Winter break just wrapped up–so it’s time to think about what to do when the kids are out of school this summer. Here, the “Wall Street Journal” and Lonely Planet share their top five family travel destinations for 2014. Can’t get to these places this year? Don’t worry, most of them are likely to still be around in 2015.
Europe
Travel through Europe by country:
Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San-Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Sweden, United Kingdom, Vatican City
Travel through Europe by popular city:
Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, Bern, Brussels, Budapest, Copenhagen, Dublin, Ibiza, Lisbon, Ljubljana, London, Madrid, Paris, Prague, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna, Zagreb
Travel through Europe by popular things to do:
Acropolis, Anne Frank House, Eiffel Tower, London Eye, The Louvre
Travel through Europe with our writers:
Across Northern Europe, Balkan Odyssey
London, Rome, Paris Top TripAdvisor’s Most-Reviewed Cities List
The litany of year-end travel-related lists continues. Today, it’s TripAdvisor, which unveiled its most reviewed cities. Leading the way: London, Rome and Paris, according to the Telegraph. The top U.S city was New York, which ranked fourth overall — a stunning blow for American exceptionalism.London venues received 459,000 reviews, 96,000 more than Rome.
According to the Telegraph, “TripAdvisor features more than 260 million monthly visitors and its community has contributed more than 125 million reviews and opinions to the site, up from 75 million reviews and opinions a year ago.”
Tour Owner’s Response to Bad TripAdvisor Review Recorded, Set to Music
It’s a story almost as old as the Grand Tour of Europe itself: traveler takes tour in Italy, traveler gives it a poor review on TripAdvisor, guide allegedly calls traveler to complain about the review, traveler records phone call, call gets set to music and posted on YouTube where its language makes it NSFW (at least without earphones)..From YouTube:
A tourist gave a bad review on TripAdvisor for a very boring tour (he had 8 other tours with 4-5 stars in his profile – but this one was just bad). After the tour guide read it, he flipped out and called the tourist & decided to go into a tirade, despite being told he was being recorded. When I heard the story (from the tourist), I was shocked & offered to make this video of his story (I am better at MovieMaker). The tour guide’s name may not be able to be posted without his permission due to Italian privacy laws (TBD). But anyway, enjoy & be careful on review sites!
Majority of British Air Travelers Surveyed ‘Don’t Trust’ Female Pilots
Fifty-one percent of British air travelers “don’t trust” female pilots, citing their inability to handle pressure, according to a poll conducted by U.K.-based travel site sunshine.co.uk and reported by The Daily Mail.
Twenty-six percent of respondents said the pilot’s gender was irrelevant while 14 percent were less likely to trust a male pilot. Respondents who did not trust a man heading the cockpit, cited their “hot headedness” and ability to be easily distracted as reasons for their distrust.One possible reason for the unease about female pilots: their relative rareness. Ten percent of respondents said their previous crews had been exclusively male. And the Huffington Post points out a 2010 FAA report that notes of the 266,000 commercial pilots in America, only about 8,715 were female.
Russian Art Museum Hosts Sylvester Stallone Art Retrospective
The Russian Museum in St. Petersburg is exhibiting a retrospective entitled “Sylvester Stallone. Painting. From 1975 Until Today,” Condé Nast Traveler reports. Apparently the museum has already showed works from everybody else.
According to the museum’s exhibit notes, Stallone planned to become an artist before he became an actor, even taking “a course in Switzerland.”
The images and characters found in Stallone’s paintings, in a way, replicate events in his creative and personal biography. But they are not portraits in the traditional understanding of the word. Frantic form and color are used in the large-scale transfigurations that breathe new life and energy into the people who surround the artist, or the celebrated actor who is the idol of millions. In his works, the subject matter reveals itself through, among other things, the title, words, letters and symbols painted directly on the surface of the canvas.
The exhibit opened Monday and runs through Jan. 13, 2014.Previously, the best known piece of artwork involving Stallone, of course, was the life-sized bronze Rocky statue that the Philadelphia Museum of Art displays at the bottom of its stairs.