Should Easter Be A Long Weekend In The US?

by Dave Seminara on

At the stroke of midnight, fireworks lit up the night sky on the Greek island of Naxos. In a square outside a centuries old church, at least half the island’s population gathered to celebrate the occasion. Children ran around and threw firecrackers, senior citizens occupied all the choice benches and everyone was dressed to the nines and holding lit candles. An hour or so after midnight, everyone filed out of the square and retreated to their homes for a huge feast that breaks the Lenten fast. This is how Orthodox Easter is celebrated in towns and villages all over Greece.

If you’ve never spent Easter Sunday in a predominantly Christian country like Greece, Italy or many others in Europe and Latin America where it’s the biggest holiday of the year, you’re missing out on the travel experience of a lifetime. Here in the U.S., Easter isn’t even a public holiday worthy of a long weekend. In many parts of the country, you can drive around and shop and not even realize that it’s an important Christian holiday that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ.





I’ve spent Easter in a variety of countries where everything completely shuts down for a few days. As a traveler, that can be disruptive and annoying. But I will never forget how joyous an occasion Easter was in Naxos. Nor will I forget an Easter Sunday I spent in Modica, in southeastern Sicily several years ago (see top photo). The entire town turns out onto the streets, dressed to kill, for a colorful procession with marching bands and then after Mass, everyone repairs to a house or restaurant for a meal fit for a king. Everyone you meet wishes you a buona Pasqua and the good vibes are contagious, even if you aren’t religious.

According to the most recent census data, about 76 percent of adults in the U.S. self identify as Christians (3.8 percent practice other religions, 15 percent don’t practice any religion, and 5 percent refused to answer the question). The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state yet Christmas is a government holiday while Easter is not. Peter Steinfels, writing in The New York Times in 1998 wrote that America was “too religious and too Christian to ignore Easter, but also too pluralist and too secular to absorb it comfortably as a national holiday.”




We are indeed a diverse country, which presents interesting opportunities for visitors to our shores, but it’s also very special to visit a largely homogenous country during a major holiday because it’s fascinating to see an entire place come to a standstill as a community celebrates out on the streets together.

Easter is a religious holiday and we’re a largely secular country, so there are good reasons why it isn’t a public holiday. But I think making Easter a long weekend would be good for the travel industry and good for the country. We take an average of 13 days off per year, compared to 38 in France, 34 in Brazil, 32 in Sweden, 27 in Germany and 19 in Australia, for example.




Surely even those who don’t celebrate Easter wouldn’t mind a long weekend, would they? Or would the declaration of Easter as a national holiday be offensive to non-Christians who are already uncomfortable with Christmas being a public holiday? Let us know how you feel about this in the comments and in the poll.

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[Photo credits: Dave Seminara, Klearchos Kapoutsis and jpereira_net on Flickr]

Accusations Fly Over New Honduras Guidebook

by Megan Fernandez on

The new edition of Moon Handbooks’ guide to Honduras and the Bay Islands, published in December, already has 49 reviews on Amazon. That’s 15 times more than the previous version of the book. But 39 reviewers gave it a one-star rating, the lowest possible. What happened to warrant such an unusual trashing? Did the author confuse Honduras for an entirely different country?

No – in fact, the writer, Amy E. Robertson, lived in Honduras for nearly five years and co-wrote two earlier Moon guides to the country. It’s safe to say that she knows the place well.

But one hotel owner, Bobby Durette of D&D Brewery (a budget-conscious hotel/hostel/microbrewery in the Lago de Yojoa region), found his listing to be outdated and believed Robertson and Avalon Travel, Moon’s publisher, whiffed on the reporting. He asked his Facebook followers to post low ratings of the book on Amazon. Dozens of them did, calling the book – not just D&D Brewey’s listing – unreliable and disappointing.

Then the author’s supporters rallied by posting five-star reviews (some based on their satisfaction with Robertson’s previous Honduras guides) and tagging the one-star reviews as “unhelpful.” Online democracy at work.

Unfortunately, both sides made too strong and possibly not fully informed accusations about the other for millions of Amazon users to see.Among the negative reviews, one claimed that Roberson “refuses to visit or verify the places and businesses that she critiques so harshly.” On the flip side, another Moon author characterized Durette’s actions as a “vicious smear campaign.”

Durette says, “Our call-to-action was not an impulsive, angry move. It came after weeks of frustration and e-mailing the author back and forth, asking her to correct the mistakes in the online version of her [previous] book, which has yet to be updated. We’ve taken some heat for our call-to-action on our Facebook page, but we still feel we did the right thing.”

We contacted Robertson, Durette and Avalon Travel to get to the bottom of the spat, and in the process learned a few things about guidebooks – and Honduras.

Durette objected to about 20 pieces of information in Robertson’s description of his facility, which spans half a page. Some were matters of characterization or word choice, others factual. Some of the verbiage is unchanged from the 2009 edition of the book, despite the fact that Durette had since bought and renovated the place, he says.

Of the “saggy beds” mentioned in Robertson’s description of D&D, Durette says, “They aren’t ever since I replaced all of them.” Of the statement that only one room has double beds and the rest have two twins: “NONE of my rooms have two twin beds.” Of the mango and coffee brews in rotation: “I’ve never made mango or coffee beer in my life.” Of D&D’s listing as “lakefront lodging”: “We aren’t, and we don’t market that we are lakefront, which leads to unhappy guests arriving.” (The photo at the top of this post is of the Lago do Yojoa region, not D&D Brewery.)

Compounding Durette’s frustration about the errors is that he says his message to Avalon about D&D’s renovation went unanswered. “I believe D&D did contact Moon.com about the web copy from the previous edition. But reference to his specific complaint was not in the web copy,” says associate publisher Donna Galassi.

Robertson (pictured) acknowledged the errors, but disagrees that she was negligent or sloppy in her reporting. In her account about the romance and realities of guidebook writing, she says she spends hundreds of hours on the ground for each edition. She researched the Lago de Yojoa region in the latter half of 2011, before Durette upgraded the place. Because it had gone downhill under the previous owner, she removed D&D’s “Top Pick” designation in the book.

Robertson says she tried to contact Durette via Facebook for updates on the hotel but didn’t get a reply. She submitted the manuscript in early 2012 and the book was published in December.

Robertson says Avalon will correct its information on D&D Brewery in the digital version of the Honduras guide, due for release this spring.

Amazon didn’t respond to an email asking if it has an algorithm to detect dubious review patterns, but Galassi said, “Amazon typically does not remove reviews and so far they have not done so in this case, either. Avalon Travel did contact Amazon in response to the reviews posted by D&D Facebook friends. Avalon Travel is confident that Amy Robertson did a good job researching and writing her book. We know her to a conscientious, hard-working travel writer.”

So what are the takeaways from this situation that can help travelers?

First, don’t trust a glut of similarly phrased bad reviews on Amazon, Trip Advisor and other user-review sites. The same goes for glowing reviews thin on details of a personal experience and posted by people with only one review to their name. The red flags are obvious. (Yet however plainly dubious a string of bad reviews is, it’s not harmless; the low ratings drag down the average total rating and unfairly push the listing down on the search-results page.)

Remember that there’s a lag time in publishing – even digital publishing – because high-quality research and editing takes time, especially a book on an entire country. Most guidebook authors don’t revisit every place they wrote about in a previous edition; the logistics and cost are unrealistic. It’s also not feasible to constantly update digital editions at this point – Avalon says the technology doesn’t exist. And, hey – mistakes happen. Who hasn’t made several errors on the job? The solution is to check for the most current details online.

Robertson maintains a Facebook page with updates to her Moon Honduras book. That qualifies as going the extra mile. Perhaps other authors do, too. It’s worth checking next time you travel somewhere with a guidebook in hand.

Also check the guidebook publisher’s website for updates. Avalon does not update e-books in real time, but it does make an effort to update information on Moon.com as necessary – although Galassi says this process has been suspended lately for technology upgrades.

Robertson also articulated a reminder on why guidebooks are still valuable in the Internet age. “In countries where the use of internet for business is not as widespread as it is in the U.S., guidebooks can be especially helpful in leading travelers to places that they might not otherwise find,” she says. Guidebooks are also often written by locals, not visitors, another advantage over many online travel resources.

Lost amid the kerfluffle is that Lago de Yojoa appears to be a beautiful, underrated destination, and D&D Brewery sounds like a terrific place for budget-minded travelers. Hammocks for $3. Cabins for around $30. Hikes to waterfalls. Guided bird-watching tours.

Let’s all be friends and go to Honduras.

[Photo credit: Mixedeyes via Flickr]

Facebook Timeline For Travel Industry

by Meg Nesterov on

The World Travel and Tourism Council has introduced a fun element to their Facebook page: rather than a timeline of their own milestones, they’ve designed a timeline highlighting all of the events in the travel industry. Starting in 1400 with the first passport, and ending with the 1,000,000,000 international tourist arrival in December 2012, it puts the whole development of tourism in context. The first airport dates to 1909 in College Park, Maryland, and there are now over 44,000 airfields and airports all over the world. Hilton pioneered the hotel chain concept in 1943, and now has properties in 78 countries on six continents. Expedia has been around for 17 years, and TripAdvisor just celebrated their 13th anniversary.

Check out all the travel industry milestones on WTTC’s Timeline, and be sure to click through all the years.

[Photo credit: WTTC Facebook]

One Day In Nicaragua: Self-Deportation, An Active Volcano, A Dead Boa, A Dip In A Lagoon And An Art Deal Gone Bad

by Dave Seminara on

Stepping over a dead boa constrictor with flies buzzing around it wasn’t what I had in mind when I hired a guy named Carlos to take us to see Volcán Masaya, a national park in Nicaragua where you can drive right up to the crater of an active volcano. But when we piled into his Toyota Corolla on a sizzling hot morning in late February, Carlos wanted us to see much more than just the smoldering volcano.

“I’m going to take you to a farm and then we’re going to visit a mask maker, before we hit the craft market, Laguna Apoyo and the volcano,” he said, before we’d even had a chance to test his air conditioning or fasten our seatbelts.

We wanted to see the craft market in Masaya, Laguna Apoyo and the volcano but I wasn’t sure about the rest of it. That uncertainty grew when we pulled up in front of what seemed to be a dilapidated farm as a host of mangy looking dogs serenaded us with howls and barks. A young man in a dirty, pale-blue T-shirt led us into some caged enclosures to look at iguanas and Carlos asked me if I’d ever eaten one. I have not.


“It takes like pork,” he said. “You put it in a tortilla and serve it with a little salt and lemon juice. You want to try it?”

I didn’t but I’d seen Andrew Zimmern feast on iguana, porcupine and other exotic delicacies while filming his Nicaragua episode back in 2009 and was curious where he went. Carlos said that there was only one restaurant that had retained a permit to cook iguanas and it was in Masaya, near where we were going.

Carlos and the farmhand showed us some turtles, lizards and bunnies before leading us into a caged enclosure to see some boa constrictors. I assumed they would be inside cages but as we stepped inside the enclosure, we nearly tripped over a dead boa, whose carcass was a target for swarms of dozens of hungry winged creatures.

“When did he die?” I asked Carlos.

“Hard to say,” he said as the farmhand began poking a stick under some empty shelving units behind us. “But there are four other boas in here, don’t worry.”

“Four other boas?” my wife said, grabbing our little boys, ages 3 and 5. “Where?”

“They could be anywhere in here,” Carlos said.

And with that, we were ready to exit, but the farmhand seized a massive boa by the neck and we couldn’t help but stop to stare at the darn thing. It was hissing and coiling itself around the guy’s arms, clearly pissed off. For all we knew, it probably killed the dead boa in the corner, so after a few minutes we beat a retreat back to the car.

The visit to the mask maker felt safer and, to me, more interesting. I’m usually leery of these types of stops on a tour because typically the point is to bring you to a place where you will hopefully buy something, securing a commission for your guide in the process. The whole spectacle makes me feel like a piece of meat on a hook in a slaughterhouse, but in this case, it was just an old man sitting in the courtyard of his home with no shirt on making colorful, painted masks with his own hands. He made no attempt to sell us anything and seemed please to have us wandering around his home, snapping photos and asking ignorant questions.

The craft market at Masaya, built in 1891 and refurbished in 1997, is the best place to buy handicrafts and souvenirs in Nicaragua. There are dozens of vendors and if you enjoy haggling, this is the place for you. I sparred with a 4-foot-tall woman who called me “my love” and “my dear” over a painting I wanted but ended up paying very close to her original asking price because she correctly sensed that I really wanted the thing and used that advantage to crush me like a bug.

After a delicious lunch and a dip in the Laguna de Apoyo, a terrific swimming hole near Masaya, Carlos told us about his U.S. immigration woes. When he was 12, his mother arranged to send him to the U.S. by purchasing fake identity documents to make it appear as though he was the child of a Nicaraguan woman who had a better chance of getting a U.S. tourist visa than she did. At 22, he paid an unscrupulous immigration attorney $10,000 to try to legalize his status but it didn’t work and he eventually returned to Nicaragua. Now, at 40, he felt like his chance to live in the States had come and gone.

The Masaya volcano has to be one of just a handful in the world where you can drive right up to its craters. The volcano has erupted 18 times since the early 16th Century with the last major eruption going down in 1772, but there was some volcanic activity in April of last year that forced the closure of the park for several weeks. Prior to 1529, locals threw virgins and children into the volcano as sacrifices, and during the Somoza dictatorship in the ’70s, dissidents were also supposedly tossed into the volcano.

We hiked around the Santiago crater and although I appreciated the view and the novelty of standing right on the age of the smoldering volcano, I felt dizzy after a half hour and couldn’t help but assume that in the U.S., tourists wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the crater of an active volcano.




On the way back to the hotel, Carlos regaled us with stories about tourists he’s guided and I asked him if he wanted to see tourism boom in Nicaragua.




“We want more tourists,” he said. “But not at the expense of our culture and our traditions. We’ve got to keep what we have.”

[Photo/video credits: Dave Seminara]

Travel Through The World of Music At Phoenix’s Musical Instrument Museum

by Libby Zay on

My expectations weren’t very high when I visited Phoenix’s Musical Instrument Museum (MIM). I imagined a small collection of dusty drums and pan flutes along with a guitar or two donated by famous musicians. Boy, was I ever mistaken.

The MIM is actually a mammoth museum whose collection and quality rival that of a Smithsonian Institution. Founded by Robert J. Ulrich, the former CEO and chairman of Target Corporation, the museum’s mission is to represent the musical instruments of every country in the world-and Ulrich apparently had enough dough to not only send curators around the globe to collect more than 15,000 instruments, but to also document the traditions and history that surround them via videos.

Galleries, which are organized into geographical regions, take visitors all over the world to learn about that magic of music. Instruments include the 40-stringed zither, a xylophone from the Philippines called the gabbing, a 12-foot-tall octobass (a string instrument that takes two people to play), a gamelan orchestra from Indonesia (pictured at the top) and a collection of strange-looking harmonicas. Also on display are costumes traditionally associated with the music, including a whirling dervish outfit from Turkey and a dragon dance costume from China.

There’s also a mechanical music gallery with instruments that “play themselves,” including player pianos, tiny mechanical birds and other automated instruments that use barrels, cylinders, discs and other technologies to operate. And then there’s the artist gallery, a shrine to music legends such as Elvis Presley, Dick Dale, Carlos Santana and Taylor Swift, where you’ll also find the piano John Lennon used to compose “Imagine.”

But it’s not only the collection that is impressive. It’s also the technology available to each guest via a special audio guide. Instead of a run-of-the-mill guide that forces guests to follow along on a cookie cutter tour, MIM’s guide synchs up with whatever display you’re standing in front of. This allows you to choose to browse things you find interesting, and also ensures that your experience doesn’t bother those around you (if you take your headphones off you’ll notice everyone is essentially walking around a the museum in complete silence).

Before you leave, be sure to stop in the experience gallery, where you can test your chops by strumming and banging instruments from all corners of the world, including a Burmese harp and Chinese gongs. And in the event you can’t make it to Phoenix but just want to learn more about world music, check out MIM’s YouTube page, where you can hear and see many of these instruments being played.

[Photo credit: Annie Shustrin]