A hobby is something you do enjoyably. A pastime is an amiable way to spend an afternoon. Neither term could possibly describe the amateur pursuits of golf, fishing, poker or watching baseball. If you’re afflicted by any of these sicknesses we can only sympathize. And while we may not have a cure, we can offer suggestions on where to get treatment.

• “A good walk spoiled” is how Mark Twain referred to the game of golf and it’s been ruining days, weekends and more than the odd marriage ever since. If you long for nothing more than chasing a small white ball through the undergrowth then St. Andrews is for you. The Old Course at St. Andrews, where the modern game was invented in the 1700s, is open to the public for play year-round. Book early and bring your Mashie Niblick to break into two.
  • Flights to St. Andrews
  • St. Andrews hotels
• As the comedian Steven Wright once remarked there’s a thin line between fishing and standing on the river bank looking like an idiot. Or even more pithily; a jerk on one line waiting for a jerk on the other. The folk round these parts like to fish using Kayaks, naturally. Try it for yourself at the Alaska Kayak School in Homer where they give lessons (almost) all year round.
  • Flights to Homer
  • Homer hotels
• And then there’s America’s favorite pastime: baseball. The sport was invented in 1845 when Alexander Cartwright published the first rulebook. Inventing the game didn’t, however, save him from the bad luck that can plague even the most illustrious players – in the first recorded baseball game in history, in Hoboken’s Elysian Fields, his team lost. Only a small part of the field remains, marked by a plaque, but baseball nirvana Yankee Stadium is just a short hop across the Hudson. The truly dedicated can head 200 miles north to Cooperstown for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
  • New York Flights
  • New York Hotels
  • Cooperstown Hotels
• The international origins of poker are a bit fuzzy – some argue it’s based on a Persian card game, others bet on a French ancestry – but its American roots go straight back to the Mississippi River. Introduced in New Orleans, the game’s popularity spread north on riverboats and west with Gold Rush pioneers. Go back to the source in New Orleans, where a variety of operators can arrange riverboat cruises from as short as hour-long dinner excursions to cruises that last several days.
  • New Orleans Flights
  • New Orleans Hotels

Get the Fare Buzz to the birthplace of these hobbies from your home airport.

Yours, at the 19th hole,
Steve and Paul, Kayak.com co-founders

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 24th, 2006 at 11:45 am and is filed under Newsletters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.