Blogs

The Lure of Dark Tourism: Murder and Mayhem

Places like Cambodia’s Killing Fields,  Auschwitz, New York’s Ground Zero, or the Wolf’s Lair where Hitler barely survived an assassination attempt in 1944, exert a powerful pull on travelers.

But what’s the fascination?

Professor John Lennon of Glasgow University wrote a book exploring exactly the question, why do we want to travel to dark places: “Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster.”

The trend is so strong, The Atlantic Magazine  report

Normally I tend to shy away from places you might term "tourist traps." And Puerto Vallarta has certainly had its bread plenty buttered by tourism -- in fact, it seems that half the city is geared toward freespending gringos. And yet... there's no doubt that PV is one of Mexico’smost popular tourist magnets for a darn good reason. Several, actually – starting with its wide, wonderful beachfront on the crescent-shape Bahía de Banderas (North America’s second-largest bay). What makes Vallarta stan

IT'S NOT A CHEAP TICKET, BUT IT'S STILL A GOOD DEAL

“Premium Economy Class” is often an oxymoron, if not an outright lie. However, Air New Zealand's PE section in the big B777-300ER aircraft appears to be more premium than economy, so I was glad to try it out on an LAX-Auckland roundtrip.

The Premium Economy “space seats” in ANZ's B777s are big easy chairs that wrap around you so you're not thrown into an impromptu domestic arrangement with some stranger. Instead of reclining in the conventio

One important lesson I learned during my visit to St. Simons Island was how difficult it is to promote the use of locally sourced ingredients even in a region awash in native seafood, fruits, and vegetables. The more people seek out and demand better quality food, the easier and more cost-effective it will be for local purveyors to compete with mass produced mediocrity. The King and Prince, an historic resort on Georgia's coast is pulling out all the stops reaching out to local growers and culti

Hi all,

travelers to major cities want to take in excellent theater at bargain prices. If you're in NYC this weekend, you have got to check out this off-off Broadway piece at Astoria Performing Arts Center in Queens. Here's my review from The Queens Gazette newspaper:

A Hard Wall At High Speed: Powerful Play Hits Home 

 A scene from A Hard Wall at High Speed at the Astoria Performing Arts Center.

I don’t recall ever watching a play that had the audience glued to their seats

Billions Spent, But Are We Any Safer?


In its usual witty, acerbic but always readable content, FastCompany  looks at the Transportation Security Administration’s  huge expenditures on air travel since 9/11 in their efforts to keep us safe.

How huge is huge?

Fifty-six plus billion dollars spent on schemes and strategies that more of ten than not fall flat or never get off the ground.

But as the publication asks, who’s getting the money? And what is working?

On balance there seem to be more busts than

Occupy Business Class!

After more hours than I care to count sitting in the cookie cutter seats in economy class, I was pleasantly surprised today when Qatar airlines upgraded my wife and me to Business Class. I have not flown Business Class since I stopped working and an employer was buying my ticket. I had forgotten how much better it is to spend 7 hours in a fully reclining seat with incredibly good food and service beyond the pale.

The seat not only spread out to a flat bed, it vibrated.

The fl

 Yep, that’s right: I didn’t go see the hottest spot in Miami.  I stayed just south of Miami, right next to the University of Miami’s campus with a friend in graduate school there and didn’t even venture to one of the most talked about spots in all of Florida.  I guess this little blip shows that every city has two sides …at least.

                You may be familiar with associating yourself with a city that you may live near or outside of; I admit to doing this as my address reads Richmond, Vir

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year is upon us!

A blaze of festive lights and Yuletide decorations will soon adorn homes and buildings across the globe.

A very long tradition has the St. Nicholas day in Austria, on the 5^th and 6^th of December St. Nicholas (the good) and the “Krampus” (the evil) are going through the Gastein valley on this trational festival day in Austria. More than 100 “Passen” with St. Nicholas, Krampusse , one angel and a man with a basket on his back called “Gurzelträger” are going from house to house and thousands of people watch this spectacle LIVE in Gastein.

Here is a video!

My website

One of my favorite ways to travel while home in the States is to do some half-way planning, hop in the car, and hope for the best.  This is how my friend, Andy, and I took two and a half weeks of our summer in 2009.  We crammed two surfboards and what we thought would be enough clothing for two or so weeks in my Jeep. 

We planned out our trip to be as cheap as possible so the first stop came from Andy’s acceptance as a guest at his mom’s high school reunion.  So that meant the first le

Kangaroo Island, or ‘KI’, as it’s known locally, is more noted for what it hasn’t got than for what it has. Unlike mainland Australia, rabbits and foxes were never introduced, so the indigenous wildlife has less competition for survival.

Another thing the island doesn’t have is something a Scottish friend once called ‘The Way of the Island’. There’s no sense of being on an island; in many places, you can climb to a high point and see nothing but ‘bush’ in any direction.

That catches many visitors

TripAdvisor Plot Thickens: Second Charges Filed

The review giant seems reeling these days with legal and PR woes from all directions.

In the latest plot development, Hotelmarketing.com reports that a more serious complaint against TripAdvisor  has been lodged with the Advertising Standards Authority,  the UK organization charged with regulating advertising across all media.

The second probe, instigated by reputation management gadfly, Kwikchex  is now asking that all third parties using TripAdviso

Full Article with Pictures: Cruize Cast- Cruise Blog and Podcast

  On this cool morning in southern Alabama with no European trip on the immediate horizon, I am wishing I was in Florence. It is strange to have fallen in love with a city that is so different from where I come from, which contains delights that I didn't even know existed a few years ago, but I guess the saying is true "you can't choose who (or what) you love."

Travel writers always seem so worldly, like they have always known abou

A few short  weeks ago, I was transfixed and pleasantly taken aback by the spectacle of Ireland's prime minister Enda Kenny slamming the Catholic Church for encouraging and covering up pedophile priests for so many generations (and whoa, nelly, were the intrinsically disordered girls in the Vatican throwing hissy fits over that); more recently, Eire even withdrew its ambassador to the Vatican. I couldn't have asked for a more explicit example of how this country's come a long way, baby – once l

Iceland: Life on the Brink


Icelanders live on the edge.

In 1783 the Laki Volcano  in this glacier-covered country erupted in a violent and prolonged paroxysm, killing a fifth of the country's population.

For 10 months 30 billion tons of lava and sulfuric acid belched forth, creating a noxious haze that killed crops and livestock in Europe as it wound its deadly way west.

Some experts say it was this eruption that led to crop failures in distant France, setting the stage for the French Revolution

The quest for next year’s Yellow Jersey is going to be one steep ride.

It seems like just yesterday 34-year-old Cadel Evans assumed the highest step on the podium on the Champs-Elysees, becoming the first Australian to win the 2011 Tour de France title.

However, the Tour’s 99th edition just got one step closer after the announcement of the race’s 2012 routes at the convention center in Paris. The 2012 Tour de France will bring fiercer mountain climbs and longer time trials. With 9 flat stages, 5 m