Bowman’s Travel Brief: The Airport Lounge Life

With the Paris Olympics less than a year away, French authorities want to make sure the bedbugs don’t bite during the games and have started a drive to exterminate the pests.

Kia Karjalainen and her sister were vacationing in Greece when things took an unexpected turn. “We were in our hotel room, and I suddenly said to my sister, ‘It really, really smells of smoke. Is something burning?’”

A passenger on an American Airlines flight claims he was met by police on arrival in Los Angeles after a flight attendant highlighted concerns about the wellbeing of his children and suggested that they may not have been his.

Last month, ASTA sent a release about suppliers who pay timely commissions.

This series of articles about credit cards, points and miles, and budgeting for travel is brought to you in partnership with The Points Guy.

Playa Hotels & Resorts just recently celebrated its 10th anniversary with a big event in Cancun.

Airports, not surprisingly, are a common place targeted by car thieves, who have their pick of vehicles or get underneath cars and saw off valuable catalytic converters. Should the latter happen, you’ll know as soon you start to drive off and you hear a loud roaring sound.

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Welcome back to another episode of the TravelPulse Podcast! 

If you’ve been following the news lately, it’s plain to see that travel is back in a big way, and with it, long lines and crowds at the airports. Reports of long waits in airport check-in and security lines likely have many travelers looking into trusted traveler programs and security expediting services such as TSA PreCheck (which costs $78 for a five-year membership, and $70 to renew) and Clear (which costs $189 per year).

Between 1850 and 1852, a mighty, squat stone fort rose from a low-lying island in the Milford Haven Waterway in Wales. Originally proposed by Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to King Henry VIII, more than 300 years earlier, Stack Rock Fort—about 800 yards off the coast—was built to protect the Royal Dockyard at Pembroke Dock from attack by sea. It had a 30-foot tower, walls nine feet and nine inches thick, and housed three large cannons and one smaller one. A few years later casemates were added, and by 1870, the fort got a major makeover, inspired by the threat of Napoleon III. A new battery was added, able to hold up to 175 soldiers and five officers. Most of the fort’s useful life was spent undergoing upgrades, and it only really saw active use during World War I. In 1929 it was finally decommissioned, disarmed, and scoured for useful materials. Since then, the lonely three-story fort has sat vacant but for crashing waves, nesting gulls, and opportunistic plants.

A traveler on TikTok has shared a life hack to avoid being stuck in an airport cab pickup line.