👨‍✈️ The Briefing Room:

Notes and open topics from the editor’s desk.

Welcome Departures. The place to be for where to go and what to see. Spring is finally here! This week I have been traveling to a wonderful new location to begin production of the next part of this newsletter. I’ve been running a little behind but without further ado, here’s what’s been happening in the world of travel!

Alvin

📰 This Week in Travel:

A TLDR approach to some of the week’s most important headlines.

• China Eastern Boeing 737 with 132 onboard, crashed along the mountains in southern China on Monday. No survivors were found. Investigation is on its way. Although flying is still by far one of the safest forms of transportation, accidents do occur from time to time, but hardly ever are they this intriguing. From the look of the video footage released by Chinese media, the aircraft appeared to have dived full speed into the ground. It will be interesting to see what information the black boxes will yield.

• South East Asia is on a roll! What has been one of the country’s with the most strict mitigation measures in the region, has finally got itself in a position to open up its borders and begin receiving tourists again. Using the official Thailand Pass website, tourist can “easily” get all the information they will need to get into the country. Though a bit overwhelming, it is quite a milestone for a country that has remained off limits for the past 2 years. As with Vietnam’s rollout, there are still quite a few unknowns in Thailand’s process, but for a country who’s 10% GDP comes from tourism, these will get resolved sooner rather than later.

• Qantas reopening first class louges in Australia. After slowing reinstating service of their flagship A380 superjumbo from their pandemic desert storage locations, the carrier is reopening is first class lounges for flights from Sydney to Los Angeles and London. The fact that A380 double deckers are beginning to come out of storage means travel demand is finally beginning to go the right direction. Though the news itself might impact only a small fraction of the travel population, more premium passengers flying, means carriers can start offering more options along more routes. This always translates to better travel for everyone.

📸 Destination Deep Dive:

Comprehensive multipart series on a single destination.

France Part 06

Last week on Destination Deep Dive: France Part 05 we visited some of the city’s oldest cafés. This week, we go for a walk through one of my favorite scenic routes along the bank of the Seine River.

Starting Point: Les Deux Magots

I have made this walking route to center around the Square du Vert-Galant which ironically is a triangular park on the western tip of Ile de la Cité. It can be seen and accessed from Pont Neuf. The bridge was built in 1606 and was the first to cross the entire length of the river. The 3.5 kilometer route will take you through a lot of the points of interests in the region, but more importantly has some of my favorite foto ops salon the way. On it’s own the park is a great place for a picnic on a nice day. Specially if you are already in the area visiting Notre-Dame or any of the other points of interests I’ve shared this far in Destination Deep Dive Parts 01 - 07.

Though it ends along the river at La Tour d’Argent restaurant mainly because of the great view of the back of Notre-Dame, if you have the time of prefer shopping over photos, head over to explore the rest of the charming (though touristy) Rue de la Huchette.

Next week on Destination Deep Dive: France Part 07 we go high and to some of the best roof tops in Paris.

About Destination Deep Dives

Destination Deep Dives offer a more immersive look at one particular destination in a recurring format over a several editions of the newsletter. It is where I give myself room to explore a broader set of points of interests, for all travel styles and budgets. Think of them as small parts of a larger travel guide. Even though I will be publishing them all together as one guide at the end of the series, you may access them all as individual articles inside their corresponding Departures edition here:

• France Part 01 // Notre Dame

• France Part 02 // La Tour d’Argent

• France Part 03 // La Samaritaine

• France Part 04 // Shakespeare & Company

• France Part 05 // Café Le Procope

🗺 Bucket List:

Short highlight of a dream destination.

World’s Top 5 Spring Destinations

This week I am experimenting with the first “Top 5” list. Although these are my favorites, I am really curious to hear yours. Do you have a favorite place that makes you think of spring? I’m leaving this section deliberately open for some discussion. Let me know by replying to the email or in the comments section below.

🧳 Carry-on Only:

Travel experience, tech and accessory reviews.

One of the big nuisances about long flights is how to keep your breath fresh after hours of munching on snacks and airplane food. You might not have access to your toiletries or the lavatories might not be in their best condition by the time you are close to your destination. Here is where the Colgate Wisp disposable tooth brush comes to the rescue. They feature a built-in freshening bead that dissolves during use and requires no water for activation or rinsing. Throw one of these in your carry-on and conveniently freshen up before you land.

In the US they are available a Target, Walmart, Amazon and most big box pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS. Around the word you will find them on Amazon or you can go on the Colgate website to check where they are sold in your neck of the woods.

💰 Deal of the Week:

Special sales and offers from all over the web.

To celebrate this weeks big announcement on Thailand finally easing restrictions, I went out and found not 1, but 2 pretty sweet deals direct to Bangkok. The first one comes from Scoot via London Gatwick and the second from Thai Smile via Mumbai Chhatrapati. At $266 and $105 oneway respectively, both are flying out on Tuesday April 19th.

flyscoot.com

As usual these deals are one way and exclusively for the specified travel days.

thaismileair.com

Unfortunately for US travelers the options are still very limited as there are no ultra low cost carriers flying long haul routes to pre pandemic levels yet. But I remain very hopeful that will change soon as countries continue to open up.

🛠 Hack of the Week:

Tips and tricks for better travel quality of life.

Regardless how many amenities come with your first class suite or how comfortable you can make that empty 3 seat row in economy out to be, flying long haul is always a drag. There is only so much you can sleep and so many movies you can watch. Even though most modern carriers offer wifi onboard these days, signal can be quite inconsistent throughout the duration of the flight, not mention slow and quite expensive. One of the ways I keep my sanity on long flights while saving money on data is by using a very underutilized feature you might not even know your browser has called “off-line reading”. When enabled, like the name implies, it allows you to quickly download full webpages to your local hard rive or mobile device internal storage for consumption when you fall outside the coverage area. It not only works great when you are completely off-line, but it is also comes in extremely handy when you are on limited network speed or on a metered connection like the ones available at cruising altitude.

If you are on the Apple ecosystem, the feature is baked into the Safari web browser and syncs your Mac to all your iOS devices via iCloud.

Click here for detailed instructions on how to set it up directly from the Apple website.

If you live in Windows or Linux land, or just want to supercharge what Safari already offers, a freemium service called Pocket has you covered. It is plugin based, so it works across different browsers and operating systems and their mobile app syncs all your devices through the cloud.

You can find it at getpocket.com.

🛫 About Us:

Departures is a free newsletter about photography, travel & lifestyle. To find out more about what this is, who I am and why should you be here, visit our dedicated about page here:

About Departures