Tag Archives: France

NEW ORLEANS: Streetcars and Baby Dolls

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St. Charles Avenue streetcar, New Orleans

St. Charles Avenue streetcar, New Orleans | ©IBIT/G. Gross

A pair of once-familiar sights are set to make comebacks this year in the Crescent City. One figures to delight visitors to the Superdome. The other may turn Mardi Gras upside down.

“Welcome to New Orleans. Come for the Super Bowl. Stay for Mardi Gras.”

That’s the pitch that the Crescent City is making to visitors in February. It’s an offer the city has made before, and one that hundreds of thousands of tourists will find impossible to refuse.

But those who take up that offer this year will be witness to a couple of street revivals.

New Orleans takes its traditions seriously, even the ones it periodically turns its back on, and two good examples of that are poised to return this winter to “the NOLA.”

THE STREEETCARS
The first is a new streetcar line through the city’s Central Business District that links the French Quarter to the Superdome. If all goes as planned, the new line should be ready to roll by Feb. 3, in time for Super Bowl XLVII.

But the importance of this line goes far beyond one over-hyped football game. It’s part of an ongoing effort to undo one of the dumbest things New Orleans city government ever did.

City Hall spent the better part of four decades ripping out streetcar lines — at least 15 of them that I can find — and replacing them with buses. New Orleans has largely regretted it ever since.

Maria C. Montoya of the News Orleans Times-Picayune probably put it best: “Tennessee Williams never would have written ‘A Bus Named Desire.’ ” (emphasis mine)

Preservationists managed, barely, to save the St. Charles Avenue streetcar line (seen above) that runs down through the city’s über-scenic Garden District. It’s now a working icon of New Orleans history, used and beloved daily by locals and tourists alike.

In the late 1980s, the city fathers reluctantly acknowledged what a lot of their citizens had been telling them for years, namely that when it comes to efficiently moving people around a city, buses are no substitute for streetcars. And as the St. Charles line clearly showed, they lend a character to a city that no bus ever could.

So they decided to bring them back.

The first came in 1988 with the opening of the short Riverfront line, linking “the Quarter” to the New Orleans Convention Center. But the real resurrection began in 2004, when streetcars returned to Canal Street, the city’s main downtown thoroughfare.

There are ambitious plans to restore other lines. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 temporarily derailed all of that, but now the revival appears to be back on track.

[ FREE — AND NEARLY FREE — DELIGHTS IN NEW ORLEANS ]

This actually is one of the ways I prefer to get around a major city when I travel. Definitely faster and more comfortable than a bus, and you get to see a lot more than you will on a subway. The streetcars (or as they call them, “trams”) in cities like Amsterdam, Geneva, Switzerland, and Lyon and Strasbourg, France are sleek, state-of-the-art dreams.

The New Orleans streetcars are still largely old-school in appearance. Their two major concessions to modernity are automated fareboxes and air-conditioning, the latter of which you will bless in the summertime. But they’re just as handy when it comes to getting around.

And the way IBIT sees it, any kind of public transit that can save me the cost of a rental car is a good thing.

THE BABY DOLLS
The other comeback this winter involves an all-but-forgotten Mardi Gras tradition — and I’m not sure if even New Orleans is ready for this one.

The Baby Dolls are back.

When the Krewe of Zulu rolls their parade to open Mardi Gras Day, Feb. 12, there will be a troupe of Baby Dolls among them.

Mothers may want to hide their children — and their husbands, too.

When blacks weren’t allowed to take part in the “mainstream” Mardi Gras parades and activities downtown, black communities promptly came up with their own ways to “laissez les bon temps roulez.” The Baby Dolls were one of them.

The original Baby Dolls were a product of Storyville, the infamous red-light district famed equally for its prostitution and its jazz joints.

In a sense, the whole thing grew out of one of those Uptown-Downtown rivalries common to New Orleans. When word got out that some downtown hookers were planning to stage a Mardi Gras parade, the working girls of Storyville took that as a challenge that could not go unanswered.

They took the nickname their pimps had given them and turned it into a fashion statement, literally dolling themselves up in bonnets, bloomers, knickers and what-not, and staged a parade of their own.

But these definitely were no Barbies.

Storyville itself was torn down during World War 1, but by then, the Baby Doll idea had caught on in black neighborhoods. Before long, first-graders, their mothers and even grandmothers were rocking the Baby Doll look.

You no longer had to be an “industrial debutante” to be a Baby Doll.

Soon, they were as much a part of the black Mardi Gras tradition in New Orleans as the Mardi Gras Indians, second-line clubs and Skeletons.

The Skeletons were the first to hit the streets in “the ‘hood” on Mardi Gras morning. Ghostly figures dressed head to toe in black-and-white skeleton suits and fierce-looking masks, they went from block to block, banging on pots and pans and yelling:

“WAKE UP! YOU NEXT!”

Then came the neighborhood parades, following no preset schedule or route, with their Indians and jazz bands and second-line clubs&hellip,and the Baby Dolls.

Over time, as other black Mardi Gras traditions gained recognition and acceptance from the mainstream, the Baby Dolls gradually disappeared from the streets — but not from memory.

Now, they’re making a comeback, updated to include one of New Orleans’ newer creations — “bounce music” and dance.

These days, you don’t have to be a prostitute, or black or even female. But it’s still a reach back in time to acknowledge the city’s baudy, insolent past…which returns to the present every Carnival season. You may be amused or you may be appalled, but either way, you won’t be bored.

And that’s the NOLA for ya.

RANT: Does America need a tourism czar?

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http://www.dreamstime.com/-image26963455

Our haphazard, unfocused, uncoordinated efforts to sell America to the world’s tourists won’t cut it in the 21st century. We have to do better.

President Barack Obama last year signed an executive order creating a task force to design a National Travel & Tourism Strategy. It was a follow-up to his 2010 signing of the Travel Promotion Act of 2009.

Believe it or not, it’s the first time in our history that the US government has set promoting foreign travel to America as a national priority, something that most of the world’s nations, from the poorest to the richest, have been doing for decades.

To American ears, the title “tourism minister” has a quaint, even comic ring to it. To the rest of the world, however, it’s no joke, and here’s why:

Some time last month, a man or woman packed a bag and boarded a plane, train, bus or a ship to travel from one country to another, maybe for business but more likely for pleasure. That person was the one billionth traveler of 2012, the first time the world has ever seen that many people traveling in one year.

Tourism worldwide generates about $1 trillion and hundreds of millions of jobs annually. It’s growing almost in defiance of the recession. Just about every nation on Earth wants as big a piece of that action as it can get, and they’re all working very hard at getting it.

The world’s top ten tourism destinations, in order, are France, the United States, China, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Germany, Mexico and Malaysia. The US is the only one of the ten that doesn’t have a Cabinet-level official devoted to promoting tourism.

Some may argue that America has done well enough at attracting tourists without needing one. “We’re Number Two! We’re Number Two!” What’s the problem with that? Let me count the ways.

  1. Our Economy American unemployment is unacceptably high. This country has been bleeding manufacturing and other blue-collar jobs for decades and those jobs are not coming back. At the same time, you will be hard-pressed to find another industry in the world generating more new business and new cash flow than tourism. Think this economy could use some new jobs?
  2. Our Pride Since when were Americans content to be Number Two in anything?

And yet we sort of muddle our way through the business of attracting more visitors — and their money — to this country.

New York City is America’s top travel destination, and last year, the Big Apple drew a record 52 million visitors. The fact that the City of New York runs 18 tourism offices around the world probably had something to do with that.

It’s great that New York can afford to run its own overseas promotional campaign, but why should it have to? And what about all our other great cities that can’t afford to run their own foreign offices?

The Travel Promotion Act of 2009 created something called the Office of Travel Promotion within the US Commerce Department. Show of digital hands: How many of you out there ever heard of the Office of Travel Promotion before this moment?

If I dig long and hard enough, I can probably find out who runs this office and what it’s doing on behalf of American tourism — but why should I have to? Why should anyone have to?

I could easily tell you who’s in charge of tourism in Denmark, Brazil, Singapore, Botswana, or more than a hundred other countries. All the government’s efforts to bring in more visitors flow with a single, concentrated focus through that person’s office.

Who holds that responsibility in the United States? Who is the face of American tourism in Washington? Thirteen years into the 21st century, I have no idea — and I’m betting you don’t, either.

The federal government’s attempts to push American tourism abroad hasn’t even taxied to the head of the runway yet and already, it’s a hot, disjointed mess — a board here, an office there, a task force over in the corner.

Who’s running this?

Somebody needs to take charge here, a Cabinet-level official with the clout to pull all these scattered efforts together, and a profile that guarantees direct access to the President and Congress when necessary.

A tourism secretary. A tourism minister. A tourism czar. The title itself doesn’t matter, but the need for it does. Because the global competition for those $1 trillion is heating up, and the rest of the world is not waiting around for Washington to get its act together.

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

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 11.11.12

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

RETURN OF THE SLEEPER
Back in the 1860s, a fellow named George Pullman felt that overnight trains were well short on comfort, so he decided to do something about it. The sleeping car he created would make his name synonymous with luxury rail travel for the next hundred years.

Pullman is long gone, but according to Yahoo Travel, the company that bears his name is bringing those cars back.

Pullman Rail Journeys is now offering rail excursions in fully restored sleeper, dining and lounge cars between Chicago and New Orleans.

If you love rail travel, and especially if you love the idea of following the Mississippi River by rail from the Second City to the land of “laissez les bon temps rouler,” this one needs to go to the top of your bucket list.

But this also is a trip back into “our” history, because Mr. Pullman’s plush railcars also gave rise to the Pullman porters, who played one of the most important — and least-known — roles in the black American struggle for civil rights.

You can learn about that struggle in Chicago with a visit to the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum.

What about the other end of the journey, you ask? This, I can tell you from personal experience: A train is one of the two most enjoyable and satisfying ways to arrive in or leave New Orleans (the other being via cruise ship).

For more details, visit the Pullman Rail Journeys Web site here.

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WHEELS OF FORTUNE
Actually, more like wheels that will cost you a fortune. NBC News serves up its list of the world’s ten most scenically glorious, luxuriously glamourous — and heart-stoppingly expensive rail journeys.

Not surprisingly, four of them are in Europe, with two in the Asia/Pacific region and one each in North America, South America and Africa. And on each, the trains are practically destinations in themselves.

Keep this list handy for that day when you hit the lottery. SLIDESHOW

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LIGHTEN YOUR LOAD
In the ongoing struggle to get travelers to pack less — for the sake of their backs as well as their wallets — the folks over at Smarter Travel started looking at what travelers typically bring with them.

The goal, to identify things you should leave at home and buy during your trip.

They came up with seven items, which they put in a slideshow.

Doing this not only can lighten your luggage, but if approached in the right spirit, can become a mini-cultural adventure. You can learn a lot about a place when you go shopping in a different part of the world for something other than souvenirs.

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PRICELINE SAILS OFF WITH KAYAK
The consolidation in the online travel industry continues. After Google bought up the Frommer’s travel Web site, online travel auctioneer Priceline now joins the party by purchasing price comparison site Kayak for $1.8 billion.

Travel planners aren’t likely to notice much difference at first, so long as Priceline sticks with its plan to allow Kayak to continue to function as an independent entity. Sooner or later, however, all of these massive mergers are going to make a difference in how we shop for travel online — and how much we pay for it.

You can check out the details in this USA Today story here.

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RHINO POACHING — LOCAL TRADE, ORGANIZED CRIME
In southern Africa, the ongoing tragedy of rhino poaching not only continues unchecked, but is accelerating to tragic levels, driven by well-financed organized crime.

African Arguments reports that Asia’s growing middle class has more disposable income to spend on folk medicines made from rhino horn and increasingly is doing so, ignoring all scientific evidence that such medicines have no medicinal value at all.

The poachers aren’t quite having it all their own way, though. At least one poaching kingpin recently got 40 years in prison.

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AND FINALLY…
When someone says “Greenland,” what comes to your mind? Frozen tundra? Glaciers melting under the effects of climate change? Icebergs floating menacingly offshore in the Atlantic?

I’m guessing the one thing you don’t think about is fine dining. But Greenland — which, under all that melting ice and snow, actually is green — has this new cadre of creative chefs who would love to change your mind about that.

The London daily newspaper, The Guardian, sent one of its writers, Tim Moore, to see if there was anything to this notion of one of the coldest nations on Earth as a hot foodie destination. Did he find culinary nirvana? Did he stay warm enough to taste anything, or did his frozen fork get stuck to his hand?

Read the Guardian story and find out.

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AND NOW, HERE’S THE DIGEST:

AIR
from Travel Weekly
Congress is siding with US airlines that are balking at the European Union’s plan to charge airlines a carbon tax.

from Smarter Travel
Free concerts. Yoga room. Golf course. Brewpub. A slide four stories high. All this and more at…the airport? If you’re at the right airport, yes. SLIDESHOW

from Travel Weekly
Flight attendants at Southwest Airlines approve a change in their contract that will allow Southwest to fly over water. What does that mean to you? For one thing, it means Southwest is one big step closer to offering flights to Hawai’i.

from Smarter Travel
Has your flight in Europe been cancelled or delayed more than three hours? You have rights, including the right to “get paid.” How do I love thee, European Union? Let me count the euros…

from the BBC
Is supersonic passenger air travel poised to make a comeback? If you’ve ever flown from LAX to Delhi or Papeete to Paris, you’re praying that the answer is yes. Check out the possibilities.

LAND
from Travel Weekly
Tour operator Tauck and PBS documentary filmmaker Ken Burns are teaming up to create an 11-day Mississippi River tour package, including a week-long steamboat cruise.

from the Los Angeles Times
The Space Needle is now a half-century old. If you saw it when it was new, that thought might be a little scary. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a good excuse to visit Seattle. That and the coffee, of course.

from USA Today
Ten places to get away from the cold-hearted winter wrath of Mother Nature. SLIDESHOW

from the New York Times
A Caribbean Carnival crawl, one island at a time.

SEA
from Travel Weekly
Cruise lines are increasingly going “green” these days. A surge in environmental consciousness after years of fouling the world’s oceans, or outreach to increasingly eco-conscious passengers?

from USA Today
When the cruise ship formerly known as Carnival Destiny emerges next spring from its $155 million makeover, it will have been renamed Carnival Sunshine and its attractions will include…wait for it…a water park.

AFRICA
from the Washington Post
Want to see the real East Africa? Bag the safaris and head for the cities, because these days, the “real East Africa” is urban.

from allAfrica.com
The Lonely Planet travel writers vote the ancient Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa as Africa’s top travel destination. See if you agree.

from allAfrica.com
A group of adventure travel enthusiasts is traveling the length of the Mother Continent by motor convoy — from Cairo to Capetown. They’re now in Tanzania.

from allAfrica.com
Uganda is world-famous for its rare mountain gorillas. As a tourist attraction, however, they’re gradually being eclipsed…by birds. Surprised? Don’t be. Birdwatching is huge in Africa.

AMERICAS
from the New York Times
Another chocolate tour — this time of the Caribbean.

from the Los Angeles Times
Ecuador is making a strong push these days to draw more visitors, and one of their lures is the old colonial charm of the newly freshened historic center in the capital, Quito.

from the New York Times
The Corn Islands off Nicaragua have no glitz, no glamor, no huge over-the-top resorts. They’re keeping it real out there. Real, rustic, tranquil Caribbean ambiance.

from the BBC
Can a man be buried in two places at once? Two intriguing travel destinations, one on each side of the Atlantic, claim to be the final resting place of Christopher Columbus.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from CNNgo
Go big or stay home. South Korea is planning a massive — and I do mean MASSIVE — new city devoted entirely to tourism and aimed straight at the Chinese market. If it’s built — and its projected pricetag of $275 billion makes that a very large “if” — there will be nothing else like it anywhere.

from CNNgo
A food writer goes on a six-food foodie odyssey in China, and comes back with a list of favorite cities for favorite dishes. If you’re planning a China trip, keep this list handy.

from the BBC
Chimelong Paradise is China’s largest theme park. Amusement at your own risk.

EUROPE
from Travel Weekly
Up a lazy, intimate, luxurious river. Barge cruising in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France.

from Rick Steves via SFGate
How to enjoy — and survive — a European road trip.

from Typically Spanish News
If you get sick or hurt while visiting the Spanish city of Málaga and you don’t speak Spanish, you might want to avoid Carlos Haya Hospital. They just fired their seven staff interpreters, whom they plan to replace with…a telephone service? What we may have here is an unhealthy failure to communicate.

Edited by P.A.Rice

Traveler’s bank…or cartel bank?

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Is a British bank that’s useful for travelers equally helpful to drug traffickers?

Whether as a saver, investor or traveler, it’s hard to know where to put your money these days.

I discovered a lot of things on my first trip to London a decade or so ago. One of them was this British bank called HSBC.

With automated teller machines in full effect worldwide, I really didn’t feel much like hassling with traveler’s checks anymore. It was so much easier to just go to the ATM in whatever country you happen to find yourself and draw out the cash you need — and at a better rate than you’d get from any currency exchange house.

But which bank could you use? Which one had the kind of global reach that would allow me to travel anywhere and get cash anywhere, with the same ATM card?

That’s when HSBC came into focus.

Founded in Hong Kong right around the time we were wrapping up our Civil War, HSBC today has a workforce of more than 270,000 people, a number roughly equal to every man woman and child living in Newark, NJ.

All told, the bank is sitting on total assets of more than $2 trillion — that’s right, trilion — making it the third largest bank in world.

And branches almost everywhere, except Africa. And the United States.

So when I found out a few years later that HSBC had opened a branch in Beverly Hills, I promptly went and opened an account. The following year, I was back in Europe, traveling between London and Paris and drawing cash as needed in both Britain and France without a care, courtesy of HSBC.

I could not have been happier. I even gave HSBC props on this very blog.

Fast-forward to the waning weeks of 2012. I’m scanning the European online press when I come across this in The Independent, a London newspaper:

“Financial watchdogs have demanded explanations from HSBC after it emerged that the bank is at the centre of an HM Revenue & Customs investigation over offshore accounts opened in Jersey, including some for criminals living in Britain.”

The reference to Jersey refers not to our state of New Jersey but to the place that gave the state its name, the island of Jersey in the English Channel. There’s more:

“…the tax authorities have obtained details of ‘every British client of HSBC in Jersey’ based on information provided by a whistleblower. It is reported that the 4,000 offshore account holders include a man once called London’s ‘number two crook,’ a well-known drug dealer living in Central America and bankers facing fraud allegations.”

As our British cousins like to say, bloody hell! Then there was this:

“HSBC is already preparing to pay $1.5bn of fines to American authorities after subsidiaries funnelled money for drug runners and Iran through the bank in breach of money-laundering laws.
The bank has admitted that it could face prosecution and that the final payment could be even higher.”

Even for the third largest bank in the world, $1.5 billion in fines is no joke. What the hell is going on here?

Turns out that HSBC’s Mexico branch has been helping drug cartels launder some of their $22-plus million a year in dirty money.

Feel free to look stunned, shocked and surprised.

The evidence is so damning that one of the bank’s top executives apologized at a US Senate committee hearing…and then resigned on the spot.

That gesture may save his personal honor, but may not spare HSBC from criminal prosecution in the United States. And all that came before the Jersey nonsense. By this time next year, HSBC could find itself “standing tall before The Man” on both sides of the Atlantic.

I don’t think even Johnnie Cochran could have gotten HSBC out of this one.

And these are the people I keep my little travel money with? Drug cartels? London gangsters? Iran?

Oh, HELL no.

So more than a decade after I thought I’d settled this issue, I’m once again hunting for a bank that will let me use its ATM card anywhere around the world, with few or (preferably) no fees. If I find one, I’ll pass on the info here. If you already know of one, please share it with the IBIT family in the form of a comment.

Either way, the moment I find one that looks right, IBIT will be done with HSBC.

UPDATE
Multiple financial news outlets are reporting that Washington will announce criminal and civil penalties against HSBC totaling $1.9 billion for permitting Mexican drug cartels to launder hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money.

Among the complaints were that HSBC allowed its Mexico division to operate a branch in the Cayman Islands which had no office and no employees, but had 50,000 client accounts and $2.1 billion in cash.

G.Gross
10 Dec 2012

Edited by P.A.Rice

Learn globally, read locally

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Yuyuan bazaar, Shanghai, China

Yuyuan bazaar, Shanghai, China | ©IBIT/G. Gross

Want to be better prepared for international travel? Make foreign media a part of your research.

How do you research an overseas trip? Talk to friends who’ve been there? Pick up a guidebook or two on your chosen destination? Check out Web sites devoted to that city, that country, that region? Rifle through the blogosphere to get samples of first-person experiences? Read IBIT?

All good. So don’t hate me for it, but I’m about to add to your reading list.

Do you check out local media? Newspapers, magazines, radio stations? If not, you really should. You don’t need to read entire editions of local papers. Just look for articles relevant to you as a traveler.

Is there mention of special events going on during the time you will be there?

Is there some local hotel or resort that looks like a better deal or a more interesting stay than that canned, cookie-cutter, if-you’ve-seen-one-you’ve-seen-’em-all chain hotel you were thinking about booking?

Are there forecasts of bad weather or labor disputes that could have an impact on your trip?

Are there stories about unique restaurants, nightspots, music? Some intriguing aspect of local culture that the guidebook authors haven’t had a chance to catch up with?

You can find any or all of that in the local publications.

Even with all the advances in tablet computers, smartphones and online publishing, it will be a long time — if ever — before any destination guidebook can give you this kind of up-to-date info. Even better, access is usually free.

Several years ago on a GBF (Group of Best Friends) trip to France, a pre-trip scan of French papers warned of an impending wildcat rail workers strike in Paris. That little bit of 4-1-1 led us to get to the Gare de Lyon station earlier than we normally might.

Minutes later, the platform filled with men carrying the fluttering red banners and placards signalling the start of their grève. Any passenger unaware of the strike who arrived a few minutes before departure, as is the norm with European trains, had no chance of leaving Paris that morning.

Our little group? We watched the strike unfold from the comfort of our seats aboard our TGV high-speed train, which pulled out on schedule for Lyon — the last train that would do so that day.

Say what? The national language in your destination is French? German? Portugese? Japanese? Anything other than English? Believe it or not, that really isn’t a problem.

You simply connect to the foreign Web site in its native language and run it through an online translator like the one built into Google. The bad news there is that they really aren’t very good.

The good news is that you may not need it.

A great many of the world’s major publications produce Web sites that publish their offerings in clear, smooth, mentally digestible English, and the Web makes it easy for you to find them.

The first step is to do a Web search for newspapers in your destination country. That will produce sites providing a list of papers.

Some of those sites will include the languages in which those individual sites are published. Others provide links directly to the English-language editions of those newspaper Web sites.

You’ll find examples of both types of Web listings at the end of this blog post.

In addition to Web versions of traditional newspapers, several major countries have their own news Web sites, which are major media in their own right.

The BBC from the United Kingdom, France’s Agence France-Presse and France 24, and AllAfrica.com are all examples of national media Web sites that offer a huge range of material a traveler can use. Believe me, there are plenty more, all over the world.

In addition to local or national news, they also offer current weather info, up-to-date bulletins on traffic or transportation delays, and may even have whole sections devoted to travel.

In the world’s major cities — which, like ours, often suffer from major traffic congestion — they also include Webcams featuring live real-time images of various parts of town.

Even if you have no plans on driving “over there,” you can use those Webcams to your advantage.

You know that vaguely uneasy feeling you get when you’re walking to your hotel in a neighborhood/city/country you’re hitting for the very first time? London is a city of monstrous size, which can make that feeling even worse.

But thanks to the BBC’s London “Jam Cams,” I got an advance look at the neighborhood where my vacation apartment was located. From my desk at home, I was able to spot landmarks that would guide me unerringly to my destination.

Two weeks later, when I emerged from the London Underground station in the South Kensington neighborhood, I knew exactly where I was and where I was going.

And when you’re setting foot in one of the largest cities in the world for the first time, believe me, that’s a good feeling.

Even those sites that don’t offer a travel section often have sections devoted to culture or entertainment that can be useful to a traveler — not only in their own locales, but other parts of the world, as well.

Several even offer free online tutorials in the local language for the linguistically impaired.

You know, like Americans?

A careful scan of local foreign media can create your own advance “picture” of what awaits you at your destination. and when foreknowledge is part of your carry-on luggage, you can’t help but feel more comfortable when you get there.

WHERE TO FIND FOREIGN MEDIA
world-newspapers.com
The Big Project (UK edition)
Squidoo/foreign papers in English

Edited by P.A.Rice

Railcruising

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Red White Black and Blue

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Black Americans traveling outside the United States for the first time often worry about how they’ll be treated. What they find often takes them totally by surprise.

A funny thing happens to black folks when we travel outside the United States for the first time. We find out that we’re Americans.

More specifically, we find out that the rest of the world often sees us more fully as Americans than do a lot of our so-called “countrymen.”

We also find out that being perceived as an American often makes a difference in how we’re treated abroad — compared with, say, Africans.

We’re treated better.

All this is gratifying in some ways, unsettling in others. Either way, it’s not what we expect when we get that U.S. passport stamped with its first foreign visa.

When you grow up in a country, any country, your life experience in that land shapes the way you see yourself, and the world.

Growing up black in America means learning to see yourself as being “different,” a few degrees apart from the mainstream. We didn’t voluntarily separate ourselves from that mainstream. We’ve been pushed and walled off from it — blatantly in my elders’ day, more subtly in mine.

TWILIGHT ZONE CITIZENS
You go through life being viewed by turns as a threat, a freak of nature, an issue, a cause, a voting bloc, a market, a whole series of stereotypes — almost anything, it seems, other than just another U.S. citizen.

For that reason, black American citizenship often has a kind of Twilight Zone feel to it. You’re an American officially, but not entirely. Your citizenship status comes with a psychological, emotional asterisk that never goes away.

So when you venture beyond your borders for the first time, you expect the rest of the world to come at you more or less in the same manner.

Surprise…it doesn’t.

When you step off the plane in Paris or Istanbul or Sao Paulo or Beijing — or for that matter, Dakar or Lagos or Cape Town — the locals see you exactly as what you are.

Someone born in the United States, steeped in the American life experience and thoroughly saturated in American culture.

In other words, an American.

You don’t have to wear a USA T-shirt. You don’t have to say a word. One look at you and they just know, instantly. American, through and through.

WE DON’T BLEND IN
Even in urban, sub-Saharan Africa, where you might expect to blend in seamlessly with the locals, you don’t. You stick out like a sore red-white-black-and-blue thumb.

For the black American traveler, this has both advantages and drawbacks.

Among the biggest drawbacks: Everybody thinks you’re rich. After all, everybody’s rich in America, right? Our television shows, our music videos, our movies are broadcast the world over — and on screens large and small, we sure look rich.

Which means that when you walk into the local market or shop, the vendor instantly raises his prices, just as he would for any other American. Beggars and street hustlers will follow you a little farther down the block than they would some other tourist, and much farther than they would any local.

You deal with it. You learn how to haggle, how to fend off the hustlers. It goes with the territory. You’re an American.

But there are advantages, too. For one thing, you’re likely to find out that, contrary to some of the political propaganda you hear back home, most of the world really doesn’t hate American people, even if it’s appalled by American politics.

UNEXPECTED ACCEPTANCE
People will smile at you, especially if you smile at them. People will talk to you, no matter how pathetic your halting attempts to speak to them in their native language. They will welcome you to their country, maybe even invite you into their homes. If you run into problems, they may go to extraordinary lengths to help you.

All because you’re an American, and you cared enough to come for a visit.

You also may find yourself periodically displaying the same kind of cultural chauvinism abroad that “other” Americans do. You’ll know it the first time you catch yourself thinking, or even saying aloud, “Wow, that’s not how we do things back home!”

And when you laugh about it, you’ll be the only one who gets the joke. After all, you’re kind of new to this whole “American” thing. From that point on, you just accept it, the way virtually everyone else around you does.

That’s when you realize that all those worries and fears you had about how you would be treated were just so much excess cultural baggage, dead weight that won’t be coming with you on your next international trip.

Even this little bit of delight has a flip side, however. You realize that the moment you see how Africans are often treated abroad.

THE FLIP SIDE
When you see taxi drivers in London or Paris or Beijing stop to pick you up — unlike the way so many of them pass you on the street in, say, New York — you may not realize at first that those same cabbies who were happy to stop for you will pass up Africans all day long.

Just as you might be followed throughout a shop by store security back home, so too will the African be followed overseas. Discrimination in jobs, housing, education, systematic hassling by the police — the full gamut of the black American experience — the African from the Caribbean or the Mother Continent receives elsewhere in the world.

But not you. You’re okay. You’re an American.

That may jar you a little bit. It also may explain why, when you give that little nod to the African passing by on the street — that little nod of acknowledgement that many black Americans traditionally give one another — the African may not return it.

That, too, can be unsettling. Actually, it hurts. Both sides have some serious bridge-building to do.

But pretty soon, you’re back to enjoying your unexpected status as an American abroad. People being nice to you. People treating you as if you were the same as everybody else.

For the first time, you really understand why so many black American soldiers, shipped to France during World War 1, opted not to return to the States. And you find yourself wishing every day could be like this.

But even as you’re having the time of your life, in the back of your mind, the clock is ticking. All too soon, you will have to get on the plane to return home, where all that’s familiar in your life will be waiting for you.

Right down to that asterisk.

That’s the tradeoff that comes with travel. It always opens your eyes, but it doesn’t promise that you’ll always enjoy the view.

Edited by P.A.Rice

T’is the (Christmas market) season in Europe

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Christmas market, Strasbourg, FR

Strasbourg, France — Christmas market | © G. Gross

If you’ve never experienced a European Christmas market, you owe it to yourself to get out there in the cold among the bright lights and the non-stop festive cheer.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Christmas is an outdoor affair that lasts for a month or more, a public event to be shared with townspeople and tourists alike, and they draw visitors across Europe annually by the tens of millions.

The Christmas market is a tradition that may date back as far as the 1300s. Some of the first known began in the German-speaking region of Alsace, in what is now eastern France.

Since then, it’s taken hold throughout western Europe, has penetrated portions of eastern Europe — and can even be found in the United States here and there.

Wherever you’ll find them, you’ll have a blast, because that’s the whole point.

The Christmas market is a mixture of Christian and pagan traditions. The great European cathedrals are often the anchor point of Christmas markets. Nearby may be a huge, gayly decorate pine tree, a tradition we got from the pagans.

There are solemn religious ceremonies this time of year also, but mostly, this is neither the time nor the place for solemnity. Whether to mark the birth of Christ or the coming of the winter solstice, Christmas markets are all about celebration.

The bigger ones set up huge amusement-park rides. Outdoor ice-skating rinks welcome the skilled and lure the foolhardy. Street musicians and singers perform. Vendors sell tasty snacks and hot drinks, especially the hot, spiced wine known as vin chaud in France and glühwein in Germany.

This is where everyone is free to be a kid, regardless of the date on their birth certificate.

Stalls sell all manner of Christmas trinkets and decorations. As with a lot of other things around the world these days, a lot of what they sell may be mass-produced in China or elsewhere, but if you look, you can still find seasonal items lovingly handcrafted by locals.

The Christmas markets also may be where the locals come to buy their Christmas trees and Christmas lights.

If you can’t have fun at a Christmas market, check your pulse. Someone may have stolen it.

I experienced my first Christmas market a few years ago in Strasbourg, the regional capital of Alsace. It claims the title as the first official Christmas market, going back to the 1500s, and remains one of Europe’s best.

There definitely are bigger and splashier ones elsewhere, however, especially across the Rhine River in Germany.

The Christmas markets now springing up in Eastern Europe might be especially interesting to check out because they only began to appear with the fall of the Iron Curtain. So only now are people able to celebrate as they please, as their western European counterparts have been doing for centuries.

They might not be as smooth or well-organized as they are in France, Germany and elsewhere, but that spirit of new-found freedom and celebration might more than make up for that.

The European Christmas market phenomenon belongs on your holiday travel list — if not for this year, then for 2012 and beyond.

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