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the IBIT Travel Digest 2.17.13

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


BEER AND THE POWER OF TRAVEL
If you’re ever visiting New York anytime soon and find yourself feeling thirsty, you’ll want to introduce yourself to the Brooklyn Brewery.

If you have any doubts about the difference that travel can make in a person’s life, you’ll want to get to know the man behind the beers from Brooklyn Brewery, one Garrett Oliver.

Garrett Oliver

Garrett Oliver

He spent a year in Britain in the 1980s and developed a taste for Europe’s fine brews. Then, he came home to the United States, where most beers — churned out in industrial quantities by a handful of giant corporations — had no taste.

I remember those days. In much of the world back then, the term “American beer” was a bad joke, the ultimate oxymoron. When Oliver referred to the US beers of the time as “this thin yellow liquid,” trust me, he was being kind.

Most flavors of Kool-Aid had more character — and for that matter, more flavor. Some of this limp-wristed refrigerated dishwater was so pitiful, it couldn’t even form a decent head when you poured it into a glass. You were better off drinking tap water.

So in true American spirit, Oliver took matters into his own kitchen and started making his own beer at home.

Over the next several years, the amateur brewer became a professional brewmaster. And a guy who had graduated with a college degree in broadcast and film morphed into the world’s pre-eminent scholar on the brewing art.

He also became a creator of some truly world-class beers. How world-class? These days, the Europeans are importing beers from him.

Garrett Oliver is one of the reasons you now can find some 2,000 craft breweries scattered across the United States, from Portland ME to Portland OR, Savannah GA to San Diego, each literally lending its own flavor to the city in which it sprang up.

Who knows how much of this, if any of it, would have happened had Oliver not spent that year overseas, having his eyes opened by something he never would have experienced had he played it safe and stayed home. Travel has the power to change lives.

Road trip, anyone?

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AIR NIGHTMARES
Halfway through the second month of 2013, Boeing seems no closer to getting its problematic 787 Dreamliner back into service after grounding all of them worldwide due to in-flight problems with its lithium-ion batteries.

Poland’s LOT went so far last week as to declare that no flights using Dreamliners will be scheduled until October — whether the bird is fixed by then or not.

In addition to grounding all the 787s already in service, Boeing has halted delivery of new ones until the battery issue is resolved. Either way, the airlines already committed to the Dreamliner are losing money daily while this drags on.

Meanwhile, Boeing’s principal rival, Europe’s Airbus Industrie, has dropped plans to use the same battery aboard its new A350 airliner, which is designed to compete with the Dreamliner but has yet to enter service.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from USA Today
Poland’s national airline, LOT, is the latest to ground the troubled Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and it says the plane will stay grounded into fall. Ouch.

from Travel Weekly
The American Airlines-US Airways merger may be official, but there’s still a long way to go before it becoes a physical reality on the ground and in the air.

LAND
from Budget Travel via Yahoo
Getting married? Planning on raising a family? Here are eight travel destinations you might want to see before you start having kids.

from the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
Are reading and travel equally fundamental in your life? Five of the world’s most literary cities, all of them suitable for the literate traveler.

SEA
from USA Today
Multiple stories on the Carnival Triumph mess…and “mess” is indeed the operative word here, in more ways than one. And just when the cruise industry was still trying to put the Costa Concordia disaster fully behind it.

from AARP
Three classic cruise rip-offs and how to avoid getting stung.

FOOD & DRINK
from CCSD Tours
You’ve heard of pub crawls. Are you — and your bike — ready for a pub roll? These guys offer a cycling tour of pubs in Britain. They have other cycling tours in Europe, too, but this one’s for you beer drinkers out there.

from The Guardian (London UK)
Want a taste of fine French cuisine in a genteel English setting? Go north, young gastronome, to Montreal.

from the Washington Post
Welcome to Chicago, where the locals take their hot dogs seriously. Very seriously. These dogs “ain’t your average Huckleberry Hound.”

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AFRICA
from Africa.com
Want to start real discussion at your next party? Get three people together at random and ask them to name five livable cities in Africa. When they’re done, you hit them with this list of ten, and the reasons why. Watch their jaws drop.

from New Era (Namibia) via allAfrica.com
The Namibian government and the private sector lay down guidelines for tour guides.

from the Washngton Post
West Africa’s French-speaking Cameroon is a microcosm of Africa, in ways good and not-so-good.

from the Tanzania Daily News via allAfrica.com
Authorities in the Mara region are turning to a new weapon in the battle against poaching — education.

from The Namibian (Namibia) via allAfrica.com
A generation before the Nazis, Germans were waging genocide in East Africa. It’s a story little known in this country and largely forgotten elsewhere — except perhaps Namibia.

AMERICAS
from The Guardian (London UK)
When it comes to the lush jungles of Costa Rica’s incredible Caribbean coast, the local indigenous peoples make the best guides.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from Agence France Presse via France 24
Gamers in Hong Kong are creating their own great escape. All you have to do is figure out how to get out of a locked room while blindfolded and handcuffed, with a ticking clock prodding you on. In high-pressure HK, they call this fun.

from The Guardian (London UK)
What you’ll find in a walk across Shanghai, where 21st-century China coexists, barely, with the 14th.

from The Guardian (London UK)
In the largely unvisited northern Indian hill country of Meghalaya, the wild scenery is but the first of its surprises. For one thing, in this male-dominated nation historically torn between Hindus and Muslims, Christianity is the major religion and women rule the roost.

EUROPE
from France 24
Formerly down and dirty Marseilles is trying to remake itself this year as the official 2013 capital of European culture.

from CN Traveller
Berlin — rooms with a…zoo?

Edited by P.A.Rice

the IBIT Travel Digest 1.27.13

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

IMG_1605

DANCING THROUGH CUSTOMS
One of the fringe benefits of writing a travel blog is that you can make some great friends doing great work. One such friend of mine is Renee King, who publishes A View to a Thrill.

In her most recent installment, she gives us the 4-1-1 on of the US government’s trusted traveler programs that can seriously speed you through the Customs process upon your return to the United States. It’s called “Global Entry” and here’s what Renee had to say about it:

“Originally created to target frequent international travelers, the U.S. Global Entry program has been a virtual god-send for travelers who want a fast and secure way of skipping the lines altogether when re-entering the United States.”

To pick up all the details on “Global Entry,” check out Renee’s article here. And then bookmark it. You’ll want to keep this one handy.

Anyone who doesn’t “get” the importance of this program has never walked/stumbled/staggered off a jumbo jet with about 300 other exhausted souls after a transoceanic flight lasting 12 hours or longer, only to queue up in a Customs line…with the passengers of two, three or four other jumbo jets, all doing the same thing you are.

I have. I don’t recommend it.

If such a trip is a one-in-a-lifetime deal for you, then you may not need this program, especially when it costs $100. You’ll also have to make an appointment to be interviewed, electronically fingerprinted and see if you qualify for the program — and frankly, not everyone will.

But when you walk off that plane in a jet-lagged fog and breeze by all those folks suffering in line, you’ll swear it was the best time and money you ever spent on travel.

And if you make more than, say, three or four globe-girdling flights per year, you need this.

To apply for the Global Entry program, start here.

ALL ABOARD…THE NIGHT TRAIN
If it’s true that, in the words of the old Amtrak commercial, “there’s something about a train, then there’s something even more captivating about an overnight “sleeper” train.

Watching the sun set from the privacy of your own compartment, then bedding down for the night with a window full of stars and awaking the next morning in a different city — or a different country — is unforgettable.

It’s also practical. A sleeper train combines transportation and lodging in one. Instead of losing a day traveling between points, you arrive at your destination early the next morning.

It’s not cheap, but a private compartment often includes all your on-board meals, as well as other perks unavailable to Coach passengers, all of which makes the sleeper experience worth considering.

London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper has considered it at length, and compiled a slideshow of what they consider to be the top ten overnight sleeper train runs in Europe, including one between Europe (London) and Africa (Marrakech, Morocco).

Paris-Barcelona? Paris-Berlin? London-Penzance? Yeah, I could happily do any of those.

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AFRICAN FASHION MADE EASY
Not many folks on this side of the Atlantic are aware of it, but Africa has developed quite the fashion scene. We’re talking high-end threads for men and women from high-profile designers from the length and breadth of the Mother Continent.

Until a few years ago, your best shot at checking out this vibrant and growing fashion world was to fly to one or more of perhaps seven African cities:

  • Lagos, Nigeria
  • Nairobi, Kenya
  • Cape Town, South Africa
  • Johannesburg, South Africa
  • Dakar, Senegal
  • Luanda, Angola

And if you want to get a feel for the sources of inspiration that drive these African fashions, that still might be the best idea.

However, you do have alternatives. Lots of them, in fact.

New York City, Los Angeles and Dallas both annually hosts African Fashion Weeks. But if you feel like giving your fashion trip some international flavor — with a bit less expense and a lot less flight time — there’s the Black Fashion Week in Paris and the Africa Fashion Week London, now in its third year.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from Business Insider via Yahoo
A Germany-based air safety monitoring group lists the world’s ten most dangerous airlines over the last 30 years. Read with some large grains of salt.

from eTurbo News
An Indonesian airline adopts new Sukhoi Superjet 100 airliners from Russia. The reason: They can operate from the country’s short runways.

from NBC News
Southwest Airlines is betting that you’ll be willing to pay $40 extra to board their planes early. Would you?

from eTurbo News
Ethiopian Airlines cuts flights from Addis Ababa to Europe.

LAND

from Travel Weekly
A heavy late-December snowfall has the skiing looking good at America’s ski resorts.

from The Telegraph (London UK)
What do you get when you take an Amtrak train between Toronto and New York? A 12-hour rail cruise through US history and some of North America’s most gorgeous scenery.

from Forbes via Yahoo
Can you measure a country’s happiness? The Legatum Institute of London says it can, and it’s produced a list of the world’s ten happiest nations. And no, the United States is nowhere in the top ten.

from Time
Has snowboarding lost its mojo?

SEA
from Cruise Industry News
More evidence of the cruise industry’s growing tilt toward Asia: Princess Cruises to homeport a second cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, in Japan.

from Cruise Critic
For those of you dying to escape the frigid winter, there are six cruise ships sailing in warm waters that nearly always have cabins offered at a discount.

from Cruise Industry News
The upscale cruise line Silversea plans to offer shorter (and thus cheaper) cruises in Northern Europe and the Mediterranean.

from Cruise Industry News
As cruises go, this one’s the ultimate icebreaker. Hapag-Lloyd Cruises is planning an August cruise of the Northwest Passage fron Greenland to Alaska on one of its expedition ships, the Hanseatic. You don’t often see the words “expedition” and “5-star” in the same sentence.

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AFRICA
from Reuters
You might want to hold off on that Cairo vacation a little longer. Things are getting hectic — and deadly — again in Egypt.

from al Jazeera
Museum in Mali trying to protect some of the country’s historic artifacts from the threat of destruction by radical Muslim insurgents.

from eTurbo News
British Airways pulls out of Tanzania, and Emirates is the first airline to step into the void.

from The Telegraph (London UK)
Tourism officials in Egypt report that foreign visits are up, but not as much as expected.

from eTurbo News
Ethiopia turning to China, India and Russia as potential new tourism markets.

AMERICAS
from the Huffington Post
George Hobica says Albuquerque NM has been overshadowed by Santa Fe, but it deserves a closer look. Especially if you’re a fan of beer, road trips and under-the-radar cool.

from Travel Weekly
Want a shot at some warm winter weather and a whiff of that new hotel smell? Start saving your coins and circle Dec. 2014 on your calendar. That’s the the 1,000-room $1 billion Baha Mar casino resort is set to open its doors.

from the Chicago Tribune
If you’re a baseball junkie, a visit to Chicago’s historic Wrigley Field is something close to a religious pilgrimage. Now, the Sheraton hotel chain is planning to put up a boutique hotel directly across the street from the old ballpark. Think they’ll pt bleachers on the roof?

from Reuters via NBCNews
More flights and a weaker dollar have combined to create record-setting tourism in Hawaii.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from BootsnAll
Southeast Asia is a great destination for rail travel.

from China Daily
The dispute between China and Japan over the Senkaku (or if you’re Chinese, Diaoyu) Islands is throwing cold water on tourism between the two countries.

from SFGate.com
Walking in the path of samurai. Scenic medieval walkways in Japan.

from The Guardian (London UK)
What would you see on a 40-mile walk across a city of 30 million souls? Marcel Theroux gives us his answers from his trek across Tokyo, the first of a series of walks across the largest cities on Earth.

EUROPE
from ABC News via Yahoo
Welcome to County Kerry in southwest Ireland, where drunk driving is legal. And no, that’s not a typo.

from eTurbo News
Ukraine’s largest airline, AeroSvit, goes belly up, stranding hundreds of passengers in the process.

from The Guardian (London UK)
It wasn’t that long ago that the term “luxury hostel” might have been the ultimate oxymoron in travel especially in Europe. It’s fair to say that things have changed. A lot. SLIDESHOW

AIRFARE ALERT: Hong Kong at a premium

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© Maurie Hill | Dreamstime.com

© Maurie Hill | Dreamstime.com

Cathay Pacific is putting their Premium Economy section up for sale for flights to Hong Kong. If you’ve never been to Asia, it’s your chance to experience upgraded service from one of the world’s few 5-star airlines.

For the next five days, Cathay Pacific has the mother of all airfare sales going to Hong Kong. Premium Economy seats starting at $1,629 round-trip from four US gateways — New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

(A BIG shout-out to IBIT’s own Aviation Queen, Benet Wilson, for pulling my coat to this deal.)

Two things make this a serious bargain. The first is the fare itself. For not a lot over a standard Coach fare, you get a better seat in a separate cabin with lots of amenities. About the only things you don’t get are the lay-flat seats you now find in Business Class.

All very important when you’re going to be on an airplane for 15 hours.

The other thing that makes this a great deal is the airline itself — and how often these days do you hear anyone say that?

Cathay Pacific is based in Hong Kong and they know it well. More than that, it’s one of the world’s most respected airlines when it comes to in-flight service and the way their cabin crews treat their passengers.

I’ve been raving about these guys since I first flew with them in 1976, and they haven’t lost their touch. Of the roughly 700 airlines in the world today, they are one of only six to win a 5-star rating from Skytrax.

You have two reasons not to dawdle on this deal. The first is that it’s only good for five days. The second is that there are only about 30 Premium Economy seats aboard Cathay Pacific’s Boeing 777ERs.

And no, those are not Boeing’s problematic Dreamliners, so no worries there.

If this deal appeals to you, head over to the Cathay Pacific Web site and get busy.

ALSO CHECK OUT
CATHAY PACIFIC: A good airline gets better
The world’s best airlines
FLY THE FLAGS, Part 1
FLY THE FLAGS, Part 2

the IBIT Travel Digest 12.9.12

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

HI-YO, PINOT GRIGIO!
Touring wineries and sampling their wares is a big business these days, worldwide. There are escorted winery tours by bus or van, and self-driven wine routes you can enjoy at your own pace by car or bicycle (although you definitely want to go easy on the sampling in both cases).

Napa Valley is even world-famous for its Wine Train, featuring world-cass wines and dinners to match.

It was only recently, however, that I learned that you can tour wineries on horseback. Fresh air and gorgeous surroundings, finished off with some equally gorgeous wines. You can do it either as a day trip or as part of a hotel or bed-and-breakfast stay.

In eastern Washington state and Oregon, up and down California wine country, from Mendocino County in the north to the Santa Ynez Valley and Temecula to the south, or as far off as Argentina and Australia, you can saddle up and get your drink on in the same outing.

I myself am not quite ready for this kind of outing; the only horse I ever rode was made of wood and went around in circles. But for those of you possessing both horse skills and a taste for the grape, this might be a vacation worth considering.

If this sounds like something you might like to look into for 2013, drop me an email at greg@imblacknitravel.com and I’ll send you the information directly.

Just remember to go easy on those samples, lest you get caught galloping under the influence.

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YOUR VOICE MATTERS
Have you ever wondered if all those online reviews people write about hotels actually make any difference? A study conducted at New York’s Cornell University suggests that the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

According to an article in Travel Weekly, the Cornell study showed that good or bad hotel reviews could affect not only room demand at that hotel, but could influence room rates by as much as 10 percent, up or down:

“The study found a direct link between the rise or fall of revenue per available room (RevPAR) and improvements or declines in the online reputation of a hotel, driven by ratings on sites such as TripAdvisor and Travelocity.“

To read the entire Travel Weekly story, click here.

Bottom line: Your opinion matters. The Web has given you, the consumer, a more powerful voice than you’ve ever had before. Treat it like the priceless asset it is.

BEST ON A BUDGET
As we know, travel media folks are a bit list-crazy, and never more so than at year’s end. One of the lists you’ll find over at Budget Travel is its 10 Best Budget Destinations for 2013.

Some of their 10 nominees — like Palm Springs, the Bahamas and the Loire Valley in France — are pleasant surprises, because you don’t expect those places to be cheap. Others are a surprise because you’ve never heard of them, like Boracay Island in the Philippines.

And then, there are the ones you’ve heard of, but would never expect to make the list in a million years.

This year’s shocker: Northern Ireland.

To check out the entire Budget Travel list, click here.
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AND FINALLY…
It looks as if Alec Baldwin may get the last laugh, after all.

Remember when the actor/bad boy was famously kicked off an American Airlines flight at LAX last year for refusing the turn off the game he was playing on his cell phone?

Well, almost a year to the day of that incident, the NY Times is reporting that the head of the Federal Communications Commission now says the airlines should allow its passengers freer use of their personal electronics on board aircraft.

FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said as much in a letter last Thursday to Michael Huerta, acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration:

“I write to urge the FAA to enable greater use of tablets, e-readers, and other portable electronic devices during flight, consistent with public safety.”

The magic words there are “during flight.”

Nothing yet from the FAA, which has the last word on the issue, but even that agency has appeared in the past to be leaning in that direction.

It’s been reported in the past, including here on IBT, how personal electronic devices that use radio signals, such as cellphones, have shown signs of interfering with a plane’s navigation controls. But word processing, gaming and other functions would seem to offer little such threat, if any.

Either way, with the FCC more or less getting behind the traveling consumer on this, it could be that we’ll finally see this issue solved for good in 2013.

Meanwhile, if the next TV commercial for a Capital One airline miles credit card features a grinning Alec Baldwin with what appear to be canary feathers in his mouth, you’ll know why.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from USA Today
Wouldn’t you know it: The Boeing 787 Dreamliner has scarcely entered service, but technical issues are already starting to surface. In this case, fuel leaks.

from the New York Times
American Airlines pilots ratify a new contract with the airline. For travelers, that means no worries about Christmas holiday trip disruptions. For AA, it’s one step closer to a merger with US Airways.

from ABC News via Yahoo
How bad is internal airport theft by TSA agents? The feds are planting iPads and other consumer electronic devices with GPS tracking devices to see if any of them get stolen…and they are. DO NOT check your laptops, tablet computers or smartphones.

from the Huffington Post
Kate Hanni of FlyersRights says the airlines are sticking it to travelers this holiday season with deceptive pricing and hidden fees, especially baggage fees. Bah humbug!

from Agence France-Presse
A French court has cleared the former Continental Airlines and one of its engineers of criminal responsibility for a deadly 2000 crash of a Concorde supersonic airliner in Paris. Civil liability is still on the table, though.

LAND
from NBC News
Here we go again…a simple device small enough to hide in a Magic Marker can let thieves open the electronic door locks at several major hotel chains nationwide. We’ve reported this before. Yikes. The hotel chains know about it, but have yet to correct it. Double yikes.

from the New York Times
Do you love skiing so much that you wish you could do it all year round? Have some frequent -flier miles saved up? Because if you’re willing to travel, you could ski 12 months out of the year, including in a few places you might never expect.

from Budget Travel
There are lots of folks who prefer to travel by themselves, and across much of the world, solo travel is perfectly fine. But there are some places where it’s really better to go with a group. Here are eight of them. SLIDESHOW

from Travel Weekly
The Hyatt Regency in Chicago begins the second phase of a $110 million renovation.

from SFGate
Wanna get high? I mean really high, as in “those ants down there are actually people” high. Destinations to take you up, up and away.

SEA
from Travel Weekly
Plans by Royal Caribbean International to build a third Oasis of the Seas-class cruise ship may have run aground in Helsinki. The vessel would be built in Finland, but Finnish government is balking at financing the build.

from Travel Weekly
Apparently, not all the cruise lines are holding their noses at the European market. Norwegian Cruise Lines is hooking up with Gate 1 Travel to offer European combination cruise-land tour packages next year, starting with Italy. If they find a way to work affordable airfare into the package, this could be very interesting.

from USA Today
The luxury small-ship Windstar cruise line is offering some end-of-2012 deals on its Northern European cruises, including two-for-one sales.

from USA Today
The weather doesn’t just pick on the airlines. High winds in Cape Town, South Africa force a cruise ship to stay at the dock…for four days.

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AFRICA
from allAfrica.com
New air services in the works for Mozambique, including flights from the capital Maputo to an island resort.

from T. Rowe Price
Ghana, now in the process of peacefully holding a presiddential election, could be the next rising financial star on the Mother Continent. So say these guys, who see five new economic powerhouses on the African horizon — in the west, east and south.

AMERICAS
from The Guardian (London UK)
Good news for those who’ve traveled to Cuba or are planning to go: Thanks in part to an easing of government restrictions, the food is getting better. Much better.

from SFGate
Arizona has a world-famous wave. But leave the surfboard at home, because this one is solid layers of multicolored sandstone millions of years old in remote southwestern desert. This is one vacation that will make you work.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from CNN Travel
Singaporeans may have an international reputation as being cold fish emotionally, but they’re passionate when it comes to cooking in what some consider the capital of Asian cuisine — and for some remarkably low prices, they’ll show you how Singapore cooks.

from CNN Travel
The best places to shop in Beijing…and some cool places to shop in Shanghai.

EUROPE
from Girls’ Guide to Paris
Ah, Paris, how can I tour thee? Let me count the ways. By foot. By Metro. By tour bus. By bike. By…Segway? Oui, Segway.

from Context Travel
A 3.5-hour tour on foot and by Metro of the immigrant’s Paris.

from The Guardian (London UK)
An agritourism project is saving a fading village on the island of Cyprus — and giving travelers something to do other than party the night away in Larnaca.

from the Washington Post
The Louvre, arguably the world’s greatest art museum, is branching out, opens a satellite museum in an old French mining town. Good way to experience the Louvre’s treasures while avoiding the Paris mobs. You can almost hear the ghost of Louis XVI saying, “Damn, why didn’t I think of that!”

from Travel Weekly
If one of your travel dreams is to see the Colosseum in Rome, you probably shouldn’t put it off a whole lot longer. It’s literally crumbling.

Edited by P.A.Rice

the IBIT TRAVEL DIGEST 11.18.12

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Sahara Desert caravan

The Sahara Desert. Think you could survive here? | ©Simone Matteo Giuseppe Manzoni — Dreamstime.com

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

THE WORLD’S DRY PLACES
This edition of the IBIT Travel Digest is dedicated to my editor, P.A. Rice, whose name you’ll often see at the bottom of my blog posts. In addition to being a fine writer in her own right and a good friend of many years, she loves — I mean LOVES! — the desert.

Having been born in Louisiana and spent most of my life in coastal California, I’ve never been a desert person. Too much sand, too little shade, too many things that stick or bite you.

Oh, and did I mention that it’s usually hotter than all Hell? Unless, of course, it’s freezing cold.

But when she’s in the desert, she sees — or more accurately, feels — something different. Something profound. Something wondrous. And if you try looking at it through her eyes, you may start to see the desert in the same way.

It’s a land that makes you accept it on its own terms. But if you can do that, it will treat you to breathtaking sunrises and sunsets, night skies overflowing with stars and enough solitude to let you have meaningful conversations with your own soul.

I’ve seen sunlight and clouds combine over the Imperial Valley of California in ways that that I’ve seen nowhere else on Earth.

And as evidenced by this story in the London newspaper, The Guardian, she’s not alone in her appreciation of the world’s driest places.

The article lists incredible deserts all over the world — and tours to let you explore them. Deserts in Arizona, North Africa, Mongolia, and countries you may not even think of in terms of deserts.

Like Spain.

Don’t worry…it’s a DRY heat.

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LOW-FARE AIR TO AFRICA
easyJet is Britain’s largest airline and one of the principal low-fare airlines in Europe. It’s orange-and-white Airbus A319s and A320s are a common slight all over the continent.

Now, according to The Guardian, easyJet’s Greek founder is bringing the low-fare airline concept to the Mother Continent.

Fastjet has taken off, literally, in Tanzania.

The implications of this are huge. Africa is one of the largest and most populous of all the world’s continents — and also by far the one most under-served by the world’s airlines.

If Fastjet succeeds, spreads and inspires the rise of competitors, it could revolutionize African air travel.

Stay tuned.

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HIGH-STYLE HIGHWAY STOPS
If it’s been awhile since you took a cross-country road trip — and at today’s gasoline prices, who could blame you? — you will be forgiven if you go slack-jawed when you see what’s happening to highway rest stops these days.

I got my own inkling of that a couple of weeks ago on Interstate 5 in Southern California, heading back to San Diego.

There’s long been a rest stop overlooking the coast within the boundaries of the Camp Pendleton Marine Base, but I hadn’t stopped there in years. Small, nondescript, nothing special.

My, how things have changed. Two buildings are now three. Multiple large, clean restrooms, snack and soft-drink vending machines that actually work. And I didn’t check, but it might even have wifi now.

But as you’ll see in this Washington Post travel story, that’s nothing.

America’s rest stops are going upscale, so much so that some are on the verge of becoming destinations themselves. Check it out.

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AND FINALLY…
And as long as we’re toying with the idea of hitting the road again, the financial magazine Kiplinger offers up this list of its 10 cheapest American cities for a good vacation.

The first thing you’ll notice about this list is that only two of its top 10 cities are anywhere west of the Mississippi River. One of them is Phoenix, AZ.

Desert. It figures.

But that’s not as amazing as the city that appears at the top of the Kiplinger list, the Number 1 destination for a cheap American vacation.

Drum roll, please…Riverside, CA.

When I first saw this, my initial reaction was “really?” Then I recalled my several drives through Riverside with my family enroute to and from family visits in Texas and Louisiana, not to mention my stops there on the train.

After thinking it all over, my reconsidered thought was…REALLY???

If you think you can make a compelling case that the Kiplinger folks are right, drop me a comment here on the blog or send an email to greg@imblacknitravel.com. I’m willing to be persuaded.

Just be prepared to work at it.

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And now, here’s the Digest:

AIR
from Travel Weekly
American Airlines adds service to Europe, Asia and Latin America from its hubs in Dallas and Chicago. The flights themselves don’t begin til next year, but you can start booking them now.

from the Huffington Post
They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what about the skies of the beholder? Would you fly in airplanes as ugly as these? SLIDESHOW

from CNN
The A350-AXWB is the lightweight, long-range airline that Airbus intends to compete with Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner. Will it catch on with the world’s airlines…and more importantly, their passengers?

LAND
from The Daily Beast
Where to find some of the world’s tastiest cheap eats. No surprise, most of them are in Asia.

from AARP
Airline etiquette — how to deal with rude passengers in-flight.

from USA Today
Is a steady regimen of business travel hazardous to your health?

SEA
from USA Today
NCL joins rival Carnival in selling all-you-can-drink packages aboard its cruise ships.

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AFRICA
from allAfrica.com
British travelers vote their favorite city in the world. New York? Toronto? Paris? Surprise…it’s Capetown, South Africa.

from the Daily Observer (Gambia) via allAfrica.com
For foreign tourists, visiting the Gambia often means getting bum-rushed by “bumsters.” Mostly, they’re just a nuisance, but they can be a BIG nuisance.

from allAfrica.com
An unlikely alliance of US environmentalists, herdsmen from Somalia and financiers from China is joining forces in Kenya to save the rarest antelope in Africa. The hirola is closer to extinction than giant pandas, mountain gorillas or rhinos…and cannot survive in zoos.

from CNN
How to survive in the Sahara with the world’s original desert survival experts, the Tuareg.

AMERICAS
from the New York Times
Atlantic City refuses to bow down to Superstorm Sandy.

from Travel Weekly
And speaking of Sandy, resorts in the Caribbean are still reeling from its impact, these days in the form of widespread cancellations from US travelers. Good time to swoop in and negotiate a bargain, perhaps?

from the New York Times
Seth Kugel loves São Paulo. He wants you to love it, too. WARNING: You may have to work at it.

from the Washington Post
Have a thing for ghost towns? Then check out a pair of abandoned mining towns in Chile. SLIDESHOW

from the Huffington Post
For all the gloom-and-doom talk in the mainstream media about the demise of American manufacturing, there are a lot of local factories still making their own products — and making money doing it. Some of them will let you come in and watch. SLIDESHOW

ASIA/PACIFIC
from The Guardian (London UK)
Want to see where The Hobbit lives…at least on film? Head for New Zealand. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” hits theaters next month. Check out the incredibly beautiful land where it was shot.

from CNN
The Hello Kitty restaurant in Beijing. The pink ambiance will make you smile. The food will not.

EUROPE
from Travel Weekly
Greece is pining for more US tourists.

from The Guardian (London UK)
Some of the lesser known but no less worthy attractions of St. Petersburg, Russia.

from the New York Times
The Prague that hides in plain sight.

from the Washington Post
Here in the States, writers joke about tree-hugging hippies who think they can sing their way to revolution and freeom. In the scenic Baltic republic of Estonia, the people there actually did.

AIRLINES: Flight attendant rant, scuffle grounds flight

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Multiple news outlets are reporting a bizarre incident aboard an American Airlines flight from Dallas to Chicago that left two flight attendants injured and grounded the flight.

According to those reports, it started when a female flight attendant took to the public-address system this morning on Flight 2332 as it was preparing to depart Dallas-Ft. Worth (DFW) for Chicago O’Hare International (ORD).

Some passengers used their Twitter accounts to describe it, saying the flight attendant started ranting about mechanical problems aboard the aircraft and saying the plane was going to crash. According to some of those passengers, the woman had to be physically subdued by fellow flight attendants.

You can read a full account of the incident from msnbc.com here.

A later report on the incident in the Chicago Tribune includes raw video shot by passengers aboard the flight. You can’t really see anything, but starting at about the 1:44 mark, you can hearthe flight attendant screaming as if she were…well…possessed.

American Airlines, which recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, has been losing hundreds of millions of dollars at an alarming rate and is jousting with employee unions in a bid to cut pensions and lay off thousands of workers.

IBIT will have more on this situation as it unfolds.

the SUNDAY TRAVEL DIGEST 9.11.11

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

Pirogues at the Banjul ferry crossing, the Gambia | ©Greg Gross

THE DOG DAYS OF TRAVEL?
The travel industry has conditioned us Americans to view the Labor Day weekend as the official end of the summer travel season. The folks at Lonely Planet would like to offer a dissenting view.

September, you see, is the start of the “shoulder season,” which just might be the traveler’s best friend. Lots of attractions, smaller crowds, lower prices at hotels, restaurants and the like.

The way they see it, in fact, September may be the best month of the entire year to get your travel on, worldwide.

For a region-by-region LP breakdown of the factors that make September a month to give your suitcase a workout, click here.

THE NORTHERN ROUTE
Back in the day, a little-known way of saving money on flights from North America to Europe was to go via national flag carriers from the northern reaches of the mid-Atlantic. The principal vehicle for this was Icelandair, the national airline of Iceland.

According to the Godfather of Travel, Arthur Frommer, this gambit still works today, but via a different airline.

The best way to save on airfares these days from the States to Europe, he says, to is to begin your journey in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, via the national Finnish airline, Finnair.

You may need to do a stopover in Helsinki to complete your onward journey, bt that’s not necessarily a disadvantage. If anything, it has the added benefit of introducing you to an intriguing part of Europe often overlooked by Americans.

For more details on this northern air route to European air bargains, click here.

WANT TO RAISE YOUR VOICE?
According to msnbc, recently concluded meeting of heavyweight policymakers in airport security, immigration and border control came to a conclusion that should not have required a meeting to reach:

When you travel, the quality of your experience matters.

I can hear your teeth gnashing already as you recall your most recent exercise in traveler’s frustration. I myself would love to have had the chance to introduce them to the blue-uniformed stone-faced Sphinx I recently encountered at the San Ysidro border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana.

But I’d much rather hear from you.

What changes in immigration and customs procedures would you most like to see that would make for a better travel experience?

I’ll be collecting your thoughts, suggestions and ideas until Sept. 30. The best answers will be featured here on IBIT, and also compiled into a report which I will send personally those same policymakers.

Send your ideas and suggestions via email.

Meanwhile, you can read the short msnbc story on the meeting here.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST
And finally, no need to remind you what day this is, or what happened ten years ago.

9/11. The Twin Towers. Al Qaeda. All of that.

We’ve heard a lot of talk about how the world changed on that day. In a decade of traveling since then, I found the world generally to be the same mix of good and evil that it’s always been.

In that same time, I’ve watched us use our newfound fears to justify old-school discrimination and prejudice against anyone perceived as “different.” Seen us frisk little girls and search babies in their diapers at airports, decide that torturing people was okay.

The world didn’t change on 9/11. We did. Mostly for the worse.

So I’m thinking this is a good day to think about who we want to be as a nation. Because in truth, America is the world’s greatest ongoing experiment in nation-building — and the experiment is far from finished.

Those who died on this day weren’t soldiers fighting for a cause. They were largely regular folks like the rest of us — all races, and all religions, just trying to make it.

The best way we can honor them, I think, would be to live our own lives the best we can, treat one another the best we can, and try in our own lives to uphold all those high-sounding values we so often proclaim to the world.

Ultimately, history will judge us not on whether we remember what happened ten years ago today, but on what we do with the memory.



And now, here’s this week’s Digest:

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AIR
from USA Today
United Air Lines says it’s committed to maintaining its Denver hub. The size of that hub, however, is shrinking. That means fewer flights to and from the Mile High City.

from WhichBudget.com
ATRA, the Air Transport Rating Agency of Switzerland, lists the ten safest airlines in the world. Finally, a reason to feel good about US-based airlines.

from the Associated Press via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
On the other hand, is the rush to automate airline cockpits eroding the stick-and-rudder flying skills of airline pilots?

LAND
from Agence France Presse via France 24
Recession? Terrorism? Who cares? According to the UN’s World Tourism Organuization, international travel for the first half of 2011 is up nearly 5 percent, with South America and sub-Saharan Africa leading the way.

from the New York Times
For the last few years, some small but tech-savvy car-sharing services like Zipcar have been quietly taking a bite out of the rental car business. Now the big boys are firing back, and it’s the biggest of them all that’s leading the charge.

from The Economist (London UK)
Where are the world’s ten most liveable cities? According to The Economist, four are in Australia and a fifth is in New Zealand. Of the rest, three are in Canada and two in Europe. The United States? Dont ask.

from BBC Travel
I’ve said it before: There’s something about a train station. The BBC agrees, and offers proof. SLIDESHOW

SEA
from Atlas Cruises and Tours
Is there really such a thing as free activities aboard a cruise ship? Not only is the answer “yes,” but the list is varies, and rather long.

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AFRICA
from the Daily Champion (Kenya) via allAfrica.com
Kenya Airways is out to become Africa’s air connection to the rest of the world, with Nairobi as its hub. To that end, they’re looking to double the size of aircraft their fleet within five years.

from the News Junky Journal
According to South African research, African tourism grew by more than 10 percent in the first five months of this year. Leading the charge were Tanzania, Malawi, Ghana and Botswana.

from the ​Times of Oman
Kenya reaches out to — and into — wealthy Oman is search of tourists.

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AMERICAS/CARIBBEAN
from BBC Travel
Prohibition my be just a memory, but the underground drinking culture it inspired via the speakeasy still lives — in Philadephia.

from the New York Times
The Dose Market in Chicago is taking the flea market concept and running with it, uptown and upscale.

from the ​San Francisco Chronicle
Lots of tourists fly over or cruise past Hawaii’s active volcanoes. Not many get a look at one from the inside. But you can.

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ASIA/PACIFIC
from NHK World (Japan)
All but forgotten amid the global 9/11 hype, Japan pauses to mark the six-month anniversary of its devastating earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster.

from Gadling
There may be more than one Great Wall of China.

from The Guardian (London UK)
Would you take a kayak out into the ocean at night, just to look at the stars? You might if you were in New Zealand.

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EUROPE
​from Rick Steves via the Huffington Post
You’re in Paris for the first time, finally, and the Eiffel Tower is high on your list, even if it’s just to get it out of the way. You can wait in the long high-season lines with everyone else, or you can follow Rick’s advice here.

from Ma View Francaise/My French Life
An expat offers up a decidedly unromantic view of life in the City of Light. Prepare to have a few bubbles burst (or not).

from Nomadic Matt
One of my buds in the travel blogosphere recounts his experiences traveling through Ukraine.

from the New York Times
Catalonia — hiking in the shadow of Spanish volcanoes.

Labor Day in the motherland — via Chicago

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If your holiday weekend plans take you to or anywhere near the Windy City, one event you may want to check out is the annual African Festival of the Arts.

PLACE: Washington Park
DAYS: Sept 2-5
TIME: 10a-10p daily
PRICE: $30 weekend pass
$30 Family (2 adults, four children)
$10 advance per day
$15 at the gate per day

There are all manner of festivals, parades and other special events going on in virtually every corner of the United States this coming Labor Day weekend, but this one kind of jumped out at me.

And then, it kind of sat on my neck until I decided to write about it.

For four days this holiday weekend, as it has for the last two decades and change, the African Festival of the Arts transforms Washington Park into an African village, complete with music, food, dance and a wide range of arts, textiles and crafts.

But let’s face it, most folks will go for the music, and this year’s bill is loaded with a lot of high-profile names from both sides of the African Diaspora, nearly all of whom could be — or have been — headliners in their own right:

Friday, September 2

  • Al B. Sure
  • Chico DeBarge
  • Jon B.
  • Christopher Williams
  • Zzaje
  • Fela Queens
  • Spirits of the Ancestors
  • DJ Kodjo (Traditional and Popular African Music)

Saturday, September 3

  • Bootsy Collins
  • Roland Brown & The Merchants
  • DJ Kodjo (Traditional and Popular African Music)
  • Mike E & AfroFlow
  • Afronique Fashion Show
  • MUNTU
  • DJ Kodjo (Traditional and Popular African Music)

Sunday, September 4

  • Mary Mary
  • Gerald Wilson
  • The Selvy Singers of Earle, Arkansas
  • Joshua’s Troop
  • Taylor Mallory
  • DJ Kodjo (Traditional and Popular African Music)

Monday, September 5 (Labor Day)

  • India Arie
  • Awards Recognition: Grand BaBa-George Daniels and Grand YeYe-Geraldine de Haas
  • Joan Colasso
  • DJ Cajmere
  • Kefee
  • Samba1
  • Tambour sans Frontier
  • Tahura
  • Senekeh

Singer-actor-author Tyrese and actress Pam Grier also will be on hand to sign autographs and meet festivalgoers.

Not exactly a lightweight lineup, is it?

This is annually put on by Africa International House, which produces several other programs in the Chicago area devoted to promoting African heritage.

Between musical acts, if you can break away long enough, you’ll find pavilions, exhibits and booths devoted to books and authors, spirituality, African heritage, health and wellness, quilting, film, fine arts, an African marketplace, a drum village…

Hell, I’m getting worn out just writing about all this…but in a good way. The emphasis is on connecting all the many strands of the African Diaspora and keeping things positive.

Could that be why there’s not a gangsta rap act to be found in the festival all weekend?

Works for me.

If you think it might work for you, too, check out these resources for more information:

African Festival of the Arts
AFA on Facebook
AFA on Twitter

You need to mine all these sources carefully. The festival Web site is a little tough to navigate, so you may have to put in some extra effort to find the information you’re looking for. From the look of what they have planned, though, you just might find it worth the effort.

Ask about discounted tickets for seniors and children.

Washington Park is located next to the University of Chicago campus on Chicago’s South Side, about nine block east of the Dan Ryan Expressway on South Martin Luther King Dr.

If you don’t feel like driving — and at today’s gas prices, who would blame you? — check with the Chicago Transit Authority for information on how to reach the park via public transit.

While you’re there, you also might want to check out the Du Sable Museum of African American History, the first museum devoted to that topic in the United States. It’s named for Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, the Haitian who founded in 1779 the trading post that eventually became the city of Chicago.

That’s right, folks: America’s “Second City” was founded by a black man. And no better time and place to commemorate that than on a Labor Day weekend in Washington Park.

CONTACTS
African Festival of the Arts
Africa International House
6200 South Drexel,
Chicago, IL 60637
(773) 955-7742

Washington Park
5531 S. Martin Luther King Dr.
(773) 256-1248

AMTRAK: History rides the rails

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The past is not dead. It’s not even past. — William Faulkner, 1897-1962

History is not static. A nation’s past can move you, literally. For black Americans, a rail vacation can take you deep into your own heritage.

Earlier this spring, Amtrak trotted out a special exhibit in Philadelphia on The Great Migration, the movement of millions of black Americans out of the rural South to the industrial North.

It was meant to celebrate National Train Day, but the response was so great that Amtrak is bringing it back — first to Washington DC and later to Baltimore.

You can read all about the exhibit and how it came about in the Washington Post story here.

The exhibit’s a fine idea — as far as it goes — but it doesn’t actually go anywhere.

With a little bit of planning, however, this is one piece of black American history that can literally take you places.

America’s Great Migration of African-Americans came basically in two waves. The first took place between 1910 and 1930. The second began with World War 2 and didn’t end until about 1970.

My own family was involved in both, and as a kid, I experienced the second one myself.

In the first one, my ancestors, including some ex-slaves, left the farms of Mississippi for urban New Orleans.

When American industry began gearing up for World War 2, a good year of so before Pearl Harbor, millions of working-age black men saw their chance and went for it, traveling both north and west.

That’s how my Uncle Curly ended up in Oakland, CA, taking the old Key System trains across the Bay Bridge to work in the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco.

Two decades later, he’d join the crew that built the Oakland Coliseum.

In the 1950s, my mother followed Uncle Curly to Oakland, and brought me with her. By train.

It couldn’t have been easy to leave everyone and everything that you knew, even if what you knew wasn’t all that great, and move across a continent with little more than hope and a willingness to work your butt off.

That took more “heart” than your typical gangsta rapper knows anything about.

It also took something currently in short supply in this country — a stubborn optimism and abiding faith that no matter what, you could still better your life.

Today, you can retrace those journeys via three different Amtrak trains — all of which, coincidentally, originate in New Orleans.

One is the Crescent, which swings north and east from New Orleans to New York. The second is the Spirit of New Orleans, celebrated in song by Arlo Guthrie, that follows the Mississippi River north from the “Crescent City” to Chicago.

Last but not least is the Sunset Limited, which runs west from New Orleans to Los Angeles.

(My family’s migration path required a fourth train, the Coast Starlight, from LA to Oakland.)

I can’t tell you much about my trip on the City of New Orleans to Chicago. I pretty much slept through it.

What do you want from me; I was four years old.

Chicago looked and felt like science fiction. Never mind Carl Sandburg’s “big shoulders,” this was some kind of sprawling, hulking universe. An energetic, powerful, we-ain’t-playin’ kind of place. Even the amusement rides loomed over me.

The only things that seemed to come down to my level were the fireflies.

What kind of town was this, where even the insects were electrified? Did they plug into the wall during the day to recharge?

The Sunset Limited was next. This time, I was determined not to sleep.

Eventually, I did, of course, but I saw more than enough to get me hooked forever on travel.

Many years later, I finally followed the path of the Crescent through the Deep and Dirty South — Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, into DC.

I’d grown up with the Civil Rights movement. The televised images of the Freedom Riders and Selma were all burned into my mind. Cross burnings. Church bombings. Medgar Evers, Schwerner, Cheney and Goodman, Viola Liuzzo on one side of history. George Wallace, Lester Maddox and Bull Connor on the other.

A lot has changed for the better since those days. Not everything, but a lot. Still, a part of me felt as if I were riding through not just my ancestral home, but what once had been enemy territory.

You can still ride the routes of the Great Migration — from Bay St. Louis, MS to St. Louis, MO, from Camden, SC to Camden, NJ, and scores of other stops along the way.

You can see the places your ancestors came from, and arrive in their new worlds as they did. And you’ll arrive in better shape than many, because a lot if those original journeys weren’t on passenger trains. They were in freight cars.

Think about that as you ease your reclining seat back after returning from dinner and drinks in the dining car.

We tend to think of history as a textbook, a statue, a museum — static, silent, dead. That’s not history. That’s just our approach to it.

History lives, with lessons to teach and stories to tell. It lives in your very DNA, in the collective memories of your elders, in scrapbooks packed with yellowed newspaper clippings and fading photographs with smudged notes scribbled on the back.

And because Amtrak survives, it still rides the rails of these United States.

ADDENDUM
Look closer at that pic up there at the folks waiting in “Colored Waiting Room” in some American train station. Everybody “suited and booted,” men and women alike, dressed to the nines. Wonder what they’d think about today’s kids “sagging,” with their “pants on the ground” and their butts hanging out?

My London ‘hood

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South Kensington is more than just a pleasant neighborhood within easy reach of a lot of London attractions. It’s an ideal base for exploring and mastering the rest of London — and it’s been serving that role for decades.

Back in my old London neighborhood, South Kensington.

Cromwell Road. Gloucester Road. Collingham Road. Being on these streets again feels like reuniting with old friends. Each name brings back a memory, a smile.

The sidewalks bustle with people of every nationality. Travelers flow up and down the thoroughfares, towing wheeled suitcases bearing tags from the airlines of a dozen nations from Europe, Asia and Africa.

My friends Jay and Irene Berman introduced me to this neighborhood a decade ago. It’s what I call a “travel base,” one of those neighborhoods that ideally suited as a base of operations for the visitor.

South Kensington has served that role for tourists, business people and foreign students for decades, and it’s easy to see why.

It’s strategically located to the rest of the city. You can get subway trains of the London Underground to virtually anywhere from the Gloucester Road Tube station. It’s got everything you need within easy walking distance — restaurants, pubs, grocery stores, banks, post office, laundromat, Internet cafes, hardware stores.

There are some nice sites close by, as well — museums like the Victoria and Albert. Parks like Kensington Gardens and Green Park. Harrods, for those of you out there with the shopping gene.

Walk south for a few blocks and you’re at the Thames River.

But South Kensington has taught me to look not for touristy things, but for the things that give you what you need and want to make your trip a success.

In other words, the things that make you feel at home, when you’re not.

But they’re more likely to be older cities like London, built to a human scale, rather than a place like Los Angeles, which was built around the automobile. Easy access to good public transportation is one of the hallmarks of every good traveler’s hood.

There’s another factor in my choice of neighborhoods when I travel, and that’s lodging. Regular IBIT readers know I prefer apartments over hotels when I travel. Staying in apartments rather than hotels is more likely to put you in a real neighborhood like South Kensington than in a hyper-commercial downtown district.

It can cost a little more than a hotel per night, but apartment stays come with some benefits that save you money over the course of your stay. Having a kitchen to prepare your own meals, and a washer and dryer for your clothes saves you money on restaurant bills and baggage fees, not to mention making your luggage a lot lighter.

I’ve since learned that just every great metropolis has a neighborhood like this, and the truly gigantic cities in the world have more than one.

In New Orleans, for instance, there are neighborhoods along or near the St. Charles streetcar line that are just as functional as South Kensington, and have the added “perk” of being beautifully scenic, besides.

New York City has several of them, in each of its five boroughs, and you New Yorkers out there probably can and should tell the rest of us where they are. Ditto for Chicago, Atlanta and Washington DC.

Indeed, easy access to public transit is one of the hallmarks of a traveler’s ‘hood.

What would you look for in your ideal travel base? Have you ever found such a neighborhood yourself when you traveled — and if you have, where was it and what was it like?

Okay, off to the Imperial War Museum. I’ll add some pics to this entry once I’ve had a chance to shoot a little bit.