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the IBIT Travel Digest 2.3.13

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The good, the bad and the bizarre in the world of travel

cropped-hburghof.jpg

When you’ve finished overdosing on Super Bowl hype, chips and dip, come refresh your mind with a peek at what’s happening in the world of travel

PRICELINE+KAYAK=?
We are soon to find out, because according to Travel Weekly, the Federal Trade Commission has signed off on Priceline’s bid to buy the popular travel search engine for $1.8 billion.

That pretty much makes the sale a done deal, which could go down as soon as next month.

Snapping up Kayak gives Priceline a powerful search tool to tie in with its existing travel sales service. Less clear is how this marriage will benefit the traveling consumer.

On the other hand, Priceline has said that Kayak will to function as an independent entity, so we’ll see what happens.

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CAR SHARING: THE BIG BOYS TAKE NOTICE
You know that a new way of doing things really works when the big, old-line corporations start diving into it. That’s what has happened with car sharing.

Car sharing is kind of the automotive version of couchsurfing. It got its start in Switzerland in 1948 and took hold in the rest of Europe in the 1970s.

Once you become a member of a car-sharing service, you can rent a car for an entire day, a few hours or even a few minutes, if that’s all you need. You pick up the car in town, use it around town, drop it off in town. Cheaper and often more convenient than conventional car rentals, more flexibility and independence than taxis.

The concept doesn’t appeal only to travelers. Some people who don’t need a car full-time every day are actually getting rid of their own wheels (and the costs that go with them) and resorting to car sharing instead.

It’s also a good way to get a real-world feel for operating an unfamiliar vehicle type, whether it’s a pick-up truck or an electric car — without having to put up with a car salesman.

One of the pioneers in this field has been Zipcar, available in 34 states and the District of Columbia, as well as Ontario and Vancouver in Canada, as well as Barcelona, Spain and five cities in the United Kingdom.

How well does this concept work? Well enough for some of the rental car industry’s biggest players to take notice.

Hertz is answering its challenge by creating a car-sharing service of its own which it calls Hertz On-Demand. Enterprise followed suit with what they call WeCar. Even U-Haul has jumped into this game with U Car Share.

Avis, too, is buying the Zipcar concept. It’s also buying Zipcar…for $500 million.

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MORE (CRUISE) SHIPS AHOY
At this point, I’m not sure if the cruise industry’s shipbuilding binge is entering its second decade or its third. The one thing I do know: It’s not stopping.

Royal Caribbean, locked in mortal combat with Carnival for the dominant share of the market, is showing every sign of both expanding and updating its fleet super-sized cruisers.

They’re already moving to trademark the names of six new Oasis-class vessels that haven’t even been built yet.

The Oasis-class — led by its namesake, the Oasis of the Seas — is currently the largest cruise ship afloat, maxing out at 5,400 passengers.

But Royal Caribbean isn’t stopping there. The line also is working on a new, slightly downsized cruise ship, the Sunshine-class, designed to transport and entertain a mere 4,100 passengers at a time.

This ship is so new, the first one hasn’t been named yet, much less built. But according to Travel Weekly, Royal Caribbean has already committed to building a second one.

I have no idea how the folks at Carnival will respond to this, but you know that they will be respond. It’s like an arms race, only with oceanview suites, water slides and Bahama Mamas.

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AND FINALLY…
If you were (or perhaps still are) a regular viewer of the 1970s TV series M*A*S*H, you might vaguely recall lots of occasional references to some mythical town or village whose name sounded like “Wee-John-Boo.”

Well, it turns out that Uijeongbu is no myth. It’s a real place, where the real Mobile Army Surgical Hospital operated during the Korean War. And in South Korea, its legacy extends far beyond film and television.

The people of Uijeongbu, desperately hungry during the war, made meals of whatever they could get their hands on. The result was a dish the locals called budaejjigae, Korean for “army base stew.”

Basically, it combined traditional Korean ingredients with whatever leftovers the locals could scrounge or smuggle from U.S. Army mess tents.

The shooting eventually stopped (the Korean War has never formally ended), but “army base stew” remained a staple of Uijeongbu — and Julie Wan of the Washington Post took advantage of a visit to her family in Seoul to seek out this most unconventional dish in its birthplace.

And as you’ll see when you read her story, she found it.

If you know the origins of things like gumbo, barbecue or fried chicken, you can relate to budaejjigae. Cookbooks today are full of dishes devised by poor, hungry people who tossed anything and everything into a stew pot and used a slow fire, a lot of spices and their imaginations to create something unforgettable.

If I ever find myself in South Korea, I may need to make a small side trip to Uijeongbu.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from Travel Weekly
JetBlue experimenting with an expedited security service that could — maybe — speed you past regular airport security lines. For a fee, of course.

from Smarter Travel
Visual advice on how to dress for air travel. Aimed mainly at women, but the fellas can learn a few things from this, too. SLIDESHOW

from Smarter Travel
The TSA shuts down an airport terminal in Atlanta because of an unattended…toothbrush? You can’t make this stuff up. I mean, those Colgate bombs can be deadly…

from Smarter Travel
Did you know that fresh oranges, in addition to being healthy for you on the ground, can help keep you hydrated in the air? These and other healthy food tips for air travelers.

LAND
from Travel Weekly
Hertz now letting its Gold Plus Rewards members upgrade their rental cars via their smartphone app.

SEA
from Travel Weekly
Carnival cancels Belize port calls for two of its biggest ships through 2013. The cruise line says the port is overcrowded with ships.

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AFRICA
from Tanzania Daily News (Tanzania) via allAfrica.com
Serengeti National Park, already a UN World Heritage Site, wins a prestigious international tourism award.

from The Star (Kenya) via allAfrica.com
The German cruise ship MV Astor makes a historic port call at Lamu, setting aside fears of kidnappings by Somali bandits.

from The Star (Kenya) via allAfrica.com
Are British Army units training in East Africa arming and equipping poachers?

AMERICAS
from CNN Travel
Today’s Super Bowl is more than just a battle between two pro football teams. It’s also a tale of two cities, Baltimore and San Francisco, and how they play. SLIDESHOW

from NBC News
New York City’s Grand Central Terminal celebrated its centennial last Friday. The Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty may be great monuments, but if you want to locate New York’s beating heart, you’ll find it here.

from the New York Times
Yes, you can send an email to the Bahamas, but a mail boat can send you there.

from Travel Weekly
Haiti officially protests the latest U.S. State Department travel advisory on visiting the island nation, which reads in art: “No one is safe from kidnapping, regardless of occupation, nationality, race, gender or age.” State denies trying to discourage Haitian tourism.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from Yomiuri Shimbun
Deep in a forest, well away from the mad urban bustle of Tokyo, a village of Japanese craftsmen hand-builds elegant wood furniture with skills honed over 15 centuries.

from France 24
Missed out on the New Year’s Day festivities Jan. 1? Well, there’s still Chinese New Year coming up on Feb. 10, and the place to party is Hong Kong.

from CNTV
A small lake fishing village in China’s Yunnan province becomes a hidden tourist gem.

EUROPE
from the New York Times
Feel yourself choking on mobs of tourists in Venice? Find a way to go eat with some of the locals.

from Lonely Planet
Is this the world’s most beautiful train ride? It’s in Norway.

from Travel Weekly
The Waldorf-Astoria hotel chain is making a serious move on Europe. With hotels already in London, Rome and Versailles, the luxury brand is now opening a Waldorf-Astoria in Berlin. And they’re not done. SLIDESHOW

OT: Dave Brubeck, 1920-2012

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Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck, 1920-2012

Today, IBIT strays somewhat from the topic of travel to mark the passing of an American jazz legend.

We lost Dave Brubeck today, and for anyone who grew up with a love and respect for jazz, the loss is immense.

If you’re of my generation and come out of New Orleans, jazz almost seems to be coded into your DNA. Duke Ellington, Count Basie, John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and so many others.

You may even have jazz notes hanging like musical fruit from your own family tree, as I do.

But as a kid, I didn’t really connect with jazz on a gut level until I heard “Take Five” for the first time in 1962 — courtesy of an AM radio station in San Francisco.

I heard it while clutching a cheap plastic transistor radio the size of a small shoe, with “made in Japan” in raised letters on the bottom and a small, tinny-sounding speaker not fit for “elevator music.” The alternative was to plug in the somewhat uncomfortable oversized earphone, which in those days went into only one ear.

For me, none of that mattered. “Take Five” was the song that turned “cool” from a state of mind into a sound. More than that, it was the signal that my musical tastes were no longer those of a child — even though I still was one.

Most artists want to be known and respected for their body of work, not just one piece of it. In Brubeck’s case, though, it’s probably unavoidable, for “Take Five” is not just his song. It’s his signature.

I grew up thinking this was strictly an American thing, that we were the only ones who loved jazz. How wrong I was.

Black American musicians first exposed the rest of the world to jazz in Europe, just before and especially during World War 1, when Parisians listened to the Army bands of America’s racially segregated black units, a pattern repeated in Europe and occupied Japan after World War 2.

Which is one big reason why today, you can find a jazz club in the capital city of every major nation on Earth.

Another reason was the Cold War.

Back then, both sides tried to use culture as a weapon of sorts. When the Soviet Union was trotting out classical orchestras and the Bolshoi Ballet on worldwide tours as cultural proof of its superiority, Washington countered with the likes of Ellington, Armstrong, Basie…and Dave Brubeck.

Fast-forward to 1976. Tokyo, Japan. I’m sitting in a second-floor nightclub wedged into a small office building in the Ginza, drinking Kirin beers from a glass boot…and listening to young Japanese musicians playing American jazz.

Including Brubeck’s “Take Five.”

Soon after, I learned that there were countries all over the world with jazz radio stations — and even more, hosting their own jazz festival lasting days.

Montreal and Toronto, Canada. Paris and Nice, France. Copenhagen. Vienna. Montreux, Switzerland. Havana. Jakarta, Indonesia. Macedonia, Moldova, Algeria and Azerbaijan.

Jazz. For days.

Regular IBIT readers know I’m not big on traveling the world to experience American culture. My skin crawls at the sight of a McDonald’s on the Champs Elysee or all over the Recoleta in Buenos Aires.

For music, however, I make an exception.

I delight at listening to black African choirs put their own interpretations on black American gospel music. I truly enjoy listening to hip-hop and rhythm ‘n blues via London or Marseilles or Salvador in Brazil’s Bahia state.

Above all, I love hearing everybody’s spin on jazz.

Dave Brubeck was one of the geniuses who brought this uniquely American creation to the world, and the world has never let go of it, or him. Play this cut on the streets of almost any big city, anywhere, and someone will stop to listen. Not just because they like it, but because they know it.

David Warren Brubeck would have been 92 years old tomorrow. His music will live on a lot longer than that.

The good stuff never dies.

the IBIT Travel Digest 12.2.12

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

Catalina sunset

Sunset off Catalina Island | ©IBIT/G. Gross

ALL ABOARD — WORLDWIDE
If you love rail travel — or just loathe air travel — The Guardian newspaper in London has one of the best resources for planning a fantastic rail vacation.

It’s created its own Web page dedicated to great rail journeys around the world.

Stories about terrific train trips on almost every continent, planning advice, suggestions from readers, photo galleries, it’s all there.

One such trip that’s definitely on my list is aboard The Canadian, a train that travels across virtually the breadth of Canada, from Toronto in the east to Vancouver on the Pacific coast.

It’s not a high-speed train, but given the beauty of the land, including the Rocky Mountains, you won’t want to go that fast, anyway.

Even if you don’t actually use it to plan a train trip, you’ll probably learn some interesting things from it.

For example, thanks to the English Channel tunnel, it’s now possible to travel not merely from London to Moscow, but from London all the way across Europe, Russia and Siberia to Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean — crossing ten time zones and nearly 8,000 miles — without ever stepping onto an airplane.

Not that you’d actually want to, but you could.

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STRETCHING OUT ON AMERICAN
There’s a truism in the fashion world that says if you wait long enough, everything comes back in style. That may be the case among the airlines, as well.

About a decade ago, I joined my first airline mileage program. The airline of choice was American. The reason? Back then, American touting the fact that it was removing seats from its aircraft to create more legroom between rows. When you stand 6’3,” you pay attention to things like that.

Sure enough, a few years later, the airline decided it needed the money, so it put all those seats back into all those planes. Bummer.

Fast-forward to November 2012. An email from American Airlines pops up in my inbox:

“Good things do come to those who wait.

Earlier this year, we mentioned that extra legroom in the Main Cabin was coming. We’re happy to tell you that Main Cabin Extra seats have arrived. You’ll enjoy the following benefits when you purchase a Main Cabin Extra seat:

• Extra space to stretch out
• Group 1 boarding to settle in early
• Seats near the front of the plane so you can get on and off the plane faster”

Legroom is back. Cue the Kool and the Gang music. “Ce-le-brate good times, come on!”

Well, not entirely. There are a couple of differences this time around.

A decade ago, the extra legroom was spread through the entire cabin. This time, it’s being limited to the Main Cabin Extra section at the front of a selected group of new jets.

The other difference is one you’ve probably come to expect by now. If you want a seat in Main Cabin Extra, and you don’t have elite status with American, you’ll have to pay for it, anywhere from $8 to $118 per flight, according to American’s Web site.

On the other hand, you won’t be paying hundreds or thousands of dollars extra for a First or Business Class seat.

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AFRICAN VISA
If I had a dollar for every unsolicited credit card application that turned up in my mailbox in the last five years (and went straight to the shredder), I could probably fly someplace nice… in Business Class. But here’s one Visa card I wouldn’t mind having.

It’s called the KQ Msafiri Visa credit card. It’s result of a joint venture between Barclay’s Bank of Kenya and Kenya Airways.

Not only do your purchases with the card earn miles toward free Kenya Airways flights, but you also get priority check-in and boarding, and up to $56,500 in travel insurance, free.

Cool. But what I’d really love to see would be for outfits like Kenya Airways, South African Airways, Ethiopian Airlines or Arik Air to partner up with some American banks — preferably some black-owned American banks — to create a credit card whose purchases would build miles toward travel to Africa.

That’s one credit card application I wouldn’t shred.

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AND FINALLY…
This last item sounds like a punchline, or maybe something from the satirical news Web site, The Onion…but it’s neither.

Starting this weekend on selected international flights, Japan Air Lines will be serving its passengers in-flight meals featuring…Kentucky Fried Chicken.

That’s right, JAL is hooking up with KFC. According to the JAL press release, it’s to be called “Air Kentucky.”

Greasy fried chicken at 35,000 feet? Neither I nor my bowels know quite what to make of this. Believe it or not, however, it does make a certain amount of sense, although perhaps not for the reason you’d expect.

It would be logical to presume that JAL is doing this to placate those Western passengers whose faces turn unnatural colors at the very thought of eating sushi. But you would be mistaken.

According to the press release, “KFC is widely popular in Japan, particularly during the Christmas season.” And according to CNN, it ties in with a JAL gimmick of partnering with restaurtant chains popular in Japan, such as “MOS Burgers, Yoshinoya beef bowls and Edosei pork buns.”

And there you have it. Pass me the sushi, please.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from Smarter Travel
A holiday gift from your friends at ST, the ten airlines that give you the best legroom in Coach — or as I like to call it, Sardine Class. SLIDESHOW

from Travel Weekly
Flying to the Caribbean from anywhere in the world? No problem, mon. Flying among the Caribbean islands on regional airlines? Big problem, mon.

from Travel Weekly
Delta to begin flying between Seattle and Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport, which is closer to the city than its other airport, Narita. But Seattle’s gain will be Detroit’s loss.

LAND
from Smarter Travel
The ST crew highlights the cold-and-flu season by pointing out the 10 Germiest Places You Encounter While Traveling. Their title, not mine. Never mind that, just take their advice and stay healthy going into the New Year. SLIDESHOW

from CNN
First, the bad news. Hotels are now going the way of the airlines and hitting their guests with hidden “resort fees.” The good news? The feds have taken notice.

from Smarter Travel
Five off-season travel destinations that are really cool, and not just because it’s winter. SLIDESHOW

from Travel Weekly
Ridership isn’t the only thing growing at Amtrak. Look for a larger number of Amtrak Vacations packages in 2013.

SEA
from Travel Weekly
Houston has had a gleaming new cruise ship terminal since 2009, but no cruise ships ever made port calls there. Starting next November, that will change.

from Travel Weekly
More life preservers, better tie-downs for heavy equipment aboard ship and standardized procedures for bridge officers are among the safety changes being proposed within the cruise ship industry as a result of the Costa Concordia disaster.

from CNN
How do you “undiscover” an island?

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AFRICA
from Travel Weekly
British travelers recently declared Cape Town, South Africa to be their favorite city in the world — and it looks as if Europe’s international airlines are getting the message.

from the South African Government News Agency via allAfrica.com
A cultural, historical and anti-poverty industrial center dedicated to the memory of anti-apartheid martyr Steve Biko opens in South Africa. The Steve Biko Heritage Centre is expected to become a major tourist attraction.

from The Star (Kenya) va allAfrica.com
With foreign tourism starting to dry up, mainly over security fears as Kenyan forces tangle with Al Qaeda-aligned terrorists from neighboring Somalia, the government tries to boost domestic tourism to compensate.

AMERICAS
from CNN
The ravages of Superstorm Sandy are not preventing holiday visitors from pouring into New York City.

from CNN
Take a look at Detroit through the eyes of its mayor, former NBA superstar Dave Bing.

from SFGate.com
Up in the Napa Valley, you can find restaurants that design menus around the finest local wines. Not down in Monterey. This beautiful seaside-scenic town, a two-hour drive south from San Francisco, has gone nuts over local craft beers — so much so that several local restos now feature entire dinners built around local brews.

from the Los Angeles Times
Memories of the California gold rush live on in Yreka.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from China Daily
Have you ever seen any of those ancient Chinese paintings depicting incredibly beautiful landscapes, towering bullet-shaped limestone mountains that couldn’t possibly be real? Well, they’re real, all right, and Guilin is the place that inspired a lot of those paintings.

Travel Weekly
With cruise sales leveling off here and sailing over their own “fiscal cliff” in Europe, the cruise lines are turning to Asia to pick up the slack. Singapore has already built a new ocean terminal large enough to dock the world’s biggest liners, and more are coming.

from CNNgo
Paris? New York? San Francisco? Madrid? You can all sit down. The Michelin Guide to the world’s great restaurants has crowned the gourmet capital of the world — and it’s Tokyo…still.

from Travel Weekly
Canada’s Four Seasons becomes the latest luxury hotel chain to plant its flag in China with a new 313-room luxury tower in Beijing.

EUROPE
from The New Yorker
Paris, that gastronomic capital of haute cuisine, is going ga-ga over its newest craze. Brace yourself: It’s American hamburgers. We’re not talking Mickey D’s, either.

from Cisco
The next time you find yourself in one of those classic London cabs, whip out your smartphone or your iPad and see if its wifi is working. Cyberspace is coming to the hackney carriage.

from Reuters
It’s no big deal anymore to find a Muslim mosque in Paris. A gay-friendly Muslim mosque in Paris? That’s a very big deal.

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?

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

“Go ‘head on.”

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Sometimes, I feel as if I’m traveling for those who never got the chance.

Two very “deep” black women recently made me stop and reflect on my travels. One was economist, author and commentator Julianne Malveaux. The other was fellow travel blogger Renee King.

Ms. Malveaux, in New Orleans for the Essence Music Festival, posted on Facebook about what she saw in the eyes of passing sisters while taking a walk along Bourbon Street:

“In the time I walked I was stunned by the number of sisters without joy in their eyes. Oh, they were looking good, and there was some laughter, but too many were walking down Bourbon like it was a death march (perhaps I exaggerate slightly), a duty, not a joyful experience.”

Meanwhile, my friend Renee wrote on her blog about a high school friend who, like her, dreamed of venturing beyond their native Alabama, but never left.

“She has settled comfortably into a life where she only gets to see the beauty of the Maasai through photographs gracing the pages of National Geographic.  She will only get to experience that moment through someone else’s vantage point and never realize the sheer joy of witnessing first hand, the completeness that traveling brings to a life.”

Their comments took me back to my senior year of high school in New Orleans, to a house on the corner of Magnolia and Amelia streets, where a crew of young hustlers used to hang out on the front steps, waiting for dark, when they would melt into the night. They were all varying degrees of high energy and boisterous swagger, but they had those same joyless eyes.

I was the schoolboy, always with an armload of textbooks, still struggling through a world they’d long ago abandoned.

Back then, I had delusions of being a sketch artist. One afternoon while passing by the crew, I dropped my sketchpad. One of them snatched it up and started thumbing through it.

“What’s that?” one asked. The Eiffel Tower, I told him.

“You been to Paris?” he asked suspiciously.

“No, but I wanna go one day,” I replied.

I told them about some of the places I’d already been and some of the ones where I wanted to go…and that’s when it happened. They actually invited the schoolboy to sit on their steps, anywhere I wanted.

Anywhere, that is, except the top step. That was reserved for their leader, their shotcaller, a sinewy, bare-chested kid with skin the color of burnt mahogany. He had a rough, uneven Afro, a gap-tooth smile and an easy laugh that rolled like a wave.

He also had a fist the size of a grapefruit with the density of granite, and it was clear that he’d already used it more than once.

“You really gonna go all them places?” he asked me with a steely look. I nodded and said yes.

He flashed those gapped teeth at me, threw back his head and laughed.

“Well, go ‘head on, podnuh! You go ‘head on!”

It became almost a weekly ritual after that, pouring out my bucket list on those steps while the crew looked over my drawings. Slidell, on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain, was as far as most of them had ever been, but there I sat, babbling on about all the places I wanted to see in the world someday.

I could’ve been talking about going to the moon.

I went on to college in Northern California. They never left the NOLA.

Four years later, back to visit family, I went by the old spot. The shotcaller was still there. Same gap-tooth smile, despite recently having been stabbed.

The rest of the crew? One by one, he ticked off their names. In jail. In hiding. Dead. My heart sank.

Then he asked me, “You been to any of them places yet?” Not yet, I told him.

“You still going, though, right?”

I promised him I would.

“Well, you go ‘head on, podnuh.” And he strolled off down the block.

I never saw him again. By now, he’s with the rest of his old crew. In jail. In hiding.

Or dead.

Sometimes when I travel, I imagine that they’re with me, seeing what I’m seeing, learning what I’m learning, their eyes wide, their minds ablaze.

Letting me sit with them and dream aloud about travel was their way of keeping me safe. I didn’t realize that then. I never got the chance to say thank you, or to show them the world beyond Magnolia and Amelia.

Edited by P.A.Rice

the IBIT TRAVEL DIGEST 4.9.12

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

With this edition of the IBIT Travel Digest, we’re trying a slightly different format. Let me know if you prefer this approach or you’d rather keep it “old school.” Because unlike other social media (*cough* Facebook! *cough!*), IBIT prefers not to force changes down your throat.

​And now, here’s this week’s Digest:

-0-

AIR

RYANAIR…AGAIN
Ryanair, Ireland’s low-fare airline will try anything to to lighten its airplanes to cut fuel costs — lighter on-board magazines, less ice in passengers’ drinks. At one point, they even considered removing armrests from seats and imposing a “fat tax” on passengers.

Now, Ryanair is after their female flight crew to watch their weight.

You can’t make this stuff up — and here’s the proof, courtesy of London’s Daily Telegraph.

from msnbc
Flying while (extremely) pregnant — a risk worth taking?

from Smarter Travel
JetBlue and Hawaiian Airlines are hooking up to make it easier for Americans back East to head for the islands.

fromUSA Today via DearSkySteward
Looks like Delta has found a formula to beat rising fuel costs: Higher airfares and fewer seats. Meanwhile…

from the New York Times
Delta actually may be looking to buy its own oil refinery. Genius or madness? You decide.

from OutOfTown
IBIT readers absolutely adore gleaming new Asian airports like Changi (SIN) in Singapore and Seoul Incheon International (ICN) in South Korea. An abundance of Internet-friendly facilities is one reason. Changi’s extra effort to make the airport a pleasant experience is another.

from msnbc
Five of the world’s best airlines and the lengths to which they go to earn their reputations.

LAND ​

TAX SHELTER, OF SORTS
Federal income taxes this year are due April 17, and there’s a New York hotel that’s offering you a different kind of tax break.

According to USA Today, if you check into the Andaz Wall Street, A Hyatt property, between now and April 15, they will have their “Accountant in Residence” file your taxes for you — free.

All the hotel needs is your tax information and 72 hours’ notice. So get those receipts together.

from GOOD
Where in America do people walk and bike the most? Probably not where you think they do.

from Eater.com
Want to reserve a table at one of these 11 ultra-exclusive restaurants? It won’t be easy.

from National Geographic
NatGeo’s nominees for the world’s ten best food markets. Most are in Europe, a couple in Asia, a few more in Latin America and the Caribbean. But their top choice is in Canada.

​from Wandering Educators
Can’t visit the world’s great art museums because your bored children make it a miserable experience? The art of getting kids to appreciate art.

SEA ​
COSTA ON THE COMEBACK?
Travel Weekly is reporting that Italy’s Costa Cruises is showing its Easter cruise bookings for 2012 up from 2011.

If so, it represents a nice rebound for a catastrophic first quarter following the Costa Concordia disaster and an engine-room fire that knocked another of their ships, the Costa Allegra, out of service.

But if everything is coming up so rosy now for Costa, why is it — as TW also reports — that Costa is making these upbeat pronouncements solely to Italian media? You’d think the company would want the whole world to know, yes? Curious, to say the least.

from National Geographic
The stream of tsunami debris from the 2011 Japan earthquake/tsunami disaster has tourists paying to see — and literally dive into — the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

from Vacation Cruises Info
A review of the new cruise ship Celebrity Eclipse. Half-acre on-board lawn? Check. Glass-blowing studio? Check. World-class dining? Well…

from CNN Travel
What is about the Titanic that people find so endlessly fascinating? A full century after she went down, people are still bringing her up.

from the Toronto Star (Canada)
New York to Toronto…by cruise ship? Welcome to the world of small-ship and inland waterway cruising.
​
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AFRICA ​
EDITORIAL
It’s been a turbulent week or so for the Mother Continent. A tense presidential runoff election in Senegal. A military coup coupled with a Taureg revolt in Mali. A dispute over presidential succession in Malawi after the incumbent succumbed to a heart attack.

Enough to make most Westerners shrug. Just business as usual in Africa, right? Not really.

In the Senegal presidential runoff, the challenger swamped the incumbent, who gracefully bowed out. In Malawi, politicians obeyed their own constitution and elevated the country’s female vice-president to the top job. And Mali’s neighbors imposed their own sanctions to force the coup plotters to return the country to civilian rule.

Imagine that. West African nations handling their business through diplomatic channels and democratic means. It’s a sign not just of political stability, but maturity. It’s an example for the rest of the continent.
— Greg Gross, IBIT

from The Witness (South Africa)
Soldiers posted in Kruger National Park may not be having much luck stopping poachers, but they’re great at terrorizing lost tourists. Who trains these guys, the TSA?

from the New York Times
A year after its revolution launched the Arab Spring, Tunisia is once again beautiful, serene, historic — and peaceful. It might be a good time to visit, before the tourist hordes come back.

from The Nambian via allAfrica.com
Namibia is trying to become the first African country ever to host the Adventure Travel World Summit, in 2013.
​
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AMERICAS/CARIBBEAN

from Gizmodo
For those who’ve forgotten how incredibly beautiful Yosemite National Park is, this time-lapse video will remind you.

from The Guardian (London UK)
Easter is every weekend at the Tierra Santa (Holy Land in Spanish) religious theme park in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

from the Toronto Star (Canada)
You know Francis Ford Coppola for his movies. Get to know him for his California wines.

from the Washington Post
On location in the Big Easy: A two-hour tour of New Orleans sites used as film backdrops.

-0-

ASIA/PACIFIC ​

CAN ANCIENT CHINESE MEDICINE HELP MODERN TRAVELERS?
After China opened itself to the world in the 1970s, we started learning about traditional Chinese healing techniques such as acupuncture, the use of delicate needles to relieve pain by manipulating pressure points in the body.

Not quite as well known is acupressure, which works on the same principles, but without the scary-looking needles.

Could acupressure work on some of the aches and pains common to travelers? There’s a small story on the CNNgo site that suggest the answer could be “yes.”

As always, CHECK WITH YOUR DOCTOR FIRST.

from Travel With A Mate
Ten cool things to do in the South Korean capital, Seoul, on a budget.

from We Blog the World
Speaking of overlooked destinations in Asia, Manila almost never comes to mind. Maybe it should.

from Agence France Presse via France 24
Got a road-rage fantasy? Want to unleash your inner Patton? A company in Christchurch, New Zealand will put you at the controls of a main battle tank…and let you run over cars with it.

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EUROPE ​

from About.com/Eastern Europe Travel
Croatia is not your typical European destination — and that can be a good thing.

from The Guardian (London UK)
Speaking of Croatia, the Balkans may still be a politically fractured and fragile region, but these days, it’s also one ruggedly beautiful landscape that’s welcoming visitors.

from Go World Travel Guide
Cheap flights to Europe are only half the battle. Tips for saving money once you get there.

from Agence France Presse via France 24
In the Black Sea resort town of Batumi, they’re building a tower with a fountain at the top. Once a week, the fountain will flow not with water but with chacha — also known as “grape vodka.” And you get to taste. Pray that your tour bus has a designated driver.

CYCLING: On the freeway? Yes, you can!

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© Richard J Thompson | Dreamstime.com

There are rare days, usually special events, when you and your bike can actually have a freeway all to yourselves. It’s a treat not to be missed.

Have you ever ridden your bike on the freeway? I’m not talking about riding on the asphalt shoulder while four or more lanes of car traffic are roaring by your left shoulder at 65 miles per hour and up, but actually on the lanes.

Would you like to?

Normally, of course, this is out of the question. States usually make it illegal for a bicycle to be anywhere on the freeway, even on the shoulders — with one notable exception.

In certain areas where there is no practical or convenient alternative for getting from Point A to Point B, a cyclist may be able to legally ride on the shoulder of the freeway between those two points.

Your state or county highway department can tell you which stretches of freeway are “bike legal” where you live. California has roughly 100 miles of freeway that are “bike legal,” and I’ve ridden some of them.

But that’s not what we’re talking about here.

We’re talking about you and your bike being legally and safely in the freeway lanes themselves, any or all of them, without a motor vehicle in sight.

Can you actually do that?

Yes, you can — this spring in Fresno, the unofficial capital of California’s Central Valley. That’s where the California Classic Weekend will be held on May 19–20.

That Saturday is devoted to cycling: a century ride, a metric century ride and a mini-metric ride. A century ride is just what the name implies — 100 miles. A metric century covers 100 kilometers or 62 miles, while the mini-metric ride is a 35-miler.

But here’s the kicker: Ten miles of the course are on California Freeway 168, which will be closed to vehicular traffic for the event.

It’s all yours, folks, for almost an entire day.

Sunday is for runners, a half-marathon and a 2-person relay, which allows pairs of runners to split the half-marathon into 6.5–mile legs.

For those who really want to test themselves, you can enter the Classic Ultimate Challenge — do the century ride on Saturday, then run the half-marathon the next day.

The whole thing is sponsored by Rabobank, a major bank/investments/agribusiness firm in the Netherlands. If its name sounds familiar to you, it might mean that you follow the Tour de France, because Rabobank sponsors a team every year in the cycling world’s premiere event.

But what jumps out at me is the chance to pull onto a California freeway with your bike and hammer your pedals for ten miles, without fear of either a citation or getting flattened by a long line of cars driven by crazed motorists.

It’s not uncommon for authorities to open a freshly constructed freeway to hikers and cyclists the day before opening it to traffic for the first time. But closing down an existing freeway for a day and turning it over to recreational cyclists?

Nothing common about that, I promise you.

While there are hundreds of “event” rides that take place each year across North America, only a handful give you the chance to ride on a freeway or expressway.

The Five Boro Bike Tour puts cyclists on the elevated Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in New York City. The one time I did that ride back in the day, the road surface on the BQE was so awful, with so many ruts and huge potholes, that the biggest thrill you got from riding it was surviving it.

One hopes that things have improved since then.

In Canada, there’s a charity ride, the Heart & Stroke Ride for Heart, that lets cyclists onto the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto.

If you know of other cycling events, in California or anywhere else, where they do this sort of thing, leave a comment on this article or drop me an email at greg@imblacknitravel.com.

For me, the Central Valley has always been an area to pass through between Los Angeles and San Francisco. I never had much reason even to slow down en route and certainly had no reason to view it as a travel destination.

This little event just might be enough to change my thinking.

How about you?

the SUNDAY TRAVEL DIGEST 10.16.11

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

My Point Loma bodyguards | ©Greg Gross

CANADA SPEAKS BIKE
Cycling is a great way to experience a new city, and as the Los Angeles Times points out, two of the best cities to enjoy by bicycle are up in eastern Francophone Canada, Montreal and Quebec.

Given Montreal’s close cultural ties to France, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the capital of Canada’s Quebec province has followed the example of Paris and created a city bike rental program.

They call it Bixi — part-bike, part-taxi.

Pick up a bike from one outdoor Bixi station, drop it off at another.

The cost: roughly $5 an hour. The beauty: If you drop off the bike within a half-hour, it’s free. As in no charge. The bikes themselves are built to be smooth, comfortable, easy to ride and carry stuff.

The catch: The program doesn’t operate in winter (what, Canadians don’t like to pedal in snow?). Also, such programs almost never provide bike helmets with their bikes, so you’ll have to provide your own — and just on general principles, you really should.

As for Quebec, more about that later.

PAN AM: THE GOOD OLD DAYS?
One of this seasons’s most supremely hyped TV shows is “Pan Am,” a nostalgic look back at America’s flagship airline at the birth of jet travel.

To many travelers of a certain age, the show represents a look back at what “Pan Am’s” producers want to portray as the golden, glamorous age of air travel. However, from the other side of the Atlantic, the view is a bit different.

In particular, Simon Calder of London’s The Independent finds a lot more tarnish than gold. Not only were trans-Atlantic airfares much higher back then, but you had to book your flight literally months in advance.

Maybe the “good old days” really weren’t all that good, eh what? In any case, you won’t find Mr. Calder pining for them, and perhaps we shouldn’t, either.

WORLD’s HIGHEST PORTA-POTTIES?
USA Today is reporting that an environmental group in Nepal is installing portable toilets on Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, as part of an effort to get the thousands of mountain climbers to assault the peak each year to help keep it clean.

Have we turned the world’s highest mountain into the world’s highest outhouse? Guess it’s not just the yellow snow you have to watch out for anymore. EWWWW!

AND FINALLY…
If you read blogs like this one, you probably already know why it’s good to travel. If you know folks who don’t, refer them to this short but on-point essay from Lonely Planet’s Tony Wheeler:

“The media feed us scare stories about those in other countries, but the reality is that most people in the world are searching for the same things we are – a better life, a better future for their children – and they’re only too ready to lend a hand to a fellow human being.”

In a world driven by politicians and media bent on naming and villifying the latest bogeyman of the month, that’s a good thing to remember.



And now, here’s this week’s Digest:

-0-

AIR
from the New York Times
The NYT’s Susan Stellin offers up some suggestions and Web sites to help you refine your online airfare search. for one thing, look for sites that give you the FULL price of your ticket, including things like baggage fees.

from USA Today
Korean Air brings the Airbus A380 super-jumbo jet to LAX, with the fewest seats of any A380 now in service. They’re billing it as “the world’s most spacious A380.” If any of that extra space is in Coach, it might be worth the airfare.

from the Guardian (London UK) ​
London’s three main airports — Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted — to hit the saturation point in less than 20 years. Some travelers would tell you they’re there now.

LAND
from Frommer’s
Ten rail trips via Amtrak that are cheaper than driving.

from Leave Your Daily Hell
This travel blogger offers up a list of the cities that the world loves to hate. He loves every one of them, and tells you why you just might, also. One of them, quite naturally, is Los Angeles.

SEA
from USA Today
If you’re thinking about doing a cruise in 2012 and you want to get the best deals, you need to start planning — and booking — now.

from USA Today
Some signs of life on the Mexican Riviera: After pulling out due to security fears, Princess Cruises set to return to Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta in the fall of 2012 and spring 2013.

from Lonely Planet
The LP gang share their list of ten of the best places on the planet for a journey on the water.

-0-

AFRICA
from the Independent (London UK)
Cape Verde, a nation comprised of ten small islands 300 miles off the West African coast, is the latest hotspot for Europeans seeking to escape the winter cold. Clear waters, pristine beaches and people whose motto is “No stress.” Yeah, I could do that.

from BBC Travel
The Tour d’Afrique makes the Tour de France look like a weekend cruise. Whether you ride it to win or just to experience the continent of Africa, you will be changed.

from ​allAfrica.com
Zambia and Zimbabwe will co-host the 2013 Genera Assembly of the UN World Tourism Organization. The venue will be Victoria Falls, the world’s largest natural waterfall, which straddles the border of the two countries.

from​ the Independent (London UK)
The 15-year civil war that devastated Mozambique until 1992 also devastated its wildlife. After nearly two decades of peace, both are now coming back strong.

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AMERICAS/CARIBBEAN
from the New York Times
Think of French-speaking eastern Canada and you’re likely to think of Montreal, a great city. But give some thought to Quebec, a beguiling blend of New World and Old Europe. And one of the best ways to see Quebec is by bike.

from the Los Angeles Times​
Not all the most beautiful fall foliage in North America is to be found back East. According to my friend Chris Reynolds, the small British Columbia enclave of Nelson can match New England color for color.

from the Le Massif de Charlevoix
And as long as we’re on the subject of Quebec, check out this cool-looking new rail trip, courtesy of my friend and fellow train enthusiast, Jools Octavius.

from the Daily Mail (London UK)
Just for a little variety — or maybe a lot — you might want to consider a different venue for next year’s Oktoberfest. Like, say, Brazil?

​
-0-

ASIA/PACIFIC
from the Los Angeles Times
The world hasn’t quite run out of unspoiled tropical paradises, as witnessed by Malaysia’s Tioman Island. Development is minimal. Natural beauty is boundless. Just watch out for the falling coconuts.
​from the

from Vayama
Etiquette matters everywhere, but good etiquette really matters in Singapore. A comprehensive lists of do’s and dont’s, especially if you plan to do business in this island city-state.

from Rusty Compass
Vietnam is a wonderful place to visit, but mind your bag — especially your camera bag — in Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City). Snatch-and-grab thieves on passing motorbikes can rip you off and hurt you at the same time. VIDEO
​
from Travel and Beyond
Where to get your eat on in Singapore, a foodie’s paradise. Second of two parts (the link to Part One is in the text).

-0-

EUROPE
from BootsnAll
Seven things you should know about Germany’s perpetually changing capital, Berlin.

CUBA: The rules

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Beach scene, Cuba

If you’re thinking about visiting Cuba now that Delta is launching charter flights there this fall, you have to qualify under the bogus requirements of the US trade embargo. You’ll find them here.

The recent announcement by Delta Air Lines that they’re starting up charter flights to Cuba this fall has got a lot of folks interested and excited — and why not?

Much as I’d love to make a stopover in Toronto or Cancun, to be able to travel directly to Havana without having detour through Canada or Mexico or somewhere else is a wonderful thing.

However, you still have to dance with Washington’s outdated, obsolete and generically nonsensical trade embargo against Cuba, which was designed in part to discourage Americans from visiting the island — and especially from spending money there.

Anyone else in the world can simply book their passage to Havana and go. If you’re an American, you have to be “licensed,” either as an individual or part of a group.

Yes, that’s the term they actually use, “licensed.” Doesn’t that just make you feel special?

Over the years, the rules have been loosened, re-tightened, and most recently under the Obama administration, loosened again. For now, however, this bureaucratic nuisance remains in place. The best and surest way to navigate a path around these rules is to know exactly what they are.

You’ll find them spelled out on this Cuba travel page from the State Department.

To be licensed to visit Cuba, you have to apply to the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which is part of the Treasury Department.

If navigating the bureacratic maze of federal regulations is your idea of a good time, you could do it on your own, but I don’t recommend that. The better way to go, I think, would be to work through US-based travel outfits that specialize in legal travel to Cuba.

Look for companies that are licensed by the Treasury Department and have a good track record of getting Americans smoothly to Cuba and back. Often, they may offer their own package tours to Cuba that include airfare and lodging.

The downside: They often will require you to be part of a group.

One such outfit is Marazul, the agency through which Delta will shortly be operating its Cuba charter flights.

Others include:

As always, do your homework and check out these outfits thoroughly before you commit yourself or your money.

The day will come when Americans no longer have to bother with this absurdity. Until then, these are the dance steps we have to follow to legally visit a fascinating and beautiful country with whom we are not at war.

ALSO CHECK OUT:
Delta’s new connection: Charter flights to Cuba