(CNN) — This week in travel news, we bring you the breakfast capital of the world, new ultra-long-haul flights and the fascinating evolution of the airplane evacuation slide.
Breakfast of champions
Van, eastern Turkey, is the home of serpme kahvaltı — breakfast spread — and the morning feast includes oven-hot flatbreads, Turkish coffee, creamy scrambled eggs, local cheese flavored with mountain herbs, grape molasses and tahini.
How the sausage gets made
Cooking oil was out of the pan and into the airplane on March 25, when it powered an Airbus A380 on a three-hour trial flight in France.
The aerospace manufacturer hopes to get its aircraft certified to run on Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) — made mostly of used cooking oil and waste fats — by the end of the decade.
In another behind-the-scenes peek at how the aviation sausage is made, this week we looked at the evolution of another slippery airplane asset: evacuation slides.
Did you know that the “arm doors and cross check” instruction to flight attendants as a plane leaves the gate is when the slides are prepped to automatically deploy?
Rays of travel sunshine
Sometimes no news is good news, right?
For the first time in many months, this week the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn’t add a single new destination to its highest-risk category for travel. And it also lifted its risk advisory for cruise travel.
While many parts of the world are opening back up, China’s zero-Covid policy means that lockdowns are continuing across the country. Luxury hotels in Chinese cities are now offering babysitting services to parents trying to manage that familiar challenge of juggling remote working with managing their kids’ online learning.
Homes for refugees
Now, it has nearly 88,000 members and Tosheva and her admins have personally arranged housing for around 90 refugees. Many of the hosts are donating the use of their vacation properties — including a castle in Ireland — to people who have lost everything.
And in Ukraine itself, a remote ski resort in the Carpathian Mountains has become a refuge for displaced citizens.
10-year vacation
Tom Grond has been to 130 countries, including Syria.
Tom Grond
Dutch blogger Tom Grond set out on a round-the-world trip in December 2012 — and he hasn’t stopped since. Here’s how he went from being a $30-a-day budget traveler to sustaining himself through writing and posting about his adventures.
In case you missed it
This tiny Italian village wants to become an independent nation.
What weighs 1,600 pounds and loves spring break?
When Anthony Bourdain visited Libya in 2013, he discovered local hip-hop, Italian restaurants and post-war uncertainty.
Get set, travel
If your travel hours are stretching into double digits, it’s nice to be able to afford some luxury — without your costs running into quadruple digits or more.
Our partners at CNN Underscored, a product reviews and recommendations guide owned by CNN, have worked out how you can book a super-duper first class suite on Singapore Airlines for almost nothing using air miles and credit card points.
