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Germany Travel / Friedrichshafen Travel / Wish You Were Here / Dornier / Zeppelin / Aviation / Museum Travel / → All Tags

Wish You Were Here: Friedrichshafen, Germany

The skies are gray. The building is gray. The airships are gray. Wait—airships?! Yeah, we just said airships.

It's in the 40s here in Friedrichshafen, Germany, but we've taken this detour to the southern edge of the country for a few reasons that don't care what the weather forecast says.

For one, it's the birthplace of the Zeppelin airship, way back when Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin decided to get in the balloon business. Perhaps you're most familiar with the Hindenburg (cue "oh the humanity") as that was a Zeppelin craft, though technology means they're built far safer and better these days. At the Zeppelin Halle near Friedrichshafen-Bodensee Airport, the dirigibles still take passengers up on the same route over Lake Constance as the Count's 1900 maiden flight. In town, there's that Zeppelin Museum we've previously written about.

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Art Travel / Photography Travel / Mario Testino / Vogue / Lima Travel / Peru Travel / Museum Travel / Fashion Travel / → All Tags

At MATE, the Brand New Lima Gallery of Fashion Photographer Mario Testino

Flip open the ginormous tome that is the September issue of Vogue magazine and, almost near the end, this stunning photo presents itself. The entire spread is essentially a love song by the Vogue-favorite photographer Mario Testino, to his native Peru. Taking editor-at-large Hamish Bowles along for a ride down to Lima, the two visit Testino's newly opened museum, MATE.

MATE stands for Asociación Mario Testino and, since its premiere exhibiton "Todo o Nada" features only Testino's work, MATE comes across as a monument the photographer has built to himself. Even visiting MATE on our own, last month during a brief stay in Lima, can't shake that feeling. MATE will eventually feature the work of other Peruvian artists within its restored walls, but for now it's the domain of Testino devotees.

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Where and When to Watch the Space Shuttle Atlantis Make a Final Move

If you missed the move of the Space Shuttles to their new homes in New York City and Los Angeles—don’t worry—there’s still one more NASA orbiter that has yet to reach its final resting place This time the transportation is taking place in Florida and not too far from where the astronauts and crew did their thing for decades. That means that there will be no piggyback-plane flyover, but at least you’ll have the chance to pay your respects to one of the country’s remnants of NASA space travel technology.

This time it’s the Space Shuttle Atlantis, and it's scheduled to head over to Kennedy Space Center on November 2. It only needs to travel around 10 miles or so to park and ready a new $100 million exhibit, but much of the path is through restricted areas and other limited access places.

That means you’re going to need to buy your way along the route and the Kennedy Space Center visitor complex will be happy to sell you some tickets for exactly that.

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Space Shuttle / Endeavour / NASA / Space Travel / Museum Travel / Los Angeles Travel / → All Tags

10 Hot Shots from the Space Shuttle Endeavour's Drive Through LA

This last Saturday, the Space Shuttle Endeavour caused a little Los Angesles gridlock of its very own, traveling on the Over Land Transporter (OLT) for 12 miles through the city in order to reach its new home at the California Science Center’s Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Display Pavilion. No surprise that it was 10 hours late.

Endeavour, built as a replacement for space shuttle Challenger, completed 25 missions, spent 299 days in orbit, and orbited Earth 4,671 times while traveling 122,883,151 miles. The public will be able to visit the Shuttle at the CSC beginning October 30. For more images of Endeavour both on the LA streets and during her fly days, check out the Endeavour Flickr Group.

It also shouldn't come as any surprise that NASA themselves scored the best images from the entire drive, posting them to their Flickr. Hey, NASA may not have flying Space Shuttles anymore, but they do have a killer Flickr stream! From the NASA shots and a few others, we chose 10 images you just have to see:

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Museum Travel / Food Travel / Italy Travel / Gelato / Bologna Travel / Dessert Travel / → All Tags

This is a Real Thing: Italy's New Museum of Gelato

One of the reasons travelers and tourists flock to Italy each and every year is for the food. Obviously there’s pizza, pasta, and plenty of other warm and savory dishes, but when it comes to dessert there’s really only option on our menu—gelato. Thankfully there’s now a shrine dedicated to the cousin of ice cream, just one of Italy’s national treasures.

The Carpigiani Gelato Museum is now open for business. Exhibits reveal the history of gelato, like from where it came and how it got to where it is today. There’s over 10,000 images showing the evolution and history, and there's even twenty different original machines. Tools of the trade, videos, and other multimedia displays round out the offerings, so you’re definitely getting the full gelato experience.

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Museum Travel / Museums / Free Stuff / Budget Travel / → All Tags

No Plans This Weekend? 'Museum Day' Means Free Visits All Over the US

Looking for something to do this weekend? How about checking out a local museum for free? In case you didn’t know, tomorrow—Saturday, September 29—is Museum Day, and that means plenty of free admission and complimentary access to museums across the country.

All the fun is organized thanks in part to Smithsonian magazine and all you have to do is head over to their website and start museum shopping. Museum Day Live! gives you free access to the museum of your choice, as well as your guest. It’s kind of like a buy-none-get-both free kind of deal, so you really can't lose. There are some limitations, so it’s probably best to start free museum shopping as soon as possible. Just remember to print out your ticket voucher thing and bring it along with you.

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Art Travel / Street Art Travel / Arizona Travel / Airplanes / Video / Museum Travel / Boneyards / → All Tags

'The Boneyard Project': Airplanes as Art in the Arizona Desert

Okay, good news and bad news. Good news first: earlier this year, a group of artists banded together to rescue some abandoned airplanes from the infamous boneyards of the Arizona desert, repaint them in dazzling schemes, and display them as artpieces within something called "The Boneyard Project" at the Pima Air & Space Museum. Yes, it looks super awesome and yes, it was open to the public, but therein lies the bad news: "was."

You see, The Boneyard Project happened over a weekend in January of this year. It's over. We've only just come to find out about it as some design blogs circulated resulting photographs of the exhibition. Apparently the event was publicized mostly through the street art community as pieces included DC-3s painted by How & Nosm, Nunca, and Retna; a Boeing C-97 by Saner; a C45 plane by Faile; a Lockheed VC-140 Jetstar by Andrew Schoultz; and an assortment of nose cones, cockpits, and other pieces painted by Bast, Dan Colen, Trustocorp, Ron English, Shepard Fairey, Futura, Richard Prince and Eric White.

But wait! There's a little more good news...

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Space Shuttle / Endeavour / 747 / NASA / Space Travel / Museum Travel / Los Angeles Travel / → All Tags

Space Shuttle 'Endeavour' Waves Goodbye to Houston for the Last Time

Houston, Texas isn't in the best mood today. After all, around sunrise this morning "Space City" lost what it should have kept: the NASA Space Shuttle Endeavour, which departed for the last time from Houston's Ellington Field, en route to its final resting place in Los Angeles. The Endeavour first hit the sky in 1992, flying 25 times, with 123 million miles in space and 4,700 circles around Earth.

It won't be a direct flight to LA for the Endeavour, atop its modified Boeing 747 carrier plane; it's booked to stop at Biggs Army Airfield in El Paso, Texas, before heading to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California. Then, tomorrow, the journey in the skies completes at LAX Airport before the shuttle takes to the streets in October.

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Germany Travel / Zeppelins / Blimps / Museum Travel / Aviation / Historical Travel / → All Tags

One Guess for What Country Has the World's Largest Zeppelin Museum

The US has no shortage of aviation museums and, indeed, another one just opened in Ohio this summer. Still, while walking under warbird wings and checking out the occasional spacecraft it's all too easy to forget about those lumbering pioneers of long-haul travel: the airships.

Airships (or Zeppelins/dirigibles/blimps, whatever term you most prefer) had a short shelf life thanks in part to the development of actual airplane aviation and thanks, also in part, to that "oh, the humanity" tragedy that saw the Hindenburg mega-airship go up in flames in 1937. But, for a time, Zeppelins were the coolest thing in air travel; Germany operated regular trips to both Recife, Brazil and New Jersey using them!

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Photo Gallery / Finland Travel / Helsinki Field Trip / Helsinki Travel / Scandinavia Travel / Aviation / Finnair / Airports / Museum Travel / HEL / Historical Travel / → All Tags

Say HEL-lo to Helsinki: Inside Finland's Deserted Aviation Museum

HEL-lo Helsinki! Hilarious puns on the city's airport code (HEL) aside, our man about the world John "Yes, That John" Walton has been spending some down time in Helsinki this year, and has some great recommendations all this week for things to do in the world's most northerly capital!

Who can turn down an afternoon poking around a completely empty aviation museum, with old planes just waiting for you to clamber around them?

Not us! Ee spotted the Suomen Ilmailumuseo while taking the hotel bus to a Helsinki Airport hotel earlier in the summer, so on our return to HEL, with a carefully crafted morning free, we made sure to stop off.

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Space Travel / Museum Travel / NASA / Neil Armstrong / Road Trips / Air Force / → All Tags

You Know, There's Already a Whole Museum Honoring Neil Armstrong

What you already know by now is that Neil Armstrong, NASA pilot and first man on the moon, died Saturday at age 82 of complications from cardiovascular procedures. What you probably don't know is that the man already has a museum dedicated to him, and it's been around for thirty years! The museum opened in 1972, three years after the famous first moonwalk 1969.

The Armstrong Air and Space Museum sits in the tiny (under 10,000 people) town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, Armstrong's birthplace. Since Ohio has a reputation as a breeding ground for aviators, astronauts and presidents, the structure branches out beyond Neil to cover all Ohio's contributions to the history and politics of space flight.

Among the items on display are Armstrong's uniforms, an F5D Sky Lancer, the Gemini VIII spacecraft (in which Neil flew and which also made the first space docking), Apollo 11 artifacts (Neil's backup Apollo 11 spacesuit!) and a moon rock. Even the architecture of the museum is notable; it resembles the moon rising and the dome that gives this effect contains a star theater.

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Art Travel / Museum Travel / Airports / Airport News / EDI / Nude Travel / Naked Travel / Edinburgh Travel / → All Tags

Is This Picasso Too Sexy for Edinburgh Airport?

There’s a little bit of a controversy brewing at Scotland's Edinburgh Airport, but it has nothing to do with baggage fees or airport security. This time it’s an airport advertisement that’s getting passengers all hot and bothered.

On loan from the collections of the Tate over in London, Picasso’s Nude Woman in a Red Armchair is now on the wall at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. An airport advertisement was just trying to get people excited for the new exhibit and to sell some tickets, but apparently the "provocative" display of modern art is not appropriate for an airport—at least according to some passengers.

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