Tag Archives: Beer

the SUNDAY TRAVEL DIGEST

Leave a reply

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

IN THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST
Have you ever stood in a place where history happened, history that touches you directly? If not, you owe it to yourself to do that at least once in your life.

When history touches you, it changes you.

I found that out on my second visit to Washington DC, the day I decided to take a walk down to the Washington Mall to see the Vietnam Memorial wall.

I got as far as the Lincoln Memorial.

There, I climbed the steps until I found the one where Martin Luther King Jr. had stood in 1963, the day he gave his immortal “I Have A Dream” speech.

I just stood there, transfixed. Seeing the same view he’d had across the great mall, feeling the impact of that day and those words, a seminal moment in our nation’s torturous — and as yet unfinished — trek toward equality.

The man who eventually left that step was not the same, and never would be again.

That spot has since been marked by the U.S. Park Service. It’s one of eight sites listed by the folks at Tripbase where famous people spoke to the world, and changed it.

The King speech places sixth on their list. Not surprisingly, it ranks a lot higher on mine.

MEET THE LOCALS
One of the biggest challenges for a traveler is to move beyond the tourism structure in the places you visit and get to meet and interact with residents — the regular, non-professional folks who give those places life. This is especially true when the place is outside the country and the culture that you call home.

So I’m always on the lookout for ways of doing that.

One of them is the Global Greeter Network. These are groups of volunteers in popular travel destinations whom you can hook up with for your own private walking tours, conducted from the perspective of a life-long resident who loves their city and delights in showing it off to visitors.

You can find walking tours in major cities all over the world, but those are usually for groups. With the Greeters, it’s just you and your guide for a very special hour or two.

The first of these I ever heard of was the Big Apple Greeters in New York City. The guide was an energetic, gray-haired retired teacher who could walk you out of your socks and make you love every step. It was one of the best days I ever spent in Manhattan.

In addition to New York, the network has greeters in Chicago and Houston. Even better, it has volunteers doing the walking tour thing in Paris and five other cities in France, two in the United Kingdom (alas, not London), as well as Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Russia, Serbia, Canada, two in Australia and Buenos Aires.

They even say they can find you a greeter in the Ivory Coast in West Africa. (This would be a great concept for other African nations to emulate to boost their own tourism. hint, hint)

Other programs are designed to let you break bread with friendly residents, literally. Eat With A Local is designed as a kind of cooking exchange. You agree to fix a home-cooked meal for a visitor traveling in your area, and in return, you can get together with an EWL member on your vacation for a meal and a get-together away from home.

“If you’d like to get involved, but you can’t host people for some reason, you can always offer to meet up and go out for a meal together instead!” EWL says.

It’s all part of a quietly growing Local Travel Movement, aimed at “getting in touch with the local people, seeing a place like a local!”

Works for me.



And now, here’s this week’s Digest:

-0-

AIR
from USA Today
The competition between Airbus and Boeing at the Paris Air Show helps determine what the airlines will be flying over the next decade. And as this year’s show wraps up today, the word is that Airbus kicked Boeing’s tail assembly.

from the New York Times
Tips on how to make your own great airline food from some folks who ought to know: professional chefs.

LAND
from GotSaga
If crowds give you the creeps, these are five places to scratch off your list of travel destinations. Four are in Asia, and the fifth has the added disincentive of being a periodic conflict zone.

from The Guardian (London UK)
Exploring canal-laced, table-flat Amsterdam by bike. Your choice of three specialized routes geared to three very different sets of tastes.

SEA
from USA Today
U.S. health inspectors from the CDC board the Queen Mary 2, one of the world’s newest and priciest ocean liners, and find dozens of health violations, including roaches in areas where food is prepared? Oh, HELL no!

-0-

AFRICA
from allAfrica.com
The good news: The nations comprising the East African Community are setting up a system to allow travelers to visit all EAC-member countries on a single visa. The bad news: Some EAC countries are moving on this faster than others.

from allAfrica.com
Kenya plans to add five world-class international hotels within the next two years.

-0-

AMERICAS/CARIBBEAN
from Travel + Leisure
The T+L folks evidently like starting arguments. Exhibit A: Their list of the 15 best American cities for beer lovers. Who’s number One? Portland, OR. Who’s at the bottom? Just about every traditional American beer town you can think of. Let the foaming begin!

from IncaRail
A train trip to Machu Picchu? Sign me up!

from the New York Times
And speaking of Machu Picchu, there’s more than one way to climb to the top. And naturally, it may be the hard way that’s the most rewarding.

from the San Francisco Chronicle
Speaking of booze, if a summer tour of the Northern California wine country sounds appealing, but the blazing heat is threatening to peel your skin off, seek shelter underground…in a wine cave. Less sunblock, more Zinfandel. Sounds like a plan to me.

-0-

ASIA/PACIFIC
from the Los Angeles Times
A $215-million theme park devote to Hello Kitty is in the works for Shanghai, China.

from the San Francisco Chronicle
Mention Azerbaijan to most Americans and the first word likely to come to their minds is…”HUH?” But this former Soviet republic wedged between Russia and Iran is mixing the old and the new with a diverse culture and a great location on the Caspian Sea. SLIDESHOW

from the New York Times
Going to Beijing? Already there? Want to find the restaurants in China’s massive capital where they’re doing regional Chinese cuisine and “keeping it real?” The NYT’s Xiyun Yang will hook you up.

-0-

EUROPE
from the New York Times
Not many world capitals can boast a UN World Heritage Site two hours out of town. Lisbon can: the city of Évora.

from The Guardian (London UK)
Matt Brown offers up his nominees for the ten best pubs in London. This one may require considerable in-depth research. Yep, definitely. Considerable…

from the BBC
Dover Castle is not just about ancient British history. It also was the command center where the British ran the evacuation of Dunkirk, which saved 380,000 British and French soldiers from Nazi capture (and God knows what else) in 1940. Now, you can see a new exhibit in the underground passages beneath the castle that re-creates those desperate days.

the WEDNESDAY TRAVEL DIGEST

Leave a reply

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

Chicago Midway Airport | © Greg Gross

Okay, my West African sojourn is over. Time to get back to business. And I’m not the only one who’s back.

The Amazing Race, easily one of the most successful of all reality TV series, is back for another round-the-world round on CBS.

This time around, some old friends — teams that fell short for a wild variety of reasons — return for a second bite at the million-dollar apple.

Some of them — like the Cowboys, the Goths and the Trotters, among others — were viewer favorites. Others were more anti-favorites back to raise our collective blood pressures, like the NFL cheerleaders.

While they all battle each other for the bucks, we get to follow them vicariously around the globe. Sounds cool to me.

They started from the desert outside Palm Springs. First leg, Sydney, Australia. First surprise of the series: Sunday night’s debut was a two-parter, so nobody’s been eliminated yet! So if you missed last weekend’s opener, you’ve got a chance to catch up next Sunday.

The Boeing 747 will never die, just modify.

You know how rapper Tupac Shakur, who’s been dead since 1996, somehow magically seems to release a new CD almost every year? So it is that Boeing keeps coming up with new incarnations of its now iconic 747, which first flew 42 years ago.

The newest version is the Boeing 747-8, rolled out earlier this month. Designed to fly farther, faster and quieter on less fuel, this latest version of the original looks like Boeing’s latest bid to throw down with rival Airbus and their massive double-decker A380.

As some of you will recall, that’s what the new state-of-the-art Boeing 787 Dreamliner was supposed to do. But with Dreamliner deliveries top the world’s airlines still stalled by a seemingly never-ending set of problems, the Boeing folks appear to have settled on the 747-8, with its increased capacity and redesigned wings, as their Plan B.

You can read all about this latest version of the 747 in the CNET magazine story here.

This follows an old rule of aircraft makers: If it ain’t broke, upgrade it. When the original design is a winner to begin with, you can do that.

And now, here’s this week’s Digest:

AIR
from the New York Times
The FAA held its annual Aviation Forecast Conference last week to look at various indicators for the immediate future of air travel — costs, aircraft and airport room, availability of flights and the like. For the traveling public, none of it looks good.

LAND
from Frommer’s
ATTENTION, BEER LOVERS! Where are the best places in the world to knock back some truly great beers? the Frommer’s crew offers up their 14 nominees. Between my own experience and that of friends, I can vouch for seven of them. WOW, I’m way behind! SLIDESHOW

from the New York Times
When in Rome, shop like the Romans do. From personal experience, I know that if you want to save money when you travel, go local. Nowadays, that includes scouring the Web for sites offering deals and discounts for locals only.

SEA
from Maritime Matters
The Carnival Splendor, crippled by an engine-room fire last November, is back in business.

from Smooth Jazz Cruise
First, all you jazz purists out there, just chill! Aiiight?! Second, for you smooth jazz fans out there — and you know who you are — the Smooth Jazz Cruise is taking bookings for their two Jan. 2012 sailings. So why am I giving notice 11 months early? Because these cruises sell out every year, that’s why.

AFRICA
from msnbc travel
With the political chaos in Cairo having subsided (at least for now), Egypt is desperately trying to get its tourism back up to speed. (NOTE: With Egypt trying to lure back visitors, that could mean some real bargains in the offing. Keep an eye on this!)

from We Blog the World
A look at Swaziland, the last African monarchy. It’s small, it’s peaceful — albeit with perhaps a sternly forced peace — abnd culturally fascinating. All of which may explain why it doesn’t show up on the cultural radar of mainstream media.

from allAfrica
In South Africa, talks are underway that could lead to the African Diaspora becoming more than just a concept, but a place — a formal recognition as a region of Africa itself. The implications, and their potential, are off the charts.

AMERICAS/CARIBBEAN
from the San Francisco Chronicle
As expected, the presence of The City’s new fan-friendly baseball park has drawn new restaurants, shops and residential building to an area once known only for run-down warehouses and little-used railroad tracks. King Street is becoming the new epicenter of San Francisco.

from the New York Times
Meanwhile, an hour’s flight to the south, downtown Los Angeles is turning into a place that’s actually worth spending some time in. Best of all, you can actually WALK there. Walk in LA…what a concept!

from The Grio
B&Bs in Massachusetts and Michigan offer a descent into history with their bed and their breakfast — tunnels, trapdoors, secret passages. That’s because a century and change ago, these inns were stops on the Underground Railroad that took escaped slaves to freedom.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from Asia Travel Tips
If you’re flying on China Airlines to Taiwan and plan to use their high-speed trains to get around (and why wouldn’t you?) you get a 25 percent discount on your train tickets.

EUROPE
from the New York Times
Could you get through a weekend in Paris on only $100? See what happens when the NYT’s Frugal Traveler, Seth Kugel, gives it a shot.

the SUNDAY TRAVEL DIGEST

Leave a reply

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

Amsterdam water taxis | @copy; Greg Gross

SCAN THIS
Depending on how you look at it, the TSA’s latest efforts to protect air passengers from terrorism are either keeping them safer in the air, or violating their personal dignity and possibly exposing them to cancer on the ground.

There actually are two types of airport full-body scanners. The one that’s causing all the uproar is the X-ray backscatter machine. That’s the one that’s hitting your skin directly with radiation in the form of X-rays.

The radiation dosage is extremely low, hence the government’s insistence that the cancer risk is extremely low. The flip side of that argument is that you’re subjecting millions of people daily to that risk, and many of them repeatedly over the course of a month or a year.

Disclosure this summer that some branches of government had been surreptitiously retaining some of these full-body images — after telling the public that the scanners can’t and don’t do that — hasn’t done much for their credibility, either.

Imagine you’re an airline pilot or flight attendant. Would you want to go through a backscatter machine as many as 400 times a year?

By the way, did you know that you and everybody else aboard an airliner flying at altitude are subjected to low doses of radiation every time you fly?

You can learn about this via this transcript of a recent experts’ discussion on National Public Radio.

Of course, you could decline to be scanned, but that makes you a candidate for what the TSA, showing government’s gift for whimsical wording, calls an “enhanced pat-down,” of a sort most folks first experience as teenagers in the back seats of cars.

This has led to, among other things, a woman being forced to remove her prosthetic breast and a small child being strip searched, as you can see on this YouTube video.

And as you’ve heard a great deal in the news over the last week, not everybody is down with having strangers feeling them up, even in the name of security. TSA’s response is basically: “PHFFFT!”

The TSA has since relented and will now allow uniformed pilots to skip all of this, as long as they go through metals detectors and have two forms of identification. Cabin crew — so far, at least — no such luck.

Meanwhile, some Republican types in Congress are trying to get airports to take TSA out of the equation entirely and turn their screening over to private companies — and some airports are indeed looking into that. Even were that to happen, though, the private screeners would still be required to follow TSA security rules. So for you and I, the flying public, not much would change.

Bottom line: prepare to be groped and/or radiated for the foreseeable future. Or think seriously about taking trains.

And now, here’s this week’s Digest:

AFRICA
Ethiopian Airlines becomes the first African airlines to operate the Boeing 777, its most modern jumbo jet. Another step up in class for EA, and a piece of good new for Africa-bound travelers. It gives EA the ability to connect virtually any two major cities in the world, non-stop.

They also plan to be among the first to fly Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner — provided Boeing can ever get the thing off the ground. Its delivery is now three years late.

from GotSaga
Ten things to enjoy in Capetown, South Africa — for free.

from the Guardian (London, UK)
A Guardian reader describes the many social roles played by the beaches in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. They’re not just for tourists. The locals use them for everything from beach soccer to baptisms, and more. Sounds like my kind of beach.

AMERICAS
from AP Travel
Where do you find America’s most affordable fine dining? According to the folks at Zagat, it’s New Orleans.

from the New York Times
Argentina produces some of the best wines in the world. A lot of those wines come from the wineries in and around Mendoza, which welcomes visitors. You’ll need to rent a car to get around the 100 or so wineries that welcome visitors, but the experience may be more than worth it.

ASIA
from the Japan Times
Americans aren’t the only ones giving thanks in November. Instead of turkey, though, a Japanese meal of thanksgiving might include crab cooked wine.

from the Japan Times
Sapporo is more than just a popular brand of Japanese beer. It’s a city with a lot going for the visitor — good food, good fun and good transportation, all packaged in a city smaller and a lot easier to comprehend than Tokyo.


EUROPE
from Europe Up Close
Paris is a city of neighborhoods, 20 districts known as arrondissements. Each has its own personality and character. Some are packed with attractions, and some are where Paris really lives. Not sure which is right for you? This blog post offers an excellent guide.

from the New York Times
In the study of humanity, Man was considered to be advancing when he stopped living in caves. In southern Italy, they’re converting caves into hotels…and putting tourists into them. If you stick around long enough, everything comes back.

from AP via US Today Travel
Follow the path of Catholic faithful on a pilgrimage trail in Spain that dates back more than a thousand years. You’ll need a backpack, a good pair of comfortable hiking shoes — and if you want to do the whole thing, about six to eight weeks.

Beer travel, Part 2

Leave a reply

Part 1 of this two-part series looked at beer and brewery tours as a travel theme within the United States. Part 2 concludes with a taste of beer travel around the world.

You can easily spend all your vacations in breweries and brewpubs at home. Eventually, though, your tastebuds may develop some serious wanderlust.

You find yourself sampling imported beers, just to see if they’re worth all the hype. By and by, you start to wonder what these international brews taste like at the source.

There’s only one way to find out. Time to dig out that passport. Beer is as good a reason as any to see, and taste, the world.

That’s especially true if you decide to delve into the origins of beer, which dates back to ancient Iraq and a good six millenia before the birth of Christ.

Every region seems to produce some good beers. Continental Europe is all but saturated with them, but you’ll find worthy brews in the Americas, Asia, Australia and Africa.

(“Africa?” you say. A cold Tusker Lager on a hot summer day will answer your question.)

All brewery tours are not created equal. In addition to those prized free samples, some offer knowledge, in everything from how to properly pour a beer to hands-on steps in the beer-making process itself.

And when it comes to breweries, you’ve got more destination choices than vacation days. A lot more.

GERMANY
The country that gave us Oktoberfest (see the pic above) has more than 1,300 breweries, half of them in Bavaria. Together, they crank out a dizzying 5,000 different brands in 23 different varieties…at least.

The Bavarian city of Bamberg in southern Germany supposedly has the largest concentration of working breweries in the world, so you might want to start there.

(Another reason for visiting Bamberg is to get a feel for what a German city was like prior to World War 2; it was one of the few that Allied bombers left alone.)

Or you might want to check out the Benedictine abbey at Weihenstephan, which has been making the stuff since 1040.

And yet, all those breweries and Oktoberfest notwithstanding, Germany is neither the largest maker nor the biggest consumer of beer. They’re third, behind Ireland.

So who’s Number One? An Eastern European country that not only produces some of the world’s best beers, but also happens to be very high on the tourism radar these days.

CZECH REPUBLIC
Since the end of the Cold War, Prague has become one of the hot new travel destinations in Eastern Europe, and that’s exposed a lot of Americans to some incredible Czech beers.

After all, these are the folks who invented pilsner, the light, golden beer most familiar to Americans. That’s a good reason to visit the town of Plzeň.

We know it better by its Germanic spelling: Pilsen.

JAPAN
The first non-American beer I ever tried was Kirin. It was first brewed, and still is, in Yokohama.

Yokohama is where where Americans introduced beer and brewing to Japan back in 1870. It’s also the place where America’s Adm. Matthew Perry sailed into the harbor with a fleet and opened Japan to the Western world — more or less at gunpoint.

Other brands that brew beer throughout the country and do brewery tours include Asahi, Orion, Sapporo and Suntory.

In Japan, you may literally get a chance to double-dip, since beer is not the only alcoholic beverage brewed there. Sake, Japan’s deceptively potent rice liquor, also is the product of breweries, which also conduct tours. Far too many to list here.

IRELAND
The grand-daddy of brewery tours doesn’t even take you into the brewery itself, but that doesn’t stop beer lovers from flocking to with near-religious fervor.

The Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, Ireland is a slick multimedia presentation on the makings of Guinness Stout. that, when I was last there, included a man-made waterfall and a walk through a real, and enormous, beer cask. It also features a spacious bar that serves up not only your one free Guinness, but a 180-degree view of the Dublin skyline and maybe the best beef stew you’ll ever have.

Made with Guinness.

Whether in a bar or a brewery, if you’re new to international travel, there’s something comforting about being around beer. It’s familiar. Language, scenery and brewing methods all may vary from one place to another, but beer is beer, pretty much, wherever you are.

Comfort zone in a glass.

Some of these breweries will be in the heart of great cities, others in small towns, or abbeys in the countryside. The mere act of traveling to reach them can give you an ample slice of life to go along with your beer sample.

You do remember where you stashed that passport, right?

WHAT’S IN A NAME?
If you really want to have some fun, you’ve got to hit the brewery in the Czech town of České Budějovice. The name doesn;t ring any bells with most Americans, until you hear its German version: Budweis.

Where they’ve been brewing beer since the 12th century, which they call…

…wait for it…

Budweiser.

August Busch hit St. Louis a few centuries later and started brewing his own Budweiser over here in 1876. A-B and the Czechs have been battling in court over the use of this name ever since.

I’m not even going to try to unravel this mess. If you’re curious about all the legal back-and-forth, read it here.

Bottom line: the Czechs get to use the Budweiser name over there, A-B gets to keep it over here. A-B also cut a deal with the Czechs to market their “Bud” here in the States, under the name Czechvar.

So if you ever comes across one, you’ll know you’re drinking the original Budweiser from “the old country.”

So which do you think is better, the Czech “Bud” or ours?

Find that passport!

Beer travel, Part 1

Leave a reply

If you want to get your drink on and sample the best of the best while you travel, wineries are no longer your only option.

For a long time, it seemed as if winemakers had the tourism thing all to themselves. Clean air in the country. Rolling hills and mountain slopes covered with precise rows of lovingly tended grapevines. Stacks of massive wooden barrels in cool caves. Lessons in wine tasting, and samples of some truly delightful wines.

Work in a tasty lunch or a classy dinner, and you’ve got the makings of a great day.

Beer was consigned to bars, baseball games and backyard barbecues.

Winery tours are still a delightful travel option the world over. But it looks as if the world’s beer producers have caught on and are catching up, with increasingly more on offer than just a free sample of suds.

Touring breweries around the world is downright refreshing, especially during those hot, sticky summers. I’ve toured breweries in Mexico and Ireland, and there are lots more on my list.

The advent of regional beers and microbreweries around the United States means you can give yourself a much more intimate understanding of beer, its history, how it’s made and what makes one different from — and better than — another.

And you can do it not only without leaving the country, but probably without leaving town. North Dakota may be the only state in the Union without a homegrown brewery of any kind or size.

But before there were microbreweries, there were MACRO-breweries, and the mother of American brewers will gladly show you around.

The Anheuser-Busch company, by volume the largest brewer in the country and maybe on the planet, does tours at five of its 12 breweries around the United States, including Merrimack NH, Jacksonville FL, Ft. Collins CO and Fairfield CA.

But you really should save yourself for the flagship brewery in St. Louis, where A-B was born. This place looks like a city in miniature, so be prepared for a lengthy tour and a lot of walking.

A MULTITUDE OF BREWS
They offer a free basic tour, which does include a free beer sample at the end. But if you can, spring for the $25 for the much more in-depth “Beermaster Tour,” which includes sampling their beer from one of their giant finishing tanks.

(Trust me on this: Until you’ve sampled freshly-made beer drawn straight from the tank, you only think you know how beer’s supposed to taste.)

Two things will jump out at you on these tours. One is the long list of other beers that A-B doesn’t brew but now owns, most of which will be very familiar to beer drinkers:

  • Bass Ale (United Kingdom)
  • Boddington’s (UK)
  • Beck’s (Germany)
  • Czechvar (Czech Republic)
  • Kirin ( Japan)
  • Leffe (Belgium)
  • Kirin beer ( Japan)
  • Stella Artois (Belgium)


(NOTE: Stella Artois is brewed in Belgium and runs ads to make you think it’s from France, but may be best known in the UK, where its association with binge drinking and soccer hooligans has led to it being nicknamed “wifebeater.” Oh dear…)

The other thing that will amaze you is the dizzying number of beers that A-B makes, many of which you’ve not only never tasted, but probably never heard of.

Eighteen different versions of Bud. Thirty different Michelobs, including four you can only get seasonally. A few, with names like World Lager and Bare Knuckle Stout, have come and gone, without ever having seen the refrigerated shelf at your favorite liquor store.

Red Bridge? Red Hook? Rolling Rock? ZiegenBock? Yep, A-B owns them, too. And even when you add all of the above together, it’s still but a partial list. You literally could drink yourself under the table before you tried them all.

Of course, nowadays, A-B itself is owned by Belgium’s brewing giant InBev.

SIZE ISN’T EVERYTHING
Anheuser-Busch not to your taste? The Samuel Adams brewery in Boston also has a tour, as do other large US beer makers.

What? You say you’re not up to touring a brewery the size of a county seat? Well, you don’t have to. The explosion of microbreweries in the United States has also meant an explosion of brewpubs — and brewery tours.

These tend to be much more intimate experiences; let’s face it, they’re called “microbreweries” for a reason. Also, your guide is less likely to be some college student working part-time and more likely to be someone actually involved with brewing the beers. That never hurts.

As a bonus, many of these microbrewery tours are located in places that are travel destinations in their own right. Here’s a very small sample:

  • Anchor Brewing Co. (San Francisco)
  • Brewery Ommegang (Cooperstown NY)
  • Brooklyn Brewing (New York City)
  • Wynkoop Brewing Co. (Denver)

Where travel is concerned, New York and San Francisco need no introduction. Cooperstown, meanwhile, is the home of Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame. Beer and baseball have always gone together, so to have a brewery tour and a nice lunch after a visit to the hall is a no-brainer if ever there were one.

Thanks to the revival in American brewing led by the microbrewers (and home brewers, too), many cities around the country even hold their own annual Oktoberfests, modeled after the original German festival (which celebrates its bicentennial this year).

But there’s nothing like the real thing…

NEXT: Brewery tours around the world

POSTSCRIPT
Is it me, or there something just wrong about microbreweries holding a “Notsoberfest?” There are places doing this all over the country. Don’t we have enough problems with binge drinking?

October is a time to enjoy and celebrate beer, not an excuse to encourage folks to go for a “Ph.D” — Ploughed, Hammered and Drunk.

Just sayin’…

the SUNDAY TRAVEL DIGEST

Leave a reply

The good, the bad and the bizarre from around the world of travel!

FALLING LEAVES, RISING PRICES
As the days grow shorter, travelers start longing to get away. If you’re one of them, shop carefully and be prepared to act fast.

So I’m scouting airfares and ticket prices for the coming holiday travel season, and what I find so far is that the airlines this year are turning the upcoming holiday travel fare structure on its head.

Usually, it’s cheaper to fly during the Thanksgiving holiday than during Christmas/New Year’s vacation time. Or so it’s been until this year.

So far, looking at packages to Europe, Thanksgiving is actually more expensive than Christmas. I don’t know yet why that is, and I can’t think of one logical reason for this.

You can bet, however, that I’ll be asking.

PLACES IN THE KEY OF LOVE
Certain cities in the world have a way of binding themselves to your soul and refusing to let go — and the first link in the chain is music. There may be no better example of that than San Francisco.

When I was a kid, I used to think I was the only one who associated a song with a special place, one that I’d seen or dreamed of seeing. I took this as evidence that I was nuts.

Now that I’m older, I find that, while I may indeed be crazy, I am by no means alone. Lots of folks out there do exactly the same thing. And few places have inspired more such connections than San Francisco.

By some counts, the city known as “The City” inspired more than a thousand songs. The singers range from Judy Garland to John Lee Hooker, to Tony Bennett to Scott McKenzie, Harry Chapin to Carmen McRae, to name a very few.

Then last night, though, in a story on the San Francisco Chronicle’s Web site, SFGate.com, I came across one I hadn’t heard.

The writer, originally from France, had been haunted for many years by a song by French artist Maxime Le Forestier. Depending on who’s talking, it’s called either “La Maison Blueu,” The Blue House, or simply “San Francisco.” It was inspired by his brief stay in The City back in the 1970s, where he met Allen Ginsburg.

Music can connect you to a place in ways no amount of pics or postcards or videos can. This song evidently has helped inspire French dreams of seeing San Francisco the way a lot of Americans dream of seeing Paris.

Here’s a YouTube video that a couple of French visitors to San Francisco visitors paired with it.

You need not understand a word of French. If you love San Francisco, or dream of seeing it someday, you’ll “get it.”

Or it will get you.

What song ties your soul to a special place, and why? Send me an email at greg@imblacknitravel.com!

And now, here’s this week’s Digest:


from MSN Money
The best credit cards for earning free travel. Also, ranking lists of major hotel chains and the number of stays it takes to get you a free night’s sleep. (Thanks to Kimberly Major for spotting this!)

from A Luxury Travel Blog
Not sure what makes a good shot? This camera will tell you.

from Yahoo! Travel via concierge.com
Tropical rainforests and northern glaciers aren’t the only natural wonders in danger of disappearing. So are some of the world’s great beaches. Here’s a list of seven to see before they’re submerged, washed away or polluted for good.

AFRICA
from Lonely Planet
“The amazing Race” returns tonight for its 17th running on CBS. In honor of Ghana being on of its featured stops, IBIT features aGhana travel guide from the folks at LP.

AMERICAS
from Frommer’s
Fields of lavender. Century-old olive trees. Provence? Catalonia? Not even close — but if you live in the United States, you’re already a lot closer than you think. Writer Melinda Quintero givers us a taste of agritourism, California style.

from Brilliant Tips
Chicken, Swordfish, Beer. Great flavors…for ice cream? The folks in this small Puerto Rican mountain town seem to think so.

from Frommer’s
Where to go for the best tasting of the grape in Paris. Wine bars, wine shops, wine festivals, tasting classes. Paris is one of the cities that qualify as Ground Zero for oenophiles. (NOTE: If you can spell or pronounce “oenophile” — or remember what it means — after your third tasting, you may not have had enough wine!)

from Prevention
The best U.S. cities for walking that excess weight off. Most of them happen to be pretty good travel destinations , besides. So get moving, America!

from Frommer’s
Our national parks are sorely under-visited these days, but if sleeping in mummy bags in a tube tent is not your idea of a grand time, there are pretty plush alternatives.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from Lonely Planet
Want to experience India, but afraid you might succumb to sheer sensory overload? Daniel McCrohan has five tips for newbies to the subcontinent.

from the Guardian (London, UK)
Ten of the best rail journeys around India, along with tips on how to navigate the Indian railway system.

EUROPE
from the New York Times
Leave it to the French to put sparkling water in public water fountains. Bubbly refreshment without the plastic bottle. One more reason for me to love Paris.

from Gadling
Another reason to admire Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. The air terminal with its own museum of classic Dutch paintings is now the first major airport in the world with a library. Suddenly, that long layover between flights doesn’t seem so daunting anymore. What a simple, brilliant idea.