We recently received a message on our Facebook page from a reader named Kim, asking for advice on where she and her husband-to-be should go on a dream honeymoon. Weâve gotten questions like this before, but this one had an extra twist—theyâre planning to bring along their 11–month–old along for the ride.
Tokyo is a city full of impressive skyscrapers, and the newest tower is striking indeed. Standing at 2,100 feet, the thin white Tokyo SkyTree will serve as a broadcasting tower. It is Guinness–certified as the tallest tower in the world and the second tallest building behind Dubai's Burj Khalifa (which is 617 feet taller). The real reason to be excited is the observation decks with spectacular views of the city.
From opening day on May 22 until July 10, tickets will only be available by lottery and need to be purchased by a Japan–issued credit card (ie residents only). Tickets open to everyone on July 11 through the box office, and start at about $13 for adults and $4 for children. The tower will be open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Many well rated hotels are tempting travelers with free gas cards as a perk for booking a room. The free gas cards are a response to high fuel prices, which are averaging about $3.71 a gallon nationwide, according to AAA.
Here are some examples of gas voucher deals.
Free apology for the high prices with every fill-up (Courtesy iotae/Flickr)
Nationwide, anyone who books two separate stays through August 15 at the Choice Hotels chain (which covers Comfort Inn, EconoLodge, and other properties) can earn a $50 gift card to use for gas, dining, or shopping. Details at the Choice Hotels website.
In Colorado Springs, several properties are participating in the "Tank Full of Summer Savings" promotion. For instance, award-winning St. Mary's Inn will reward guests with $25 in gas if they stay at least two nights. (Mention the offer, sponsored by the local visitors bureau, when booking by phone.)
In Fort Lauderdale, the Broward County visitors bureau is giving away $25 American Express gift cards to travelers who book summer stays of at least two nights at select hotels through its website or Facebook page.
In Canada, booking a weeknight stay directly on the websites of participating Marriott resorts with the promo code TRS will grant you free on-site parking and a $25 gas card.
Two great sources for other hotel promotions, including ones for free gas cards, are BedandBreakfast.com and DealBase.
As a rule of thumb, you're better off driving than flying if you're going no more than 400 miles from home and are traveling with at least one other person. For longer trips, use the Fly or Drive? Calculator—which lets you enter your itinerary, car make, and model—and compare it with current fares and fuel prices.
The view from a ground-level power outlet at Fort Lauderdale Airport (Courtesy kjarrett/Flickr)
Many travelers struggle at airports to find conveniently-located power outlets to charge up their electronic devices. But a pair of crowd-sourcing websites can help you find those ever-elusive electrical outlets at terminal gates: Airport Plugs and Air Power Wiki.
Air Power Wiki has enabled thousands of travelers to share the locations of outlets at hundreds of airports worldwide on a website that resembles Wikipedia. Air Power Wiki was nvented by Jeff Sandquist more than five years ago, and it's now gathered enough information from users to be truly useful.
Exhibit A: At Kansas City Airport's Terminal A, Air Power Wiki reports that there are power outlets available "at the seating area between gates 14 & 15 (outside of secured area)." The site explains that the "outlets are located under the seats."
Unfortunately, because the Wiki can be edited by anyone, some spammers have inserted a few bits of spam. But the community polices this very well and you probably won't notice it.
Meanwhile, AirportPlugs.com is a similar site that asks travelers to provide exact locations of electrical outlets that they find. The site is still new, so it only has information for the major airports in Las Vegas, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Medford, Ore. But we hope this site also grows in popularity because it presents information in a way that's optimized for reading on the tiny screen of a mobile device, unlike Air Power Wiki, which requires much more scrolling.
If you don't have time to read these sites, here's a quick tip on finding power outlets: Think of places where cleaners would logically need to plug in their vacuum cleaners, such as underneath chairs and on pillars. That's probably where you'll find an outlet.
Thanks to a new terminal at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, there's no reason to dread connecting in Atlanta.
Waiting around Hartsfield-Jackson might not be so bad from now on (Courtesy saiberiac/Flickr)
Connecting through Atlanta has long been a necessary evil—it's a Delta hub, as well as AirTran (and soon to be Southwest, once that merger is finalized). But it just got a little less evil. The new Maynard Jackson international terminal, which opened on May 16, was designed to alleviate some of the congestion, as well as add 12 new international gates—freeing up more space for domestic flights. A new entrance and security checkpoint were also added for international travelers and the baggage–claim process for those connecting from outside the U.S. has been streamlined.
Not only is the terminal more efficient, it's also nice to look at. Huge windows let in lots of light, and a city ordinance demanded that 1% of the $1.4 billion cost was put towards public art (after you pass through security, look for the conical piece made up of thousands of Swarovski crystals).
Are you excited about an easier flight through Atlanta?
A Virgin Atlantic plane on the runway in Manchester (Courtesy eisenbahner/Flickr)
How many times have you been forced cut off a phone call practically mid–sentence, or send a frantic "CallyouwhenIland!!" text, seconds before the airplane door closes? Thanks to Virgin Atlantic, that may be a thing of the past—in the not–too–distant future.
Passengers traveling between New York and London on the airline's Airbus A330 will soon be able to use their cell phones to talk, text, and surf the web in–flight. It's a bit of news that's sure to delight business travelers and the occasional text–addicted teenâ¦and dismay cranky travelers already fed up with crying babies and whirring engines.
There is, of course, a catch: in–flight calls will cost £1 per minute (by current exchange rates, that's about $1.30). As usual, phones will need to remain off for takeoff and landing, and a headset will be required to make calls. And there might be a few bumps to smooth out as the new service is launched: according to Time's Techland blog, Virgin Atlantic estimates that limited bandwidth will allow only 10 calls to be made at a time.
Even with a few small hiccups it's still pretty big news: after all, an airplane is one of the last places where you can feel disconnected from the outside world. And if Virgin Atlantic pioneers a trend, who knows? Perhaps Alec Baldwin and Josh Duhamel can stay on the right side of the law from now on.
There are a lot of jokes at the expense of the TSA, thanks to some ridiculous mistakes and policy misunderstandings on the part of agents. But it's no laughing matter when an agent's ignorance causes a teen traveler's life–saving medical equipment to malfunction.
When 16–year–old Savannah Barry—who is a Type 1 diabetic and wears an insulin pump—was flying out of the Salt Lake City airport last Monday, she followed the guidelines for diabetic travelers listed on the TSA website and asked for a pat–down instead. She even presented the agent with documentation that the $10,000 insulin pump should not be taken into a full–body scanner. But the agent insisted it would be fine and sent her through. Moments later, her insulin pump malfunctioned (see the video below of an interview with Savannah about the incident).
To add insult to injury, she was given a pat down—exactly what she had requested in the first place—in addition to her trip through the body scanner after TSA agents spotted her insulin and the juice she was traveling with to prevent low blood sugars.
Savannahâs mother was told by a representative of Animas (the company who made her insulin pump) to have her unplug the device as soon as she landed and rely on insulin shots until further notice. Luckily she was able to obtain another insulin pump—evidently another pump company heard her story and sent it to her after she returned home to Colorado.
We contacted the TSA to get their official statement:
âTSA has spoken with the passenger and a member of her family regarding her screening experience and we will continue to communicate directly with the family to address their concerns. TSA works regularly with a broad coalition of advocacy groups representing passengers with disabilities and medical conditions to better understand their needs. Signage posted at security checkpoints where advanced imaging technology (AIT) is used informs passengers that AIT is always optional for all passengers, including those traveling with medical devices.â
Traveling with a medical device can be complicated. This story really struck a nerve with me—Iâm not a Type 1 diabetic, but my younger sister, April, is. She was diagnosed at 14 and has been living with an insulin pump ever since. On family vacations, sheâs had to pull TSA agents aside and explain her situation, show them the insulin pump, and be led to the side for a pat down that ends with swabbing her hands for bomb residue. There is nothing like watching your little sister follow the rules only to have everyone else in line staring at her like sheâs a criminal, wondering what she did to deserve a pat down at the airport. But this is her only option if she wants to get on that plane, since she cannot go through the full–body scanner with her âelectronic pancreas,â as she calls it.
So whatâs your take on all this? Do you think it's unfair to blame the entire TSA for one agent's misstep or do you think this is a sign that the entire organization needs an overhaul?
The app Flight+ launched only a couple of weeks ago, but it's already a bestselling app in the iTunes App Store. The reason is simple: This week, Apple named Flight+ its App of the Week, singling it out as exceptional among the 725,000 apps in the store.
Flight+ deserves its popularity. It can do complex things in a very streamlined way. That matters most when you need help handling a snafu with your itinerary, such as a delayed or canceled flight.
Say your flight is delayed. Flight+ earns its $3 price tag because it lets you track any flight in the sky on a map in real time—at least as close to real time as is allowed for security reasons. You no longer have to take the word of the gate agent that a plane is en route.
If a delay means you might not make your onward connection, use the app to quickly look up a basic terminal map at your destination airport. The map can help you figure out how to get from Point A to Point B more quickly and catch a tight connection.
Alternatively, say the airline cancels your flight. Use Flight+ to look at the flight board at your airport, or a near by airport, to see your flight options. Check the weather at alternative airports to plan a route around a regional storm.
If you already use TripIt to manage the details of your itineraries, you can sync your TripIt account up with Flight+ easily. The app will start tracking your upcoming flights based on the itineraries you submitted to TripIt. If you choose, you can receive status alerts on your device's home screen if it looks like you will face a nasty surprises with your trip.
One drawback, the Flight+ app version for iPhone/iPod doesn't work on the iPad, and vice versa.
SEE A VIDEO OF HOW FLIGHT+ WORKS (Note: The video has no sound.):
Last year, Wade Bruleson of Enid, Oklahoma, learned the hard way what could go wrong when you rent a car in Mexico. During a vacation stop in Cozumel, Bruleson went on a quick trip in his family's rental car to pick up a map from a local shop. During the drive, he accidentally broadsided a motorcycle, which led to a few broken bones for its two riders.
At the police station, Bruleson discovered that the premium insurance policy he bought from his rental car company wouldn't cover everything. In Mexico, the guilty party in a car accident that causes injury must pay a cash settlement to victims, something that's not covered by insurance. The cash settlement is equal to the wages that injured are expected to lose because they will be out of work during their physical recovery.
Bruleson had to wait in jail while his car rental company and the family of the victims agreed on a figure for compensation. At one point, the victims wanted $6,000 for lost wages during the time they were recovering. That number was eventually talked down.
Burleson walked free after about 30 hours, thanks to the help of many people, such as his son, family friends who wired money, the American consulate, and others.
In the US, a personal auto insurance policy or credit card coverage tends to meet the requirements of car rental companies and the legal system. The same is not true in Mexico. The law requires that foreign drivers buy liability insurance from a Mexican company, such as Sanborn's Insurance.
This liability insurance is generally not included as a perk on a US credit card, but it's worth buying because it greatly reduces the chances a traveler may be jailed or face steep financial penalties. Policies typically include coverage of attorney and bail bonds.
Besides liability insurance, a traveler should also get collision and damage insurance (which more or less covers the vehicle) as well as personal accident insurance (which essentially covers the driver and other passengers).
Being fully insured is important in keeping a situation from getting out of hand. But there is no readily available insurance to pay a settlement to cover their wages. That has to come out of the traveler's pockets, and can soar to thousands of dollars, as Burleson found out the hard way. And the guilty party has to stay behind bars until the financial settlement is reached. Spending a night in a Mexican jail is no picnic, as Burleson described on his blog:
One concrete bed for two men, one concrete toilet in the center, ants and spiders crawling over the walls, feces and urine staining the floor and bed, no lights and only a small window that let an outside street lamp light shine through. I was not offered a pillow or a blanket, nor was I given any water. I would not eat or drink for the next 24 hours.
Are you a fan of flying vs. driving this summer? (Courtesy Ceo1O17/Flickr)
A couple months agowe theorized that no one would be taking road trips this summer due to high gas prices. Turns out, we might have been wrong.
According to the Royal Bank of Canada, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, their U.S consumers are feeling better about the economy—and they want to travel. Thanks in part to a recent dip in gas prices, 67 percent of the respondents said they were planning on driving to their summer vacation spot—up 8 percent over 2010—while 34 percent plan to fly domestically (up from 26 percent in 2010). The amount of respondents planning to travel internationally was up 5 percent over 2010 for a total of 17 percent. (Chances are, those people wouldn't be driving anyway.) The price of travel is still a main concern though, with almost half of the respondents admitting to an overall scaling back on vacation plans.
I'm still figuring out my summer travel plans, but a flight to New Orleans for a girls' getaway has already been booked. Chances are I'll be flying (hopefully internationally) for another trip. So I'm part of the 34 percent and the 17 percent. But what about you: flyâ¦or drive?
As New Yorkers, we like to think we set the trends. Yet there was one thing this city didn't have that most other major cities already feature: bike–sharing. But pack your helmets—starting this summer, locals and travelers alike will easily be able to take a two–wheeler for a spin.
The Citi Bike program will include 10,000 bikes in 600 locations around Manhattan and Brooklyn. The locations are still being worked out, but it looks like a good number of docking stations will be set up in high–traffic areas (like Columbus Circle at the southwest corner of Central Park) and transit hubs (outside Port Authority Bus Terminal). Of course, just like everything else in Manhattan, the rentals are not cheap, even with branded sponsorship by Citibank. A 24–hour membership is $9.95, with the first half hour of each ride free (pricing from there is $4 if you keep the bike for an hour, $13 for an hour and a half, and $25 for two hours).
Compare that toBoston, where a 24–hour membership is half the price of New York's system, with the first 30 minutes free. In Montreal, a 24–hour membership costs about $7 (the first half hour is also free). Chattanooga, Tennessee even beat NYC to the punch by launching their bike–sharing program last month, with a 24–hour membership costing $6—and the first full hour of your ride is included in the membership cost. I planned on wrapping up this list by making the point that the only place more expensive then New York, in terms of most things, is London. I was shocked to see that the cycle hire programthere is only 1 GBP (about $1.60) for a 24–hour membership! It can be inferred that heavy underwriting by sponsor Barclays keeps cost down.
I've lived in New York for a dozen years and have never biked, mostly because I am petrified of car doors being flung open and taxi drivers who take red lights as just a suggestion. But I'm tempted to take one of these for a spin (bring your own helmet).
What about you? Would you be intimidated by renting a bike in a strange city, or does that sound like a great way to see the sites?
If a hotel like this is unusually cheap for your travel dates, given its pricing history, DealAngel will let you know. (Courtesy Fr Antunes/Flickr)
DealAngel is a new website for travelers who want an independent source to vouch for the value of a hotel deal. It promises to tip you off when there's a chance to stay in a four-star hotel at deep savings or see hotels that are surprisingly available for under $100 a night.
DealAngel ranks available hotel deals in major cities as a "Great Deal," a "Good Deal," an "OK Deal," "Not a Deal," or a "Rip-Off" when compared with the hotel's rate history, the going trend for comparable hotels in the neighborhood, and other factors. The site also provides the standard information, such as a star rating and a review-based rating.
If you see something you like, you can click through to buy from one of about 30 booking engines. Recent find: In Dallas, the Warwick Melrose was available in mid-June for $135 a night, after taxes and fees, via booking site Hotel.info.
DealAngel spotlighted the rate, ranking it as one of the best in Dallas for that travel date, calculating that travelers could save $56 off by booking the deal in light of historical rates and the going prices of other comparable hotels in the market. A quick glance showed that the four-star hotel had high user-ratings from travelers (4.5 out of 5 stars from more than 400 reviews) and many promising amenities.
While helpful, DealAngel does have a major drawback: The site is new and doesn't cover enough cities yet, sticking mostly to the largest US destinations. But the company says it will expand to other cities abroad as well as smaller towns in the US.
Another problem: The site partners with some lesser known hotel booking companies, such as Hotel.info. Not all travelers will feel comfortable booking a hotel stay through a site they may not have heard of. But no one says you have to follow through on the booking link. You could use DealAngel's information to see if you can find the same price deal at your favorite travel booking site instead.
Lastly, a word about DealAngel's concept of sorting deals by "value" according to data. It isn't the freshest idea. Bing Travel has had a Rate Indicator for about five years, and year-old Google Hotel Finder lets you sort hotels on a map to find ones that are priced 50 percent below the norm. That said, DealAngel does a much better job than Bing or Google at making it easy to understand its ranking of the best hotel values at a destination. You can easily find your way around the site, grasp what you're seeing, and quickly book a hotel.
All in all, it's nice to see another website try to do the "heavy sifting," so to speak, for travelers.
Jacki Penn and her mother, Marcy, know all too well that booking a hotel room can be a drawn-out affair. Marcy, 66, qualifies for senior discounts and member rates from AAA, the American Automobile Association. On her recent search, Expedia fetched a short list of deals for an overnight from their Worthington, Ohio, home, but then Marcy then had to check with each hotel see if any might have a better deal for seniors and AAA members.
Jacki intervened when she heard about Room 77, a hotel-booking engine. A month ago, Room 77 added a tool that lets users compare the going online rates for hotels with AAA-member rates and senior rates. She found Expedia offering a night in early June at the Hilton Chicago O'Hare Airport for $159, while AAA listed the same room for the same night for $129—18 percent less.
Room 77 is the first site to clearly and thoroughly list AAA rates and senior discounted rates alongside prices available to the public. The site covers tens of thousands of hotels without annoying pop-up ads or other gimmicks. The discounts it quotes are provided by other organizations, not itself. For instance, many senior discounts are available to members of AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons. Other senior discounts are provided by hotel chains directly.
Don't assume that AAA-member rates and senior discounts will always give you the best deal. In a dozen trial searches, Travelocity recently delivered better rates for the same room on the same day than the AAA-discount rates as seen on AAA's own website. Interestingly, AAA members may qualify for money back from the auto club in such situations. AAA touts a 110 Percent Best Rate Guarantee on selected "Save Rate" hotels are the lowest available. AAA says:
"If you find a lower rate on another website for the same room, at the same hotel, on the same dates, within 24 hours of making your booking with us, we guarantee you that we'll match it plus pay you 10 percent of the difference in price."
To make a claim for money back, fill out AAA's online request form.
What about Room 77? Yes, you may want to add it to the list of sites you check for deals. That said, it's not perfect. Case in point: Expedia, the country's biggest travel site, has a much broader selection of properties in the US and abroad than Room 77, among other differences. As always, you need to check out than one travel site to boost your chance of nabbing the best deal.
Clarification, added May 15: Room 77 is both an online travel agency (meaning it will book a hotel room on your behalf) and a metasearch site (it will refer you to other companies for booking the room). About 150,000 hotels are bookable through both Room 77 directly and referrals to other sites. In comparison, Expedia offers more than 200,000 hotels directly through itself. But Room 77 also offers an additional 50,000 hotels only through referrals to partner companies, giving what it says is a comparable breadth of listings to Expedia.
The bottom line: "tens of thousands" on Room 77 offer AAA and Senior rates, according to the site.
There are two types of social networks out there—groups of people that you know from real life (Facebook, LinkedIn) and groups of like-minded folks that you've never met before in your life (TripAdvisor, IgoUgo).
The former operates on the assumption that you trust your nearest and dearest more than a group of strangers, the latter that the wisdom of the crowds is greater than the sum of its parts.
I don't know about you, but I certainly do place more trust in my friends—as you might expect, I tend to have a fair amount in common with my friends, and if they say a restaurant or a hotel is good, I'm likely to agree. That said, while I do have a pretty well-traveled, international set of friends, they haven't been everywhere I want to go, so I find myself relying on a combination of strangers and friends to plan my itinerary.
Of course, there is always the possibility that even as I'm planning my trip to Peru I might have forgotten that my friend Susan used to live in Lima. Not to fear, there are tools that make sure that I don't forget about Susan. Trippy is one of them—the app, which Sean O'Neill wrote about last week—analyzes all of your friends' posts, determines which ones might have the most relevant advice for your trip, and then posts a query directly on their wall asking for travel advice. It's not the only company to do this either—Uptake, among others, also uses an algorithm to identify friends who might know your destination and to ask them for advice.
Last year, Bing partnered with Facebook so that when you sign in and search for a city it shows you all of your friends who have lived in city (and what they like in that city).
As you can see, it's getting easier to find friends who could provide advice. My question is: which of these types of networks do you find more useful? Are you more likely to trust advice that comes from your friends? Or do you think that hundreds of people can't be wrong? Or do you use both networks? Vote in our poll or tell us below.
Sorry, Facebook: You're just not good enough at helping users organize and show off their photos, especially their travel photos.
Sure, Facebook, people upload 250 million pictures to you every day on average. You're far and away the most popular place on the Internet for storing and sharing photos. But that huge mass of photos is part of the problem. It makes for too many images to sort through.
One pet peeve: Why oh why, Facebook, do you organize photos by album? To track down a photo, users have to click through lots of albums, or else scroll down the full "photos and videos of you" section, ordered by year. You really need to come up with smarter and more flexible ways to sort through photos.
Luckily, there are some free tools out there to help people find, organize, and show off their favorite travel shots—plus the photos of one's friends and family.
(Courtesy Pictarine)
Pictarine Problem it solves: Finding and organizing all of your photos when they're scattered across all the services you use (Facebook, Shutterfly, Flickr, Instagram, etc.). Biggest perk: Not only can you pull all of your photos into one place, you can easily create new sets, and see and comment on your friends' and family members' photos. Details: Use your e-mail address to create a free account, and then give Pictarine permission to pull photos from up to 15 social services you may belong to. The site orders your images in timelines (with your relevant photos from, say, Facebook and Flickr intermingled properly, lets you quickly download your favorite photos as backups on your hard drive, and allows you to share slide shows (called playlists) with friends.
Jetpac Problem it solves: Seeing travel photos shot by you and your friends in a pretty format, like a travel magazine that only features photos and travel tips from your friends and family members. Biggest perk: No commitment. You can get full use of the service almost instantly. Details: Jetpac collects, for your eyes only, the public travel photos and locations that you and your friends have shared on Facebook and displays them on the iPad in a stunning way. Beyond photo viewing, Jetpac's other features include a summary service that estimates how many countries your friends have visited and other interesting facts.
Pixable Problem it solves: Photos your friends upload on Facebook can get lost in the shuffle Biggest perk: It requires no commitment, no sign-up, and it works quickly and seamlessly with your existing Facebook account. Details: Pixable aims to become your "photo inbox." Just as you check your email for written messages and check your Facebook "top stories" feed for quick updates, Pixable hopes to become the site you check to see photos from people you like.
The site pulls the photos of people you follow on Facebook onto a separate page in a Pinterest-style format. The format allows you to easily comment on the photos, with your comments and likes showing up on your friends' Facebook pages. But the advantage of using Pixable is that photos you may have missed because they didn't appear in "top news" or you missed your news feed for a few days are all collected here. Pixable also works for following shots from friends and contacts who use Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, and other services.
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It Would Be Wonderful if TSA Critics Had Proposals for Preventing Terrorism in the Skies
In my former life as a young lawyer, I used to hear the advice of experienced litigators as to what you should do if your case was weak on the facts and weak on the law. In that circumstance, I was told, "You yell like hell." Â That apparently is the strategy of the several readers who have thus far responded with comments to my blog of several days ago, in which I welcomed the thoroughness shown by TSA agents at airports in fulfilling their responsibility to prevent terrorists from boarding planes with explosives on their person. The TSA's goal and their duty, we should always remember, is to keep the rest of us from dying in a plane crash. Â The responses -- all but one of them -- have thus far consisted of sheer invective (defined in the dictionary as "abusive language, vituperation"), descending to a level lower than I for one have seen. Â Rather than respond to such outrage, I should like to suggest an experiment. I should like to ask the critics to do something positive, to suggest how they would replace the TSA and with what. Are they actually suggesting that we should simply board planes in the future without undergoing any security checks at all? (Who among us would feel easy about doing that?) They we should rely entirely on counter-intelligence personnel working away from airports? What about the suicide bombers that aren't apprehended by C.I.A. agents before they reach an airport? Are they suggesting that racial profiling would do the trick? Â Are they suggesting we replace federal employees with private persons earning the minimum wage? Â In light of the photographs that have been published of Al Qaeda's earlier use of padded, long-john underwear covering arms, legs and torsos with pouches of explosives, are they actually claiming that pat-downs serve no purpose, and can be dispensed with? Â What in the world do they suggest we do? Dispense with security checks altogether? Replace caution with sheer bravado? Simply take our chances? Become brave Uncle Sams who simply stroll into airports and challenge the world's terrorists to take down our planes? What are their positive recommendations? Can they compose a comment or two in which they actually set forth how they would replace the TSA with something more effective? Â So let the critics weigh in with something positive. Let them put up or quiet down.
Pauline Frommer's Springtime Visit to France Was Filled with New Sights and Experiences
Until recently, I have not known anyone who has ever visited the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. In fact, I had scarcely heard of it. An impressive, two-wing structure given over to temporary exhibits of far-our art (including a great deal of video art), it has been in existence, as best I know, for no more than a decade (the east wing, a separate Museum of Modern Art, is older), and has been generally overlooked by the many travel writers who have penned guidebooks to Paris.  But it deserves greater attention. My daughter Pauline returned this past week from a stay in Paris, full of enthusiasm for the Palais de Tokyo's current display of anthropological subjects captured in abstract oils. And she was similarly impressed by the museum's unusual and intriguing schedule of daily exhibition hours: from noon until midnight. This means that visitors can have a compelling evening activity in Paris for the reasonable outlay of â¬8, the museum's price of admission.  Apart from this novel addition to the city's famed art scene, Pauline was impressed by the number of one-day cooking schools available to the English-speaking visitor. Apparently, such instruction is presented in both French and English during the fall/winter/spring, and then entirely in English during the tourist-heavy summer months. At the more than 30 such schools in Paris, at least three of them -- Cook 'n With Class, La Cuisine de Paris, and Cucina di Terresa -- permitted students to attend simply for a few hours on one day, and thus to hone their skills at a limited number of dishes. Pauline raved about the heavenly vegetarian cuisine that was prepared at Cucina di Terresa, and although the cost of one-day's attendance was a stiff â¬80, that was for three hours of instruction and also included eating a full dinner.  A highlight of her stay was a walking tour of the Tuileries Gardens conducted by the impressive, Europe-wide (many cities) Context Travel (www.contexttravel.com), whose highly-intellectual walking tours are led by Ph.D.-level guides and deal with profound subjects of cultural and historical importance, in this case associated with Paris. Astonishingly enough, when 12 persons arrived for this particular tour, they were divided into two groups of six persons apiece, each with their own individual guide, so that the locale would not be demeaned by an overly-numerous group of tourists. Pauline's guide was herself a director of a distinguished group of artistic conservators whose office is in the Louvre. The other tour was led by an American who is pursuing a graduate degree in art history in Paris. You make advance reservations for these tours by accessing the Context website listed above.  Because she was in Paris on Sunday, May 6, the day of the French presidential elections, Pauline learned about the outcome from the highly-excited wait staff of a restaurant where she was having dinner. She immediately rushed by metro to the Place de la Bastille (jail of the ancien regime that was demolished, and its staff wiped out, on July 14, 1789, at the start of the French Revolution), where enthusiasts of French-President-Elect Francois Hollande were gathered to hear his victory speech later that evening. And in the run-up to that event, she partied with an immense crowd of mainly-young people shouting "Vive la France!" "Vive Hollande!"  The joys of travel. A springtime trip to France brought her such memorable encounters.
Al Qaeda's Underwear Bomb Plot to Bring Down a Passenger Airplane Makes Objections to TSA Pat-Downs a Bit Ridiculous
For many months the Internet has been full of smug comments about the efforts of TSA agents to ensure aviation security. Can you imagine? they'd sneer. Grandmothers in wheelchairs have been patted down. Elderly gentlemen have had their trousers, and the legs within them, examined for explosives. All of us have been inconvenienced, or had our privacy invaded, by these overly zealous federal employees. Â Now, with the news out of Yemen about an attempted Al Qaeda plot to pack explosives into underwear pouches, those sarcastic criticisms of the TSA's misplaced zealotry seem a bit weak, don't they? It seems undeniable that the world's terrorists are still hell-bent on bringing down U.S.-bound or U.S.-originating airplanes with "undetectable" explosives. And I for one will be grateful for the half-hour delays in boarding flights that are caused by TSA agents patting down the arms, legs, and torsos of passengers. Â I wonder whether the authors of these caustic anecdotes about TSA extremism will lapse into silence in the days ahead. And though I fully expect them to persist in their smug arrogance about the foolishness of TSA procedures, or about claims that full-body scanners are an expensive waste, I hope that all of us will read their renewed criticism with the careful analysis that such diatribes should receive. Let's hope that in the days ahead, TSA uses pat-down procedures even more frequently and extensively than before.
School Is "in" for Summer Travelers Who Want Something Different
You're undoubtedly aware that I'm greatly in favor of learning vacations, the summer interludes when you return to the equivalent of your college days, to the liberal arts. The two outstanding vacations of that sort are the Oxford Experience at Oxford University in England, and the Cambridge University International Summer School in Cambridge, England. But nearly all the most popular courses in those two summer programs have been full since April, as I had occasion to learn this past week. Â But that leaves two U.S. learning vacations that are both the full equivalent of anything England has to offer. Â One of them is Cornell's Adult University in Ithaca New York. Its one-week courses -- and you can stay for either one, two, three or four weeks -- run from July 8 to August 4, are attended by every sort of person, include all three meals daily, an afternoon cocktail hour, and cover subjects ranging from classical music to wine tasting and the literary works of the Bronte Sisters. There are literally dozens of different courses, all on the Cornell campus, with lodgings in an ultra-modern student residence. It's one of the most exhilarating summer vacations -- I gloried in it last summer -- and you can learn more by going to a website for Cornell's Adult University (www.sce.cornell.edu/cau). Â And then there's an equally profound series of one-week summer vacations at St. John's College, which has two campuses -- one in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the other in Annapolis, Maryland. Both of them run summer sessions for adults -- learning without examinations, without grades, simply pursued for the love of learning, and involving the reading and discussion of the great books of the Western tradition. The Santa Fe session runs for three weeks from July 8 to July 27, the Annapolis session runs for one week from June 4 to June 8. And you can learn more by googling "summer classics" at St. John's.
Summer is the Peak Time for Travel Scams: Watch out for Fraud
You've just turned on your computer to access your e-mail, when suddenly you're confronted with an immediate emergency. Your grandson aged 19, or else a friend in his fifties, or your former assistant at the corporation for which you worked, is sending you an urgent, electronic plea for help. They are either in a foreign hospital, with a slightly disabling ailment, or in a foreign jail -- in Paris, let's say -- for having inadvertently violated a traffic rule. And they can't get out of either the hospital or jail without paying a bill of seven hundred and fifty dollars. Can you please wire the money? Â So help me, I actually received such a plea for help less than two years ago. And I came close to wiring the money until I first had the sense to attempt to verify the claim. It wasn't easy. The criminal who concocted the scheme -- and that person must have sent the plea to at least fifty different persons in one day -- had obtained amazingly realistic information about the identity of my grandson, friend or acquaintance from various social media sites where that information had been posted for all to see. The popularity of Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, and the easy access to personal information appearing on those sites, has greatly expanded the opportunities to use common travel predicaments as the setting for scams. Â I've now heard of numerous people who have received these summertime appeals for help, supposedly sent by a friend who was traveling in Europe or Southeast Asia. And I know of well-meaning sorts who have actually wired the money. Â Travel scams are on the rise. They are skyrocketing in number and in size. They used to be confined to offers of free trips or stays that actually required attendance at heavy-handed solicitations to buy time-shares. But the people selling time-shares are pikers when compared with the crooks who are now dominating the travel scene. Â The lesser form of scams involves the use of robo-calls. Your telephone rings, you pick up the receiver, and in quick order you first hear the sound of seagulls, then of waves breaking on the shore, then various bars of maritime-like music, and then the stentorian speech of a gravelly-voiced announcer saying: "This is your captain speaking and I'm inviting you on a cruise -- a free-of-charge cruise". Â You ultimately pay the small amount of taxes and fees associated with that cruise -- the actual sailing is supposedly free of charge -- and find yourself confined to the deck of a ferry traveling from a port in eastern Florida to the Bahamas, a "cruise" of about two hours. You don't receive a cabin. The small amount you've paid for phony fees and taxes is actually triple the size of a ticket for deck passage that you could have bought on the very same ferry. Â The scams currently on view in the world of travel are endlessly ingenious. Some of them tell you that you are the lucky winner of a contest -- that you will be receiving a free vacation simply for paying a registration fee. The reason so many people succumb to these phony announcements is that there actually are legitimate contests, and some people are correctly chosen as winners. But those people receive a registered letter announcing they have won -- and not a recorded phone call. The receipt of a registered letter is perhaps the only persuasive evidence that a contest is on the up-and-up. Â Beyond that, the would-be traveler must simply bear in mind the ancient adage: There is no such thing as a free lunch. In this time of travel scams, it's more important than ever to be constantly guarded and alert.
Summer Deals, Pt. 2: China on a Tour
Now for the same amount of money that you'd pay for a two-week Mediterranean cruise, you can also go to China. Such companies as ChinaSpree (www.chinaspree.com), China Focus (www.chinafocustravel.com), Pacific Delight Tours (www.pacificdelighttours.com), or Ritz Tours (www.ritztours.com) are charging around $2,500 (reflecting a cash discount or an early-purchasing decision), and also including round-trip air to China all the way from New York or San Francisco; they are charging that little for a virtually all-inclusive two week tour of several Chinese cities, including air, food, sightseeing, lodging, everything. Â China is no longer as cheap as it was last year. The Chinese currency has recently risen by as much as 8% and Chinese workers are demanding higher incomes. But again, when you consider that you can fly there all the way from San Francisco, and for just a bit more from New York, included in the price, you find that a China vacation is still a very real bargain. Â By way of a side comment, it's possible, too, that heavy tourism to China, and the constant presence of foreign tourists there, is a factor that keeps the political system a bit more open than it might otherwise be -- although some of you may disagree with that claim.
Want to See Europe for Cheap This Summer? Try a Cruise
It's just a few days until summer, the high season for travel, and yet too many of us are still uncertain as to where we plan to travel during that customary vacation period. I thought I'd contribute a few thoughts. Â Currently, the single best value in travel are cruises of the Mediterranean. If you will go to the websites of any cruise discounter, you'll be amazed at the low rates for one-week and two-week sailings of that storied sea. Â The reasons are several -- an unsettled political climate in several of the countries lining the Med, the recent tragedy of the Costa Concordia -- but primarily the general notion that the cost of trans-Atlantic airfares to reach the embarkation ports is simply unaffordable. Â Let's start with the cost of the cruises themselves. If you'll go to a typical cruise discounter, like Vacations To Go (www.vacationstogo.com), and opt for the Mediterranean and a cruiseline like Royal Caribbean, and seven nights as the duration of the cruise, you'll have difficulty finding a single departure costing as much as a thousand dollars per person. In fact, you'll find numerous departures in June for $499 and in July for $599 per person. Â And if you'll search instead for a two week cruise, and type in the words Celebrity Cruises, you'll find numerous departures of such upscale ships, on 12-night cruises in June, for as little as $849 and $999 -- that's as little as $80 a day. You'll find two-week cruises in July for under $100 a day. (And those July prices will undoubtedly come down even more as we approach that month.) Â In addition to cruises on the large cruiseships, you'll also find spectacular bargains on the smaller ships carrying only 200 to 400-or-so passengers (a website for those smaller cruiseships is SmallShips.travel. This summer sees a buyer's market for all ships in the Med, large and small. Â Now it's true that to reach the Mediterranean this summer, you'll need to buy a round-trip airfare for about $1,300 per person. So your total cost for a one-week cruise will be about $1,900, even $1,800, and your total cost for a two-week cruise will be about $2,400. Â And you'll want to keep in mind that for a just a bit more, you can add on a several night stay in the colorful Mediterranean city in which you start or end your trip -- a city like Barcelona, or Venice, or Rome or Malaga -- and thus you'll have a longer-stay vacation for a totally affordable cost.
Would-Be Tourists from "Friendly" Countries Must Apply Electronically for Permission to Travel to the U.S.
 The citizens of 36 countries (basically, the nations of western Europe and such other friendly places as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea) don't need visas to enter the United States as short-stay tourists. They don't have to pay the forbidding $140 per person that we charge other foreigners simply to apply for a visa. And that leaves those lucky supporters of the U.S. utterly free to visit the U.S.A., doesn't it?  It doesn't. Unknown to most Americans, the citizens of those 36 visa-waiver countries need to file an English-language, computer-generated, electronic request to visit the U.S. -- something known as an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) -- on the eve of any trip here. And they have wait for an official response of approval before they can actually board the plane to come here. They must also pay $14 while doing so.  And what does their ESTA request consist of? It involves filling out a comprehensive questionnaire, in which the applicant answers such questions as to whether they are a terrorist or other known criminal, whether they have ever been accused of fraud, whether they suffer from a communicable disease or from mental or physical disorders, the address where they will be staying in the U.S., and so on. The questionnaires are uploaded to the Department of Homeland Security, which obviously lacks the resources to ascertain the validity of these answers. It is obvious that the 19 hijackers of planes that flew into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, could in an hour's work, have responded to that questionnaire in a manner that would not have aroused the slightest suspicion.  It will take you at least a half hour, provided you're a fast reader and totally fluent in English, to read the explanation of the application that appears on the official website of the ESTA program (https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/). It will take you at least another half hour, perhaps longer, to fill out the application. And applications, obviously, require not simply an understanding of English but some ease with use of a computer, which doubtless many would-be visitors fail to have (they can, of course, enlist a relative or friend to help them with the burdensome questionnaire).  And now consider the job of reviewing these questionnaires. Even at the depressed level of foreign visitors to the U.S., several tens of thousands of such ESTA's must reach the Department of Homeland Security each day. Who reads them? Who analyzes them? Has the Department hired the several hundred employees needed to examine the applications?  "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad," are the words of the ancient Latin adage. It is simply loony to believe, in my opinion, that the Electronic System for Travel Authorization helps protect the United States, impedes a single would-be terrorist from coming here. Yet Congress passed the measure and the Department of Homeland Security seeks to implement it.  Imagine if you were compelled to fill our a questionnaire in French upon contemplating a visit to France. How many would-be visitors to France would be deterred from attempting the trip?  The new tourist agency assigned to increase tourism to the U.S. would be well advised to petition members of Congress to repeal this ill-considered measure. It is an exercise in folly, an example of shooting oneself in the foot, on the part of a nation that could benefit tremendously from the billions of dollars in income that additional incoming tourism could bring, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of additional jobs that increased tourism would generate.  (And by the way, if a name check of the questionnaire could enable the Department of Homeland Security to prohibit travel by a person on the no-fly list, that information is already available to the government when the airlines submit their passenger lists to the relevant authorities).  The effect of ESTA? It is to bewilder or intimidate a great many would-be visitors to the U.S. It is, again, an exercise in sheer folly.
Airline Mergers Should Push the U.S. to Improve its Rail Systems
The most important current news in travel is the strong possibility that American Airlines may merge with U.S. Airways as a result of the bankruptcy proceedings recently initiated by the former. That's a goal avidly pursued by the chairman of U.S. Airways and frequently discussed by industry figures, and it probably means that the United States is now on its way to having as few as four important airlines. Â How can that be? Well, consider: United Airlines has now merged with Continental, Delta has merged with Northwest, Air Tran has merged with Southwest, and American may merge with U.S. Air. What will inevitably result from all this are much higher airfares, especially on the extensive and previously competitive routes serviced by American and U.S. Airways, and a possible reduction in the frequent flyer privileges had by passengers of both airlines. Â One response, from members of the public, might (and should) be a renewed effort to increase the size and efficiency of Amtrak, to set this nation on a course towards an effective rail system. Trains are the most efficient user of fuel per passenger and airlines are among the least efficient. If we are to achieve energy independence, we must attend to the needs of our railroads, replacing some part of our reliance on planes. Only the most committed ideologues could deny that proposition. Â There is some small progress on the road to high-speed rail, as in California, where planners have now reduced the proposed cost of the San Diego-to-San Francisco high-speed rail route by $30 billion, and where work is about to begin on the first segment of that line. In Italy, the wealthy Ferrari company has announced it will proceed to operate its own high-speed trains on the rail tracks capable of accommodating such vehicles in Italy. Ferrari will soon provide an example of how even private interests may benefit from high-speed rail lines constructed by the government of that nation. Â
Brand USA Just Doesn't Get Why People Aren't Coming to the U.S.
I've just viewed the one-minute TV commercial that Brand America will soon begin running in several foreign countries to attract tourism to the United States. Based on a song performed by the daughter of Johnny Cash, who presents its lyrics entirely in English (that's right, English, yet for foreign consumption), the commercial consists of a montage of familiar, homely scenes of life and nature in the United States -- forests, rivers, people enjoying themselves at outdoor barbecues, mountains, urban streets, kids playing -- all presented as if foreigners didn't possess similar forests, rivers, outdoor barbecues, mountains, urban streets, kids playing. Not a single iconic attraction appears in the commercial -- neither the Statue of Liberty nor the Grand Canyon -- and various masterminds of advertising apparently believe that this is the way to generate a passionate desire to visit the U.S.A. Â Unlike many other countries, the United States is constantly revealed and shown to the world's population in our Hollywood films. I don't think it's a lack of familiarity with our nation that has depressed our incoming tourist figures. I believe there are millions of additional foreign residents who would like to vacation here if they could more easily obtain visas to do so. We now charge many of them $140 per person simply to apply for a U.S. visa, and require a personal interview in a consulate that may be hundreds of miles from where they live. Even to citizens of visa-waiver countries (who can come here without visas), we require that they electronically transmit a desire to do so in advance of leaving home. The barriers to incoming tourism are many and varied, and I would think that Brand America might be better advised to concentrate on those immediate means of permitting more foreigners to spend vacations in the U.S.
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