Find. Eat. Drink. – A Travel App Curated By Food Lovers, For Food Lovers

by McLean Robbins on

When traveling, food lovers often rely on the suggestions of others to find the best places to eat, drink and dine out. For travelers merely passing through a region or without foodie friends nearby, new (free!) app Find. Eat. Drink. might be the ultimate solution.

Marketed as “the world’s first travel guide curated by top tier chefs, sommeliers, bartenders, baristas, pitmasters and food artisans,” the app differentiates itself from other travel products on the market in that it showcases credible references from top industry insiders to populate an app that is friendly to the local and traveler alike.

The app allows you to choose a nearby option (within 10 miles of your current location) or from over 120 cities and towns, worldwide and features 2,100 establishments from 340 experts with updates added weekly. Once a user finds a place of interest they can choose to visit the website or make a reservation, which is convenient for “on the go” needs.

From the Cajun to the Basque, Boston to Barcelona, Miami to Montreal, you’ll find great suggestions of things to eat and drink across neighborhoods large and small. We particularly like that you can narrow by region, such as limiting Boston to a “South End” or “Back Bay” search, and that items aren’t just restricted to high-end, dine-in restaurants. The app includes suggestions for coffee, dessert, cocktails (pubs and dive bars included!), farmers markets, butchers, candy shops, ice cream parlors, even shops that sell culinary antiques.

Expertise ranges from well-known chefs, like Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin and Andoni Luis Aduriz of Mugaritz, to the purveyors they use, like Allan Benton of Benton’s Bacon, and winemakers like Arianna Occhipinti.

A social component adds another layer: users can look up a place, see who recommended it, look at the recommender’s profile, go to their recommendations and so on and so forth.

Don’t want to use your smart phone? You don’t have to. There’s a website, too.

Tallinn’s Medieval Old Town

by Sean McLachlan on


Tallinn is a medieval wonderland. The capital of Estonia isn’t on a lot of people’s bucket list but anyone at all interested in history, architecture or art will love this place.

The central attraction is Old Town, a medieval walled city filled with old buildings and fortifications. The sheltered bay and the easily defended Toompea Hill made it a natural place to settle. Sometime about 1050 A.D. a fortress was built atop the hill, the first of many. In 1219 the Danes showed up as part of the Northern Crusade to subjugate the Baltics and convert the local pagans to Christianity whether they wanted to or not.

The Danes improved the fortifications and expanded the town, which became part of the Hanseatic League, a trading organization of a hundred northern cities. The Danes sold Tallinn to the Livonan Order, a branch of the Teutonic Knights, in 1346. The Swedes came next in 1561. Tallinn weathered plague and the Great Northern War and became part of Russia in 1710. In 1918, Estonia declared independence from Russia and fought a bitter war against Bolshevik Russia. Independence didn’t last long, however, and the fledgling nation fell first to the Nazis and then the Soviets during World War II.

Despite all this conquering, Tallinn’s historic core has survived remarkably intact. It’s so well preserved that the whole Old Town has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Much of the 14th century city wall still stands, including a couple of stretches where you can climb the narrow spiral staircases of the towers and end up on the medieval catwalk. The Viru Gates, flanked by thin pointed towers from the 14th century, makes a nice entrance into Old Town.

Dominating the town atop Toompea Hill is Toompea Castle and Pikk Hermann Tower. It was used as the center of government since 1229 and is now the site of Estonia’s parliament. Nearby stands the inappropriately named Maiden’s Tower that used to house a prison for prostitutes.

%Gallery-178685%There are several interesting old houses of worship. The oldest is the atmospheric and very chilly Dominican Monastery from 1246. My favorite was the Holy Spirit Church with its colorful Renaissance clock, elaborate altar, and painted pews. The 13th century St. Nicholas got bombed in World War II but was meticulously reconstructed and now houses a display of religious art, including the freaky “Dance Macabre” of cavorting skeletons.

The photo below was taken from the spire of the Cathedral of St. Mary the Virgin, one of the many towers that offer fine views of the city. Also try the Town Hall for a great view. The most visible church that seems to get on all the postcards is the Russian Orthodox St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral with its onion domes.

Several of the medieval buildings house museums: Epping Tower has a collection of medieval arms and armor, the 15th-century Great Guild Hall houses the Estonian History Museum, a 14th century merchant’s mansion is home to the Tallinn City Museum, and Fat Margaret’s cannon tower from 1530 is now the Maritime Museum.

One of the most popular attractions is Kiek en de Kök, an imposing tower on the slopes of Toompea Hill. Its basement connects with a network of tunnels beneath the bastions. There’s enough of interest here that I’ll be dedicating a whole post to this place later in the series.

As you can see from the photos, I visited Tallinn this February. While I only saw about five minutes of blue sky in the six days I was there, and it snowed every day, there are advantages to visiting in the dead of winter. First, prices of hotels and flights plummet and you can pick your dates without having to worry about getting a place. This makes it a good budget travel option for those who don’t mind a bit of cold.

If you’re coming from England, you’re in luck. Ryaniar flies to Tallinn from Luton, and easyJet flies from Gatwick. There are also regular connections from Munich, Helsinki, and other important cities.

Tallinn makes a good budget option whatever the season. Old Town is compact enough that you don’t need to pay for transport, and a Tallinn Card gets you free tours and free entry into all the sites. Being so compact you can see a lot of the city in one day, making the card well worth the money. The cost of the card is 24 euros for 24 hours, 32 euros for 48 hours, and 40 euros for 72 hours. Children up to 14 years get the card for half price. The card comes with a good city map and guidebook.

Read the rest of my series: “Exploring Estonia: The Northern Baltics In Wintertime.”

Coming up next: A Snowy Traditional Village in Estonia!

[All photos by Sean McLachlan]

Wickland: The Only Ghost Tour Reality TV Hasn’t Found – Yet

by Megan Fernandez on

The new Syfy channel show “Ghost Mine” is, geographically, a new low for the genre, suggesting that the torrent of paranormal reality programs has exhausted every haunted site above the earth’s surface and left no above-ground spirit unquestioned in the presence of a camera crew. So I had to wonder how in the heck all 3 billion of these shows have missed Wickland in Bardstown, Kentucky, where young, modelesque mediums give a tour every week and practically guarantee that you’ll get to talk to dead people – without any frightening specters of evil or demons or confidentiality waivers.

That’s what happened to me both times I visited last year, anyway. That’s right, as crazy as it sounds, I believe I conversed directly with dead people, even someone I knew, at Wickland. It definitely wasn’t Bardstown’s famous bourbon talking, because I hadn’t had any.

I heard about the little-known Spirits of Wickland Tour from a friend, who happens to be a pastor and, as such, has some extra credibility in the afterlife department, in my eyes. I have no interest in the paranormal, but my husband wastes a few hours each week on ghost-hunting shows, so the next time we visited family near Bardstown and wanted something to do, we signed up for this tour:




If you didn’t make it through the videos, here’s the crux: Wickland is a well-preserved Georgian-style mansion built in 1826 for a family that produced three governors – two of Kentucky and one of Louisiana. Dixie Hibbs, a former mayor of Bardstown and respected historian in the area who has written more than 10 books, oversees the landmark. Until five years ago, it was open only as a historic attraction, and Hibbs wasn’t aware of any ghostly activity. That changed when a pair of local teenagers, Katie and Michael Wilhite, volunteered to help decorate for the holidays.

The twin sisters (Michael is named for their father) were already aware of their “sixth sense” sensitivities – they had been seeing and hearing dead people for years, usually in a scary way, and they weren’t happy about it. But during the decorating session at Wickland and subsequent visits, they had their first friendly encounters with spirits – in this case, some of the home’s former residents. They told Hibbs what they were experiencing, and it didn’t take long for Hibbs to match up the names and physical descriptions the twins provided with her records and launch the interactive tour.

Since then, either Hibbs and the twins have carried on an elaborate ruse of Manti Te’o proportions, pretending to have detailed conversations with spirits every single week, or they’ve been offering the best-kept secret in ghost tourism for a mere $15, cash or check.

“All we really ask is come with an open mind, and all we promise is entertainment,” Hibbs says. “You get to be involved. You get to interact. At most of these spirit things, you don’t get the opportunity to ask questions and get answers.”

She’s being modest about that promise. On both of my visits, copper dowsing rods moved every which way I asked them to; we got logical answers to questions about life in the 19th century; and Katie diagnosed me with a benign spirit attachment and suggested I pray it away. There was also a totally surprise encounter with my deceased father that sounds too nuts to explain without lots of preamble, but I still can’t chalk it up to anything logical because both my sister and I smelled his cigarette smoke, as clear as day.

Second in amusement only to the twins’ stories of their encounters – including a recent trip to a Civil War battlefield in Kentucky where they stunned the park’s director by identifying nearly every dead soldier by first and last name (a record only he had, in an Excel spreadsheet) and found themselves ducking from bullets – are cameos from spirits not connected to the house. Katie and Michael never know who will show up from an unknown time and place to bend their ears. They once heard from someone claiming to be an infamous outlaw, and the more Hibbs questioned him – through one of the twins – the more she doubted that he was telling the truth about his identity. “Ghosts lie, there’s no question,” she says.

Hibbs, more than anyone, dreads the inevitable end of the tour, which has been an unconventional boon to her work as a historian. She records every word the twins repeat from the spirit world and researches its veracity. Last fall, she says she located the home’s long-lost slave cemetery based on tips from past patriarch Charles Wickliffe.

It was the first time Mr. Wickliffe had appeared to either twin, and a moment Hibbs had been anticipating for years. “The craziest part is he’s calling me by name,” she says. “I said [to Katie], ‘When did he die?’ His answer wasn’t a date; he said, Dixie, you know that. Two weeks ago, he came again. I asked why he had returned. He said, Dixie, you ought’ve known I would come back. I told my friend, it’s really weird that I’m on a first-name basis with Charles Wickliffe, who’s been dead 150 years. If I had been told seven or eight years ago I’d be doing this kind of thing, I’d have thought someone had lost their mind.”

Friday nights at Wickland could be numbered. Though the site isn’t showy enough for reality TV, major cable channels are well aware of the twins and their camera-readiness, and at least a couple have considered a pilot. So far, the twins haven’t found the right format. But it could be only a matter of time before they move on from Wickland to TV land – later this year, even, Hibbs believes – and then the enchanting Spirit Tour will become a ghost itself.

[Photo credit: Visit Bardstown]

How To Ride A Bike In Paris

by Anna Brones on


Everywhere I travel, I try to ride a bike. It’s one of those weird obsessions that I have; the need to discover everything on two wheels. Be it Afghanistan or Amsterdam, game on.

Here’s the thing about riding a bicycle in new places: it’s like learning how to ride a bike all over again. No matter how used to the bicycle you are – at home in Portland I don’t even own a car – discovering a new city on two wheels makes you fall in love with cycling all over again. It’s a challenge. Navigating streets you have never walked down before, learning the ins and outs of local bike culture, figuring out how traffic works. There’s a flow to cycling, and each city has its own variation.

Paris is no different, and a few days into taking the metro I knew that underground transportation wasn’t going to be a sustainable option for me. Cram yourself into a few too many metro cars during rush hour traffic and you’ll be sprinting for an above ground office as well. Biking is a welcome solution.

Fortunately, Paris is equipped with the Vélib system, a well designed, and much talked about, bike-share system that boasts over 20,000 bikes around the city. Launched in 2007, the Paris Vélib system is the largest bike-share system in the world, used by tourists and locals alike.There is something freeing about being on a bicycle, the fact that you and you alone are responsible for getting anywhere. There’s a sense of accomplishment unlike any other when you have made it from point A to point B, successfully navigating a maze of bike routes and busy city streets.

Admittedly, I was slightly nervous and a little scared, so my first foray into the world of Vélib was with a friend.

“Just make sure you tell me where to turn!” The worst part about biking in a new city is your lack of navigation skills. I trust my ability to keep an eye out for cars and scooters, but trying to identify the names on the blue signs on the corner of every old Parisian building is something else entirely.

But then it occurred to me: cycling, much like traveling in general, is about giving up control. Accepting the fact that you will get lost, and that that’s OK. In fact, there is beauty in those moments when you find yourself in a place you hadn’t planned on being, and there’s a pure sense of accomplishment when you miraculously end up at your final destination with no help but from anyone other than yourself.

So I went alone, mapping out my route before I left, but remaining open to a bit of serendipity. Those first few pedals were freeing. I have been cycling since before I can remember, but this was different – a new feeling. I was learning how to ride all over again, and the thrill of it was impressive.

I managed to work my way through a busy roundabout, navigating around cars, buses and other cyclists more familiar with the ways of Parisian velo life than myself. I took a deep breath and pushed through. This was no Portland, and that’s what made it fun. Then came the time to find a spot to park the bike. Station one was closed due to surrounding roadwork and the next two were full. The fourth time was a charm, a reminder that once again, when you travel, you are rarely in control, and all you can do is keep going until things go your way.

And so with my first solo Parisian bike tour, I was addicted.

I pedaled down from Montmartre in the moonlight. I cruised by the Moulin Rouge, dodging a couple of scooters along the way. I manoeuvred my way around the mess of roadwork surrounding Republique. I sat next to a policeman at a stoplight, the policeman looking at me and rubbing his hands together to ask if I was cold.

%Gallery-178982%

This was the real Paris. As the Vélib card says “La ville est plus belle a velo.” The city is more beautiful by bike. La vie aussi.

Want to check out The City of Lights on two wheels? Here is a basic guide:

Buy a pass

If you have traveled in Europe before you will know the frustration with a lack of security chips that all European bank cards have. This makes it difficult to use your debit or credit card in the Velib machines. There are, however, a couple of simple solutions to this problem:

  1. Buy a one or seven-day pass online. You will be given a code that you will type in every time you want to access a bicycle.
  2. Buy a Navigo pass (just the card itself, not the full metro pass) and put your Velib one or seven-day pass on it. Buy a Navigo pass in a metro station, and then you can add your Velib pass to it by purchasing one online. This allows you to forgo typing in your pass every time you want to pick up your bike, and you can just swipe your Navigo pass at the bike station.
  3. Buy a Vélib pass. If you are staying in Paris for an extended period of time, consider getting a yearlong pass. For 29 euros, you get a yearlong pass that allows you up to 30 minutes of free bike use each time you ride. For 39 euros you get the same thing, but up to 45 minutes each time you ride. You can pick up a card at the Hotel de Ville and then pay for it online and activate it at a Velib station.

Keep a map on you

Whether you download the PDF of the main bike routes in the city, or keep an electronic version on your smartphone, the map provided by the City of Paris is useful for navigation. There are over 200 kilometers of bike routes, and most of them are well marked.

Learn to use your bell

Many of the protected bike lines are right next to pedestrian routes. Don’t assume that the pedestrians will see you, or move out of your way for that matter. Make yourself heard.

Check that your bike works

When you arrive at a Vélib station, do a basic check of the bike before you take it. Make sure you can pedal it, that the brakes and lights work and that there aren’t any other major problems. You will notice that often bikes will have the seat turned in the opposite direction – this is the local Parisians’ way of telling each other that the bike isn’t functioning.

Be aware

This may go without saying, but you have to be on guard for pedestrians, scooters, cars and buses at all times. If you are ever unsure of where to turn, find a place to stop and pull out your map. Or just keep riding and go with the flow of getting lost for a few. You might just discover something unintended.

Resources

Vélib – English site
Géovélo – a site that uses Google Maps to help map your route
City of Paris Bike Route Map

Mandatory Car Rental Insurance: Watch Out For Bait-And-Switch Pricing

by Dave Seminara on

Mandatory insurance. Those are two words that I hate to hear when I’m renting a car outside the U.S. On Thursday night, I spent an hour and a half in a Thrifty Rent a Car location near the airport in San Jose, Costa Rica, trying to understand how an eight-day rental that I expected to pay $394 for was somehow going to cost me either $786 or $946. I’m an experienced traveler and I should have known better. Here’s how I got scammed and how you can avoid the same fate.

I spent a huge amount of time shopping around for a deal on a rental car for an eight-day trip to Costa Rica and the best price I found was through Thrifty, which quoted me a price of $394 for an automatic transmission SUV. By American standards, this was no bargain, but in Costa Rica during the high season it was the best deal I could find.

I received a confirmation email from Thrifty that listed my estimated “mandatory charges” (base rental price, one-way drop off surcharge, vehicle license fee) plus optional charges (booster seat for child), and then the “estimated grand total” price. Two days before we arrived in country, the local branch also confirmed the reservation and the price via email. Even in the fine print of both emails there is no mention of any additional charges or mandatory insurance costs.We arrived at the Thrifty location near the San Jose airport on Thursday night and, despite the fact that there was only one person in front of us in line, we waited 40 minutes to find out that our $394 rental car was actually going to cost $786 if we opted for the lowest possible level of insurance or $946 if we chose the more comprehensive coverage. We spent nearly another hour unsuccessfully trying to untangle the mess and it quickly became clear why we’d waited so long to get to the counter in the first place: everyone was arguing with them about the same issue as they were shocked to find double the rates they expected.

I thought it was a scam because the agent was jotting down all these prices on a scrap of paper as though he was making it up as he went along. I’ve been hit up for mandatory insurance in other countries before but those costs were more an annoyance than the budget buster this was. So I walked out and tried two other rental car places, both of which quoted similar rates.

Rather than pay nearly $100 per day to rent the car, we took a cab to our hotel and I studied the confirmation email from Thrifty. Even in the fine print and “terms and conditions” of the confirmation email there was no mention of the mandatory insurance. I called Thrifty to complain and all they could manage was their contention that my rate was only an “estimated grand total” and not an “actual grand total.”

I went back to Thrifty’s website and tried to make a new reservation, this time studying all the fine print in the terms and conditions section and still couldn’t find any mention of the huge mandatory insurance cost.

I also checked the section on car rentals in my guidebook (Frommer’s) and there is no explicit warning about the exorbitant mandatory insurance, only a boilerplate sentence about checking to see if your existing insurance in the U.S. will cover you in Costa Rica.

I’m sure that Thrifty isn’t the only company guilty of this sort of bait-and-switch pricing, and as an experienced traveler, who has rented cars in a variety of countries, I should have clarified that their “grand total” estimate really was going to be the grand total. But I took the term “grand total” at face value. Next time I’ll know better and you should too. In the meantime, which way to the San Jose bus station?

[Photo credit: jepoirrier on Flickr]