#OnTheRoad On Instagram: Reunion

by Alex Robertson Textor on

This week on Instagram, Gadling is off to the Indian Ocean island of Reunion.

The Indian Ocean bridges Africa in the west and Southeast Asia and Australia in the east. Much less familiar to Americans than Europeans, the region’s islands challenge the Caribbean for the attention of upscale Europeans, and can lay claim to some of the world’s dreamiest properties. Some of its countries, like the Comoros, are very poor; others, including Seychelles and Mauritius, can be found at the top of Africa’s per capita income tables.

Most popular among French-speaking tourists, Réunion is a French overseas department whose closest neighbor is Mauritius. Like Mauritius, Réunion is a true creole hodgepodge of a place, with a melting pot population; unlike Mauritius, it boasts a volcanic, mountainous interior so dramatic that it is often likened to Hawaii.

I’m here for the hiking, the mountain villages, réunionnaise cuisine, the tropical fruit and the heat. It’s been an interminable, wet, gray winter and I want to warm up. I’ll be sure to pass along some warmth to you.

Do you have any photos you’d like to share with a wider audience? If you mention @GadlingTravel in your own photo AND use the hashtag #gadling, your photo will be considered for our Photo Of The Day.

[Image: Flickr | Aleix Cabarrocas Garcia]

Making Sense Of Biden’s $1 Million Hotel Bill In Europe

by Megan Fernandez on

So much for Amtrak Joe. The government spent $1 million on two nights in Europe for the Vice President and his entourage last month, according to government contracts posted here. CNN confirmed with the State Department that the contracts are legitimate and calls them a rare look at White House travel expenses.

The eye-popping numbers: $585,000 for one night at the Hotel Intercontinental Paris Le Grand and $459,000 for a night at the Hyatt Regency London the Churchill Hotel. (Plus $321,000 for a limousine company, although Biden’s own limousine is flown over for such trips.)

The nice, round $1 million-for-two-nights number is lighting up Twitter with outrage and jabs. But the cost breaks down to about $500 per night at a five-star hotel in the world’s most expensive cities. Nothing weird about that.

So why is the bill so high? The charges cover 136 rooms, not just Biden’s. His entourage includes Secret Service, military, a medical unit, and a team that screens and serves his food, CNN reports. The room block may include reporters, though the government doesn’t pick up their tab. Some rooms might be used as office space.

Some members of the entourage stay more than one night. The contract for the London hotel is for 893 room nights, which sounds like a lot, but it averages out to 6.5 nights per room.

The cost could include paying guests to relocate, too.

CNN ran the figures by officials from past Republican administrations, all of who said the costs were reasonable. One former senior White House staffer who supervised travel arrangements told CNN that it sounds normal to have as many as 136 rooms.

The government doesn’t let hotels compete for these contracts or security reasons. Evidently it doesn’t use Priceline, either.

[Via CNN]

[Photo credit: From documents posted on FedBizOpps.gov]

Chicago’s Field Museum Unveils Brilliant Reconstruction Of Lascaux Prehistoric Cave

by Sean McLachlan on


The Field Museum in Chicago is the first venue in North America to host an impressive 3D reconstruction of the famous prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux, France.

“Scenes from the Stone Age: The Cave Paintings of Lascaux” showcases the best-ever full-sized replica of the paintings, including many never before seen by the public. Visitors will feel like they’re in the cave itself as they enter into a tunnel that has the same paintings and relief as the original. The works are lit by simulated oil lamps and torches to replicate what they would have looked like to the Paleolithic artists who made them some 15,000-20,000 years ago.

Lascaux contains hundreds of images of animals, geometric shapes and an enigmatic human figure with a birdlike head. The artists used the natural contours of the stone to give the figures a 3D effect and the illusion of movement.

Also on display are period artifacts and a reconstruction of a Stone Age family, with descriptions of their surprisingly advanced culture.

The original cave was closed to the public in 1963 in order to preserve the fragile paintings, which were already beginning to show wear due to the changes in temperature, humidity and a rise in carbon dioxide due to more than a million visitors entering the cave. Now experts are trying to remove a growth of fungus, bacteria and algae that threaten the paintings.

“Scenes from the Stone Age: The Cave Paintings of Lascaux” runs from March 20 to September 8.

[Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

Fabled Sunstone Discovered In English Shipwreck

by Sean McLachlan on


A team of French archaeologists believe they have found a sunstone, a strange crystal that was said to help mariners locate the sun even on overcast days.

Some of the medieval Norse Sagas mention this device. In “Rauðúlfs þáttr,” King Olaf asks the hero Sigurður to point out the sun in the middle of a snowstorm. Sigurður points to where it is behind the gray sky. To test him, the king had a follower “fetch the sunstone and held it up and saw where light radiated from the stone and thus directly verified Sigurður’s prediction.”

One recent study suggests the “sunstone” was a double-refracting crystal, which allows light through when the light is polarized in certain directions. They brighten or darken depending on the polarization of the light behind it. Clouds block the sun’s visible light but let through a concentration of polarized light that can be detected by the crystal as it’s moved around. Double-refracting crystals such as cordierite, tourmaline and calcite are common in Scandinavia.

Some scholars have expressed doubts about the sunstone’s existence because “Rauðúlfs þáttr” is a highly allegorical tale full of magical events.

Now it appears the tale may not be all that fantastic after all. Archaeologists from the University of Rennes have been studying finds from a British ship that sunk in 1592 near the island of Alderney in the English Channel. They found a rectangular block of Iceland spar calcite crystal, a type known for its double-refracting properties. The crystal was found next to a pair of dividers that may have been used for navigation.

The researchers suggest that their discovery shows the use of sunstones lasted well beyond the Viking era.

The team’s results appear in the latest issue of the “Proceedings of the Royal Society.”

[Photo courtesy Alderney Society Museum]

Buddha Toilet In France Causes International Fracas

by Megan Fernandez on

A small hotel in the Burgundy region of eastern France did what legions of Pier 1 and World Market shoppers have done and used the image of Buddha for decorating purposes, devoting one of its individually themed rooms to the spiritual figure. And they found out that the motif isn’t so innocent when an embassy contacted the management to complain, according to the International Herald Tribune.

The biggest problem was that Moulin de Broaille, the hotel, extended the image to the room’s toilet seat, a placement that is offensive to many Buddhists. A Bangkok newspaper reported that followers in Thailand were “enraged” and wanted Buddha dethroned.

The French embassy in Bangkok and Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs became involved after a group, called Knowing Buddha, fielded complaints. The group works to educate the rest of the world that using the god’s image flippantly isn’t just inconsiderate, but “tramples on the Buddhist’s heart.” Its Facebook page posts images of “overseas disrespectful cases,” including portable toilets in the Netherlands and skateboards in the U.S.

In addition to associating Buddha with bathrooms, the easiest way to misstep is to place the image on or near the ground, especially where someone could walk on it. House slippers, doormats, and skateboards have drawn Knowing Buddha’s reprimand. Wearing the image on the lower half of the body, as on a skirt, is also a no-no. Towels, dinner plates, napkins, toys, furniture, tattoos, bars named after Buddha and Buddha-head soap are other offensive treatments.

%Gallery-181006%The group responds by educating the offender on why Buddhists consider the image rude, and encourages its followers to rectify the situation by, when possible, elevating the Buddha image to a spot above eye level.

If you need an alternative exotic Eastern motif to a Buddha statue that you have no intention of meditating before, ever, the gorgeously graphic letters of the Thai alphabet, as seen on Knowing Buddha’s Facebook page, should keep you off your embassy’s radar.

[Photo credit: Knowing Buddha]