Paris Extends Shopping Hours in 12 Major Neighborhoods
Posted on 09/25/2015, 11:15 AM
Thanks to a recently passed bill, Parisian stores in such popular neighborhoods as the Marais, the Champs Elysees, and Montmartre will have the option to stay open on Sundays and up until midnight, a radical policy shift. And a controversial one: the Mayor of Paris has spoken out against the new rules, which overturn a 1906 law keeping Sunday a "day of rest" for the majority of workers; and a...
A Camera that Won't Work at Tourist Sights
Posted on 09/23/2015, 4:15 PM
Instagram is bigger than you thought. This morning, Facebook (which owns it) announced there are now 400 million active users—that's up 100 million since the start of 2015. Soon, nearly half a billion people will be recording their experiences that way. And look what that mentality has wrought. New, in things we don't need: An idea for a camera that won't let you take pictures of popular thin...
Kids Stay and Eat Free in San Diego
Posted on 09/23/2015, 2:00 PM
Once again, as it has done annually for a while, the city of San Diego, California, has worked with some of its biggest hotels, restaurants, and attractions to offer a slew of deals in which kids vacation for free with their families. This year, those promotions include free admission to the famous San Diego Zoo, the original SeaWorld, and on Hornblower Cruises tours of San Diego's deservedly...
Miss a Connecting Flight? This Airport Will Pay
Posted on 09/15/2015, 3:30 PM
Would you pay $42 if it meant you didn't have to worry about missing a connecting flight? Gatwick, London's second-busiest airport (out of the city's six), has launched a new product that does exactly that. For £27.50 per flight, passengers can buy this option as part of "GatwickConnects," which promises that if they miss a connecting flight there because of delay or cancellation, the airport...
TSA's Luggage Lock Skeleton Keys Leaked
Posted on 09/11/2015, 11:00 AM
Consumerist and Wired report the design of the master skeleton keys used by the TSA to open and inspect your luggage has been leaked on the Web. Now anyone can use a 3-D printer to duplicate the keys and open luggage—and people are doing it. The security blunder stems from a story in the Washington Post published nearly a year ago, which ran an image of the keys along with a story on luggage ...
An Icon of Modernist Architecture Turns 50: Happy Birthday to St. Louis’ Gateway Arch
Posted on 09/02/2015, 6:00 PM
St. Louis’ Gateway Arch may well be the most bittersweet of the world’s iconic monuments. The planned focal point of a park built in the 1930’s to celebrate Thomas Jefferson, and the expansion of the United States westward, spurred by the “Louisiana Purchase” (the land buy that the President made from the French, doubling the size of the United States), its creation required the destruction ...
#1 in #2: Japan Opens First Toilet Museum
Posted on 09/02/2015, 12:00 AM
I don't know if you've ever sat on one of those futuristic Japanese toilets, but they will change your life. In North America and Europe, toilets plug into the plumbing, but in Asia, most of them are also plugged into the electric supply. The things have more buttons than the remote control than your television, and boy do they make you feel happier—between the seat warmers, odor neutraliz...
Hilton Yanks Adult Movies
Posted on 08/28/2015, 1:00 PM
Not like you ever rented one, but porn movies are being eliminated from all Hilton hotels' in-demand movie selection. Said Hilton in a statement, as if it was something you might have purchased, "While the vast majority of our properties already do not offer this content today, this content will be phased out of all other hotels subject to the terms of their contracts." Advocacy group Natio...
Entrancing Video Follows Luggage After It's Checked
Posted on 08/24/2015, 4:00 PM
Amsterdam's Schiphol airport wants to show you that it has put a lot of cash into building the ultimate baggage delivery system. So it produced this astonishing video by attaching a camera to a piece of luggage and sending it through the airport's elaborate system of automated conveyor belts, slides, and sensors. This version is enough to put stars in your eyes, but the version ove...
Airline Complaints Soar! Whose Fault Is It?
Posted on 08/24/2015, 3:30 PM
It's not your imagination: Airfares may be down (as we reported last week), but complaints about U.S. airlines soared more than 20 percent during the first half of this year. Between January and June this year, the U.S. Department of Transportation logged 9,542 consumer complaints, which was up 20.3 percent from the first half of 2014. In June, complaints shot up 50 percent over last year. ...
