Video: Winter Time-Lapse Of America’s Southwest

by Kraig Becker on

If you’ve been reading Dave Seminara’s posts this week on winter hiking in Arches and Canyonlands National Park you probably already have some sense of just how spectacular this region of the U.S. actually is. But just in case you need a reminder, this beautiful time-lapse video from the American southwest will certainly do the trick. In addition to being filmed in the parks mentioned above, this short film was shot in a number of other great locations throughout Utah and Arizona, including Zion, Monument Valley and Horseshoe Bend.

At just two minutes and thirty-three seconds in length, it is a bit short, however, and by the end you’ll be left wanting more. Perhaps that is just the teaser you need to inspire your own journey to his breathtaking outdoor playground. If you haven’t been there yet, definitely add it to your list of places to visit.


“White Southwest Timelapse” from Zhuokang Jia on Vimeo.

Hotel News We Noted: January 18, 2013

by McLean Robbins on

Welcome to this week’s edition of “Hotel News We Noted,” where we round up the week’s best, most interesting and just downright odd news of note in the hospitality world. Have a tip? Send us a note or leave a comment below.

Hotels to Spot the Celebs: Washington, DC’s Hottest Inaugural Lobbies
It’s officially here: Washington is celebrating its 57th Presidential Inauguration on Monday, Jan. 21. We’ve already covered how hotels are prepping for inauguration and some of our favorite over-the-top packages, but what about the best places for people watching? We’d park ourselves at the Four Seasons’ Bourbon Steak or Seasons, Adour at the St. Regis, Off the Record at The Hay Adams, the Round Robin bar at The Willard, POV or J&G at the W, Blue Duck Tavern at the Park Hyatt, the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Georgetown, Quill at The Jefferson or West End Bistro at The Ritz-Carlton, Washington, DC. Washington Post’s Reliable Source is a great place to get the scoop on who is staying where this weekend … and who isn’t coming to town (Oprah, among others).

Tech-Free Trend: Leaving the Gadgets at Home
Could you go tech-free for a week or a weekend? Marriott seems to think so. They’re testing “Braincation Zones” at hotels across the Caribbean and Mexico, ABC News reports. This encourages guests to put down devices and truly relax. The article goes on to detail other hotels that encourage tech-free policies or tech-free zones. We’re totally inclined to put down our gadgets on vacation, but think that actually removing the ability to check email or make phone calls goes a bit far … we’d like the ability to make that choice on our own, thank you very much.

Hotel News of Note: QE2 to Become a Floating Hotel In Asia
Bloomberg Businessweek is reporting that the Queen Elizabeth 2, the former cruise ship that made waves in the luxury cruise space for more than 40 years is being converted to a floating hotel and will be docked in Asia. The property will open in 2014 and may move locations at some point, possibly to Dubai. How does the idea of staying in a floating hotel sound to you?

Hotel Openings: Tropicana Las Vegas
Hilton Honors members just found their next location for a Las Vegas vacation. The DoubleTree by Hilton has invested more than $200 million to renovate the 1,500-room, 35-acre resort. In celebration, Hilton is giving away monthly chances to win one million HHonors points as well as an ultimate Vegas vacation weekend on their Facebook page.

[Image Credit: ~MVI~ (running away from parties)]

Royal Institution In London Looking To Sell Its Historic Home

by Sean McLachlan on


The Royal Institution of Great Britain, one of London’s great scientific landmarks, may soon be moving.

The BBC reports that it’s putting its historic Mayfair property on the market with an asking price of £60 million ($96 million). The Royal Institution was founded in 1799 to promote scientific study and education. It hosts numerous lectures, a video channel, and there’s a museum dedicated to Faraday on site.

Michael Faraday’s 19th century experiments, many of which took place in the institution’s building, led to the practical use of electricity.

The institution has been in financial difficulty for several years and hoped to turn itself around with a major remodel. Unfortunately, the cost of doing that was not matched by new income and donations.

One scientist I spoke to who has lectured at the Royal Institution says that this announcement may be a cry for help to get more donations. I hope she’s correct. I wouldn’t want to lose such an important landmark in the middle of my favorite city.

[Photo courtesy Mike Peel]

Happy 100th: 15 Places To Celebrate Centennials In 2013

by Anna Brones on

A new year isn’t just the time to look ahead, it’s also the time to look back and commemorate. 2013 marks plenty of centennials, from the birth of civil rights activists to metro lines. Here is your chance to not only explore new destinations, but also learn a little bit about the past with a list of places that all have something worth celebrating this year.

If you’re looking to help celebrate a few centennials in 2013, look no further.

Glacier Park Lodge, Montana, USA
Opening to guests on June 15, 2013, the Glacier Park Lodge has become a focal point of the park. Built on the Blackfeet Reservation, the land was purchased from the Piegan, a tribe of the Blackfeet Nation, and at its opening, hundreds of Blackfeet Indians erected teepees around the lodge. Today it features 161 rooms and can accommodate up to 500 people.

National Museum of Fine Arts, Cuba
Located in Old Havane the National Museum of Fine Arts houses both a Cuban specific collection as well as a universal one, including ancient art from Egypt, Greece and Rome. The museum is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Tour de France, France
One hundred years of mountain stages, yellow jerseys and champagne finishes, Tour de France 2013 should be a momentous occasion. The centennial edition kicks off in Corsica on June 29, and in an attempt to celebrate the beauty of the country that is its namesake, the route is 100% in France, the first time in 10 years.
Washington State Parks, USA
If there ever was a time to take advantage of the outdoors in the Pacific Northwest, it’s this year. For Centennial 2013, explore the state’s extensive network of beautiful spaces, complete with yurts, rustic cabins and the occasional mountain goat.

Metro Line 8, Paris, France
Serving some of the City of Light’s most iconic stops like Invalides, Opera and Bastille, Métro Line 8 was the last line of the original 1898 Paris Metro plan. Opened on July 13, 1913 (one day before French independence day), it is the only Paris underground line to cross the Seine and the Marne above ground, via a bridge.

Grand Central Terminal, New York, USA
An iconic hub of travel, Grand Central Terminal in New York City is known for its Beaux-Arts architecture, and the pure romanticism of adventure that it induces. After almost a decade of renovation, on opening day on February 2, 1913, it welcomed over 150,000 people from all over the city. It’s no surprise that Grand Central Terminal has a year of events planned, and maybe it’s time we all took a commemorative train ride.

Soccer fields, USA
The U.S. Soccer Federation is celebrating its 100 years on the field with a variety of events throughout the year, but a special emphasis will be on the U.S. Women’s National Team’s matches, and the U.S. Men’s National Team’s campaign to qualify for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which means for soccer fans, there are plenty of places around the country to celebrate.

Konzerthaus, Vienna, Austria
Home to the Vienna Symphony, the Konzerthaus is a hub of classical music. With a goal of emphasizing both traditional and innovative music styles, it hosts several music festivals a year. In a season it hosts over 750 events, resulting in around 2,500 compositions.

Rosa Parks Museum, Montgomery, Alabama, USA
Civil rights activist Rosa Parks would have turned 100 this year, and in her honor the Rosa Parks Museum is coordinating the Rosa Parks 100th Birthday Wishes Project. They have been collecting words and inspiration from visitors and 1,000 will be chosen from the Montgomery area and 1,000 from around the state and country. Take part in the celebration on February 4, Parks’ birthday.

Bangladesh National Museum, Bangladesh
One of the largest museums in Southeast Asia, the Bangladesh National Museum started out as Dhaka Museum in 1913. Besides the standard collections of archaeology, classical art and natural history pieces that national museums are traditionally known for, it also illustrates the freedom struggle that ended in the liberation of Bangladesh.

Museo Teatrale alla Scala, Milan, Italy
Attached to the famous Scala Theater in Milan, the Museo Teatrale alla Scala holds over 100,000 works that relate to history, opera and ballet. In the hallways you’ll find musical instruments and portraits of great singers to have graced the theater. A must for any classical music or opera lover.

Edinburgh Zoo, Edinburgh, Scotland
The 82-acre Edinburgh zoo, is home to the UK’s only Giant Pandas, which are a huge hit with locals. They also have a Squirrel Monkey cam for your viewing pleasure. With over 1,000 animals, the zoo has an extensive list of activities to celebrate its 100th year.

Karachi Race Club, Pakistan
You rarely hear of people traveling to Pakistan for the horses, but the Karachi Race Club has now been attracting racing fans for a full 100 years. The biggest racecourse of Pakistan, seven to ten races are held at Karachi Race Club every Sunday.

Konzerthaus, Vienna, Austria
Home to the Vienna Symphony, the Konzerthaus is a hub of classical music. With a goal of emphasizing both traditional and innovative music styles, it hosts several music festivals a year. In a season it hosts over 750 events, resulting in around 2,500 compositions.

Line A, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Opened to the public on December 1, 1913, Line A was the first line of the the first working subway system in the southern hemisphere. Today it is used by over 200,000 people a day. Until recently, some of the line’s original La Brugeoise trains were still in use, but are now slated to be replaced by more modern day cars, and the line itself is set for reconstruction in mid-January.

[Photo credits: davidwilson1949, ChrisProtopapa, s4nt1, infrogmation, Diego3336]

Mysterious Vietnamese Noodle Dish Makes An Appearance In New York City

by David Farley on

The most memorable, awkward meal of my life took place in an alleyway. Memorable for what I was about to eat, awkward because I was a 6-foot, 200-pound Westerner molded into a red, plastic child-sized chair, my knees rising above the matching table, like a Brobdingnagian who went on a walk and ended up in Hoi An, on the central coast of Vietnam, lost and hungry.

When an ancient woman in a conical hat placed a small bowl filled with noodles, pork and vegetables in front of me, I quickly forgot about my lumbering self or that I had crossed into a realm few other tourists here do; in a town crammed with Vietnamese restaurants that cater to Western tourists, these alleyway eateries are tucked away almost out of the view of most visitors.

I looked around: I was the only non-Vietnamese sitting at the dozen or so tables flanking the alley, and realized I had found the travelers’ holy grail: authenticity. But that’s not necessarily what had motivated me to wedge myself into this form-fitting chair. I was there to eat cao lau, an enigmatic noodle dish that I’d read about in an out-of-print book about Vietnamese cuisine.

I grabbed a pair of chopsticks and dug in.It was a medley a tastes, a flavor strata that was at once very Vietnamese (the fish sauce, fresh herbs like cilantro and morning glory) and at the same time very non-Vietnamese: the noodles were chewy in a way I’d never tasted before in a Vietnamese dish. It was one of the most memorable meals I’ve ever had.

So much so that a year later I was back in Hoi An – this time specifically to eat and learn about cao lau. I was on assignment for AFAR magazine and my goal was to meet the people who make it.

But this wasn’t going to be an easy task. Cao lau was a mystery. There’s one family who has been making cao lau noodles for generations and no one besides the immediate family knew the recipe. The only thing that people did know about it was that, technically, to make the noodle you had to use water from a certain well in town and ash from the bark of a tree that mostly only grows in the area. This was, as I later noted in the AFAR article, an example of reverse globalization: instead of ethnic dishes following human immigration patterns, tagging along to other parts of the planet where certain ethnic groups have gravitated, the traveler had to go to the place of the dish’s origin.

I left Hoi An after thoroughly (and, I might add, successfully) trekking the cao lau trail, thinking I’d never eat the delicious dish again until I some day return to this coastal city in central Vietnam.

But then, one day recently, while strolling through lower Manhattan, I stopped at a Vietnamese restaurant to look at the menu – And there it was, listed under noodle dishes on the menu of V-Cafe: Hoi An Cao Lau.

I went in and ordered it immediately. And then I asked to see the chef. A minute later, Lan Tran Cao appeared in front of me. She’s originally from Hanoi and grew up in Saigon but she says she’s been to Hoi An a few times – the last time was 2008 – and has a good friend who owns a restaurant there. She told me she takes pride in peppering her menu with dishes one doesn’t normally find at a Vietnamese restaurant in the United States. There are a few dishes from Hanoi, for example, that she cooks, which is rare to see because it was mostly southern Vietnamese who fled after 1975, taking with them a mostly southern Vietnamese recipe book as well.

“The rice noodle I use isn’t the real kind of cao lau,” she said. “But this one is a bit chewy, too, like the cao lau noodle.”

She paused for a long second and then shrugged, adding, “It’s impossible to replicate but I tried.”

When the big bowl arrived, it at first didn’t look much like cao lau at all, which is usually served in much smaller portions – this had the feel of a Korean bipimbap – nor were all the ingredients the same. Instead of the croutons that become an integral part of the dish for its texture, she sprinkled peanuts over the barbequed pork. There was no broth, which usually is shallow and lurks underneath the combination of noodles, pork and various green herbs.

But that didn’t matter so much because Lan Tran Cao’s version of cao lau was delicious. And in a weird way, it’s nice to know that if I want to eat “real” cao lau – at least the way they make it in Hoi An – I’ll have to go back to central Vietnam.

[Photo by David Farley]