'Around The World In Eighty Days'

I read Around the World in Eighty Days and I just want them to hop on an airplane and just shoot over to England and win the bet.

It's frustrating as a modern traveller to see Phileas Fogg and his crew be beholden to the rail system and boat schedules. These are problems that we now nothing about. Even our primitive forms of travel are better and a lot more reliable than the state-of-the-art accomodations of the latter part of the 19th century.

Going around the world in 80 days seems so elementary and easy. Even of you considered boats and trains. Seems like there was a bunch of sitting around. Even as they were moving, it was sitting -- on trains and boats. Yes, there's movement. However, there's an amount of idleness to sitting and waiting for a boat to cross an ocean.

Around the World in Eighty Days also chronicles a high point in the development of modern travel. Within one year, the transcontinental railroad in the United States and Suez Canal were opened. In addition, the railroads across India were connected.

The technology to travel was inconsequential. The steam engine and boat had already been put into wide use. However, without the foresight to provide the means to get across these countries was a gigantic step in flattening the world, if I can borrow Thomas Friedman's phrase. Of all the transports, the wind-propelled sled across the American plains was probably the most vital.

I was a bit disappointed in the ending. For Fogg to win the bet based on a coincidence (him asking Passepartout to fetch a priest for his marriage and learning it was Sunday) seems a bit cheap. All the while, Fogg meticulously and strategically circumnavigated the world in 80 days and the only reason he won was due to coincidence. Not even luck.