Category Archives: Rail Travel

TRAINS: Twelve lovely hours

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One of an occasional series.

The view from a Superliner Roomette on the Amtrak Coast Starlight.

The view from a Superliner Roomette on the Amtrak Coast Starlight.

All images by IBIT/G. Gross unless otherwise identified. All rights reserved.

A day’s ride down the California coast aboard the Amtrak Coast Starlight proves the perfect antidote to two weeks of stress.

I had flown up from San Diego to Oakland to deal with medical emergencies in my family. Now, after two weeks, it was time to go home. This time, however, I wouldn’t be flying. In more ways than one, I needed a break.

Which was why, at precisely 8:50 on a drizzly Oakland morning, I was aboard the Amtrak Coast Starlight as it gently edged away from Jack London Square Station, heading south to start the second of its two-day run from Seattle.

Behind me were two weeks of hospital visits, doctor conferences,bedside vigils, rehab centers, dialysis clinics.

Ahead were 12 hours aboard the Coast Starlight, a double-deck Superliner train.

I’d made this run before — first as a kid with my mother, more recently with IBIT guest columnist Walt Baranger from LA to Oakland.
Parlour car 2

This time, instead of sitting in a Coach seat, I’d be holed up in one of Amtrak’s Superliner Roomettes, the smallest and cheapest of its sleeping compartments. Two comfortable facing seats which convert at night into the bottom bunk, with a fold-out table between them to share by day and space beneath to store small luggage.

Let me be clear here: traveling by Coach on an Amtrak train is infinitely better than flying in Coach. A normal-sized human can travel in actual comfort. No Sardine Class on the rails. What’s more, even at top speed, passenger trains are amazingly quiet, much more than airliners with their noisy jet engines.

Still, if you’ve never done it, a train trip in your own compartment — or “sleeper,” as it’s still often called — truly takes rail travel to that proverbial “next level.”

First, there’s the “chill factor.”

In every passenger car on a train, people are constantly in the aisle — going to and from the bathroom, the lounge car, the dining car, the luggage rack. In your own compartment, you have only to shut your door and draw the curtains to create your own quiet, climate-controlled little world. Put on your headphones to listen to your favorite tunes and watch the world glide past your window.

Come nightfall, while Coach passengers are reclining nicely in their seats to go to sleep, you are curling up in your own bunk bed.

Another important difference shows up in the dining car, where Amtrak has worked hard over the last several years to raise the quality of its food. The cost of your compartments covers all your meals aboard the train. As long as you don’t order wine or beer with your meals, you can eat your way across America without once taking out your wallet.

You also get first dibs on meal reservations.

On the Coast Starlight, however, Amtrak goes a major step further with the Pacific Parlour Car, reserved for sleeper passengers and found exclusively on the Coast Starlight.
Train wine tasting
The upper deck is split into two sections. One is a lounge area, with comfy swivel chairs, along with couches positioned for sightseeing and small tables for your laptop or tablet computer, with plenty electric outlets and — drum roll, please — free wi-fi. The rest of the upper deck is a small dining area plus stand-up bar.

Downstairs is laid out as a rolling movie theater, complete with a big screen.

As a compartment passenger, you have the option of taking your meals in the dining car or the Pacific Parlour Car. It’s a tradeoff. The dining car menu is more extensive. The parlour car is calmer and quieter.

The Pacific Parlour Car also offers an afternoon wine tasting just before dinner — again, included in the cost of your sleeper ticket.

Actually, I might have spent the whole trip in the parlour car were it not for the 1950s oldies being played non-stop via Sirius XM radio, which pretty much guaranteed that I would spend as much time as possible in my comfy little roomette.

SOUNDS ON RAILS
For a lot of travelers, music is a big part of the experience. The airlines provide their own wide-ranging audio selections on long international flights, but the railroads are “there” yet. Not to worry; computers and digital audio/video players make it possible for every travelers to literally bring a library of tunes along with them.

When I’m on a train, I’m usually looking to chill, and the iTunes playlist I create generally reflects that. This is a sample of the playlist I created for my Amtrak Coast Starlight trip:

“French Dream,” Marc Antoine, from the album ‘Classical Soul’
“Big Girls,” Kenny Barron Quintet, from ‘The Kenny Barron Quintet: Quickstep’
“Dansa Negra,” Yo-Yo Ma & Kathryn Stott, from the album ‘Obrigado Brazil’
“When Love Comes Around,” the Braxton Brothers, from the album ‘Steppin’ Out’
“Dreamin’,” the Heath Brothers, from the album ‘Expressions of Life/In Motion’
“Just Gets Better with Time,” The Whispers, from the same album
“Keep Looking,” Sade, from the album ‘Stronger than Pride’
“Last Train Home,” Pat Metheny, from the album ‘Still Life (Talking)’

What would you play on a long train trip

All this self-pampering set me back $206 — $88 for the base fare and $138 for the roomette — or almost $40 less it had cost me to fly to Oakland in Coach.

It gets better. Every passenger pays the basic Coach fare no matter what, but the extra charge for a sleeper compartment is per trip, not per person. Friends or couples who can share the cost of a compartment can score both serious creature comforts and major savings.

There are some minor drawbacks to a Superliner Roomette. When I say it’s just big enough for two people, I do mean just. If you’re larger than a typical fourth grader, you may find the bunk beds more than a little cramped. Also, you don’t get your own wash basin, toilet or shower in a roomette. Amtrak reserves en suite bathrooms for its larger and more expensive bedrooms. For you, those are downstairs.

And none of the seats in sleepers recline.

Funny thing, though. Once you’re rolling in your roomette, with your tunes in your ears, sipping on a tasty beverage and gazing out the window as you watch the scene across the horizon change every second, none of that seems to matter.
Salinas Valley
You can take pics along the way and share them with your Facebook and Twitter friends (which I did). You can break out the laptop and get some serious work done (which I did not). Or you can exhale and do nothing at all (of which I did a great deal).

By the time you’ve covered your first 50 miles, you can almost feel your blood pressure dialing itself down.

Somewhere between the bottled water, the Martinelli’s sparkling cider and the Sierra Nevada pale ale, between the Cabernet, the riesling and the pinot grigio, between the salad of cherry tomatoes and strawberries sprinkled with grated Parmesan and the chicken hiding under a liquid blanket of red wine and beer sauce, the condos of Jack London Square and the backlots and backyards of East Oakland and San Leandro turn into the salt ponds of Hayward and Fremont.

Further on, sprawling suburbia fades seamlessly into farm country, where the vegetables of future dining car salads and the grapes that will star in future wine tastings still thrive in the ground, arrayed in precise rows that fan past your window like long fingers when the train is at speed.

Hills still green from winter rains briefly give way to rolling terrain so bare and brown that it lacks only a few craters to qualify as a moonscape. You almost expect to see a green, lizardlike Gorn from Star Trek, chasing a gimpy William Shatner in slow-motion through the narrow draws.

Not long after you clear Paso Robles and its quaint little station, the sand dunes in the distance signal that the sea is near. And when the Pacific Ocean suddenly spreads out before you, with the sun shining its own enormous spotlight down through the clouds on the waters that seem to fill the lower half of your window, you know why some passengers spend hours staking out seats in the lounge cars of this train.

The LA night skyline greets you as you pull into Union Station, the end of the line for the Coast Starlight. Ahead for me are two more hours aboard a different Amtrak train, the Pacific Surfliner, before San Diego and home.

By then, however, I was already de-stressed.

The Coast Starlight had done its job, in twelve lovely hours.

the IBIT TRAVEL DIGEST 11.4.12

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The good, the bad and the bizarre from the world’s best travel media

Liverpool | ©IBIT/G. Gross

DANCING WITH HURRICANES
For most of the last week, travelers have been coping with the chaos created by Hurricane Sandy. Clem Bason, president of the Hotwire Group, offered some really helpful tips for travelers to get through it.

But it doesn’t require a “storm of the century” to unleash havoc on the US aviation grid. All it takes is a strong storm lasting a day or more that hammers an airlines’ hub airport city like Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta or New York.

If nothing else, Sandy’s swamping of East Coast airports may get travelers thinking about how to deal with such crises in the future, and that’s a good thing. Because the realities of climate change mean we probably haven’t seen our last superstorm around here.

Bason recommends keeping your airline’s phone number in your smartphone. In addition to that, make sure you have one or more good travel apps in your phone that give you fast access to airlines, hotels, rental car agencies, whatever you need to get through the crisis.

But really, the best thing you can do for yourself during a travel emergency is to have a previously established relationship with a travel agent and keep that person on speed dial. A good, experienced travel agent not only can find alternative flights and lodging for you, but can book them…and probably a lot faster than you can.

Just a little something to think about, especially if you travel a lot — and before one of Sandy’s meteorological siblings shows up.

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“F” IS FOR FEES
As in airline add-on fees, those extra charges for checking your bags and even the “privilege” of sitting in an exit-row seat. The airlines drained an extra $22 bilion out of your collective pockets last year on fees alone.

We all know and loathe them, but we don’t know all of them.

Until now.

The crew at SmarterTravel, one of the best travel Web sites going, has produced a guide listing every single add-on fee charged by every domestic airline in the United States. Fourteen different fees — and their varying amounts — from 14 different US airlines.

It’s a PDF entitled “Ultimate Guide to Airline Fees.” To download it, click here.

Bookmark that link on your computer. Keep it on your smartphone. Print it out. If you fly a lot, this is one list you definitely want to keep handy.

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JAL SELLING COMFORT
For many years now, Japan Air Lines, that nation’s original national flag carrier, has been flying in the jetwash of rival All Nippon Airways. It looks now as if JAL is trying to take the fight to ANA with a promise of more comfort in the sky.

It’s giving their extended-range Boeing 777s a major interior makeover. When done, its cabins will be divided into four classes — Economy, Premium Economy, Business and First.

The latter two classes will be lie-flat seats in their own self-contained shells, but JAL is promising that all the seats will be more comfortable, even in sardine class.

They’re calling these reconfigured 777s “Sky Suites,” and the first of them will go into service next Janunary between Tokyo Narita and London Heathrow. Eventually, however, they will be coming to America.

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ALL ABOARD FOR BEER
You may have heard of the Napa Valley Wine Train up in the Northern California wine country. It’s a great experience, and IBIT will have more on that in a future blog post.

Meanwhile, have you heard about the Beer Train in San Diego? It may sound like the punchline to a bad joke, but it’s anything but.

Unlike the Napa Valley Wine Train, the Beer Train doesn’t have its own rolling stock. Instead, it turns a Coaster commuter train into a rolling pub. Pub grub and short walks are part of the package.

Sounds like a sweet ride, does it not?

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CARIBBEAN SPRUCE-UP
Travel Weekly reports that both Barbados and Martinique have plans in the works for new cruise terminals capable of handling the largest cruise ships out there. Which means that, in a year or so from now, passengers will be able to step off the ship directly onto the dock and head straight into town.

Caribbean ports need to do this, for the same reason that the world’s major airports have to build larger terminals to accommodate the Airbus A380 super-jumbo jet.

Some struggle to handle the larger new super-cruisers. Others can’t dock cruise ships at all. They have to use small, cramped tenders to ferry cruise ship passengers to and from shore, a time-consuming and somewhat risky process disliked equally by the ports, the cruise lines and their passengers.

Meanwhile, Caribbean cruise ships have been growing almost exponentially in size since the 1990s. Royal Caribbean International and Carnival, the two largest lines going head-to-head for the Caribbean cruise market are both building seagoing behemoths that would make the Titanic look like the SS Minnow.

It’s hardly a coincidence, then, that one of the principal partners in the new Barbados cruise terminal is Royal Caribbean. One look at their Oasis of the Seas will explain everything.

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AND FINALLY—
Travel media just love making lists — best this, cheapest that, coolest whatever. If you look long enough, you’ll probably find someone making a list of the best travel lists.

But the prize for the most counter-intuitive travel list goes to Budget Travel. Its “winning” entry: the world’s 25 must-see tourist traps.

Normally, when travel writers say anything about tourist traps, it’s to advise you — usually with great disdain — to avoid them. This slideshow does just the opposite. It lists the top 25 destinations that invariably are crawling with tourists, but worth a visit, anyway.

To look at it another way: These places are all teeming with visitors for a reason.

So if a certain sight or destination really piques your interest, don’t automatically let the travelerati put you off from it.

And now, here’s the Digest:

AIR
from SmarterTravel
from CNN Travel
Window or aisle: What does your choice of airplane seat say about you?

from SmarterTravel
Eight airline perks that are — are you sitting down? — still free. SLIDESHOW

from the Los Angeles Times
First, airlines started tapping into celebrity chefs. Now, American Airlines will let passengers in First and Business Class reserve their choice of in-flight meals. The biggest shock? There’s no fee attached.

from Travel Weekly
JetBlue plans to offer satellite-based wifi beginning early in 2013, which it says will be better than the ground-based airborne wifi being offered by their competitors. It also plans to offer at least a basic version of it…wait for it…at no charge.

from Travel Weekly
Lufthansa launches a new low-fare carrier in Europe, Germanwings.

LAND
from SmarterTravel via USA Today
Five tips to make the most of that carry-on bag.

from Budget Travel
When it comes to unexpected travel costs that can ambush your wallet, we all know about the airlines and their hated baggage fees. But there are at least a half-dozen more that BT wants you to know about.

from Reuters
The streetcar, thought to be obsolete a half-century ago, is making a comeback in New Orleans. One more reason to visit the Crescent City.

from Associated Press via Yahoo
From bike-sharing programs to building bicycle “superhighways, European cities are embracing cycling like never before.

SEA
from Travel Weekly
Norwegian Cruise Line doing away with its discounts for children under age 2. A money-making idea, or a way to force parents to leave their babies at home with grandma?

from Travel Weekly
The Love Boat in unfamiliar waters. Princess Cruise Line’s Pacific Princess will offer a 10-day Caribbean cruise next January.

from Travel Weekly
New cruise industry safety rules now require cruise ship crewmembers to do lifeboat drills that involve actually putting the boats in the water and maneuvering them while being filled to capacity. If you’re guessing this is a consequence of the Costa Concordia disaster, you’re right.

AFRICA
from The Guardian (London UK)
A few days in the bush in Zimbabwe.

from Le Monde (France)
African migrants are increasingly abandoning dreams of reaching Europe or America. These days, the “promised land” is increasingly becoming South Africa. But while the dream destination may be different, the hardships and sorrows of the journey are the same.

from Monkeys and Mountains
Shark diving in South Africa — with camera and without a cage.

from Capetown Festival of Beer
When the world thinks of alcoholic beverages and South Africa, it automatically and for good reason thinks of South African wines. These guys would like to change that.

AMERICAS
from the New York Times
Like some sort of post-apocalyptic epiphany on wheels, New Yorkers living in the wake of Hurricane Sandy are rediscovering their bikes…and liking them.

from Travel Weekly
Government bureaucracy plus consumer confusion is making a muddle of new rules governing legal U.S. travel to Cuba.

from Travel Weekly
The Imperial Palace hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip is undergoing both a year-long makeover and a name change. When it’s all done, some time around the end of 2013, it will be known as The Quad.

from the Associated Press via SFGate
The San Ysidro border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana is often touted as the world’s busiest world crossing, and often cursed as the world’s most congested. It’s now getting a makeover intended to streamline the traffic flow going south. Northbound travelers…*shrug.*

ASIA/PACIFIC
from CNNgo
Vietnam puts its own spin on fast-food dining. It usually involves two motorized wheels and some seriously fresh and tasty eats.

from Travel Weekly
What it’s like to tour quake-shattered Christchurch, New Zealand. Just one example of “dark tourism.”

from Travel Weekly
Get ready to rock out in in the Middle Kingdom. Hard Rock International is bringing its rock ‘n’ roll-themed hotels to China starting in 2015, including one on the island of Hainan.

from Travel Weekly
China’s on-again, off-again issuance of permits for foreign tourists to visit Tibet is off again.

EUROPE
from The Guardian (London UK)
Missed Halloween last week? No worries. You can always catch up at the Witches Night festival next spring in Prague. Parades, witch burnings (in effigy only, mind you) and some of the world’s best beer.

from Travel Weekly
The British travel company Trafalgar is planning a 13-day tour of European battlefields from both world wars. Included is a visit to the Belgian cemetery that inspired the famous World War 1 poem, “In Flanders Fields.”

from Typically Spanish
Spain has long been a traditional warm-weather refuge for British tourists. These days, they’ve increasingly got company, from an even chillier Mother Russia.

from the BBC
Paris for lovers…of chocolate.

Edited by P.A.Rice

the IBIT DIGEST 10-28-12

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The good, the bad and the bizarre from the world’s best travel media

awash coffee ceremony

©IBIT/G. Gross

HIT THE COFFEE ROAD
In addition to wildlife safaris, history and heritage, you now have a new reason to visit East Africa: coffee. An outfit called ET African Journeys is offering a 14-day tour next month called Ethiopia & the Birth of Coffee.

Don’t expect a lot of “down” time on this trip. The package includes visits to a coffee cooperative and at least three different local tribes — the Erbore, Kanso and Woito peoples. You’ll also head into the Great Rift Valley for 4×4 drives and boat rides on valley lakes, as well as the Blue Nile Falls. You’ll also be seeing two different UN World Heritage sites, the castles of Gondar and the rock churches of Lalibela.

Lest you drop from sheer exhaustion and sensory overload, they’ve also worked a couple of resort and spa stays into those 14 days, as well.

Ethiopia is where coffee was born and there are those of you who will swear it’s the best in the world. It spread east into the Arab world and then to Europe before finally making its way to the Americas and the rest of the planet.

I’ve never been a big coffee drinker, but after getting my first taste of it during San Diego’s African Restaurant Week, I can tell you this: Ethiopian coffee is the only coffee I’ve ever had that I would willingly drink black. It’s smooth, it’s flavorful and it won’t bite your tongue off.

I’ll make my apologies to Juan Valdez later.

The tour departs Washington DC’s Dulles airport on Nov. 30 aboard a long-range Boeing 777 jumbo jet from Ethiopian Airlines. For more information, go to the ET African Journeys site here.

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TRAINING FOR VACATION
These days, Amtrak has jumped with both rails into the package vacation business.

Amtrak Rail Journeys last from seven to 13 days and combine multiple destinations. Some feature famous sites like the Grand Canyon. Some are regionally focused — the Northeast, the Deep South, the West Coast, the Canadian Rockies. At least two combine rail trips with cruises.

Costing from about $1,000 to $4,000 per person, none could really be called cheap, but considering that your transportation, lodging, meals aand tours are all included in the one price — not to mention the experience of train travel itself — you may find it offers real value for the money.

Amtrak also offers much shorter (and much cheaper) Rail Getaways to individual cities in the United States and Canada, as well as national parks and attractions like Hearst Castle in California and several national parks. These tend to last no more than three days and run from about $300 to $600 per person.

If the idea of a vacation on rails gets your blood racing, check out the Amtrak Vacations page.

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AMERICAN DELIVERS…SORT OF
Think of this as a kind of pre-emptive strike from American Airlines.

We all know how much travelers resent those airline baggage fees. We also know that travelers are starting to turn toward air freight companies and luggage shipping services to get their bags picked up and delivered, thumbing their noses at the airlines in the process.

Well, before too many more folks opt out of letting the airlines handle their bags, American has decided to partner up with one of those services to offer its own baggage delivery. For a fee, you can now bypass the luggage carousel and let American deliver your bags to your home or hotel.

You can read about it here at Travel Weekly.

Sounds like a great idea, and a pretty slick move by American…until you learn that you pay for this extra service on top of the airline’s checked bag fees. That, I suspect, will be a deal-breaker for a lot of travelers.

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AIR ALTERNATIVE TO PARIS
OpenSkies is a small upscale subsidiary of British Airways that flies trans-Atlantic routes with smaller Boeing 757 narrow-body jets set up to be more comfortable for travelers willing to pay for a pricier ticket.

In addition to offering more legroom, nicer meals and seats that don’t leave you feeling you’ve spent six hours in a vise, the airline is now offering flights from New York into Paris’ other major airport, Orly.

Most international travelers, especially from North America, usually fly into Paris via the massive, chaotic and perpetually packed Charles de Gaulle international airport. If you’ve experienced CDG in the past — and would do anything to avoid a repeat of it — this may be your chance.

And now, here’s the Digest:

AIR
from SmarterTravel
You know those controversial airport X-ray body scanners? The TSA is quietly replacing them with scanners believed to be less potentially harmful. But the old machines aren’t going away, just being moved to smaller airports.

from Yahoo Travel
Coming soon to an airline near you — personalized airfares. Individual airfares based on your personal profile data and travel history. Good deal or something sinister? Read and decide.

from Smarter Travel
Eight foods and beverages to avoid when you fly. Some, like beans and garlic, are no-brainers. Others, like alcohol, are no surprise. But sugar-free gum?

from Travel Weekly
With Orbitz, you may not always know: the federal government fines the online travel agency $25,000 for failing to properly disclose airline baggage fees.

from USA Today
Feel like living dangerously? North Korea’s Air Koryo, judged by aviation experts around the globe as the world’s worst airline, launches a Web site. Apparently, the site is about as functional as the airline it represents. Pyongyang, anyone?

LAND
from the Travel+Lesure via the BBC
The five best neighborhoods in America for authentic ethnic food — and you won’t see a lot of “the usual suspects” on the list. If you have dissenting opinions, list your own nominees in the Comments section. SLIDESHOW

from SmarterTravel
Was it something you said? Five phrases never found on the lips of a good traveler. SLIDESHOW

from Travel Weekly
There’s a little less competition in the rental car business these days. Hertz is buying up Dollar Thrifty. Good news for Hertz. For the traveling consumer, probably not so much. But the feds still have to bless this merger, and there’s no guarantee that they will.

from the United Nations
UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, adds 26 new locations to its list of world Heritage Sites. Meanwhile, the crew at SmarterTravel picks its ten favorites. Your bucket list may need a bigger bucket.

from USA Today
Few visitors to New York City have reason to hit Staten Island, even with the lure of a free ferry ride from Manhattan. That could change by 2016 if plans go ahead to build the world’s biggest Ferris wheel in the Big Apple’s most ignored borough.

SEA
from Travel Weekly
This from Carnival Cruise Lines: No more saving deck chair for someone who’s not on deck.

from Travel Weekly
For those who plan ahead: The Cunard line has already set its world cruise itineraries for 2014 The cruises can last three months — but Cunard will let you buy much shorter segments, as short as eight days.

AFRICA
from CNN Travel
If unique wildlife is your thing, then Tanzania may be your place. Who’s up for a safari?

from Bulawayo 24 via Travel Comments
Ahead of next year’s big general assembly of the UN World Tourism Organization in Zimbabwe, three African airlines are adding more flights to Victoria Falls. You don’t have to be a UNWTO attendee to take advantage.

from Gadling
Forget trick-or-treat. If you want to see something truly spooky, check out the annual migration of 8 million African bats. Relax, they only eat fruit.

AMERICAS
from the BBC
New entry fees and visa requirements going into effect in Argentina and other South American countries. If you’re planning a trip to South America, don’t wait until departure day to get yourself up to speed on the new requirements. If you do, you may never get out of the airport.

from Agence France Presse via France 24
You know all that stuff you’ve been hearing about how the Mayan calendar forecasts the end of the world in 2012? Well, the Mayans say it’s all bogus and they have one word for all the folks out there pushing this myth: STOP.

from the New York Times
Want to really go New Age in Santa Fe, NM — and get healthier at the same time? Explore it by bike.

from The Guardian (London UK)
El Vilsito. Auto mechanics by day, wonderfully fixed up tacos al pastor by night. Only in Mexico City.

ASIA
from Xinhua News Agency via CNNgo
China is taking not quite $1 million to turn its first atomic bomb test center into…a theme park? Swords into plowshares is one thing but, uhh…wow. This is one new tourist hotspot that could be just that.

from China Daily
For decades, travelers from around the world have descended on Hong Kong in search of bargains. Now, te Chinese are doing it, too.

from The Province (Vancouver, BC, CANADA)
There’s a lot to see and do in Hong Kong. There’s even more to see and do outside one of the world’s most densely crowded cities. Venture out.

EUROPE
from The Guardian (London UK)
There are lots of good reasons these days to visit the Czech Republic. Here’s one you may not have heard about — good skiing, incredibly cheap.

from the BBC
In Paris, the Seine is getting a 35 million euro makeover that will make the riverbanks more pedestrian friendly and even more attractive to locals and visitors alike. It comes at the expense of daily commuting motorists, who are less than thrilled.

from CNN Travel
Ten cool and free things to enjoy in Paris, including your own guided tour with a local. Did I mention that it’s all free?

The IBIT Travel Digest 10-22-12

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The good, the bad and the bizarre from the world’s best travel media

James Bond Island, Thailand

© Ihar Balaikin | Dreamstime.com

The latest James Bond movie, “Skyfall,” is now blowing up (almost literally) in theaters worldwide. 007 has been a lot of places for Queen and country these past 50 years — which locations were your favorites? London’s The Guardian offers up a slideshow of their must-sees. Does their list match yours?

The one that really set my imagination racing was Khow-Ping-Kan on Phang Nga Bay in Thailand, seen above. This was the climactic location for “The Man with the Golden Gun,” one of the lesser flicks in the Bond series. These days, a lot of people just call it “James Bond Island.”

A sight like this could make me happily forget all about Bangkok, at least for a day or two.

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In its ongoing efforts to swallow the Earth whole, Google has bought up the Frommer’s travel brands — all of them — for an undisclosed price. This after buying the Zagat restaurant review publishers.

What all that means for the traveling consumer remains somewhat unclear. It’s unlikely that what you see online or on book shelves from these two well-known travel publishing names will look or feel any different in the near term. But as we all know, things change.

Will Google insist on putting its stamp on its new travel possessions, or will it be content not to fix what wasn’t broken? Stay tuned.

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IBIT doesn’t offer a Travel Outrage of the Week feature. If it did, this might top the list.

There are reports out of San Francisco that the local Travelodge motel recently refused the credit cards of famed New Orleans funk band The Meters Experience on the grounds that they are black.

And no, that’s not a misprint, nor did you misread it.

You can read the entire story yourself at SFWeekly here. For a more detailed report on the incident, go to the NOLA.com story here.

It really shouldn’t make any difference, but it’s not as if we’re talking here about some garage band composed of a bunch of high school kids with delusions of grandeur. The Meters are a New Orleans institution known around the world. Its guitarist, Leo Nocentelli, is a nominee for the 2013 class of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.

I have emailed the Wyndham Hotel Group, which owns the Travelodge chain, asking it for clarification and its side of the story. Whatever I get in response will be published here.

There’s no indication that the motel clerk or manager even tried to verify whether the credit cards were valid, a swift and simple process that hotels and motels conduct routinely with all hotel and motel arriving guests millions of times a day around the world. Instead, if the initial reports are correct, the Travelodge people took one look at these black musicians and said, “Forget about it!”

Why are we still having to deal with this kind of treatment in 2012?

ADDENDUM
I emailed Christine DaSilva, a spokeswoman for Wyndham Hotel Group, about this situation. Here’s a portion of what she had to say:

“Hi Greg,
Thanks for checking in with me – not everyone that’s written about this allegation has done that, and it’s greatly appreciated.

As you can imagine, we are deeply troubled by this allegation. We invite every individual regardless of ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual orientation or generation to experience our products and services, and we are troubled that the guests’ experience didn’t reflect our values.

“Please rest assured that we have been looking into this situation and are handling it directly with the franchised property’s owner as well as the guests.”

Sounds like Wyndham’s on the case. I suspect that a certain Travelodge property manager in San Francisco is going to be put in check…bigtime. And that’s exactly as it should be.

And now, here’s the rest of The Digest:

AIR
from ABC News
This is the sorry state to which US airport security has sunk: A list of the 20 airports in this country where a TSA inspector is most likely to steal something out your luggage. It sounds like the punchline of a bad joke, but it isn’t. The joke’s on us.

from SmarterTravel
Seven simple ways to get yourself kicked off an airplane. SLIDESHOW

from Travel+Leisure
If you’re flying out of any of these ten US airports, you’d be well-advised to a) get there early and b) not schedule your connecting flight too tightly. These Tardy Ten are notorious for flight delays.

LAND
from Travel Weekly
According to the numbers the US Travel Association fished out of the US Labor Department, travel has become a major source of new jobs in America. Guess you can’t outsource Disneyworld, can you? It’s also a growing source of cash. Foreign visitors dropped $82 billion in the US in the first half of 2012, an 11-percent increase over last year. So when you see that foreign tourist in your town, be nice. Be very nice.

from the New York Times
In Manhattan, home to some of the priciest hotels on Earth, a decent room for $150 or so a night constitutes a good deal. This guy tells you where and how to find seven of them.

from Travel Weekly
Which would you rather pay for at your hotel — your breakfast, access to the hotel gym or your in-room Internet access? US hotels are making the choice for you.

from Travel Weekly
At the San Francisco Airport Marriott Hotel, they really give a hoot. Lots of hoots, in fact. Nesting barn owls, it seems, love the place.

SEA
from Travel Weekly
Here’s an idea from Carnival Cruise Lines. Want to get your cabin early, have priority dinner seating aboard ship, be first in line to embark or debark? Easy. Just pay an extra $49.95 per cabin. And you thought the cruise industry wasn’t paying attention to the airlines and their add-on fees.

from Travel Weekly
Bermuda is starting to fall off the cruise ship industry’s radar. Royal Caribbean is the latest to cut back.

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AFRICA
from Travel Weekly
Egypt reopens a major stretch of the Nile River to cruise ships.

from Wilkinsons World
Sitting off the coast of Namibia, Shark Island today is a wildlife preserve and resort. But a century ago, it served a very different purpose. Long before the Nazis came into being, the Germans created the world’s first death camp on this island…to exterminate Africans.

AMERICAS
from Travel Weekly
Go to Mexico, get well? Mexican tourism officials are pushing the nation’s capital, Mexico City, as a medical tourism destination. Meanwhile, they’re also looking at giving small groups of visitors exclusive access to historic sites like Chichen Itza — for a fee, of course. Ever dreamed of having a pyramid all to yourself?

from the New York Times
In Portland, OR, the gritty old industrial area on the east side of Willamette River is going upscale. Check it out while it’s still both fun and relatively affordable. SLIDESHOW

from the Los Angeles Times
Before it was America’s 50th state, Hawaii was a sovereign state, an independent kingdom with its own royalty. The LAT’s Catherine Hamm shows you where to go to dive into the Hawaiian history your mainland teachers left out of their lessons.

ASIA
from Travel Weekly
Europe isn’t the only part of the world where river cruising is taking off. Aqua Expeditions, which operates Amazon River cruises in South America, has its sights fixed on the Mekong River in Southeast Asia.

from the Los Angeles Times
A generation ago, Da Nang was known to the world mainly as a gigantic US Marine base during the Vietnam war. Today, it’s Surf City East.

EUROPE
from Travel Weekly
The competition for the European river cruise market is heating up. After watching the Viking line add fresh new ships left and right, Uniworld is firing back with plans for two new ships of its own.

from the New York Times
The Belgian city of Antwerp, which first gained wealth and power as a 16th-century port city, is undergoing a revival.

from the New York Times
Wine lovers know all about Spain’s Rioja region, and for good reason. But there’s a lot more to Rioja than just great wines. There’s great food to go with them.

Edited by P.A.Rice

TRAINS: Bring back the North American Rail Pass

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old train station

© Josefhanus | Dreamstime.com

A month-long pass for rail travel between the United States and Canada? It seemed like a great idea. So why did Amtrak decide to kill it?

Anyone who’s even explored the possibility of traveling in Europe has probably heard of the Eurailpass, which lets you travel between a certain number of European countries in a month, or allows you a certain number of train travel days per month.

It’s a great, economical way to see Europe, with the comfort and convenience of train travel as a bonus. And as an absolute fan of rail travel, I sure wish we had something like that here in North America.

So it came as a somewhat unpleasant surprise to learn that, until relatively recently, we did. It was a cooperative venture between our Amtrak and Via Rail of Canada. For one set fee of $423, you could travel for 30 days in both countries.

It was called the North American Rail Pass and it was a great idea. Until 2008, when Amtrak unilaterally discontinued it.

You can get a USA Rail Pass good for 15, 30 or 45 days of rail travel, or a California Rail Pass good for 21 days up and down the state, but those obviously are good only in the United States.

Likewise, you can get a Canrailpass from Via Rail good for coast-to-coast travel across Canada, but only Canada.

The idea of a rail pass that allows travel between the two neighboring North American giants, with all their beautiful scenery and great cities? Gone. Dead.

It wasn’t Via Rail’s idea to kill it off. Amtrak did that. I just don’t know why.

To make it easier for U.S. and Canadian rail passengers to travel between the two countries by train made so much sense for both sides.

Canadians could do a lovely little loop from Toronto south through Chicago and Memphis to New Orleans, then back north via Atlanta and Washington DC aboard the Amtrak Crescent before crossing back into Canada and hitting Quebec City and Montreal on the return.

Americans, meanwhile, could head north from Los Angeles aboard the Coast Starlight up to Vancouver, BC, where they could head east across the Rockies and the great plains, then past the Great Lakes to Toronto before heading south to New Orleans, only this time swinging west aboard the Sunset Limited back to LAX.

So far, I haven’t found anything that gives a clear explanation for why Amtrak decided to do away with this. What was Amtrak afraid of?

If it wants to emphasize USA Rail Passes, fine, but why not offer both? Rail travelers who wished to confine themselves to the US or Canada would simply buy one of the national rail passes in either of those countries, while travelers who wanted to ride the trains on both sides of the border would still be able to do so for a great price. Everybody wins.

Or they did…until four years ago.

Especially in this era when so many people find air travel to be such a miserable experience, wouldn’t it make sense for Amtrak to seize on every opportunity it can find to encourage travel by train, even if it meant sharing some of the proceeds with its northern neighbor?

If I ever find out what Amtrak’s rationale was behind killing the North American Rail Pass, I’ll be sure to share it with you. Meanwhile, we fans of rail travel can hope that sanity one day returns — and brings back the North American Rail Pass along with it.

ADDENDUM
I’ve reached out to Amtrak’s public affairs people to see if anyone will tell me why Amtrak chose to unilaterally do away with the North American Rail Pass. When I get an answer, IBIT will publish it.

Edited by P.A.Rice

AFRICA: 2 rails, 3 trains, 5 stars

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rovos observation car
rovos rail
5.0.2
Blue Train dining
Blue Train lounge
shongololo express train
shongololo express bunks
Shongololo Express bed

All images property of Blue Train, Rovos Rail and Shongololo Express.

Three of the most luxurious trains in the world ride the rails in South Africa. No bargain fares here, just trips you’ll never forget.

Luxury rail travel may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the Mother Continent — unless you happen to be in South Africa.

The country has not one 5-star train, but three — the Blue Train, Rovos Rail and the Shongololo Express.

Europe’s historic Orient Express was for decades the gold standard where luxury rail rides were concerned, but for sheer opulence, creature comforts and attention to detail, it might be hard-pressed to top any of these.

Room service in your compartment 24/7? No problem. Your choice: bunks or beds. Elegant lounges. Opulent dining cars that could match some of the world’s greatest restaurants plate for plate.

Lots of trains have en suite bathrooms in their compartments; how many have you seen with bathtubs?

Of the three, the Blue Train is the oldest, tracing its origins back to the 1920s. It’s also the only one that focuses exclusively on South Africa, making the 990-mile run between Cape Town, on the very southern tip of the Mother Continent, and the South African capital of Pretoria.

And when its operators call it a “magnificent moving 5-star hotel,” they’re not playing. We’re talking luxury “to the nines.”

Elegant lounges, fine dining. Gold-tinted windows…with real gold? Oh my…

Ever thought of holding a business meeting aboard a train? You could on this one; it comes with its own conference car.

Did I mention that your compartment on the Blue Train comes with its own butler?

The Blue Train’s two competitors are considerably younger, but much more ambitious in their routes and their offerings.

Rovos Rail, which started up in 1989, was the first of South Africa’s luxury trains to extend northward beyond South Africa’s borders, taking you on journeys lasting anywhere from three days to two weeks. Along the way, you’ll see sights in Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania, as well as Swaziland.

Every two years, though, Rovos Rail makes a run that is truly off the charts: a 28-day journey the length of the African continent, from Cape Town to Cairo.

It may be the only railroad that offers air tours. Twenty passengers can charter a vintage Douglas DC-3 for a trip covering two nights and six venues in four countries. Talk about a trip back in time.

I’m especially intrigued by the Shongololo Express, the new kid on South Africa’s luxury rail block. While just as lavish in its creature comforts, the approach behind this train is a little different from the others.

The operators make a point to run this train at night, focusing on keeping you well-fed and comfortably bedded down instead of daytime sightseeing. Fear not, however. You will be seeing sights, wildlife and all.

Just not necessarily from the train.

The Shongololo Express features safari-like side trips at stops along its various routes, but it makes those trips with a fleet of its own four-wheel-drive vehicles — which travel with the passenger train from stop to stop on flat-bed cars.

How cool is that?

In a sense, this is a throwback to the earliest forms of rail touring in the United States, when trains carrying their own motor coaches headed west to take passengers into scenic lands that would eventually become some of America’s greatest national parks.

How cool would it be today to board an Amtrak train from, say, Los Angeles for a run through Utah, Wyoming and the Dakotas, stopping along the way to make 4×4 runs into the national parks that line the route?

None of these South African trains charge rates that could be considered anything close to cheap, but the old saying “you get what you pay for” comes into full effect here. When it finally comes time to leave any of these three, you may not want to.

ALSO CHECK OUT:
Rail Travel page
AFRICA page
Imaginary Journey, Part 1
Imaginary Journey, Part 2
Imaginary Journey, Part 3

Edited by P.A.Rice

AMTRAK: How to lose friends and discourage people

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America’s underfunded national railroad needs all the goodwill it can get. Crazy computerized routing is not the way to get it.

So I’m plotting a big trip in mid-June to the Deep South — Atlanta and New Orleans — and looking for ways to save money, when I get a flash of inspiration.

Why not make the return trip by train?

Specifically, a one-way ride from the NOLA back to Southern California on the Sunset Limited.

When I was five, I traveled with my mother from New Orleans to Los Angeles via the Sunset Limited, back when rail travel in the United States was nearing the end of its heyday.

It was her first trip to California. It was my first big trip anywhere. That was the trip that kindled my life-long love of travel — and my life-long love of trains.

Now, I could re-live those childhood days, and see how today’s Sunset Limited compared with the one that still flies in my memory across the American Southwest.

I eagerly logged onto the Amtrak reservation site on the Web, entered my travel information and waited to see what I could get.

What I got was a route that eventually brought me back to California aboard three different trains, not one of which was the Sunset Limited:

  • New Orleans to Washington DC aboard the Crescent.
  • Washington DC to Chicago aboard the Capitol Limited.
  • Chicago to Los Angeles aboard the Southwest Chief.

The Amtrak reservation page gave me three different prices for the same routing.

Only after scrolling down more than half the page of reservations did I come to the routing specifically for the Sunset Limited — and when I did, I found that it was cheaper to fly, anyway.

I’d already “told” the Amtrak reservation computer that I was looking for a one-way trip west from Louisiana to California. Why then would it first show me three routings going east and then north in a great transcontinental circle that would take five days instead of the Sunset Limited’s two?

Am I the only one who thinks this is nuts? Who’s programming Amtrak’s reservation system these days, Elmer Fudd?

I may be wrong, but I highly doubt that this kind of absurdity would happen while making a one-way reservation for the TGV in France or the Shinkansen in Japan, or even on one of China’s high-speed trains.

From its inception, Amtrak has had to fight for its existence, bowing and begging for funds from a Congress that has been bent on doing away with the service almost from the day it was founded. It needs all the friends it can get, both among the traveling public and on Capitol Hill.

This is not the way to get them.

Railcruising

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New Zealand devises a novel way to put unused railroad tracks back to work for the sake of tourism. Could this be the newest Next Big Thing?

Take some long-abandoned railroad tracks through a beautiful stretch of public land. Create mini-carriages carrying no more than four people at a time and send them down the line at intervals for a leisurely, scenic and self-conducted run of 12 miles or so. What do you get?

New life for old rail lines, and a new kind of rail-based tourism.

This is what’s being done today by an outfit that calls itself Rail Riders Ltd in New Zealand. They call it “railcruising.”

You can get more details about this at their Railcruising.com site.

When I stumbled upon this yesterday — on a French news Web site, of all things — the railfan in me was instantly intrigued.

This is a concept that you could apply virtually in any country in the world with a lot of unused rail lines — and a couple of places already are trying it.

France, which has some of Europe’s most scenic countryside and a lot of unused track, offers a little excursion called Vélo-Rail, featuring hybrid rail vehicles that you can pedal like a bicycle and carry up to five people at a time. Two pedal; the other three sit back and enjoy the ride.

I might’ve known the French would be out in front on something like this; they’ve been doing it since the late 1990s.

Across the English Channel, something very similar may soon be making its debut in North Wales, if it hasn’t already.

Where the New Zealanders seem to have taken a jump ahead is with their vehicles, which are motorized gasoline/electric-powered hybrids. Also, unlike the railbikes, the Railcruising hybrids are semi-enclosed, offering at least some protection from surprise storms.

But whether pedal-powered or propelled by hybrid technology, the idea is fascinating.

Indeed, this is a concept that could very quickly migrate around the globe, since there are few countries, if any, that don’t have abandoned trackage running through some spectacular bits of country.

The United States alone has an estimated 80,000 miles of abandoned rail lines. The United Kingdom has about 4,000 miles’ worth. Canada. Latin America. Asia. Africa. The possibilities are virtually endless.

We could be looking at the Next Big Thing in rail tourism.

If nothing else, it could throw an interesting curveball at the Rails to Trails Conservancy, which has been at work for years pulling up abandoned rail lines in the United States to convert the unused rights-of-way into a network of hiking and cycling trails.

It occurs to me, though, that this idea could be applied to more than just tourism or recreation. Could it not be applied to urban transportation, as well?

Engineers and designers have been talking for years about developing this kind of pod-based, on-demand rail transportation for major cities. They call it PRT, Personal Rapid Transit. But all the PRT concepts I saw in the past seemed to presume construction of new lines, be they conventional tracks, monorails or something else.

Why not apply the railcruising concept to unused rail lines within major cities as a way to get around? Something to think about, at least.

Meanwhile in New Zealand, the Kiwis are blazing a new kind of trail with their little hybrids. Don’t be surprised if this idea catches on.

the IBIT TRAVEL DIGEST 3.26.2012

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A roundup of the good, the bad and the bizarre from the world’s best travel media. ​

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

© Radkol | Dreamstime.com

TINGO ALL OVER
A new hotel reservation site has made its debut on the Web. It’s called Tingo, and its main calling card comes into play after you make your hotel reservation.

The folks at Tingo say they will keep an eye on your pre-paid reservation. If your room price drops after you’ve reserved it, Tingo will arrange a refund of the difference, automatically.

You can read more about Tingo in this msnbc.com story here.

BRIDGING THE WORLD
In my next life, I might be an engineer, because I love bridges. Admiring them. Photographing them. Sailing under them. Or best of all, walking over them.

I still have fantasies about riding the elevator that runs up the inside of each of the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge, with my trusty little Canon G12 camera in hand, to take pics from the very top.

That probably explains why I got such a kick out of Cristina Puscas’ list of 13 famous bridges that you can walk or climb. It’s on the BootsnAll Web site, which specializes in independent travel.

With this list as a guide, bridge-hopping can take you around the world.

INDIA, NORTH and SOUTH
The New York Times devotes its Sunday travel section this week to Asia, starting with a sizable story on India that features three possible itineraries based on time — one, two or three weeks.

The piece itself is informative enough, but some of the comments below it are just as insightful, especially those that suggest a possible bias on the part of travel writers toward northern India.

AMELIA EARHART WOULD BE PROUD
Finally, the folks at Air France are making a point of showing off one of their crews on a recent Flight 438, a Boeing 777 from Paris (CDG) to Mexico City (MEX).

Three pilots, 13 flight attendants. All women.

The airline put up its own video to mark the occasion.

I’m not sure how the macho Mexican male passengers on the flight reacted when they found out about the all-female flight crew, but I’ll bet the mujeres on board were diggin’ it.

And now, here’s this week’s Digest:

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AIR
from Gadling
When’s the best time to shop for your airfare? These guys say six weeks in advance.

from Budget Travel
What happens when your airline reservation magically disappears. One travel editor’s experience.

from AirSafe
On any given day, ten people will come to a US airport to board an airplane with a weapon in their possession — and seven of them will get past airport security. One of several statistical bits about the TSA, arrayed in the form of a vertical graphic.

from USA Today
How to keep European transportation strikes from blowing up your travel plans.

LAND
from Smarter Travel
Traveling to Europe this year? Bringing your iPhone with you? From restaurant guides and subway maps to currency converters and translators, these apps are custom-made to help the European traveler, and most of them are free.

from Woman Seeks World
One traveler’s list of the ten most popular countries to emigrate to. If you get the impression it’s a somewhat Eurocentric list, I wouldn’t argue.

from Lonely Planet
The LP crew offers up its list of the world’s ten best cycling routes. Saddle up.

SEA
from Fodors
Looking for a cruise that gets you off the familiar itineraries? One of these might feed your need for something different at sea.

from USA Today
Another old, familiar name in cruise ships is going away…sort of. Royal Caribbean’s Monarch of the Seas, whose wrap-around smokestack-mounted lounge created an iconic silhouette among Caribbean cruisers, is being transferred out of the fleet.

from USA Today
The river cruise business is heating up bigtime, especially in Europe. The Viking line christens four new European river cruisers…on the same day.

-0-

AFRICA
from Nature
Private developers are scrambling to buy up vast tracts of African land. Is this land grab holding back progress on the continent?

from eTurbo News
Perhaps none too soon, given the above developments, Tanzania plans to host the first-ever pan-African conference by the UN World Tourism Organization on sustainable tourism management in national parks and protected areas.

from University of Oxford
Did you know that Africa has as many cities of 1 million people or more as Europe? These guys see that as one of six reasons why investing in Africa is a good idea.

from NewsDay (Zimbabwe)
Think Americans are the only people in the world who are into reality television? Zimbabwe has its own reality TV show in the works, this one focused on the country’s tourist attractions. And yes, they plan to market this show globally.

from Wolfganghthome
Rwanda is hooking up with Google Maps to digitally mark its major tourist destinations, a first for the Mother Continent, according to this blogger.

from Travel Travel (United Kingdom)
A sample of the kind of cheap Africa vacation packages available from Europe. This one just happens to include a stay at the hotel where I stayed in the Gambia.
​
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AMERICAS/CARIBBEAN
from Frommer’s Travel
Five ways for Americans to legally visit Cuba. SLIDESHOW

from USA Today
America’s capital is loaded with history, charm, great eateries, great watering holes — and it’s table-flat. Sound like a great weekend bike ride? Now, you can rent your wheels in Washington DC.

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ASIA/PACIFIC
​from the New York Times
Myanmar, the country that many of us still think of as Burma, is emerging as a new travel destination for the early 21st century. A primer on how to get there and what you’ll find.

from the New York Times
A generation ago, Laos was the site of the Southeast Asian war your parents didn’t know about. Today, it’s the exotic, fascinating travel destination that you may not know about.

from Gadling
When it comes to visiting India’s famed Taj Mahal, timing is everything, especially if you want that great pic.

from msnbc.com
Poor Las Vegas. First, they had to contend with casinos on Indian reservations siphoning off visitors. Now, they have to deal with Singapore.

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EUROPE
from The Quirky Traveller
The quirky side of Britain’s Lake District.

​from Mo Travels
A black American expat in Amsterdam shares her all-girl getaway near Lake Garda in Italy.

from The Guardian (London UK)
​Reader tips on where and what to eat in Turkey. If all you’re expecting is kebabs, prepare to be pleasantly surprised.

from USA Today
International airports have been built on artificial islands before, but never at the mouth of one of the world’s busiest rivers, like the Thames in England. The mayor of London thinks that’s a fine idea.

from The Guardian (London UK)
Okay, this is just strange: Camel wrestling in Turkey? If your travel tastes run toward the bizarre, see this ancient Aegean custom — before the Turkish government finds a reason to ban it.

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