Walt Disney Parks & Resorts announced Wednesday it has bought 21 acres of oceanfront property on the western side of Oahu that it will use to build an 800-room hotel complex. It won’t be Disneyland Hawaii, but even without a theme park there will be plenty to entertain the family.
Disney Parks & Resorts Chairman Jay Rasulo assures locals that the resort will emphasize Hawaiian culture. The resort “will give our guests another way to visit a place that they’ve loved for many years,” Rasulo said. “As the crossroads of Asia, it is your diverse culture that makes this place so special.”
Amenities will include include educational and cultural activities, including local entertainers and hula dancers.
Believe it or not, there are other places to eat in the city than in your guide book. In cultural and gastronomic hot spots such as Paris and Barcelona, you barely have to stumble out your front door and down the block before you find a half dozen places to eat — multiply that by the ten thousand blocks in any given city and you get roughly seventy zillion available restaurants, many within walking distance. How many of those can you fit in your guidebook?
Sure, you run the risk of docking into a complete disaster, getting horrible service and Montezuma’s Revenge. But that risk is low, and the chance of you discovering something new — a restaurant and experience nothing like the other Lonely Planet mongers have encountered — is actually quite reasonable. Travel shouldn’t be legal if you’re being led around the city on a leash by your guidebook the entire time; one should open oneself up to risk, failure and the possibility of really great things to happen.
Take Comptoir De La Gastronomie, a specialty epicerie in Paris. This cozy restaurant off Rue Montmartre hosts a spectacular menu of duck and foie gras based dishes, from baked traditional cassoulet to carpaccio, all at reasonable (although European) prices. Next door in their attached boutique you can pick up enormous jars of foie gras, cheeses, wines and a variety of deli delights, all packaged up and ready to take home to mom.
So next time you find yourself leafing through your favorite Frommers or AOL destination guide searching for that “authentic meal”, take some time to consider the risk and benefit of finding some place on your own. My guess is you’ll be glad you did.
After years of battling over the thousands of pieces of pottery, jewelry and bones, taken from Machu Picchu 90 years ago, Peru is winning the war. The artifacts were lent to Yale University for 18 months but the university has apparently kept them ever since one of its alumni, U.S. explorer Hiram Bingham, rediscovered Machu Picchu in the Andes in 1911.
Like museums in Greece or Egypt trying to get the United Kingdom and other countries to return their ancient treasures, Peru has been fighting to get back theirs from the US. Since we officially frown on imperialism, why do we drag our feet returning that stuff?
This past Saturday, while walking along the promenade of Venice Beach in California, I stopped at a crowd gathered around a street performance. As I craned my neck at the outer circle, unable to see, I wondered if the attraction was the man juggling chainsaws like the last time I was at Venice Beach, although, I didn’t hear any chainsaws. I elbowed my way towards the front of the crowd, politely of course, but I wanted to see. I had to see. How could I write about it, if I didn’t see? I’m glad I was pushy. What a treat. This photo by Malingering posted on Flickr is just a glimpse. Check out the others.)
The Calypso Tumblers were in the middle of their act. Think break dancing but turned up several notches. The group members show off their mettle by spinning on their heads, striking poses while balanced on their hands, and leaping through the air in various twists and turns that causes their muscles to ripple and the crowd to gasp with thoughts like, “If I tried that, I’d break my neck for sure.” The crowning glory of the act was when people were called from the audience to create a line of 10 people. There was a great deal of build up to this act with joke telling, ribbing of the crowd and money collecting.
Finally, once all ten people stood shoulder to shoulder, bent over at the waist with their backs forming a fairly straight surface, the head guy took a running leap and flipped over them. Pretty incredible. Here’s a YouTube video posted by Utopian Flower to show you what I’m talking about. This one, though, was taken in New Orleans. Be patient when the camera seems to be turned away from the action. You’ll see the flip.
Also here’s link to another video posted by silverandblack68 that shows their act on America’s Got Talent.
After the performance I talked with one of the guys who told me about these YouTube links. In my searching I came across a video of a Venice Beach meeting. Some residents weren’t too happy with the Calypso Tumblers. From what I can tell, the complaint is that they take up more than their fair share of the promenade and disrupt the business of the surrounding vendors. I can see their point, but the group is terrific and how wonderful any person who happens to be walking by can see them. Here’s the complaint video.
One of the biggest challenges of traveling through the former Soviet Union is tying to decipher the Cyrillic alphabet. The unnerving thing is that it shares many letters with the Latin alphabet, yet they are pronounced very differently. Like a “B” having a “V” sound, for example. This makes it very challenging to find Lvov on a map when it is actually spelled “?????.”
Surprisingly, the Cyrillic alphabet is actually quite easy to learn and can be done so on your plane ride over.
But don’t spend too much time on it. Since the fall of communism, a number of countries have transitioned away from the Cyrillic alphabet and have replaced it with the Latin one, including Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Most recently, Kazakhstan has announced their intention to do so as well. The government anticipates it will take 12-15 years to reeducate the public and basically replace every sign and official document in existence. Man! Imagine growing up with one alphabet and suddenly having to change it mid-life. That must be tough. But than again, Kazakhs have already suffered through this in 1940 when the Soviets forced Cyrillic upon them.
As for us foreigners visiting the country, travel will be just a little bit easier with a more familiar alphabet at our service.
