Tag Archives: San Francisco

the IBIT Travel Digest 2.10.13

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

Hong Kong fireworks

Hong Kong fireworks — © Farang | Dreamstime.com

Wishing peace, health and prosperity to our IBIT friends in China and Chinatowns around the world as they ring in the Year of the Snake on this Lunar New Year.

EAT, DRINK AND GO TRAVEL
Every so often, I go back through old digests of mine to look for recurring themes — and if you’re a regular reader of the IBIT Travel Digest, there’s at least one you’ve spotted already. Nearly every digest, it seems, features at least one mention of food or drink.

So starting today, FOOD & DRINK gets its own section in the digest — and it kicks off with two subjects equally dear to my heart and my tastebuds.

New Orleans was a foodie town long before someone invented the term “foodie.” The word itself is out of favor these days among the blogerati (not that I give a damn), but the NOLA’S flare for flavor will never die.

From its beginnings, New Orleans cuisine has blended a mélange of influences — French, Spanish, Native American, African, Italian, Irish. Starting with the 1980s, though, a new taste fell into the city’s gumbo pot — the flavors of Vietnam.

San Diego was the first American city to receive South Vietnamese refugees en masse following the 1975 fall of Saigon, which made it the first to be exposed to Vietnamese dishes in a big way.It didn’t take long for pho and banh mi, with their fresh ingredients and vibrant mix of flavors, to become staples here.

And for you gumbo purists out there (and you know who you are): Yes, they do put in okra on request.

But while the Vietnamese cuisine tsunami was washing over San Diego, other refugees gravitated to the Gulf of Mexico to resume their lives as fishermen. Inevitably, many settled in New Orleans.

A city that already treated po’boys and gumbo as basic food groups had little trouble embracing pho soups and banh mi sandwiches. And among the Vietnamese and their descendants who grew up in the NOLA, the feeling seems to be mutual, as the New York Times recently discovered.

Today, within an easy drive from my house in San Diego are at least two Vietnamese restaurants whose menu is a mix of Vietnamese and New Orleans Creole dishes, run together by people from both locales. The nearest one features a daily special that includes half a banh mi and a bowl of gumbo.

But the best place to see the result of this marriage of cultures is in the Crescent City itself and you’ll see it below in the inaugural FOOD & DRINK section of the IBIT Travel Digest.

IBIT says: Bon appétit…or perhaps, chúc ngon miệng!

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WILL TRAVEL FOR JAZZ
Back at the turn of the 20th century, as Europe was plunging into the first of its two disastrous world wars, Paris witnessed the arrival of blacks from America, mostly soldiers, who brought with them a style of music Parisians had never heard before.

The Americans called it jazz, and Paris promptly fell in love with it. And as Jonathan Lorie discovered when he went roaming Ernest Hemingway’s old Parisian haunts for London’s The Guardian newspaper, the love still burns.

Jazz may be an American invention — perhaps the best of all American inventions — but there may be no better place to enjoy it than Paris. And as you’ll see in Lorie’s article, there are a lot of venues in the City of Light where you can enjoy it.

Lorie’s piece also links four other famed Jazz Age authors — F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Christopher Isherwood and Somerset Maugham — and their jazz hangouts from New York to Germany and even Sri Lanka.

But if all these folks were still around today, they all might leave their hearts in San Francisco. The reason is SFJAZZ, which opened late last month in the city’s Hayes Valley neighborhood.

It is the first concert hall in the United States — and maybe the world — built expressly for jazz. It features an auditorium, an ensemble room, rehearsal areas, a digital learning lab, and even a sidewalk cafe.

IBIT says: Hemingway would’ve dug it…once he got used to the no-smoking rule.

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AND FINALLY…
USA Today reports that Kate Hanni, head of the airline consumer organization FlyersRights.org, is stepping down as the group’s executive director, walking away from the outfit she founded in 2006.

You can read the entire USA Today story here.

She formed Flyers Rights after being stuck on the tarmac aboard an American Airlines flight in Austin, TX — for nearly nine hours — and getting little more than lip service from the airline. Her outspoken efforts since then led to federal regulations governing how the airlines handle flight delays.

Not surprisingly, Ms. Hanni didn’t make a lot of friends in the airline industry during her time with Flyers Rights, but she did prove that consumers who organize at the grassroots and speak truth to power can make a difference.

IBIT says: Thanks for all you did, Kate, and all you tried to do.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from the Los Angeles Times
In the eternal hunt for airfare bargains, booking too early can be as costly as booking too late.

from Travel Weekly
You may soon be able to watch in-flight shows and movies on-demand on Southwest Airlines flights, streamed to your own personal electronic devices. That’s the good news. The bad news? You’ll be paying extra for it.

from Budget Travel
A survey of travel agents says that when it comes to booking their clients on connecting flights, Atlanta-Hartsfield is one of their most favorite airports. It’s also one of their least favorite airports. Am I confused? No. I’m just booking non-stops.

from Travel Weekly
Frequent-flier miles…from an airport? Starting in June, the parking, food, merchandise or airport hotel stay you buy at Dallas-Ft. Worth International (DFW) will count toward airline miles.

from FareCompare
When is a “free” airline ticket not really free at all? FareCompare’s Rick Seaney counts the ways, and there are five of them.

LAND
from Condé Nast Traveler
The world’s ten most beautiful train stations, according to CN Traveler, right on time as New York’s Grand Central Terminal marks its 100th anniversary. Some are classic, others ultra-modern, and some brilliantly mix old and new. SLIDESHOW

from Travel Weekly
For the third time since it first opened in 1981, San Francisco is set to expand its Moscone convention center.

SEA
from the New York Times
Lust and luxury aboard the Queen Mary 2. Just don’t call it a “cruise.” It’s just not done, you know…

from Travel Weekly
Kai Tak, Hong Kong’s old airport, where almost every landing seemed like an adventure, is returning to the travel business — this time as a gleaming $1 billion cruise ship terminal that can handle the largest vessels in the business, even Royal Caribbean’s behemoth Oasis-class ships.

FOOD & DRINK
from the New York Times
In New Orleans, they know their pho — and their yaka mein. If you don’t know either, read up. WARNING: Your mouth may involuntarily water while reading.

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AFRICA
from Travel Weekly
The Radisson hotel chain opens its first Radisson Blu hotel in Mozambique.

from TechZim (Zimbabwe)
New travel startup, Zimbabwe Bookers, aims to make finding hotel rooms easier for travelers in one of Africa’s growing tourist markets.

from Tanzania Daily News (Tanzania) via allAfrica.com
Tanzania draws up plans to aggressively promote tourism in overseas markets. Its top four markets — Britain, the United States, Germany and Italy.

from Angola Press via allAfrica.com
Angola’s environmental agency building bungalows, other facilities in the country’s national parks in a bid to boost ecotourism.

AMERICAS
from The Guardian (London UK)
When your mother takes you on a sailing excursion to Central America at the age of six, just the two of you — and it lasts for four years — school field trips may have a hard time holding your attention after that.

from the New York Times
A look at San Juan, Puerto Rico, starting with one of my favorite spots — Condado Lagoon. SLIDESHOW

from The Guardian (London UK)
Are you into “Girls?” I’m referring here to the HBO hit TV series, set in Brooklyn. A look at the neighborhoods that give the show its inspiration.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from the Washington Post
Singapore spent so many decades living with the reputation of being the straight-laced capital of Asia, that it’s hard to imagine this city-state having a quirky side. But it does have one. Yes, it does.

EUROPE
from France 24
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of…graffiti? The city’s Shoreditch neighborhood is becoming a mecca for lovers of street art.

Edited by P.A.Rice

the IBIT Travel Digest 2.3.13

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

cropped-hburghof.jpg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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And now, here’s The Digest:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 1.6.13

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

Bay Bridge bike path

Welcome to the first IBIT Travel Digest of 2013. Let’s get going.

SAN FRANCISCO: BAY HEATING UP?
The folks at Smarter Travel have listed San Francisco as one of the travel destinations to watch in 2013.

That might sound a bit like saying the sky is blue and water is wet, since San Francisco has always been a hot travel destination. But the city that calls itself “The City” has some new attractions going on line this year, and it’s all about the bay that gives the city its name.

This year, the Aquarium of the Bay is putting in an exhibit devoted to the rare river otter — one of which recently turned up, almost as if on cue, in the ruins of the old Sutro Baths, to the delight of sightseers and the puzzlement of scientists.

The Exploratorium, which has delighted generations of visitors with its science exhibits, also is getting a new and greatly expanded headquarters this year along the city’s waterfront.

But the main event will be the opening of the sleek new east span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, replacing the old span damaged by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

Not only is the new bridge gorgeous and designed to hold up better in an earthquake, but it incorporates something that cyclists have dreamed about for decades — a separate bike/pedestrian path. The illustration above shows you how it will look once it’s in service.

People will be able to ride or walk from Oakland to Treasure Island, the halfway point of the bridge, something that was never possible before.

Plans/discussions/arguments are underway to add a similar deck to the original west span of the bridge.

I can’t wait for the chance to take my bike up to the Bay Area and join my cycling friends, old and new, for a spin over the bay — even if it’s only to Treasure Island. Half a bay is better than none.

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GO SMALL, LEAVE HOME
You already know about the cruise ship industry’s building boom, but it’s not just the big lines building big ships. Less well-known outfits also are turning out new, smaller vessels. One example is Alaskan Dream Cruises, which currently operates three small ships for Alaskan cruises.

How small is small? ADC’s three vessels hold a combined total of 162 passengers. Your typical Carnival or Royal Caribbean cruise ship may hold close to ten times that many — on one deck.

When you board a typical cruise ship, holding anywhere from 2,000 to 5,400 passengers, you may feel as if you brought half of your hometown with you. Not so on a small cruiser. It’s a completely different experience. Faster. Smoother. More intimate.

The super-small cruise ships can easily get into scenic inlets and bays, even explore small rivers, where the floating behemoths would surely run aground. Once ashore, you get more time to sightsee, because your small cruise vessel can dock at much smaller harbors. The mega-ships have to shuttle you back and forth on tenders, which really eats into your limited time in port.

Being smaller, such cruises are seldom cheap. But the experience can more than make up for the price.

AMERICAN + USAIR = ?
With each passing day, a merger between American Airlines and US Airways looks like a done deal.

Even before American filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year, industry analysts have been expecting the airline to be snapped up by one of its financially healthier rivals. When Delta dropped out of the fray and United opted to buy Continental instead, that pretty much left the field open to USAir.

And as we move into the new year, the wheels are already turning.

Last month, American’s pilots approved a new contract, the last of the airline’s three labor unions to get on board. Having all three unions signed means that American can now come out from under Chapter 11.

The other shoe dropped just last week, when USAir pilots gave their blessing to a proposal by their American Airlines counterparts on how the two groups would handle a merger.

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DRAMA BUILDING ON THE BLUE NILE
Ethiopia kept its plans for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam so quiet that they first were labelled “Project X.” But when you’re planning the largest dam in Africa on one of the world’s most disputed rivers, that’s a hard elephant to hide.

When finished in 2015, the reservoir it creates on the Blue Nile River will be double the size of Lake Tana, the largest lake in Ethiopia — and the source of the Blue Nile itself.

Issat Falls, Lake Tana, Ethiopia

Issat Falls on Ethiopia’s Lake Tana, source of the Blue Nile. © Cdkeyser | Dreamstime.com


Simply put, the GERD is Hoover Dam on steroids. It will surely become an enormous tourist attraction, and the electricity it generates could transform Ethiopia.

But mega-dams often do major, unforeseen damage to the environment, and Ethiopia shares the Blue Nile with Egypt and Sudan. Both countries already are unhappy about this dam.

Make that very unhappy.

People a lot smarter than me have been saying the next great global conflict will be over water, and observers in East Africa are already sounding alarms over this project.

IBIT says: Expect drama.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from Travel Weekly
Could this be the Next Big Thing in airline add-on fees? Bundled fares.

from the New York Times
New screening procedures from the TSA are letting some travelers actually leave their shoes on when going through security. The key word there, of course, is some.

from the Los Angeles Times
Save on airfares to Europe? Think off-season and outside the proverbial box.

from NBC News
Forget the Six Million-Dollar Man. Tom Stuker is the One Million Frequent-Flier Mile Man. And that’s how you get a jumbo jet named after you.

LAND
from the New York Times
How to get the most out of TripAdvisor.

from National Geographic
Ice hotels. If you’re not “cool” after spending a night in one of these places, see your doctor.

from Smarter Travel
For a lot of women, wearing stiletto heels while traveling may be impractical. In Greece, it’s also illegal. One of 11 weird laws around the world that can trip up the unwary traveler. SLIDESHOW

from CNN Travel
Ten cars for every type of traveler.

SEA
from Gadling
Ways to save on your next cruise.

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AFRICA
from Mashable
Take a good look, world. Here they come: A smartphone and a tablet computer, designed by an African, built by Africans. Hitting the market now. This could be IBIT’s future travel gear…and maybe yours, too?

from informAfrica
Forget “The Lion King.” The leopard — not the lion — is the real “king of the jungle.”

from the Washington Post
Not all of Africa’s fascinating sights are of wilderness and wildlife. A look at urban Tanzania and Ethiopia. SLIDESHOW

from Africa Review
Mali’s Islamic extremist insurgency threatens the country’s deep musical traditions.

from The New Vision (Uganda) via allAfrica.com
Bill Gates loves Uganda?

AMERICAS
from the Wall Street Journal
New York City is still America’s biggest tourist draw. Who says so? A crowing Mayor Bloomberg — and a record 52 million visitors in 2012.

from the Los Angeles Times
The many and varied joys of a stay in Santa Barbara. A guide to its sights, sounds and tastes.

from NBC News
The US State Department issues a new travel advisory on Haiti: “No one is safe.”

ASIA/PACIFIC
from the Washington Post
Would you build an entire city around an airport? The place is called Songdo, and if this experiment works, it could change the way the world travels.

from France 24
Not content with making knockoff purses, pirated movies and even fake Apple stores, the Chinese may be counterfeiting a set of skyscrapers.

from CNN Travel
China prepares to open the doors to the world’s largest building.

EUROPE
from The Guardian (London UK)
Twenty bargain vacation options across Europe.

from Associated Press via USA Today
If you’re planning to visit Vatican City anytime soon, bring your prayers but leave your plastic. The Vatican has gone cash-only.

from the New York Times
Berlin. It’s not just about currywurst and beer anymore. The city’s better restaurants are racking up Michelin stars. Ich bin ein foodie?

from CNN Travel
QUESTION: How do you get the world’s largest airliner through a small French village? ANSWER: Very carefully.

Edited by P.A.Rice

The IBIT Travel Digest 10-22-12

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

James Bond Island, Thailand

© Ihar Balaikin | Dreamstime.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by P.A.Rice

“Go ‘head on.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You been to Paris?” he asked suspiciously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You still going, though, right?”

I promised him I would.

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

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

Or dead.

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

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

Edited by P.A.Rice

AIRLINES: Bailing out

2 Replies
United Air Lines flight on final approach, San Diego

United Air Lines flight on final approach, San Diego | ©IBIT G. Gross

Around the United States, airlines are quietly pulling out of airports where they’re not turning a profit. Expect to see more of this.

One day this coming June, an Airbus A319 belonging to United Air Lines will push back from its gate at Oakland International Airport and taxi down to the end of the airport’s sole runway.

With San Francisco Bay and the San Francisco city skyline off its left wingtip, it will make the long, rumbling takeoff roll to lift off from that runway. It will easily clear the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and make a long, graceful, climbing right turn before it disappears beyond the Berkeley hills.

Never to return.

After 75 years, United is pulling out of Oakland, saying its operations there just aren’t profitable enough.

Over the decades, United became one of those airlines you just took for granted in Oakland. Smaller, newer outfits came and went, but United was a mainstay, one of the big boys, as rock-solid as those Berkeley hills. You knew those guys weren’t going anywhere.

Well, now they’re going. And United is hardly alone in pulling back from airports around the country.

Frontier Airlines already has announced plans to stop flying to and from Boise, ID, Tucson, AZ and Aspen, CO. It terminated its Milwaukee flights last year. American Airlines is ending its operations out of Burbank, CA, a Los Angeles suburb.

Some of this is an outgrowth of the wave of airline mergers taking place over the last several years. Duplicated routes get pared down, chopped. In other cases, airlines retreat from markets where strong competitors like Southwest and JetBlue have the edge.

And sometimes, airlines just find it easier and cheaper to operate out of smaller airports than larger ones, such as when Southwest pulled out of San Francisco a decade ago and made Oakland its Bay Area hub. (Southwest eventually returned to SFO, but only with a relative handful of flights compared to OAK.)

None of that applied to United’s withdrawal from Oakland. The airline just wasn’t making enough money there, so…see ya!

Okay, airlines have as much right to make a profit as any other business. I get that. Still, it’s jarring when you show up at your local airport and one of the major airlines you’ve grown accustomed to seeing there — and flying from there — is gone.

It doesn’t matter why. All you know is, the ticket counter is empty and dark, the familiar signs and logos have been taken down; only their outline remains.

It’s a bit like coming home and finding a “For Sale” sign on the lawn in front of your next-door neighbor’s suddenly vacated house. The place just doesn’t feel the same anymore.

It also creates practical problems for travelers, who now may have to travel a lot farther to catch their flights.

When British Airways pulled out of San Diego — something they’ve done twice since 1988 — it meant the only way foor San Diegans to get a flight to London was by descending into the hell known as LAX.

Folks up in Burbank and the rest of the San Fernando Valley who intend to fly on American will now have to do the same.

The airlines really don’t care about any of that. The easiest — and perhaps more importanty to the airlines, cheapest — way for them to deal with a low-performing destination is to simply erase it from the route map. No need to work harder or seek creative ways to boost sales from that city.

Just bail out.

Indeed, when you watch U.S.-based airlines for a while, you realize that cutting seems to be what they do best.

Cutting routes. Cutting employees. Cutting back on amenities and customer service. Taking planes out of service to cut back on the number of available seats — and thus have a pretext for raising airfares.

All of which makes it likely that, in an economy still struggling to come wings-level, Oakland will not be the last city this year to watch a familiar airline vanish over the horizon.

DID YOU KNOW?
United Air Lines began flying from Oakland in 1937, the same year that Amelia Earhart took off on her two attempts to fly around the world — also from Oakland.

the IBIT TRAVEL DIGEST 3.26.2012

1 Reply

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

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

© Radkol | Dreamstime.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three pilots, 13 flight attendants. All women.

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

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

And now, here’s this week’s Digest:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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