Summer air travel could be a ‘recipe for frustration'
US air travel has seen a very bumpy year filled with safety incidents, fatal accidents and an air traffic control meltdown that has expedited plans for a complete overhaul of the system.
2025 started with a tragedy in Washington, when 67 people died in a midair collision between a commercial jet and an Army helicopter. Heightened anxieties stirred national attention to close calls between commercial jets and go-around maneuvers performed by pilots to prevent accidents. To top it off, an air traffic control meltdown plagued Newark Liberty International Airport for weeks after staffing shortages and technology outages caused hours-long delays.
All this raising the question: What will summer look like for air travelers in the US?
Prepare for disruptions, experts say.
The kickoff to the summer travel season starts with Memorial Day weekend, when United Airlines alone is expected to fly 300,000 more passengers than last year.
The Federal Aviation Administration is expecting record-high travel over the holiday weekend and its busiest summer in 15 years, with the peak at the end of July. The agency has said it's prepared for the high volume, but travel industry experts warn that understaffing and infrastructure breakdowns could complicate operations.
There are plans in the works from the Department of Transportation and the FAA to address these issues at airports and air traffic control facilities, but a complete revamp of the air traffic control system will take at least the next three to four years.
If you're traveling this summer, be sure to plan for a possible disruption.
Disruptions are 'always worse in the summer,' said Hayley Berg, lead economist at travel booking and price tracking company Hopper.
'In the summer, there's more people flying,' Berg said. 'Airports are busier, I think we are certainly starting to see the impact of understaffing, as airlines are now in their second or third year of flying full capacity and air traffic and airport staffing are not back to the levels that we would need to support the volume.'
Overall, she said, disruption rates are down for May compared to previous years, however, specific airports have had a bad month.
Newark Liberty International Airport has dealt with four separate technology outages since April 28. Staffing is stretched thin at the facility that controls approaches and departures of flights, and a runway is still under construction. The FAA ordered airlines to decrease flights at Newark by about 25%, compared to the number of flights there in early April. After June 15, when runway construction is not ongoing, some flights can return – but the airport is still limited to fewer flights than before.
Les Abend, a retired American Airlines Boeing 777 captain, said the problems that have been plaguing Newark recently could 'start leaking out of other facilities.'
But he underlined that the US already has next-generation (NextGen) air traffic control capabilities. 'It's the infrastructure that supplies the data that's become the issue,' he said.
Disruptions such as the air traffic control outages that happened at Newark can create a 'domino effect' on flights in other places.
Add air traffic controller shortages and the time that it takes to train a controller at any given facility to that mix, plus typical summer storms that can slow operations, and 'Yeah, it can be a recipe for frustration for travelers. There's no doubt,' said Abend.
'The fact that we're seeing that our infrastructure is breaking down, to some extent — it's not going to collapse by any means — it's just going to be bits and pieces. And it's just going to create frustration as far as delays, cancellations, so on and so forth.'
But he added that he wants to reassure the public.
'It's still a safe system. If you lose contact with air traffic control, we as pilots have a system and a protocol to do certain things,' Abend said.
Abend said he's not anticipating system-wide disruption this summer.
'I would say the majority of times, you're going to get to where you want to go when you're scheduled to get there.'
Summer is a hotspot at Newark Airport, which is an international hub for many flyers heading to Europe or many other transatlantic destinations, Berg said.
'Those passengers, I think, are certainly feeling some anxiety about what their travel plans are going to look like,' she said.
Despite the natural hassle that comes with packed airports and crowded planes, most travelers will still take the trip, according to Tomasz Pawliszyn, CEO of AirHelp, an online service that helps travelers seek compensation when plans are disrupted.
But he thinks many passengers have changed their attitudes towards Newark Airport.
'(Travelers) are really cautious on what's going on and how they fly, and I think the media attention also brought up quite a lot of problems to the surface, that existed for years,' he said.
Domestic airfare is down about 3% from the same time last year, which is the lowest level since 2021 at $265 per round trip ticket, Hopper's 2025 summer travel outlook reported. Fares to Europe are down about 8% from 2024.
'I'm expecting a business-as-usual summer, maybe a little less of a crowd on the busiest days as people try to travel on cheaper days of the week,' Berg said.
However, a recent survey from Bankrate shows 54% of adults expect to spend less on travel, eating out or entertainment this year, compared to last year. Of those surveyed, 65% of Americans who are not traveling this summer say they can't afford it and another 23% say they're not interested.
But United Airlines, which has a major hub at Newark, expects to serve more passengers this season. In June, July and August, United expects to fly nearly 50 million passengers, about a 3 million passenger uptick from last year's summer.
So far, the busiest US air travel day this year was April 17 with over 54,000 flights, according to the FAA. The FAA expects six more days of over 54,000 flights through the end of August.
While there are many things up in the air with travel this summer, experts say it's important to follow a few simple tips to try to have the least amount of disruption.
Flying direct will help alleviate the stress of missing a connection at other airports, Pawliszyn said. He also recommends flying in the morning and avoiding the weekend.
'Until we stop hearing stories about Newark,' Abend said he would book New York-area flights through JFK or LaGuardia this summer.
He also advised travelers to take a proactive stance on potential disruptions, keeping an eye on where the aircraft servicing their flight is coming from and what the weather is like there. If storms are likely to slow things down, passengers may want to change their flights.
CNN's Marnie Hunter contributed to this report.
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An Innocent Abroad in Mark Twain's Paris
For as long as Paris has existed, a group of people known by many names— derelicts; lollygaggers; scammers; bums —have sought to pass time there at no cost to themselves. Once, some 2,000 years ago, so many such personages (then known as barbarians) came to Paris simultaneously that the city was destroyed. Today, their descendants are politely called writers. One of the most successful to ever do it was a larkish American steamboat operator. In 1866, when he was 31, he convinced a San Francisco newspaper that the crucial thing to do in the lurid gloaming following the Civil War—as Army officials were yet racing to recover human remains before they were eaten by hogs—was to send him on a five-month 'great pleasure excursion' through Europe and the Middle East at the paper's expense. In exchange, he would send back riotous letters describing his trip. And that is how Mark Twain got to Paris. These letters formed the spine of The Innocents Abroad, or the New Pilgrim's Progress, which sold more than 70,000 copies the year it was published. The account slingshotted Twain to stardom; none of his other books was as popular in his lifetime. It even birthed a new stereotype, belief in which would proliferate long after his death. The caricature of the Ugly American—the loud, self-absorbed, unsophisticated tourist—was robustly embodied in Innocents ' picaresque narrative. While the boorish behavior of Twain's shipmates is cataloged throughout (snapping off pieces of ancient monuments for souvenirs, for instance), his most flamboyant portrayal is a self-portrait. Did Twain earnestly intend to attack cunning Parisian tour guides with his 'tomahawk' on a future visit? Probably not. But that's not to say the desire was wholly absent. The punch of the stereotype derives from its resemblance to God's honest truth. In the mid-19th century, an American holidaying in Paris was a logistical feat. And although the oceanic and overland legs of Twain's journey required more patience and stamina than even a flight out of Newark, the hassle—and, more especially, the expense—worked in his favor. His task was to describe a place his readers were unlikely to have seen even in photographs. One hundred fifty-eight years after Mark Twain's visit, the number of Americans who travel to Europe annually far surpasses the population of the United States in the year he was born. Many of them—more than 3 million in 2022—head straight to France, which is now the most-visited country on Earth. Virtually every living American, save those blind from infancy, has seen images of Paris. There is no need for a civilian to travel there and describe it. And yet, the wastrel, the conniver—the author—must ask: Wouldn't it be best to send one more? Just to be sure? Isn't it possible that dispatching a 21st-century writer to Paris to tramp along in Twain's wake might enhance the modern reader's appreciation of Twain's work by proxy? It's certainly not im possible. Shouldn't we follow this instinct? Mightn't it be flat-out imperative for us to do so? And that is how I got to Paris! If the last time you saw Paris was 2,250 years ago, you may be dismayed to learn that the tiny outpost you have always regarded as a serviceable fishing spot now teems with a large selection of museums and restaurants, many of which are not worth going to, and also that it is now full of French people. But a traveler from Twain's time would recognize present-day Paris much more readily than, say, Orlando. The heart of Paris, now as then, spans the colors of a March sky at dusk: pale gold, chilly white, slate blue. This palette is the legacy of Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who was wrapping up a tectonic two-decade remodeling project when Twain arrived. At Napoleon III's behest, Haussmann had taken a scouring brush to the city, replacing the airless tenements and lightless alleys that had housed Parisians since medieval times with limestone edifices and stately boulevards flanked by well-proportioned horse chestnut trees. A century and a half later, the quietly majestic neighborhoods invite admiration. Why doesn't every city look like this? you wonder. They can't afford to is the answer. Modern Paris is an elegant monument to Haussmann's profligacy; he was fired for spending stupefying sums of public money to force it up like winter tulips. Of course, the city was not yet a tasteful heirloom when Mark Twain tore through it; it was all new. (Emperor Napoleon, he wrote approvingly, was 'annihilating the crooked streets.') There have been a handful of updates to Paris since the 1860s. Notably, they've added a gigantic iron tower. And it used to be that anyone could walk right into the city morgue and have a look around, as Twain did. ('On a slanting stone,' he recalled, 'lay a drowned man, naked, swollen, purple; clasping the fragment of a broken bush with a grip which death had so petrified that human strength could not unloose it.') They don't let you do that anymore. And so the uncomfortable question must be posed: Is it still worth going there? Twain blew like a derecho into Paris on a Saturday as evening fell. Reality—in the sense of 'the truth'; in the sense of 'what really happened'—was more ephemeral in the 19th century. Assuming that Twain's timeline of recorded events is accurate, the author did not sit down to supper until after an 11 p.m. billiards game. Modeling this, I book my first dinner reservation for 11:30 p.m. There is no evidence that Twain dined at Bofinger, but he might have; it opened in 1864. I select the brasserie because its name bears a striking similarity to one that Twain records as 'Billfinger.' The author's Billfinger is his Parisian tour guide; Twain describes his name as 'atrocious,' 'nauseating,' and 'unbearable.' He and his friends, he wrote, immediately rechristened the man 'Ferguson.' Bofinger's menu indulges in no English hand-holding. This poses no problem; I speak and understand French. The dining room's walls are nitid beeswax yellow. In its center, a flower arrangement as big as a man explodes under the navel of an enormous stained-glass dome. When I arrive at half past 11, only a handful of other patrons linger at the white-clothed tables— Ummm, what?! It appears that some jealous saboteur has (to what end??) sunk a bevy of hazardous stumbling blocks into the menu to trip me up, to cripple and batter my award-winning high-school French beyond all utility. Every word I recognize is preceded or followed by—sometimes hidden among—entirely novel arrangements of letters. Do I want 'supreme of [something] French (feminine)'? Or 'egg fresh air [something]'? This is not very bon. At a table opposite mine sit the two Frenchest men I have ever seen: One, gray ponytail secured with a voluminous black scrunchie, lolls in his small wooden chair like a great brass bell; the other—the clapper—is dressed like Billy Crystal in 1989. They are sharing a preposterous meat feast directly out of a metal pan, served aloft over an open flame. A waiter walks by and pours what appears to be water on top of their food. I temper my hopes; I will deem the meal a successful French experience as long as I manage not to order that. One section of the menu broadcasts the same unfamiliar word five times: choucroute. In a panic, I order the ' choucroute Bofinger. ' The waiter overhauls my pronunciation with a sigh. (He is, to use Twain's phrasing, 'so fearfully and wonderfully Frenchy.') Choucroute —write this down—is sauerkraut; I receive a savanna-size portion. Heaped upon it: pork products representing every hue on the glistening spectrum from brown to pink (rosy ham hock, charred pork belly, thick shoulder slices, a common hot dog). I have ordered an entire Easter dinner for myself to eat alone at midnight. This is, naturally, the selfsame meat feast being shared by the two grown men at the table opposite. The ponytailed man catches my eye and genially roars, '[Something]!' His English is as good as my French; we carry on a mutually unintelligible conversation across our tables for several minutes. He reveals that he is a movie producer whose principal business is the manufacture of bionic limbs [could that be right?]. The other man—his cousin, he says—speaks English quite well, and possesses intimate familiarity with the geographic distribution of Native tribes across North America. I find myself at their table, knocking back the second glass of champagne the ponytailed man has ordered me. What do I think of Trohn? he asks. He does a faultless, silent impression of Donald Trump peering poutfully around the dining room. Which is now empty, by the way. The glowing brasserie is shut tight as a jeweled music box with all of us inside it. The Métro, which I took to dinner, is no longer running. Trohn volunteers to drive me home. (Well, he volunteers his cousin to drive him home, and orders him to drop me off on the way.) His cousin assures me that even though my hotel is not in the right direction, no location is out of his way: 'It's very small—Paris.' Mark Twain, I think, would get in the car. I discreetly turn on my iPhone's location-sharing feature as we head for their Pomeranian-size vehicle. It is possible that even if I spoke perfect French, Trohn would still boom to me, as I buckle my seat belt, ' I drink Coca-Colaaaaaa euuhhhh! ' But I suspect that he is merely leaping from one iceberg of meltingly recalled English names and phrases to another, not unlike the very famuzz polar bears du Coca-Colaaaaaa attempting to survive their rapidly warming habitat. He invites me to smoke in his car and, when I decline, divulges that if you want to do drugs in the street in New York City, it's 'no problem'—but if you try to light one cigarette, your daughter's new American friends will yell at you and scream ''Aaaaaaaah!'' He asks me if I remember the club, famuzz club, in New York, soixante dix huit (78). 'Studio 54!' I say. 'Oh la la la la!' he says. 'Occasionally,' Twain wrote, 'merely for the pleasure of being cruel, we put unoffending Frenchmen on the rack with questions framed in the incomprehensible jargon of their native language, and while they writhed we impaled them, we peppered them, we scarified them, with their own vile verbs and participles.' My attempts at French glance off Trohn like best wishes fired at the scruff of a T. rex. He indicates a store where I should buy 'parfem.' 'PahrFYUME!' his cousin corrects. 'ParFOOM!' Trohn revises. He gives me his phone number as the car stops immediately outside my hotel's front door. If I want to come to dinner again, or if I have 'any problems' with my passport, he says, I should let him know. I wake up an hour before I am due at the Louvre. ↑ This is what I imagine I will write in this space shortly after the cousins drop me off at my hotel, around 2 a.m., as I set a fusillade of alarms to rouse me a few hours hence; the rest of the paragraph will detail my boulangerie breakfast, and perhaps identify a unique quality of Paris morning light that has heretofore escaped most people's notice for thousands of years. I wake up 10 minutes before I need to be at the Louvre. I have to assume there's light of some kind, all around. Mercifully, my hotel's proudest feature is that it is across the street from the Louvre. This is the closest I can get to rooming where Mark Twain slept; his hotel was located on the other side of the street. Despite his proximity, Twain himself barely made it to the Louvre—or so he wrote. At the museum's underground entrance, more people are lined up than I have seen, cumulatively, in my entire life. This is infuriating—I don't care about the Louvre! If this weren't the Louvre, I wouldn't even go. I fear this is not going to sound very intelligent: Once inside, I discover that the Louvre is good, actually. You know what is the extremely most good? The Mona Lisa room. That's my insider tip: Traveling to Paris? Consider visiting the Louvre—and be sure to check out a picture called the Mona Lisa. Leonardo da Vinci's nearly finished portrait of a woman named Lisa has been on display at the museum almost continuously since 1797, except during the World Wars, when it was spirited offsite, plus the brief period when Napoleon hung it in his bedroom (1800–04). It may have been viewed as a technical masterpiece even as da Vinci was painting it on poplar in the early 1500s; certainly by 1550, it was known, at least, to be really very nice. But its theft by a Louvre employee in 1911—and its recovery in 1913—transformed it into the most famous artwork in the world. 'Jesus Christ!' yelps a young man straight into my ear as we plunge into a sluggish human river. Somewhere in the vicinity of this skylit corridor, sequestered in an air-conditioned box, Lisa is growing imperceptibly yellower with each passing hour. But from this vantage point, it is impossible to even see the room where this is happening. The hallway is a nearly solid mass of tourists who trudge forward grim and mute as prisoners chained together at the ankles, condemned to the gallows. The bad news: You already know, to an astonishing degree of detail, what the Mona Lisa looks like, and no additional characteristics are visible across the gulf of several feet that the museum imposes between bulletproof-glass case and visitor. The good news: In the 21st century, the painting is best enjoyed by turning one's back on it. The charcoal-blue room where the portrait hangs offers perhaps the best, most concentrated diversity of people-watching anywhere on the planet. I recommend standing off to the side, underneath—who cares, but if you must know— Supper at Emmaus, by Paolo Veronese. Take in the scene as an alien might. What is happening? There appear to be representatives from every region of Earth, in developmental stages ranging from howling baby to the gloriously aged, clad in chartreuse spandex bell-bottoms, dove-gray peacoats, olive-green track pants, white fur boleros, tank tops, cardigans, belly shirts, trench coats, stilettos, sneakers, knee-high leather boots, lace-up tops, button-down shirts, miniskirts, sweatshirts, paisley bandannas, and on and on. The assembled arrange themselves, without conflict, in a constantly dense yet ever-emptying block in the center of the room. Their focus is fixed on a single object. It depicts a person whom the crowd regards not with joy, nor with fear, but with a kind of dutiful reverence; the figure is clearly a personage of some power, perhaps of religious significance. The object is cordoned off with tall black dividers; from the side, you can observe an endless ballet of wrists and hands floating skyward. Each hand holds an electronic device, which it shows to the figure for a second or two before lowering it; then the device's owner exits. The object seems to relate to the devices in some way; perhaps the long-haired man it depicts was the inventor of the devices; perhaps this room is where he died. At the right time of day, this scene is not only entertaining, but beautiful. Nearly every pilgrim cants his or her head to examine the screen of the phone through which he or she views the painting. Around noon, when I visit, the milky sunlight cautiously diffused through the room's glass ceiling illuminates their faces until they resemble witnesses to miracles rendered in oils by the Renaissance masters. I spend an hour here, and would linger for another, but journalistic obligations compel my exit. I have booked a three-hour sauce-making class that starts at 1 p.m. This is the unpitiable dilemma of the professional lollygagger: You pine to be assigned a travel story because, you think, how hard could it be? You already have experience going places—to Target, to bed; you go to those places all the time—and this is just that, except, God willing, you're going somewhere nicer than Target and getting paid for it, and all you have to do is write down what happens. Your husband's goodbye kiss is a jealous peck; he believes, in his heart, that you have wrangled yourself a free vacation. In fact, what you have summoned is an extended paranoid dissociative episode, in which, every second you are awake, you are asking yourself, over the thrum of your racing heart, Is this moment interesting? Is this moment interesting? How would a fascinating person describe my life? You make unhinged decisions in the pursuit of mild interest, such as getting into a car in the middle of the night with men you started talking with after you ordered too much ham, because it would be perfect for the story, actually, if you got kidnapped. And if you happen to stumble upon something that unexpectedly holds your attention, you are soon compelled to leave it—lest life fall flat when allowed to direct itself. Mark Twain seems never to have experienced such agita. His breezy accounts betray no anxiety to justify the expense of sending him around the world. Or do they? Twain visited the Louvre in 1867. Obviously. Only a mud-crusted simpleton whose international luxury tour no San Francisco newspaper would bankroll would even consider skipping the Louvre. And yet. Twain's narrative boasts some— discrepancies is too magisterial a word … peculiarities, say. His first attempt to visit the Louvre occasions one of The Innocents Abroad 's funniest scenes: An unscrupulous guide—the aforementioned 'Ferguson'—spends all afternoon directing Twain's carriage to various fabric stores, rather than (as requested) the Louvre. But why did Twain climb into a carriage? From his hotel's front door, he could have dashed on foot to the museum's nearest entrance in less than a minute. It's possible that he did. Twain asserted that, after having lost an afternoon to silks, he ventured to the Louvre some other day. But his account of the museum's contents—'miles of paintings'—is vague: 'Some of them were beautiful.' The bulk of his Louvre paragraph—contrast that length with several hundred words detailing superfluous silk shopping—is given over to his distaste for the practice of painting the portraits of wealthy patrons. The Louvre was, arguably, even more interesting in 1867 than it is now, because the museum complex was joined to the emperor's residence. It is true that Twain could have toured it and been uncharacteristically uninspired to expound on its history, its atmosphere, or any work he saw there. It is also true that Twain advances no observation about the Louvre that required stepping inside. The archetypal Ugly American is incurious. Twain was not; his folksiness belied his capacity for scrutinous observation. An upbringing on the unfinished edge of the Missouri frontier provided numerous opportunities to witness homicide—as a child, he wrote, he saw an enslaved man struck dead with 'a chunk of slag for some small offense'—but little exposure to the fine arts. Twain left school at age 12 to get a job. Could shame, I wondered, have shaped the lopsided Louvre passage? I, who received a decade more formal schooling than Twain, am unable to distinguish a masterpiece from a painting that is merely pretty good. By inserting, where a critique might go, a description of a funny thing that happened, I seek to conceal the fact that I am an unsophisticated moron incapable of processing fine art beyond the dimensions of size and color. I asked Matt Seybold, an associate professor of American literature and Mark Twain studies at Elmira College, if it struck him as at least plausible that Twain might have outright lied about touring the Louvre. In response, he forwarded me a letter that I might, he said, find 'curious.' Twain wrote it to a teenage girl, Emeline Beach, who'd accompanied her father on the same world tour in 1867. Twain sent it after the trip, while working feverishly to produce all the observations he had promised his employers. In the letter, Twain implored Miss Beach to send him a list of names of Spanish paintings 'that delighted you most - & say all you can about them too. Remember, I am in a great straight, now, & it is hard to have to write about pictures when I don't know anything about them.' I spend three exhausting hours 'Mastering Classic French Sauces.' Irritatingly, my frantic battle to do so is not sufficiently compelling to warrant further description. Having had only sauce for lunch, I pour myself a fist-size cup of more sauce (caramel au beurre salé) for the walk back to my hotel, and drain it before reaching the street. A friend who happens to be on vacation in Paris has sent me her dining itinerary—a jumble of neighborhoods, dishes, and restaurants that I barely glance at—and invited me to join her for a meal. I arrive at a darling bistro to find her seated across from two stylish companions. I am 'not really a 'brains' girl,' my friend confides to them while introducing me—an assessment that is accurate, if stunningly cruel. She is surprised, she says, that I selected this spot from her list of options. What the heck is my friend talking about? Our reunion is interrupted by the appearance of an openly hostile man whose scowl makes plain that he would prefer that we were dead or, even better, bleeding out in a gutter. He is the waiter. He props up a chalkboard menu and stomps away. Twain wrote of difficulties procuring Parisian fare by ordering in either French (which he claimed the French could not understand) or English (which robbed him of 'the coveted consciousness' that he was 'in beautiful France'). I am spared this hardship by my friend's chic Parisian associates. One of them, who looks like a '60s pop star, translates the offerings in a voice that drifts through the air like wild bergamot: Poached calf's brain. Pig-feet croquettes. Pickled quail. Head ragout. Jesus Christ. Whose head? What's head? No one says. Some items—pig ears; duck—are described as 'pressed.' That might be safest; sounds almost like a grilled cheese. No, confesses the other Parisian, who resembles the miniatures of young dukes in the Louvre; not like a grilled cheese. More like: You take something—the ears of a pig, the carcass of a duck—and mash it inside a special device until it becomes a juice of itself, and then turn that juice into sauce, which you trick people into buying. The members of my party have the gall to request several of these demonic items from the livid waiter. I take one goldfish's nibble from every plate. Each dish is either colloidal crumbles or the wettest thing I have ever put in my mouth. Halfway through the meal, the waiter yells at us for speaking too loudly, but he does not pay us the courtesy of kicking us out. Mark Twain luxuriated in Versailles like a Chihuahua ripping apart the contents of a lingerie drawer. An entire chapter of The Innocents Abroad is devoted to it, exploding with the prefatory declaration 'VERSAILLES! It is wonderfully beautiful!' So ebullient was Twain's praise for this monument to monarchical excess that, before traveling to France, I asked Seybold, at Elmira College, if it could all be deft irony whizzing over my head. Twain is our Americkest author; Versailles would seem to represent his nation's antithesis. Could he really have loved it? 'Twain's aesthetic tastes, particularly at this time, are gaudy as hell,' Seybold told me. Just two years before he glided through Versailles, Twain had lived in a shared dirt-floor miners' cabin. The Innocents Abroad changed everything. But Twain, who went on to earn enormous amounts of money, ' spent it as fast as he made it,' Seybold said. He was, to borrow a French term, nouveau riche. As a person whose own aesthetic tastes are at least as gaudy as hell, and probably gaudier, I cannot wait to see Versailles—a site that, Twain gushed, 'thrills one like military music!' Here is what I learn from my visit: The Chateau de Versailles took more than 50 years to build; its construction costs were equivalent to one kajillion 2025 American dollars; and if you go to it, you absolutely must skip the inside—all of it. It's not worth it, not even the gift shop (pitiful Christmas ornaments). Mark Twain: Old times on the Mississippi When Twain toured the site, it lacked many of the splendors that greet modern pilgrims (results of a 20th-century renovation). It also lacked UNESCO World Heritage status. More than 7 million visitors now pass through each year. They're all present on the day of my visit. Some aspects of Versailles are swell. Clouds appear to glow on the ceiling of the Salon d'Hercule; forest-green velvet damask spreads like frost across pea-green wallpaper; ostrich-feather bouquets erupt from the king's bed canopy. One or two things are even luridly interesting—for instance, the hidden door through which Marie Antoinette fled a mob of Parisian women, barely discernible as seams on a wall. But mostly it is a sort of dreary, rideless Disney World, without the stellar crowd management that is Disney's hallmark. A singular paradox is inescapable: So successfully have the masses managed to mimic, at a fraction of the cost, the extravagant design features epitomized in royal residences such as Versailles that many of the original interiors—with their rare violet marble and ornate gold trim—look, to modern eyes, cheap. Twain was fortunate to come at the exuberant height of summer, when the gardens flaunted what he described as 'rainbows of flowers.' Only the scraggly yellow vanguard—daffodils, crocuses, primroses, and gorse—has mustered by the time I visit, in gray March. Bacchus, bone-dry, slumps in the center of a stagnant green pool clutching fistfuls of limp grapes; none of the fountains is turned on. Every one of the gardens' hundreds of statues is covered up, many in head-to-toe fitted sheaths, like cadavers in body bags. The secret to enjoying yourself at Versailles is to confine your exploration to the gardens, where rentable golf carts (42 euros an hour) give you the run of the place. The best part is, you needn't trouble yourself to operate them, or conduct the conversations in French necessary for their procurement, or listen as their purveyors explain the rules that must govern your conduct while tooling around Versailles. Simply make the French person who has been forced to accompany you do all that—provided you have one, which I do recommend. Did you spot him—this story's photographer—in the preceding scenes? He has been here practically the entire time, though you may have mistaken him for a shadow, darting in all black around the periphery. But now, as always when a discussion has to take place entirely in French—unavoidably or merely for convenience—we must shove le photographer into the foreground. Le photographer is sleek and chic and his manners are spotless as a cat's. The sole impolite thing he does during the four days I spend with him is actually kind and helpful—it only feels rude: Whenever I ask le photographer to recommend something, he begins by listing things that 'Americans like.' What about me gives the impression that I want to do things Americans enjoy? Talking nonstop about the United States from the moment we meet, except for those times when I am beseeching him to order for me at restaurants? Why, I ask him after one such recommendation, do Americans like that particular café? 'There is no explanation,' le photographer says gravely. The clouds are marbled with veins of pale sunlight when le photographer, at my request, parleys with the golf-cart wardens, signs all the waivers, surrenders his driver's license, and chauffeurs me down Versailles' golf-cart highway: a corridor of almond-white sand bordering the centroidal Allée Royale. All of these tasks preclude him from holding a camera, which is doubly regrettable, first because that is the work he has been hired to perform, and second because—I state this with certainty as an experienced writer for periodicals—illustrative images are the lone reason publication of a story is ever tolerated; the accompanying text is an abstract two-dimensional wrought-iron border placed around photos to promote visual harmony. When I spot rowboats for hire, le photographer's day instantly grows worse: We ain't leaving Versailles without floating down the Grand Canal, I explain. To make it up to him, I offer to row so that he can snap some pictures, if he's quick about it. Accounts of royal parties held on this mile-long waterway describe feats of 17th-century pyrotechnology and magic: 'An infinity of fires' made the channel 'appear all in flames'; I enjoy the boat ride mainly because it feels like desecrating the private property of the wealthy, which provides a rush even if those wealthy have been dead for several hundred years. Following two incomprehensibly slow-motion collisions with other crafts, le photographer takes the oars. A creature that would look at ease on the River Styx skims by us. 'What is that?!' I say with a gasp. It has feathers the lightless black of a sealed crypt, and startling blood-colored eyes. 'A … water chicken,' le photographer says. 'It sounds better in French.' In another corner of the sleeping gardens, le photographer and I come upon a pack of boys and girls shrieking that the bushes are on fire. ' Au feu! Au feu! ' the children scream as they jerk the boughs of yew hedges violently up and down. This action sends forth billowing clouds of gray smoke—pollen, actually—so that the yews do appear, genuinely, to be smoldering. It is a really good gag. One of their irritated parents marches over and orders them: ' Stope! Stope! Stope! ' (In deploying the English stop, the French teach their children to associate our language with the abrupt cessation of pleasure.) As soon as the party has passed out of sight, I pounce on the hedges and enjoy a few seconds of maniacal fun jerking the branches myself—unless this behavior is bad for the yews, or technically illegal, in which case I do not. Trampling roughshod over the Sun King 's estate, I tell le photographer about Twain. 'Mark Twain,' he'd asked the afternoon we met, ''ates French people, non?' Twain was, in fact, a font of uncharitable aphorisms about the French: 'A Frenchman's home is where another man's wife is'; 'The Race consists of human beings & French'; 'a dead Frenchman has many good qualities.' But isn't that just how Americans reflexively talk about the French? Well, yes. Thanks, perhaps, to Mark Twain, who perfected the simultaneous disdain for and fascination with French culture that now typifies the American attitude. Yet for all the potshots he took at the French, the author's private interest in French culture could be described as obsessive. His favorite book, Seybold told me, was a 900-page history of the French Revolution. Paris was not even an official stop on the cruise itinerary of Twain's five-month trip; he took advantage of a layover to make the detour. While the steamship voyage was advertised as an 'excursion to the Holy Land' (with the whole of Western Europe relegated obliquely to 'intermediate points of interest'), it is the France chapters where the young Twain's wit sparkles most brightly. 'Even if he kind of pokes fun at it once he's there,' Seybold said, 'there was something that was drawing him to it.' In their book, Mark Twain & France: The Making of a New American Identity, the authors Paula Harrington and Ronald Jenn argue that Twain sacrificed the French on the pyre of his blazing scorn for a purpose more self-serving than pure dislike: By emphasizing (or inventing) the ways in which the French differed from his countrymen, they write, the author honed a keen-edged 'American' identity for his own comedic character, and for his nation. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had been gone less than a decade when Twain was born. From his perspective, the country had only just sparked into existence, and the flame was so unsteady that it might yet extinguish before the world noticed. There was no quintessential American, so Twain imagined him: a wily rube, cynical toward the same refinements of Europe that inspired awe in him. Whether the character embodied the spirit of the country with startling accuracy or became a self-fulfilling prophecy is impossible to say. But a century and a half later, the contours of my own seemingly instinctual reactions to the French—alternating beguilement and dismay—fit over Twain's with the precision of a cut-paper silhouette. Twain's footsteps through Paris left such deep imprints that, generations later, it remains all but impossible for a visiting countryman to see over the top of them. So what if he failed to win over the French? They were too French for him anyway. Today, I explain to le photographer at Versailles, as we admire unobservable shrouded statues, Twain is best known for novels he wrote about children. 'Of course,' he interjects when I name Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I stop short. Le photographer had told me he hadn't read any Twain. And why would he have? 'J'imagine it's one of the most famous cartoons' in France, le photographer says. What? Perhaps le photographer misheard me. 'Does it take place in the very distant past?' I ask of the cartoon. 'Yes,' he says, 'near the border of the Mississippi.' Back at the hotel, I will look up the series. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer —that is, of Tomu Sōyā—is a Japanese anime cartoon that was dubbed into French as Les Aventures de Tom Sawyer. Its single season premiered in France in 1982 and was rerun for decades. Every Frenchman his age, le photographer tells me, knows the theme song. Translated, it begins as follows: 'Tom Sawyer, he's America, the symbol of liberty. He was born on the bank of the Mississippi River.' Thus did Twain fulfill the secret wish of every derelict, bum, and pervert: Eventually, he found a way to stay in Paris forever. Travel Notes La Samaritaine This recently restored 19th-century department store is a majestic stop for a bathroom break. Ochre-enameled lava glows from re-created exterior art nouveau panels. A sprawling peacock fresco presides over the sun-drenched top floor. The striking pale-green and 'horizon blue' shades that coat the ironwork are historically accurate; they were identified through stratigraphic pigment analysis. La Samaritaine's dramatic grand staircase appears to float through its central passage. On the third floor, sneak behind displays of men's shoes to peer down into the apse of the medieval Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois church across the street. 9 R. de la Monnaie, 75001 Paris, France Kodawari Ramen Tsukiji Le photographer's best recommendation, which even those who are not American seem to enjoy, is this indoor ramen restaurant designed to replicate the ambience of an open-air wholesale Tokyo fish market to a degree that might be called psychotic. Speakers pump in sounds of ship horns, seagulls, and distant yelled conversations recorded at the original Tsukiji market. A humongous (fake) severed shark head served as the centerpiece of my table, which, like the bare light bulb hanging above it, was splattered with (fake) blood. It would be worth a visit even if the food were bad—but the ramen is delicious. 12 Rue de Richelieu, 75001 Paris, France The Richelieu Wing Thank goodness the architects of the serene Richelieu wing of the Louvre understood that the most elegant way to experience the outdoors is from inside. In a space formerly occupied by the finance ministry, a towering glass ceiling shelters statues that once cavorted in open courtyards. As a result, the statues are not just bathed, but nearly drowned in brilliant natural light. Admire them, and admire, too, the tidy half-a-clock sound (tock tock tock tock) your shoes make on the marble flooring. 99 Rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris, France La Grande Épicerie de Paris For a DIY lunch, take a stroll through this distinctly un-American supermarket. Here there are massive displays of oeufs de poissons and an entire dairy section devoted to crème fraîche. The only thing you absolutely must buy is a carton of Le Beurre Bordier Demi-Sel. Schlep your purchases to the nearby Luxembourg Gardens to enjoy a meal en plein air. Before leaving the store, swing by the display labeled États-Unis, and treat yourself to an unnerving encounter that combines familiar faces (Reese's Peanut Butter Cups) with those of ghoulish strangers (what exactly are unfrosted 'New Yorkers' cookies?). 38 Rue de Sèvres, 75007 Paris, France The Estate of Trianon If you insist on viewing interiors at Versailles, skip the gilded cattle chute of the palace and concentrate on this luxurious but intimate estate. Trianon's structures, more human in scale, afford a much clearer picture of how Marie Antoinette and the gang lived day-to-day. At the Petit Trianon, you can see up close the (no-offense kind-of-ugly) green-and-blue-patterned dishware the queen ordered for her private dining, and traipse through her rather modest bedroom. Keep an eye out for her golden MA monogram incorporated extravagantly into the wrought-iron-and-bronze staircase that winds through the front of the château. Hôtel du Louvre If you need to sleep as close to the Louvre as possible, for a small fortune, the Hôtel du Louvre, which opened in 1887—today it is a Hyatt property—provides that opportunity. Rooms on the lowest floor feel spacious (by European standards) thanks to soaring ceilings. But the decidedly more snug accommodations on the uppermost floor offer sweeping views of Georges-Eugène Haussmann's elegant cream-colored metropolis—and guest rooms facing east are nearly at eye level with the caryatids holding the weight of the Louvre on their heads.
CNN
6 hours ago
- CNN
FAA says Newark airport's technology problems should be resolved by October
The head of the Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday he's 'confident' the technology issues at troubled Newark Liberty International Airport will be resolved by October. 'The (transportation) secretary has been very clear with me that we need to fix this, and we're fixing this now,' Chris Rocheleau, the acting head of the FAA, told a House budget hearing Wednesday. 'The second piece to that is the staffing. I think by October, we will be very healthy in there at staffing levels that we need.' The FAA transferred air traffic control over Newark to a Philadelphia facility last July from New York, where it was previously located, a move seen as controversial by many controllers and the union that represents them. Rocheleau's remarks, before the House Appropriations subcommittee on transportation, come after the New Jersey airport experienced four air traffic control system outages in recent weeks, leaving pilots and controllers without communication at times. Those outages came amid ongoing staffing shortages for controllers and the construction of a runway, which was completed this week, earlier than anticipated. 'With the runway completed, we'll continue our work to harden the telecoms infrastructure and improving the staffing pipeline for the airspace,' said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a statement. The aging infrastructure and technology are some of the problems that could plague summer travel as Newark's airport tries to get back to flying at full capacity. Experts warn to typically expect disruptions during summer travel due to the volume of travelers at US airports, but the added pressure on the system could cause delays or cancelations. Last month, the Department of Transportation announced plans to build out a new air traffic control system. Part of that includes strengthening the existing infrastructure at Newark for a seamless summer of travel. A new fiber optic cable is now in place between Philadelphia and New York to improve air traffic control telecommunications. The FAA is seeking a company to build out the new system, the Department of Transportation said Wednesday. The agency issued a Request for Information for a company to implement a 'brand new air traffic control system over the next three years.' It identified five areas of interest for a new system: telecommunications, radio communications, surveillance, automation and facilities. Duffy has not disclosed how much the project would cost but has said he's counting on Congress to deliver funding. It's also unclear how this will impact Verizon's contract with the FAA to modernize the system. Verizon has a $2.4 billion contract to provide a long-sought upgrade to the FAA's communications system, known as the FAA Enterprise Network Services, or FENS, program. CNN reached out to the Department of Transportation for comment.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘PWC Beach,' Echo Bay pipe mat latest Lake Mead improvements for boaters
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Lake Mead is 8 feet lower than it was a year ago, and officials are making more adjustments to help boaters who are ready to get out in the water this summer. After adding a new courtesy dock for personal watercraft adjacent to Hemenway Harbor just two weeks ago, the National Park Service (NPS) said this week it is adding another pipe mat at Echo Bay, along with adjustments to the courtesy dock there. Hemenway Harbor, the closest launch point to Las Vegas, will have reduced access this summer as NPS extends the boat ramp. Construction began June 2, and the launch ramp will be reduced to one lane. The courtesy docks will be reduced down by one half, according to an NPS web page summarizing the project. 'Personal Watercraft Beach,' or PWC Beach, was announced around Memorial Day as the summer season began. It's just north of the Hemenway Harbor ramp. The Lake Mead National Recreation Area Facilities team installed two Mobi-Mats, one on each side of the new courtesy dock. The mats are portable, and have been used in recent years to help boaters with changing conditions at the lake. Some boaters have complained that they won't use PWC Beach because they don't want to drive through the dirt, but they won't have any other option nearby. 'All jet skis must launch at PWC Beach during construction,' according to a May 31 social post. Summer is the busiest time for boaters, but it's also the best time for construction, NPS said. 'Water level projections for the 2025 summer boating season are favorable for construction, allowing dive and contract teams to perform underwater and shoreline work safely and efficiently at the launch ramp. Summer and fall are generally the best times for this type of underwater construction work,' NPS said. As of noon Wednesday, Lake Mead's surface was at 1,056.59 feet, compared to 1,064.81 feet on June 15, 2024. While that drop is a bit alarming, it's better than projections last year that expected the lake to be down another 3 feet, at 1,053.56 feet. The lake typically hits its low point in July each year. On July 27, 2022, the lake hit its lowest point since it was filled in the 1930s, dipping to 1,041.71 feet above sea level. At Echo Bay, crews were scheduled to do the work on Wednesday, June 4, and finish before the end of the day. The upgrades will extend and widen the ramp for safer, easier boat launching, NPS said. Officials noted that the right launch lane remains closed. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
