The Cultured Girl

For years, globetrotters have sworn by melatonin as a weapon against jet leg. I, too, have always considered the supplements a cultured girl’s travel essential — popping one pill before bed really does seem to help me adjust to a new sleep schedule — but I always wondered if it was a placebo effect. Apparently not: According to a new study by Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, taking melatonin was significantly more effective than a placebo in helping people sleep. Melatonin is a hormone normally produced by your pineal gland at night, so taking a supplement before bed in a new time zone tricks your body into thinking it’s bedtime, even if it’s 3 p.m. in your hometown. You can also use it to readjust when you return from vacation. Plus, it’s not a sleeping pill by any means, so there are no weird side effects or grogginess. The pills are easy to find over the counter (try your local GNC), or you can buy a bottle online at drugstore.com.

I’m a notorious over-packer, which is why I was thrilled to discover a brilliant little online store called Minimus. The site offers travel-size packages of just about every toiletry and cleaning item you can think of–from Bounce dryer sheets to St. Ives Apricot Scrub. Not only does it save precious room in my suitcase, but I love that I can buy individually-wrapped products, say a Woolite pouch for 39 cents, and forego the mess of filling up plastic containers and buying more than I need. Plus, it stocks higher-end drugstore brands like Pantene and Dove that I rarely come across at my local Walgreens. It’s a resource that’s sure to lighten any Cultured Girl’s load.

While packing for an upcoming trip last night, I found a couple old ticket stubs that, like usual, had been stashed inside the front pocket of my suitcase. I threw away without a second thought, but I guess I should’ve been more careful because, according to the Guardian, these crumpled papers provide the essential building blocks needed to steal my identity.

Using only a British Airways stub found in the trash, reporter Steve Boggan was able to gain full access to a traveler’s personal details–including his passport number, the date it expired, his nationality (Dutch, living in the UK), and his date of birth. Boggan then surfed publicly available databases and found out–within 15 minutes–where the passenger lived, where he worked, which universities he had attended, and how much his house was worth. Find out how he did it here.

So besides ripping up your boarding pass, what other steps should you take to make sure no one snatches your cultured identity? Here’s a good list I gleaned from MSNBC:

1. According to officials, people really do go ‘dumpster diving’, or sift through trash to find a statement or bill that someone didn’t destroy. Tear up — or, if you prefer, shred — credit card statements, solicitations and other documents that contain private financial information.
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It makes me more than a little sad to hear that Starbucks is expanding into France, as deftly detailed in this BusinessWeek story (via Agenda). I am not firmly in the Starbucks-is-evil camp; after all, it is a socially responsible company that treats its employees well, and I have a weakness for Frappucinos. But I cannot understand why anyone would want to drink a watery Starbucks latte when the other option is a rich French espresso at a Parisian cafe. Take the Big Evil Chain Store factor out of the equation, and it’s still offensive from a pure coffee-drinking standpoint, not to mention a cultural one. I guess it could be a selling point that Starbucks offers takeaway coffee, which might appeal to busy tourists and business types. Otherwise, it seems like a very risky move, since a similar chain called Columbus Coffee isn’t doing too hot in France.

Given our country’s obsession with all things retro, I’ve always been surprised that drive-in movie theaters haven’t made a comeback. I finally got the chance to see a movie at a drive-in movie theater a few years ago, and though I had the misfortune of attending the night they were showing “Bruce Almighty,” I savored every bit of the experience, from the Raisinettes to the elaborate tailgates staged by families sticking around for the double feature. In Texas, at least, drive-ins are starting to pop up again. This handy site can tell you where there’s a drive-in near you, or perhaps near someplace you’re vacationing. Another option?  Just make your own.

I used to be able to say I’d eaten at the world’s best restaurant: The Fat Duck, in Bray, England (above). Now, according to Restaurant magazine’s annual Top 50 list, the Duck has been knocked down to second, replaced by El Bulli in Spain. I can’t really complain, though, because when I had my four-hour lunch at the Fat Duck (the sun was setting when we left), I had no idea it was the world’s best. My mom and I simply asked my CIA-graduate cousin where we should eat while in London, and we did what we were told.

We traveled by train —passing through Slough, the setting for BBC’s The Office—and arrived at a charmingly modest space in a pastoral suburb. The highly theoretical meal that followed was by far one of the most interesting I have ever consumed, if not the absolute best. Like many modern restaurants, the Duck prides itself on the experience of food (hence, the four-hour meal). You are asked to do puzzling things like suck Douglas Fir-infused powder through a straw after consuming a mango and lychee dessert. But despite the fact that each menu item featured between five and ten bizarre ingredients, the descriptions were humorously simple. I, for instance, had “Pot Roast Loin of Pork with Gratin of Macaroni.” (The side dish turned out to be truffle oil mac and cheese that was one of the most luxurious things I’ve ever eaten.)

Unlike at many other modern restaurants—where the experiments sound good but have way too much going on when you taste them—some of the Fat Duck’s concoctions were truly revolutionary, and it was easy to isolate and savor the individual tastes. (A surprisingly yummy cauliflower risotto with chocolate comes to mind.) Still, if I’m going to invest that much in a dining experience, I’d probably opt for something just as gourmet but a little bit less complex. (San Francisco’s Gary Danko comes to mind.) After all, one of the things I enjoy most about dining out is the company, and while I’m apt to spend most of a meal talking about the food, I don’t want to have to think about it that much.

I always thought it was cool that Disney World has a network of underground tunnels for employees. Little did I know that Paris had the idea first, and its version is far creepier and far cooler. National Geographic Adventure has an incredible story following a writer through the 170-mile long network of tunnels underlying the city. Called “the catacombs,” they began as quarries used to build some of Paris’s most famous structures, including Notre Dame, and are rumored to contain thousands of skulls and bones. It’s been illegal to enter them since 1955, which is what makes this story so damn cool.

Would-be law-abiding explorers can visit the tunnels at the Les Catacombes museum, the only legal way to peek at the underground system.

When a friend of mine first showed me Menu Pages in New York, I was insanely jealous that we didn’t have something similar in San Francisco. Today, I delightfully discovered that we do. Apparently, Menu Pages has expanded its empire to Chicago, Boston, and SF. The web site lets you view up-to-date menus for hundreds of restaurants around a city, giving you a far better sense of what you might eat (and how much you will pay) than any Citysearch review ever can. I just used it before making a dinner reservation for Friday, and I’m already thinking about what to order. A must for any discerning diner or traveler.