On the road and looking for something a little different this summer ? Well, if you don’t mind a little ’shock and gore’, head to the nearest medical museums.

From stomach sized hairballs (National Museum of Health and Medicine) to a giant hamster wheel for energetic patients (Glore Psychiatric Museum), medical museums offer the chance to explore the medicines colorful history and discover the bizzare, the offbeat, and the extreme treatments of days gone by.

You’ll be amazed (and relieved) by how far the practice of medicine has come.

1. The Glore Psychiatric Museum is housed in the former ‘State Lunatic Asylum No. 2′ building in St Joseph, Missouri. From medical artifacts such as a tranquilizing chair and a dousing tank to exhibits featuring the ‘1,446 Objects Swallowed by a Patient’ and the ‘television diary’, this museum will leave you speechless, spellbound, and mighty relieved that the days of such barbaric medical treatment is well and truly over.

2. The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia was orginally established as a place where trainee doctors could go to learn about anatomy and human medical anomalies. It’s those anomalies - such as the preserved body of the ‘Soap Lady’ and a cancerous growth removed from President Grover Cleveland - that now draw the public to it’s doors.

3. National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington DC is a goldmine for American history buffs. Here you can see not only the bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln but also the probe used to locate the bullet and the blood stained shirt cuff of the surgeon who attended Lincoln’s autopsy. Other permanent displays include ‘Medicine During the Civil War’ and ‘Battlefied Surgery 101′.

4. International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago offers a diverse collection of surgical memoriabilia and artefacts from around the world. Spread out over four floors, the exhibits include early 20th century X-ray machines, trephining (skull drilling) instruments, and an iron lung. The museums newest exhibit, Beyond Broken Bones, looks at the history of orthopedics and prothestics from the Ancient Egyptians to modern day.

There are medical museums all over the USA open to the public. So next time you are on the road and looking for something different, find out if the city you’re in has one.

After a week spent flying in coach from Austin to Washington Dulles to Chicago and back, I am in full-on rant mode about the horrid state of air travel in the U.S.

Never have I felt like such an underappreciated sack of potatoes; an abused commodity and not a customer. Although I’m normally a glass-half-full sort of gal, it’s time to shift into “hostile mode” about air travel.

Nothing personal here; I know several pilots and flight attendants and they’re great people, but for the foreseeable future, I recommend that anyone who travels by air must always assume that the worst is going to happen on your trip, and plan accordingly.

Ready? Dukes up.

** Airline attack plan — overbook flights to ensure that every seat is full, then bump the excess people (that’s you, sucker.)

• Your riposte: check in as early as possible, preferably always online 24 hours prior, print your own boarding pass and get to the gate early. Stragglers lose.

** Airline attack plan — cramp your style by squooshing maximum human flesh into teensy seats with minimal seat pitch (legroom.)

• Your riposte: Don’t be obese or tall (control whatever aspect of this that you can.) Check with SeatGuru for the least-abysmal legroom options on your aircraft. When you can, always pick your seat ahead of time online and make it an aisle seat, for your own mobility and comfort.

** Airline attack plan — save money by not providing food or drink unless you pay for it.

• Your riposte: Never travel without at least an energy bar with you; assume you’re in the Sahara or some other place bereft of food. Carry an empty water bottle through security, then fill it at the water fountain. Never assume that anyone will feed you, so bring your own sandwich from home, or a box lunch from your hotel, or pick up something at the airport. Don’t let ‘em starve you or leave you thirsty and dehydrated.

** Airline attack plan — make checking luggage miserable by charging you for bags, then losing them.

• Your riposte: Never let ‘em get their paws on your stuff. Never check your luggage unless you want to go to Alabama or some mystery place at Heathrow to claim it. Get over that pack mule syndrome and travel light (2 pairs trousers, 3 shirts, 2 pair shoes & do laundry during your trip) then put all that in a carryon with wheels. Be sure that you can lift your bag into an overhead bin yourself and don’t expect any help. Women, figure out how to carry only a laptop bag and be sure you can fit your purse into it, because you are only allowed one personal bag and even though sometimes that’s ignored, don’t give them an opening to force you to check anything.

Your ultimate attack move in return to all this is to refuse to fly unless you absolutely, positively have to, or at least adopt a personal no-fly list for the most egregious airlines.

Factor in some additional time and try the train or the bus (yes, the bus and these guys have free WiFi aboard.) It couldn’t be much worse than the cattle car airlines, and you’ll sure have more seat room.

Make it a pleasant road trip and drive yourself, perhaps carpooling with office mates for business travel.

If you do have to fly, pop those B-complex vitamins for your nerves, and gird yourself for battle. I’ve got your back.

Folks can get pretty worked up about finding the best, most authentic Chicago-style deep dish pizza; a quick search on the topic at foodie site CHOW.com brought 15 pages of feedback.

While in Chicago last weekend for the terrific SOBCon08 blogging conference, I had a good appetite from walking around the city and decided to dive into the deep dish at one of the two restaurants that most of my sources recommended - Lou Malnati’s.

It’s near the corner of Wells and Hubbard, just north of the Chicago River and the Loop.

(The other recommended Chicago pizza place seems to be Gino’s East; anyone out there tried them? Please let us know in the comments.)

The pizza’s fresh to order at Malnati’s, so they need 25 minutes or so to make it. If you’re ravenous upon arrival like I was, order their house specialty spinach bread appetizer, but don’t eat the whole thing (maybe split it with someone) because it’s an incredibly rich and cheesy little stuffed loaf and you won’t have any room for pizza.

Malnati’s deep dish pie sure ain’t Pizza Hut.

The crust is pulled up at the sides, like a little round walled garden for toppings, and it manages to be crunchy and soft at the same time thanks to a lot of oil and other calorie-laden magic that I’d rather not acknowledge.

You eat it with a knife and fork, not picking it up with yours hands the way that most Americans eat pizza.

The tomato topping is chunky, not smooth (I ordered a sausage and green pepper pie) and it’s not gooey cheesy at all. You’d better like tomatoes, which I do. The individual pizza is “only” two slices, but they are big ones, and after the spinach bread I was quite happy with a small pizza serving and the enormous bucket-sized glass of Coke that arrived when I ordered my drink.

Malnati’s has a hopping To Go business (1-800-Lou-To-Go) with a loaded freezer case right by the checkout register offering a variety of ready-made pies. They’re in foil containers so I don’t think the microwave is involved, which probably would make an icky, soggy crust anyway.

One guy came bouncing into the restaurant while I was eating and bought a stack of three frozen pies to take out; when I asked him which one was his favorite, he said, “Hmm, probably the sausage!”

The Malnati’s decor is exposed-brick homey and full of items on the walls to please sports-mad patrons: hockey sticks, Cubs photos, a program from the 1959 Chicago White Sox appearance in baseball’s World Series and one of the gold records of the Chicago Bears football team’s 1985 one-hit wonder “Super Bowl Shuffle.”

As a nod to sports teams outside of the Windy City, a pair of Shaquille O’Neal’s basketball shorts are also framed and hung on the wall (size 52 Long, thank you very much.)

That afternoon pizza meal was so filling that even after a lot more walking, I skipped dinner that night without blinking an eye.

My kinda town, Chicago is….

Related post (on my Family Travel blog) - Taste of Chicago: Garrett Popcorn

If you’ve got a bit of time on your hands,  grab a coffee and click on the latest Perceptive Travel zine.

This month’s lineup includes…

Features:

Laurie Gough puts on her hiking books while trying to separate the divine from the delusional in “Sedona: Is the Whole Town Built on a Hoax?”

Edward Readicker–Henderson, on a whirlwind journey through Africa, looks at “How the Last White Rhino in Zambia Wins at Strip Passport”

Amy Rosen takes a trip to Wales and forages for food in “Don’t Eat Low–lying Berries, and Other Lessons Learned in the Wales Countryside”

Rob Sangster recounts his experiences of traveling to the remote Indian town of Leh in “Members of the Tribe”

Michael Buckley addressed the current Olympic torch controversy in “Olympic Fire and Brimstone”

Music and Book Reviews:

Tim Leffel has put to together a great selection of music and book reviews for you listening and reading plesure.

When is a guidebook not just a guidebook?

When it is also a guide to the art, the history, the culture, and the architecture of a specific place. So I’m not going to call ‘A Journey into Michelangelo’s Rome’ just a guidebook. It is, in fact, a work of art that allows you to travel both back in time and into the present while exploring Rome through the eyes of it’s most famous artist, Michelangelo Buonarroti.

The perfect book for the armchair traveler, it starts with an introduction to Michelangelo and his world. You are immediately transported back in time to follow his journey from sculptor to painter. Along the way, you’re introduced to a cast of characters, mainly popes and politicians, who played extremely important roles in the development of not only Rome but also Michelangelo’s art.

I was quickly mesmerised by the beauty of Michelangelo’s work and was fascinated by the background stories on how the various sculptures and paintings evolved. And as a traveler, I found the numerous maps that highlighted the locations of Michelangelo’s work, plus where he lived and visited, indispensible. Having never visited Rome, the maps helped me envision not only the Rome of the past but also present day Rome.

The book’s detailed photographs, sidebars, diagrams, and street maps provide clarity and understanding of how and why Rome is considered one of Europe’s most beautiful and interesting cities.

Written by Angela K. Nickerson, A Journey into Michelangelo’s Rome looks like a coffee table book and acts like a travel guide and history/art lesson. It is also small enough to make the ideal traveling campanion. In fact, I’ve lent the book to a couple of friends who are off to Rome later this year for the very first time. They thought they had already figured out where and what to see in Rome. But after reading this book, they are now revising their plans so that they can see Rome through Michelangelo’s eyes.

Want to know more about the author and this book, then have a read of this interview.

A Journey into Michelangelo’s Rome is one of the Roaring Forties Press ArtSeries. Each of the books in the series tackles the interrelationship between an artist and a city. Some of the other titles include A Journey into Dorothy Parker’s New York and A Journey into Matisse’s South of France.