Countries
Some of Cuba’s “classic” American cars. Photo by German Cruces Rajoan, Panoramio.
It’s been more than 50 years since Fidel Castro came down from the mountains to lead a guerrilla movement ousting the corrupt, Mafia-tied Bautista regime in Cuba. Since that time, U.S.-Cuba relations have been both red hot (during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis) and icy cold (for most of the rest of the time since).
It’s time for a thaw, and I applaud President Obama’s initiative to restore full diplomatic relations with that island nation just 90 miles south of Key West.
As readers of this blog know, I always come down on the side of fewer travel restrictions between nations, not more. I think they lead to greater understanding among peoples, who often are far ahead of their governments in their innate grasp of the need to travel freely and exchange ideas and get to know… Continue reading
York Minster, an impressive Gothic cathedral, smells like…?
Until this morning, when I read about it in eTurboNews, I hadn’t heard about York, England’s “world famous” (as the Visit York website puts it) smellable travel guide to that alluring city, adding a key sensory sensation to what is normally a sight-only medium.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a smellable picture must add a few hundred more.
The guide, called Smell York — which is straightforward enough, though I might have chosen something less edgy like “York Aromas” — invites you to scratch and sniff 12 different scents to cajole you into literally sniffing out various York attractions and shops.
Some are clearly pleasant — drawing you towards the city’s chocolatiers, tea shops, and floral gardens — and others perhaps less seductive. For instance, one scratch and sniff yields the “haunting aromas of… Continue reading
North Korea supreme leader Kim Jong-un with Dennis Rodman. Photo from the Mirror, London.
Imagine a country with scenic mountains, some with “surreal” rock formations similar to those you might see in China, uncrowded ski slopes, ancient temples, and a general feel of a place that hasn’t changed all that much in the past few decades.
It holds an annual marathon with opening and closing ceremonies held “in a stadium filled with thousands of cheering North Koreans,” according to a dispatch from eTurboNews.
It also has the dubious honor of being the most closed, secretive society in the world today.
Obviously, we’re talking about North Korea, where tourists — especially Americans, with the notable exception of Dennis Rodman — have been made to feel less than welcome. Some American tourists have even been detained for long periods of time or sent to prison camps based on flimsy evidence of… Continue reading
A South African white rhino — endangered enough as it is. Photo by Dennis Cox / WorldViews.
According to recent reports, East African safari tour operators have suffered a 30-70 percent drop in bookings (including cancellations) in recent weeks due to the Ebola scare.
Southern Africa tour operators have been hurt somewhat less, but are nonetheless feeling the pinch.
Let’s put things in perspective.
Just because Ebola has tragically ravaged three West African countries — Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone — doesn’t mean it’s not safe to travel to East or Southern Africa, where the vast majority of wildlife safaris take place.
Here are some (perhaps surprising) facts:
London, Paris, Rome, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro are closer to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa than are East and Southern African safari centers like Nairobi, Kenya; Harare, Zimbabwe; and Johannesburg, South Africa.
Nairobi is about 3,300 miles from the outbreak,… Continue reading
On the hike up the Mannlichen. Photo from Swiss Tourism
Though it lacks the glitz and glamour of St. Moritz, Gstaad, or Zermatt, the Jungfrau region may be the most truly “Swiss” of any alpine resort area in Switzerland.
All the prototypical Swiss images are here: the towering snow-capped peaks, the glacier-cut valleys, the flower-blanketed meadows, the rushing rivers and thundering waterfalls, the neatly trimmed A-frame chalets, the colorful little cogwheel trains chugging up the hillsides.
If you encountered Heidi on your morning walk, you wouldn’t blink twice.
And while towns like Wengen, Mürren, and Grindelwald may not be household names in the U.S., the Swiss know them well. The Jungfrau was one of the first alpine resort areas in Europe, and the Swiss have flocked here for outdoorsy vacations for more than a century.
While no area of Switzerland is exactly a budget haven, the Jungfrau region – situated… Continue reading
Golden Gate Bridge tower, San Francisco — a must-see in the City by the Bay. Photo by Ian Klein/Dreamstime Stock Photos
OK, I’ll admit it, there’s nothing scientific about this list. I haven’t googled “The Five U.S. Cities Foreign Visitors Want to See Most,” because this post is based strictly on my own anecdotal experience.
And my experience in talking with foreign visitors from Switzerland to Singapore, Panama to Palau — and points in between and beyond — is that a remarkable number have the same wish list:
*San Francisco
*Los Angeles
* Las Vegas
* Miami
* New York City
Having lived in three of these cities and visited the other two, I understand the appeal. Not only are they great cities, but they dominate American movies and TV settings, and, in several cases, serve as the beacons of American glitz and glamour.
Sure, I’ve met… Continue reading
Budapest’s Chain Bridge over the Danube by night. Photo by Dennis Cox, WorldViews
I love river cruising and was itching to get onto the Danube as soon as we reached Budapest, the Hungarian capital that the river neatly divides into two sections called Buda and Pest.
“We” being the international group of journalists I was traveling with, on an Insight Vacations tour of Central European capitals. Budapest was our last stop in a whirlwind tour that was an accelerated version of the regular Insight tours of the region, yet we managed to pack a huge amount of sightseeing into less than a week.
Having just left Vienna a few hours before, we arrived in Budapest in late afternoon in time to change money, change clothes, change languages and change mindsets from schnitzel to paprikash. Fortunately, goulash, sausages and strudel remained much the same.
Our hotel, the Sofitel… Continue reading
The Hungarian Parliament Building, illuminated at night. Photo by Clark Norton
On my recent trip to Central Europe with Insight Vacations, I enjoyed Prague immensely, discovered the delightful Medieval town of Cesky Krumlov (also in the Czech Republic), rekindled an old flame in Vienna, but fell totally in love with Budapest.
Maybe it’s because I’m a sucker for river cruises — the evening dinner cruise we took on the Danube was magical — or maybe it was the Hungarian Parliament building, lit up like a centenarian’s birthday cake at night and almost as beautiful inside by day, or maybe it was that lunch consisting solely of the best strudel I’ve ever eaten.
Probably some of all three, but there were also the endearing intangibles:
* Asking a couple of locals shortly after our arrival the name of the bridge in front of our hotel,… Continue reading
The village of Durnstein lies on the Danube in Austria’s beautiful Wachau Valley. Photo by Dennis Cox/WorldViews
In my last post, Fifteen Things I Didn’t Know About Vienna, Austria, I confessed that there was a lot I didn’t know about Vienna, despite having visited there a number of times in the past.
But those visits had been quite a few years ago, and I had forgotten what a beautiful city Vienna is.
Vienna, in fact, has ranked number one of all the world’s cities for the past three years in the Mercer Quality of Living rankings for expatriates, based on 39 factors such as infrastructure, amenities, health care, etc. I could definitely see living here, though I’d have to brush up on my German, which consists of three words: bier, danke and Auf Wiedersehen. (Well, I guess that’s four.) And, oh yes, wein. And wurst… Continue reading
Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace was too small for Empress Maria Theresa. Photo by Clark Norton.
I’d been to Vienna several times before my recent visit there with Insight Vacations — a company that runs high-class tours of Central Europe and many other destinations throughout the world — but I learned a number of things I didn’t know about the city, largely thanks to our excellent guides and our tour director, Neira Milkovic .
* Vienna sports the world’s oldest zoo, the Tiergarten Schönbrunn, which dates from 1752 and is located within the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace.
* The gardens at Schönbrunn Palace are as big as the country of Monaco. The palace was the summer hunting “cottage” of the Habsburgs, who ruled Austria and much of Europe for hundreds of years; despite its nearly 1,500 rooms and 3,000 servants to tend them, Empress Maria Theresa, who ruled from 1640-80,… Continue reading
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