The best of the web: Sydney, books, tipping, Frida, Staten Island wine, monorails, Cuba, Blarney Stone, and more

• * The New York Times focuses this week on summer in Sydney. It’s interesting to see what they make of my hometown – they also have separate features on the ocean lap pools and the beachside cuisine. The rock pools are a fabulous subject – one of the best features of many of Sydney’s ocean suburbs and with a fascinating social history as well. It’s something that is authentic in the sense that it is familiar to Sydneysiders but fresh and new to outsiders. The photographs all show Sydney sparkling in the sun, which it usually is, except that the La Niña effect has been bringing abnormal amounts of rain this summer. For a local perspective, the Sydney Morning Herald has this feature on kayaking in Sydney Harbour.

• * Rachel Friedman at Brave New Traveler asks what will become of the traditional backpacker book swap, if e-book readers such as Amazon’s Kindle take off (link via WorldHum). Both Rachel, an Eva at WorldHum, riff about the experience they had with certain books that passed through the hands of dozens of travellers, each of whom wrote their name on the title page. I wonder if either has heard of BookCrossing, which lets you have that experience any time – except it’s about travelling books rather than books when you’re travelling.

• * The Window Seat has a round-up on tipping around the world – always a contentious issue! Though they don’t include the United States, where it’s possibly most fraught of anywhere.

• * This Just In… notes that the largest Frida Kahlo retrospective in the US in 15 years is opening this month in Philadelphia. I saw a Kahlo exhibition at the Tate Modern in London a couple of years ago and she is well worth the time so if you are going anywhere near Philly between now and May then you should pay a visit. Watch the movie Frida with Salma Hayek to get in the mood.

• * Staten Island is probably the least glamorous of New York’s five boroughs. It one claim to fame – as opposed to the infamy of the garbage dump and the mob stronghold – is the free ferry that gives decent views of the Statue of Liberty. Apparently it gets an undeservedly bad rap and is actually quite green and pleasant. Whatever. But now the so-called ‘forgotten borough’ is getting a vineyard and winery – Gridskipper has the details.

• * Should Lonely Planet – now owned by the BBC’s commercial wing BBC Worldwide – publish a guide to Burma (Myanmar)? Join the debate at Gadling.

• * In most cities monorails are a joke – a boondoggle from the 1980s that goes nowhere and serves no useful purpose. Sydney has one. Detroit has one. Now Dehli is to join the list of cities with a monorail, according to Gadling. Though with a planned 45km of track, maybe this monorail will actually go somewhere and serve a purpose. Here’s hoping! (Do we get to sing the song now? monorail … MONORAIL … MONORAIL).

• * A hot topic in the blogosphere is debating how Cuba will change now that Fidel Castro is retiring and whether the United States might, finally, lift the travel embargo. (The official US line is that it will not do so until Cuba introduces democracy, which seems like a strange policy considering Americans can travel to a whole host of non-democratic countries such as China). Of course, Cuba is no great mystery to the rest of the world, as the LA Times’ Daily Travel & Deal blog points out. Meanwhile, many Americans have sidestepped the travel ban anyway, as The Window Seat writes. The Observer called in its architecture writer to describe Cuba as it is now.

• * The Tokyo restaurant scene is distinctly unimpressed with the Michelin team and it star ratings, telling the New York Times: “How can a bunch of foreigners show up and tell us what is good or bad?” It’s a badge of honour for many Japanese chefs that they turned the Michelin stars down. (Link via WorldHum).

• * The Blarney Stone is meant to give you the gift of the gab but Jaunted reveals that travellers have been kissing the wrong stone.

• * I’m really enjoying Liz (aka KiwiWriter) at Write to Travel‘s weekly feature of Travel Blog of the Week. This week she features Primitive Culture, a travel blog with Bangkok as the base. The photographs are especially well done.

• * Poor old Max Gogarty continues to make headlines around the blogosphere. World Hum‘s take is here; Perceptive Travel here; Gadling here; and my own post here.

• * Check out this photograph of olives in Jerusalem in Intelligent Travel. Or for really beautiful photos, visit Exposed Planet – the latest picture is of three Uros women on Late Titicaca in Peru.

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