The Titanic Awards

Name Will Hide
Who? London-based freelance travel writer with a weekly column in The Times. Find him on the web at willhide.com and willhidetravels.blogspot.com
Age 42
Countries Visited 50ish

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Flight Scariest was flying Belgrade-London on JAT in November 2009 when we passed too close to the jetstream of a 747 somewhere over Austria. It’s the only time I’ve really thought “this is it”.
2. Worst In-Flight Meal I hate it on short, overnight flights from the US east cost to London when they wake you two hours before landing for “breakfast” and then just give you a muffin that has a sell-by date of June 2019 and a cup of luke-warm dirty water that they laughingly call coffee.
3. Worst City for Driving Cape Town. You expect it to be bad in somewhere like Tehran or Dhaka, but Cape Town in theory has more of an air of civility – so why are their drivers so selfish, never letting you in at junctions and cutting you up all over the place?
4. Worst Ride on an Animal On an elephant in Assam, India. Never, ever ride an elephant in shorts. Their skin is like industrial sand paper. The hair on the inside of my legs still hasn’t grown back.
5. Worst Museum There’s a Jesse James exhibition in Stanton Missouri, USA, which is basically a posh shed next to a highway. It’s devoted to the notion that JJ never died young in the 1890s but went into hiding, grew old and passed away peacefully in Texas in the 1950s, supported by a few pictures of an old guy with a similar nose and ears – except they’re not similar at all. It’s just so bad, it’s good. You’ve got to admire the belief of the people who run it.

Famous Travelers columnist, freelance, The Times, travel writer, Will Hide, willhide.com

Name Jill Starley-Grainger
Who? Journalist, editor, web editor and travel presenter. Has written about travel for Conde Nast Traveller, Sunday Times Travel Magazine, The Guardian, The Independent, Food and Travel, British Airways High Life, Ryanair Magazine, Time Out Travel Guides, Footprint Guides and numerous other travel magazines and websites, previously travel editor for Harper’s Bazaar Dubai and web editor for bahighlife.com.  Read her blog at uktraveleditor.wordpress.com or follow her on Twitter @uktraveleditor
Age 35
Countries Visited 29

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Airline Ryanair based itself on low-cost Southwest Air in the US, but unlike much-loved Southwest, everybody hates Ryanair – rip-off fees added almost daily, no customer service and clear disdain for passengers from the top down.
2. Worst Airport Abu Dhabi Airport is always packed and chaotic, and the few shops and cafes are tiny and rubbish. Expect to sit on the floor as there are only about 50 chairs for thousands of passengers.
3. Worst Train Meal On the overnight TrenHotel from Madrid to Paris, vegetarians should pack their own. Our ‘five-star’ breakfast? Cold, undercooked aubergines soaked in manky sunflower oil. When we asked for the croissants, toast and cereals our neighbours were being served, we were scowled at and told that since we’d ordered the vegetarian breakfast (must be booked weeks ahead), they couldn’t give us the normal one.
4. Worst Hotel The Travelodge in Battersea, London. It’s looks and feels like a prison – but with worse lighting and surlier staff. Rooms might start at £19, but they aren’t worth £1.90.
5. Worst City for Driving Istanbul – traffic doesn’t move – no matter what time of day. As we were sitting in a cab at 1am, a man with no legs scooted past us using just his hands for walking. Truly.
6. Worst Travel Gadget The microfiber travel towel. After the first use, it’s rock hard and only soaks up three drops of water. Plus, unless you’re hostelling or camping, you don’t need to bring your own towel. Waste of money.
7. Worst Museum The 007 Museum on the island of Naoshima, Japan, is so bad, it’s good. The island is a justifiable mecca of modern art and architecture, but this museum is an anomaly of awfulness. Based on a Bond novel, ‘The Man with the Red Tattoo”, that was partly set on Naoshima but that wasn’t even written by Ian Fleming and was never made into film, this “museum” features handmade models of some of the book’s villains, along with various bits of worthless Bond memorabilia, and a comedy cut-out where you can poke your head through to have your picture taken as Bond and Bond girl being rescued. Actually, it’s brilliant, in an OMG would-you-believe-this-place kind of way.

Famous Travelers @uktraveleditor, Jill Starley-Grainger, travel writer, worst airline, worst airport, worst train meal, worst travel gadget

Name Mike Carter
Who? Freelance travel writer whose work appears mostly in the Guardian and Observer newspapers. His Uneasy Rider travel column in the Observer, which charted his 2006 six-month solo motorcycle trip through Europe and beyond, was subsequently turned into a book of the same name. He’s currently cycling around the coastline of Britain — a journey of 6,000 miles — for his latest Observer column. If he survives, he plans to write a book about it too. Check out his column here.
Age 45
Countries Visited 54

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Stretch of Road for Motorcycle If things haven’t improved since 2006, any stretch of road in Albania. In just a few short days, I practically destroyed my shocks in the potholes, was attacked by snakes, shot at and had the nearest of near misses with a car that came straight at me before flying over a wall. It was like starring in my own Indiana Jones movie.
2. Worst Travel Writing Line A toss up between “It was the perfect end to the perfect day” and “I’ll definitely be back”. I’m pretty sure I’ve used them both at some stage. Possibly in the same piece.
3. Worst Thing about Guidebooks I may be missing the point here, but I can’t for the life of me understand why some guidebooks print huge, double-page spread color photos of places and just a few words about them. You’ve bought the guidebook, you’re reading the guidebook. You are, presumably, going to travel to see the place for yourself. So give us some useful information, not pictures, damn you.
4. Worst Meal Not so much a meal, but I bought a Fan Milk, an ice-cream type snack, in Togo recently. Unpasturised milk product, from a street vendor, in Togo. It was coming out of both ends for days. Funny that.
5. Worst Toilet No contest. In a bar in a village in central Romania they had an outside toilet up some steps. When you entered, you saw that the toilet was just a very large hole in the floor to a deep pit of sewage about six feet below you. The floor was very slippery as one can imagine and the hole easily big enough to fall through. No one would even know you were gone. I have nightmares about it to this day.

Famous Travelers biking, cycling, Guardian, mike carter, motorcycle, Observer, travel writer, Uneasy rider

Famous Travelers airport, australia, australian, flight attendants, hotel, inflight, peter moore, toilet, tourist attraction, travel writer