A Homeward Odyssey
The good, the bad & the unexpected during a long journey When I headed for Israel for the Society of American Travel Writers Freelance Council meeting, I knew the journey would be long, requiring an overnight near Newark International Airport (EWR). El Al is the only airline I can think of whose transatlantic flights leave the East Coast in the early afternoon, [...]
Chris Elliott’s New How-To Travel Book Free
Christopher Elliott is an award-winning consumer advocate on behalf of travelers, writing magazine features, a syndicated newspaper column, a website and more. His new eBook series called The Travel Troubleshooter is currently “in beta,” a version that is unformatted and therefore unpretty But to me, content is king, and each one is chock full of advance to make [...]
Jerusalem’s 9/11 Memorial Quiet & Uncrowded
By the time the World Trade Center memorial was dedicated with great fanfare on September 11, 1911, in Manhattan,, the considerably more modeet 9/11 Living Memorial a few miles outside of Jersulem had been open for nearly two years. Of course, it is thousands of miles from the World Trade Center. The memorial is a bronze depiction of a of an unfurling American flag on a granite base that includes a piece of steel from the WTC rubble.
Flagler Railroad Centennial
A century ago, in the days of railroad expansion, oilman and hotelier Henry Morrison Flagler built an over-water railroad from southern Florida to Key West. Today, people drive about 100 miles over a causeway to Key West. A couple of days ago, Key West — so changed and still so compelling.
‘Costa Concordia’ Catastrophe & Insurance
Thinking travel? Think travel insurance Costa Concordia’s’precariously perch. I am in Israel right now, and whenever I am in my room at el Aviv’s DAN Panorama Hotel, I turn on the television, I watch a news network — sometimes MSNBC, sometimes BBC, sometimes on a European channel broadcast in a language that I can understand. [...]
A Night at the Worst Eastern
I arrived at Newark International Airport (EWR) at 10:55 p.m. with a reservation at the Best Western Newark Airport West. Its website boasts that it is a “stunning Newark hotel .” Before I even reach the hotel, I dealt with incomplete airport signage at baggage claim and elsewhere in Terminal B (just named by frommers.com as [...]
Cruise Ship Runs Aground & Casualties Abound
Costa Concordia grounding results in at least 6 fatalities The “Titanic” sank in the North Atlantic in winter a century ago, but the Italian “Costa Concordia” with all modern technology available foundered under far gentler conditions. She ran aground Friday evening around dinner time near the island of Giglio off the Tuscan coast. She suffered major hull [...]
Quebec’s Ice Hotel is Open for the Season
The ice is nice in seasonal hotel in Quebec The Hôtel de Glace (Ice Hotel in English) in Quebec City is open for the 2012 season, its 11th. One great thing about a structure that melts each spring and is rebuilt again the following winter is that it can be redesigned and re-imagined every year. The [...]
New Gondola Planned for Vail
From gondola to VistaBahn to gondola in exactly 50 years Vail Mountain opened in 1962 with a small gondola and a couple of chairlifts along U.S. Highway 6 in the middle of the Colorado Rockies. Back in the day, it debuted as one the country’s most extensive ski areas, and it has never lost its [...]
29th Anniversary of Kilauea’s Eruption
Lava has been erupting from Hawaiian volcano for nearly three decades & still flowing strong My friend Jessica Ferracane, who was not working for the National Park Service when I saw her in June but is doing so now, just reminded her Facebook friends that today is the 29th anniversary of the beginning of Kīlauea volcano’s [...]
