The Titanic Awards

Name Spud Hilton
Who? Travel writer, photographer, editor, San Francisco Chronicle. He has earned three Lowell Thomas Awards and his stories have appeared in more than 60 newspapers. Find Spud on Twitter @Spudhilton and on SFGate.com/travel.
Age 44
Countries Visited 32

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Beach The Hilton resort beach in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates; tanker ships going through the Strait of Hormuz spill so much crude that the beach showers are equipped with industrial cleaner and pot scrubbers to get the tar balls off your feet.
2. Worst Road A road in the Jebel Akhdar mountains in Oman that twisted past the ancient city of Ghul. Quickly learned it wasn’t a road, but a dry wadi bed full of water-polished rocks. We were the afternoon entertainment for the town, apparently.
3. Worst BS in a Travel Press Release Carnival announced their cabins were 50% (on average) larger than any other cruise line. Sounded suspect, so I looked at all the rooms on all the cruise lines. Even did a complete chart comparison. There is no math that backs up their claim. In fact, the only rooms that fit this criteria was in a single area of a single ship in the Norwegian fleet.
4. Worst Subway Schedule The subway in Rome, the eternal city, closes down earlier than most suburban day-care centers.
5. Worst Driving In St. George’s, Grenada, all the cobblestone streets were built for carriages, not two-lane traffic. Driving by yourself is dodgy – driving with a maelstrom of cabbies swarming around you, while you try to remember its British left-side driving and try to avoid the storm gutters that were built, oddly enough, to cripple any vehicle steered into them.

Famous Travelers, uncategorized carnival, SF chronicle, Spud Hilton