Halloween graveyard tours and a graveyard joke

by Jamie Rhein on

There are haunted prison tours and haunted hotels to sleep in. Here is another way to traipse through some haunts for Halloween.

Graveyards that can seem peaceful during the day are perfect settings at night for finding chills and thrills. If there is a graveyard in a town or city near you, I bet there’s a tour. Regardless of the season, graveyards offer a span of history that includes triumph and sorrow. Each one hold clues and mysteries to the people who have lived before us.

Here’s a Halloween graveyard joke you can say when you are going past a graveyard: “How many people do you think are dead in there?”

(**Continue for answer and a sampling of graveyard tours.)

  • In Alexandria, Virginia, walk along the six blocks on the Ghosts & Graveyard lantern tour with a costumed guide who transports visitors to the 1800s through tales of ghosts and unsolved mysteries. The tour ends in the graveyard. Although Halloween inspired, it goes through November.
  • There are several ghost and graveyard tours in Nova Scotia. Several are offered year-round.
  • Ghosts and Gravestone Trolley Tours of Boston, Massachusetts goes through November 2. This tour is hosted by a 17th century gravedigger who tells tales of Boston’s murderous past. Two of Boston’s oldest graveyards are included.
  • The same company that offers the tour in Boston has similar tours in Savanah, Georgia and St. Augustine, Florida. The Website has a link to haunted tales and while you browse ghost type sounds put you in the mood.
  • In Charleston, South Carolina, there is a tour company that specializes in creepy, scary places. The Charleston Ghost and Graveyard Walking Tours brings people through graveyards where tales of love, loss and prominent people can be found.
  • San Antonio, Texas has several ghost tour options. Many included graveyards, whether you walk or take a vehicle. These tours are also offered year-round.
  • Like San Antonio, San Diego has several ghost tour options. Several include graveyards. If you scroll down the page, you’ll see many links for other ghost and graveyard tours throughout the United States.
  • To amp up a graveyard ghost tour, here’s one that combines a stay in a haunted hotel with a ghost and graveyard tour. This version is in Columbus, Ohio. The Lofts, a boutique hotel that was once a warehouse in the early 1900s has a ghost called “Lady of the Lofts. There’s a package deal that includes a night in the hotel, breakfast and two tickets to “The Haunted Columbus’s Best of 20 Years Bus Tour.” If that tour is sold out the Columbus Landmark’s Foundation has other ghost tours and guided visits through Greenlawn Cemetery. Greenlawn Cemetery is where humorist James Thurber is buried. Perhaps he’d appreciate the graveyard joke.

** Answer to graveyard joke: “All of them.”

This joke gets people every time. Here is the joke in its entirety if you forgot the question.

If you are passing by a graveyard say, using a voice that evokes the idea that you are looking for a number: “How many people are dead in there?”

Answer: “All of them.”

Europe’s most flown major airline? For now, it’s Lufthansa

by Jeffrey White on

The Association of European Airlines, which represents 35 (mostly major) carriers, came out this week with its report on airline performance, and not surprisingly it said that for most of the industry, passenger numbers were down significantly.

Not so at Germany’s flagship carrier Lufthansa, however. It’s seen passenger numbers increase a modest 4 percent from this time last year, according to the Associated Press, which is reporting on the AEA’s survey.

That means that right now among Europe’s major carriers, Lufthansa is ahead of the pack. British Airways saw passengers drop a hair more than 5 percent from a year ago, while Air France saw numbers hold more or less even.

Which major airlines are doing the worse? Alitalia, Spanair and Icelandair.

Italy’s national carriers, which declared bankruptcy in August, saw 25 percent fewer passengers on board this year than last. Spanair’s passenger numbers dropped 21 percent, and Icelandair’s dropped 12 percent.

“Fertility Clinic Tourism” on the Rise in India

by Josh Lew on

Relaxed regulations and cheap costs have made India a hotbed for in vitro fertilization (IVF). Couples looking to conceive through artificial means are coming from all over the globe to take advantage of these fertility services. The Indian Society for Assisted Reproduction (ISAR) claims that there are nearly 400 fertility clinics in the country. These were visited by 30,000 patients in the past year. According to some doctors, half of their patients come from overseas. And why not? Quality IVF procedures at a clinic in a major city like Mumbai cost about one-third of what they do in the US. Even after airfare, a couple stands to save thousands of dollars.

The boom means that there is a big demand for egg donors, who can earn between $200 and $1000 per donation. Medical tourism, in general, is on the rise in India. Elective procedures cost a fraction of what the do in the US and Europe and most top Indian doctors have been trained in Western medical schools, meaning their skills are on par with the best American and European surgeons. Because of these factors, India expects medical tourism to account for $2 billion in revenue by 2012.

Dine for charity at The Palm

by Jamie Rhein on

If you’re looking for a reason to splurge on a restaurant meal, here’s one. The Palm Restaurant group, as part of its aim to raise money for the non-profit organization Dress for Success, has a special menu for lunch and dinner through October 31.

If you order from the Fall for Success lunch or dinner menus, part of the proceeds will go to this charity that provides “economic independence of disadvantaged women.”

Menu items are creative and yummy. Ordering a meal isn’t required. There are appetizers, side dishes, salad and a desert if you’re on a tighter budget.

I’d go for the Parmesan Truffle fries for $8, or for a splurge the Nova Scotia Lobster Nachos for $18. Molten Chocolate cake is the desert offering. (Click here for the rest of the menu.)

The history of the restaurant is another reason to head here regardless of giving money to a worthy cause.

Although there are 25 Palm restaurant locations from Boston to L.A., and in Mexico City and San Juan, the Palm Group is still owned by the family who founded it. The original Palm Restaurant on 2nd Avenue in Manhattan, now a historic landmark opened its doors in 1926 as an Italian eatery featuring dishes from Parma Italy.

This restaurant is one of those famous places worth heading to for its history alone. Back when it first opened, the family couldn’t afford artwork so whenever local newspaper men came to eat, they were given a free plate of spaghetti in exchange for a drawing on the wall. The walls still boast the caricatures and cartoons of their efforts.

Here’s a detail that anyone who has traveled to another country and has struggled to say the name of a place correctly can relate to. The family really wanted the name of the restaurant to be Parma, but when applying for a business license the person who applied had an accent that made Parma sounded like Palm. Considering the restaurant’s expansion to California, perhaps this was unwittingly visionary.

Gadling Twitters Jetblue’s T5

by Grant Martin on

With all of this buzz that we’ve been hearing about the new Terminal 5 that JetBlue opened up in JFK this week, we just had to get down there and take a look.

So we sent one of our east coasters, Jerry Guo, out to check out the digs. He’ll be twittering his experience on Gadling’s feed where you can tune in, follow along, and salivate as Jerry checks out the sweet food court, marvels at the tall celings and hobknobs among the culture in the airport bars.

And ladies, ladies, please put your 8 x 10″ black and white glossies away. Mr. Guo will be busy absorbing his surroundings in a spongelike manner as soon as he sets foot in the building, so he won’t be able to sign any autographs for you. If you’d like your picture taken with Jerry, we’ll have a cardboard cutout of him at SXSW next year and you can snap a photo next to that.

Otherwise, you can stay tuned to the Gadling Twitter feed to keep up to snuff on Jerry’s thoughts of T5. He should be there around noon.