Inside Traveler @ National Geographic Traveler

Web-Exclusive

WorldWise Trivia Quiz

Test your geography IQ with our interactive quiz. » Play Now
Paris Photo Gallery

View photos that capture the true Paris, from Notre Dame Cathedral to outdoor cafés. » Click Here

Marrakech Guide

Explore the Red City of Morocco with these blogs, podcasts, maps, and more. » Click Here

51 Ways to Cut Vacation Costs

Don't get caught in a tourist money trap. Learn how to avoid hidden charges, and get expert money-saving tips. » Click Here

The Little Book of Travel Wisdom

Don't leave home without these essential tips, resources, and websites. » Read More

IT—Inside Traveler
By Jessie Johnston and Emily King

September 7, 2006:

IT's Farecast Forecast

Chances are you've already heard about Farecast, the airfare-prediction website that tells consumers whether to buy tickets now or wait for a better deal. Still in beta (trial) form, the site recently made routes to 55 more airports searchable (up from two). Farecast does the same thing as any airfare aggregator: It finds the prices and schedules from all major domestic airlines—except for Southwest which refuses to leak price info to aggregators—and presents it in a readable, easy-to-compare way. What Farecast adds is a graph that tracks the past 90 days of fares and predicts the next seven. For example: Will the airfare to Charleston drop in the next week or should you book now? It gives you the average low of the past month and the 90-day low so you can see, say, how stupid it was that you didn't book your ticket home for Christmas on August 12.

IT's favorite part is Farecast's flexible search option, which allows you to check ticket prices over a 30-day period. Instead of conducting four individual searches for every weekend in October to find the cheapest fare to Boston, Farecast will do it for you in one fell swoop. It'll even compare the prices of flying to other cities during that same period—simply click on another city and it adds it to the graph.

Farecast still has some glitches to work out (it freezes at random moments), but we'll likely use it in the future. It does the same thing as SideStep (our current go-to for all fare searching), but adds the addictive component of tracking, plotting, and graphing that takes us back to those blessed days of Algebra 2 and TI-81 calculators. Now, if only they'd add Canada so Jessie could plan her next trip to the homeland....

IT Goes Gorging

After her exhausting (if wonderful) spring travel orgy, Jessie swore an oath not to leave the District of Columbia for at least a month. She ended up adhering to the vow for a total of 53 days, but finally broke her travel fast to spend the last weekend of August in Ithaca, New York, with her newlywed friends Mia and Todd:

"The last time I came to visit, Ithaca was encased in ice, so the purpose of this visit (other than enjoying borscht and backgammon with my buds) was to sample the town's warmer weather pleasures. Saturday, after a slow start involving a 'pre-breakfast' of ice cream, we made our way to the Ithaca Farmer's Market, on the shore of a Cayuga Lake inlet. Under the roof of the open-sided, T-shaped market hall we feasted our senses on the jumble of products and people present. Among our fellow browsers were numerous infant-toting new parents (and pet-owners: we spied a pooch in a pouch and a snake worn like a bracelet), just-returned Cornell undergrads, and a West African musician playing the kora. We sampled pesto made from garlic greens, ogled brilliant blooms, and purchased picked-that-morning produce, organic yarn, fall flower honey, maple syrup, and a cutting board of many colors.

"Our shopping complete, we hunted down some lunch. After contemplating the merits of Cambodian, Sri Lankan, and macrobiotic offerings, we settled on a duo of flatbreads baked in a wood-fired oven mounted on a trailer, one with herbed olive oil and Asiago, the other topped Southwest-style with beans, cheese and salsa. We desserted on unusual sorbets (Earl Grey and lime, rosehip and hibiscus) sold at the soup stall and an apple-berry fritter from the samosa makers.

"Bellies full, we rambled up Cascadilla Gorge, which runs from the end of their block up to the Cornell campus. Once we'd had our fill of lush greenery and chattering falls, we found that the steep staircases had whetted our appetites anew. So, off to the Cornell Dairy Bar, for the day's third serving of frozen sweetness. Unfortunately, we arrived half an hour after closing, and had to content ourselves with a pint of Nutty Buddy Franklin purchased at the adjacent Dairy Store, and eaten at the bright red outdoor tables.

"After a post-ice-cream nap, we headed out for a scrumptious dinner at Pangea, which began with mascarpone-stuffed artichoke hearts drizzled in truffle oil, continued with pasta tossed with fennel and summer squash, and concluded with two kinds of chocolate cake, accompanied by frozen dessert number four: espresso-chili gelato.

"The rest of my stay was mostly mellow, involving many cups of tea and hands of cribbage, to a soundtrack of rain tapping on the windows. We took one more walk, to Ithaca Falls, confirming once more that Ithaca truly is 'gorges.'

"Before my departure from Binghamton airport, we hit the road and made our way to Corning, birthplace of Pyrex and Corningware, and home to the Corning Museum of Glass. We checked out works by Dale Chihuly and Louis Comfort Tiffany, and mind-boggling creations from the age of the maharajas and now. The highlight was definitely the Hot Glass Show, which featured live, narrated glass-blowing, enhanced by screens running live feeds from three cameras, including one inside the 2300°F (1260°C) 'glory hole' (reheating furnace), protected from the heat by fused-silica glass, itself a Corning invention.

"We grabbed one final bite at Corning's adorable Old World Cafe and Ice Cream (1 W. Market St., +1 607 936 1953), where we loved the tile floor, pressed-tin ceiling and dark wooden benches, but passed up the opportunity to try Ithaca-produced Purity ice cream. After all, I have to leave something for next time."

Hungry for more central New York? Sample chief researcher Marilyn Terrell's travelogue from her trip there earlier this summer.

From September 5, 2006

Cinema Paraíso

IT's tired of being single, so we're officially entering the dating scene. When we took you out for dinner last week it was more of a "hesidate," but this week IT's serious: We're taking you to the movies.

The fall round of film festivals officially kicked off last weekend in Telluride, and continues apace in Venice and Toronto, with Vancouver and New York in hot pursuit. But you know that already. And we know you know that. What we're banking on is that you might not be so up-to-date on the season's crop of film festivals in Spain.

You ought to be, though, because there are oodles; 16 to be exact. From now until December 2nd, there is an almost constant stream of cinematic celebrations throughout the Iberian kingdom. There are festivals focused on emigration, horror and fantasy, erotica, gay and lesbian film, documentaries, Europe, shorts, Latin America, and alternative cinema, as well as major retrospectives on David Lynch and Luchino Visconti. If you're a film buff with the travel bug, Spain is clearly the place to be.

Caveat: IT won't be paying for your tickets. It's too early in our relationship for that.

ISO Art

IT likes acronyms. So, when we caught word of the TBA Festival, we jumped on it ASAP. Here, Anne Marie Johnson, a native of Portland, Oregon, writes about an art exhibit so cool we actually checked airfares from DCA to PDX (FYI, no good deals):

"The Portland Institute of Contemporary Art's Time-Based Art Festival is a ten-day event running September 7-17. The schedule includes all genres and often defies them; mixed media, performance art, dance, film, and visual art are all represented. An artist-led series of workshops, salons, and lectures invites the audience into the creative mind. The city acts as the canvas for the festival, with performances taking place in old printing presses and dry cleaners, and on the streets and bridges of Portland.

"According to Brian Costello of PR and development at PICA, TBA is unique for two reasons: 'Portland's pioneer spirit, its openness and willingness to explore both artistically and environmentally,' and 'the thin line separating the artist from the audience; unlike most festivals, a curator's pass isn't required to attend panels or discourse with the artists.'

"This year, for the first time, TBA will be held on both sides of the Willamette. The festival will kick off with a nod to the metaphorical and literal bridges intrinsic to TBA. On September 7, a free outdoor concert will be held in Pioneer Court House Square led by John King's Extreme Guitar Orchestra and involve dozens of local electric guitar players. Following the performance, artists and audience will embark by foot or bicycle on a pilgrimage across the Hawthorne Bridge over the Willamette to the Works. Located in an old warehouse, the Works is both bar and stage, and acts as the nightly rendezvous point for the festival. It is the place to chat with your favorite artist while sipping microbrews, or to catch a live performance by the likes of Jollyship the Whiz-bang, an 'electro-accordion pyrate puppet sea odyssey', or the Wau Wau Sisters who can 'mix martinis in a handstand while smoking Pall Malls and thinking impure thoughts.'

"The schedule offers a bounty of options, ranging from relatively unknown local artists to world-renowned talent from all over. Laurie Anderson is perhaps the best known artist at TBA, and she promises to infatuate audiences with her new multimedia performance piece The End of The Moon, inspired in part by her time as NASA's first ever artist-in-residence.

"Stan's Café's performance-slash-installation-piece Of All the People in All the World exemplifies TBA's belief in audience involvement and the blurring of genres. In the piece, 300 million grains of rice—each representing one person in the U.S.—are displayed and sorted according to different statistics. One day the rice may represent Democrats vs. Republicans, the next day, the number of people infected with AIDS. The audience is encouraged to suggest different divisions, and to engage in conversation with the performers.

"TBA offers two festival pass options: For $225, the Immersion Pass includes access to all performances, all institute programs, and a nightly pass to The Works. For $150, the Flex Pass includes tickets to eight performances, a pass for all institute programs, and a nightly pass to The Works."

E-mail your feedback and tips to InsideTraveler@ngs.org.

Bookmark IT! www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/extras/blog/blog.html

Visit our Technorati Profile.

Even though they won't be going back to school this week, Traveler's assistant to the editor Emily King and researcher Jessie Johnston are nonetheless planning an imminent trip to Office Depot to pick up a kneadable eraser and a pack of colored pencils large enough to include "cornflower."

Center for Sustainable Destinations

Learn how to preserve the authenticity of the places you love.

� Click Here

National Geographic Traveler Places of a Lifetime
Our guides lead you to the best in ten world-class cities with photo galleries, walking tours, and what to know before you go.

� Click Here

The National Geographic Traveler Reader Panel

Are you a real traveler? Someone who cares about authenticity? Who has a point of view about where we should travel—and how? Then tell us what you think and be eligible to win a trip to almost anywhere in the United States.

� Click Here