The Titanic Awards

Name Steve Keenan
Who? Online Travel Editor of The Sunday Times
Age 52
Countries Visited 44

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Airline Delta – did it ever have any frills?
2. Worst Flight Cuzco – Lima: had to wait to offload passenger and a goat.
3. Worst Airport Luton. It charges to drop passengers off. It even charges for clear plastic bags. And it charges to fast track immigration. Morally bankrupt.
4. Worst Hotel Mendip Lodge, Frome, Somerset, UK – don’t think the sausage touched the pan. The egg bounced. Terrible decor. Sadly, it burnt down three years ago.
5. Worst Souvenir Fake five-foot palm tree from a restaurant in Miami. (It was a bet.) Customs at Heathrow were so astonished they never checked the suspicious coconuts.

Famous Travelers Steve Keenan, The Sunday Times, timesonline, timesonline.co.uk, travel editor, worst, worsts

Name James Ellis
Who? Journalist, photographer and former travel editor for the UK Metro newspaper. Currently writes two blogs: 1095miles.com about his daily running challenge and worldofjames.com
Age 42
Countries Visited 80 plus

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Flight Returning from Bangkok to London on Eva Air, a Taiwanese airline. I’ve had some scares in the past on flights, but this was the strangest. Mid-flight, the oxygen masks suddenly dropped down, the lights dimmed and exit lights lit up. Instinctively, I put the mask on and gave it a tug to get the oxygen going. No oxygen. People are panicking. The woman behind me is whaling. The cabin crew has their masks on. It goes on for ages — or so it seemed. It may have only been five minutes. Then the pilot comes out and is clearly astonished that people are wearing masks . He goes back into the cockpit and tells us that the electric system had been refitted and it was a glitch. They had no idea the masks had even dropped.
2. Worst Guides I was in Kenya in 2004 on the Laikipia Reserve taking a camel safari. There was a guide from the hotel and we had two Samburu Warriors (dressed a bit like the Maasai) to protect us. We were walking, leading the camel up a hill when we came into a clearing and saw a bull elephant just 10 feet away. The guide pulled his gun, I froze, the Elephant mock-charged a few steps and our fearless warriors — the ones meant to be protecting us — had made a run for it and were 300 meters away within seconds.
3. Worst Alcohol / Food Combo I typically try whatever. In this case it was Icelandic hákarl. They catch a shark, buried it for a year, dig it up, and pickle what’s left of the rotting meat, then serve it up with brennivin. After choking it down, I managed to say it was good. So they served up some more.
4. Worst Food Poisoning Chicken feet for breakfast in Hong Kong. (They had asked if we wanted a typical local breakfast and we had said yes.) When it started to go bad, my guide treated me with warm sprite and salt (her favorite remedy). I then turned the color of the exorcist girl and sand blasted the wall with my vomit.
5. Worst Statue In Wellington, New Zealand, halfway up the main shopping street. is a statue/fountain known as the bucket fountain. It has buckets on hinges that are meant to gracefully tip into the next and  cascade water down to the lower ones, but it doesn’t work as it’s meant to. The top bucket violently tips and splashes everyone with water.

Famous Travelers 1095miles.com, james ellis, metro, travel editor, worldofjames.com

Name Howie Shapiro
Who? Former travel editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and a travel writer. Also theater reviewer  at www.philly.com
Age 60
Countries Visited About 25

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Hotel I was in Barcelona with my wife and we just walked along the street looking for a hotel. We spotted one and I remember thinking how friendly they looked. And how many beautiful people seemed to be hanging out in the lobby. It wasn’t until after we checked in that I realized it was a whore house. When my wife removes her hearing aid  to go to sleep, she’s nearly deaf, so she couldn’t hear a thing. I, on the other hand, could hear everything coming through the walls. The next day I said we have to leave this  brothel and my wife said “Why? I got a great night’s sleep.” So we stayed a second night.
2. Worst Hotel Bed Sheets Baltimore, Maryland is a good place to get crabs. Both in a restaurant and, evidently, in the sheets of a Holiday Inn that no longer exists. I thought I had wiped off all the bugs I saw in the sheets before going to sleep, but I woke up itching and a doctor confirmed that I had a case of the crabs.
3. Worst Toilet The squatters in Greece. I actually liked them at first, but after using them in so many little restaurants, I desperately just wanted… well, a pot to piss in.
4. Worst Train Ride The train departed New York at 11:40pm and arrived in Philly at 840 am. It’s normally a 2 hour ride. All the wiring came down along the NE corridor and no one knew what was going on.
5. Worst City for Driving Lots of good contenders, but London takes  it (the only city where I crossed 5 lanes in 6 seconds), Jerusalem is close behind, and Boston is worst in the US.

Famous Travelers barcelona, howard shapiro, howie shapiro, inquirer, philly.com, travel editor

Famous Travelers cameroon, delhi, doula, jane wooldridge, london, miami herald, SATW, travel editor, worsts