencing our experienced life in some spectacular methods.

But as a “major” travel columnist, I experience an obligation to converse with you these days about some travel information stories that feel to have been missed by my rivals:

Let’s begin with your leisure small business to Afghanistan. Taliban fighters who have been embroiled in a 20-12 months insurgency now control the state. So now that they are in regulate, what do these fighters want to do most? Well, it turns out, they have been flocking to the country’s amusement parks. Numerous of the fighters are rural people, and they like viewing the parks, notably the sandy shores of the capital’s Qargha Reservoir. A single of the parks is named “FunFair.”

The dilemma is that the fighters have been carrying equipment guns and other high-driven weapons as they experience the bumper cars and trucks and the Ferris wheel. It has been unsettling, I am absolutely sure, for your consumers. But now some excellent information: Fighters will now have to examine their guns at the gates of all amusement parks in the state. 

In some cases lifestyle does imitate artwork. Do you keep in mind the Tom Hanks film “The Terminal”? Very well then, I want you to satisfy Wei Jianguo, a resident of Beijing. It turns out that Wei enjoys to smoke and consume. His loved ones told him he will have to quit or transfer out. This offered particular problems as Wei was unemployed. But immediately after some considering about his difficulty, he came up with a solution: He moved into Terminal 2 at the Beijing Cash Worldwide Airport.

Wei pays no rent and keeps his blankets and outfits in two suitcases. He takes advantage of an electric powered cooker to put together basic meals. This does not feel to very seriously issue Chinese airport officials as Wei has been living in Terminal 2 for the earlier 14 years.

Our last information update fears a famous residence in Venice and a new amenity your clients will be acquiring at test-in.

The Gritti Palace is a 15th-century masterpiece in a setting up on the Grand Canal just throughout the h2o from the Salute church. The lodge is stuffed with priceless paintings and antiques and experienced been a beloved of stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and, far more recently, Brad Pitt.

But now the lodge and other queens of magnificence alongside the principal canals have a problem — a significant vacationer difficulty.

The relatively properly-behaved pigeons in all individuals Venice pictures have been replaced by a chicken the Italians contact a magoghe: a big chicken, a sort of criminalized seagull, that will snatch foodstuff off of plates no matter what it requires.

So now, when your clientele check in to the Gritti Palace, they will be issued orange drinking water pistols. The birds appear, for the time remaining, to run absent from water pistols fired at them, and the hen professionals in Venice have concluded that orange is a shade that intimidates the birds.

Just don’t forget to recommend that your purchasers “aim significant” when shooting at the birds although eating on the wonderful out of doors terrace to protect against the h2o from diluting the sauce on their spaghetti alla busara.