The Titanic Awards

Name Norie Quintos
Who? Senior editor at National Geographic Traveler, specializing in consumer travel news, guided tours, and family travel. Former jobs include travel reporter at U.S. News & World Report and senior editor at Caribbean Travel & Life magazine. Find Norie on Twitter
Age 45
Countries Visited About 25

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Meal At a restaurant in Rome, I urged my kids to order a panini—“it’s authentic,” I assured them. What they got: three halves of hotdog in a hamburger bun.
2. Worst Tour In Rekjavik, Iceland, I signed up for an eight-hour “Golden Circle” minibus tour. Problem was, it was December and there were only six hours of daylight. The first two hours of the tour were conducted in near-total darkness, with the guide blithely describing the passing geologic and historical highlights no one could see, “On your left is the Hengill volcano… And here, on the right is a geothermal plant…. ” Adding to the Twilight-Zone-iness of it all was that no one else seemed to think it was odd.
3. Worst Flight Regional flight from Shiraz to Isfahan on Iran Air Tour, a subsidiary of the Iranian national airline. The Tu-154s was a leased Aeroflot aircraft. The plane’s obvious age, seemingly rickety condition, and Soviet styling made me wonder if we’d arrive in one piece. But we did.
4. Another Worst Flight I took a charter flight from Darwin, Australia, to a lodge in Arnhem Land. The plane turned out to be a two-seater. It was just the pilot—who looked awfully young—and me in the jumpseat. Halfway into the flight, he asked me to pull out the map. He peered at it and flew on. A little later he asked me if that area below looked like the marked spot on the map. At that moment it dawned on me that the guy had never been to where we were going before. Then I started to panic and wondered if he’d ever flown solo before; he assured me he had. Now, those who are familiar with my sense of misdirection would never ask me to navigate, but we somehow managed to locate the airstrip. To top off this surreal adventure, after we landed I had to get out and help park the plane by pushing it under some trees.
5. Worst Photography Moment My regular camera broke soon after I arrived for a South African safari. So I bought several disposable film cameras at a gift shop in Johannesburg. On the first morning’s game drive, the jeep was full of wannabe photo pros jostling each other with their mongo-lensed Nikons. And there I was snapping away with the $10 plastic camera. The best part was telling them where I worked—National Geographic. You could just see those guys wondering if maybe I was employing some kind of super-secret photography technique.

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