Murder on the Orient Express? No, just good eating!

by Sean McLachlan on

If you want to combine fine dining, an historic train ride, and Art Deco elegance, here’s your chance.

The Orient Express is offering a new dining service called simply “The Dinner” which gives passengers a luxury meal aboard the company’s historic British Pullman train.

The trip departs from London’s Victoria station at 7:30pm and returns at 11pm, so don’t expect to pull into Constantinople in time to see the Ottoman Empire fall. An epic rail journey this is not. But what you do get is champagne and an exquisite menu featuring dishes such as Organic Welsh Salt Marsh Lamb, Truffled Welsh Rarebit, and something called the Orange and Chocolate Tasting Plate. All this is served on selected nights in restored Art Deco carriages that make you feel like you’re back in the early twentieth century.

The dinner costs a tooth grinding $640 or more, but if you got the dosh, this sounds like a fun one.

New “most expensive” cities list names Tokyo in top spot

by Katie Hammel on

The results for Mercer’s 2009 Cost of Living survey are out, and while there are some changes, most of the rankings for the most expensive cities are just about what you would expect. Moscow, Geneva, Zurich and Hong Kong are expensive (duh), as are Copenhagen, New York, Beijing and Singapore, which all took spots in the top ten. Japan took top (dis)honors with Tokyo and Osaka taking the number one and two spots, respectively. London dropped a whopping 13 spots to number 16.

Some big moves were made by Caracas, which shot up to number 15 from 89 last year, and Dubai, which jumped from the number 52 to number 20 spot. Several U.S. cities became significantly more expensive – at least, according to the rankings. Los Angeles moved from 55 to 23, White Plaines jumped from 89 to 31, San Francisco went from 78 to 34, Honolulu climbed from 77 to 41, and Miami rose from 75 to 45. My home city of Chicago rounded out the top 50 list (which has more than 50 cities on it because some are tied) as it moved up from being number 84 last year.

The survey takes into account the average cost of over 200 items in each city including food, housing, clothing, transportation, and entertainment. The survey compares 143 cities and uses New York, with a base score of 100, as the measuring stick. In the top spot with 143.7 points, Tokyo is nearly 1.5 times more expensive than New York.

The cheapest city? Johannesburg, South Africa, which replaced Asuncion in Paraguay.

Unsurprising news of the day: Berlusconi in yet another scandal

by Sean McLachlan on

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been taking a lot of flack lately, what with allegations of corruption and dictatorial leanings, his divorce, and his penchant for hiring attractive women for important positions. Now he’s got to deal with charges that he’s covering up archaeological remains on one of his many properties.

The accusations stem from secret tapes made by call girl Patrizia D’Addario, in which the Italian leader can be heard boasting that he covered up the existence of thirty Phoenician tombs on the property of his villa in Sardinia. Italy has strict antiquities laws and the tombs should have been reported to the authorities. Covering them up would have stopped any delays in constructing the villa, but is illegal, not to mention politically damaging.

Berlusconi’s lawyer claims the Prime Minister doesn’t have any tombs on his property and that he did not know Ms. D’Addario was a call girl. He also denies that any money changed hands.

If there are tombs on Berlusconi’s property they could be a significant find and help Italy’s beleaguered tourist industry. The Phoenicians were a civilization of sea traders centered in what is now Lebanon from about 1550 to 300 BC. They set up trading posts all around the Mediterranean and even circumnavigated Africa. Several Phoenician sites are already tourist destinations in Italy, such as the city if Tharros in Sardinia, shown here.

Sexy Italian minister in damage control mode after rip-off reports

by Scott Carmichael on

When a huge portion of your economy depends on tourism money, the last thing you want is a lot of bad press about how your country is ripping off tourists.

So, it must really suck to be Italy this week. After two Japanese tourists contacted local Rome police about an insane dinner bill, the government has finally announced plans to combat these scams.

The Japanese couple hadn’t even ordered anything too outrageous – it was a fairly basic restaurant, with a pretty normal Italian dinner of spaghetti, a bottle of wine and some ice cream. The bill for this dinner should have been about $100, but the restaurant tried to make them pay over $1000, including a “mandatory” $160 tip.

Of course, when news of this scam hit the Japanese press, Italy quickly began to feel the pain. So much in fact, that the tourism minister wrote an open letter apologizing, and trying to convince future tourists that the Italian government would do everything in its power to prevent these scams.

This couldn’t come at a worse moment – the Italian tourism industry is in the middle of a perfect storm. Some tourism operators are seeing drops of up to 60% in customers. Even popular destinations like Florence are down 20%, with some hotels so desperate that they are considering closing for a couple of months.

The Italian tourism minister, Michela Brambilla was recently appointed by Silvio Berlusconi himself, and a quick look at her photos will probably explain why (slightly NSFW photos posted after the jump).

Want to go on a monster hunt?

by Kraig Becker on

Every country and culture has its monster stories. You can wander the globe and hear tales of all kinds of things that go bump in the night. From giant snakes in the Amazon to legendary ape men in the Himalaya, there are enough rumors of strange creatures to keep cryptozoologists out in the field, chasing shadows, for years to come.

If you’d like to go on a monster hunt of your own, Forbes Traveler has put together a list of the top destinations on the planet that are rumored to be the home of one type of monster or another. But as the article mentions, only the bravest, most adventurous travelers need apply, as who knows what awaits you out in these remote corners of the Earth.

Some of the locations that earn a spot on the list include Loch Ness, Scotland, where the legendary Loch Ness Monster is rumored to lurk beneath the icy waters of the lake that reaches more than 50 feet in depth in many areas. Not a fan of aquatic monster hunts? Then head to the Redwood Forests of Calfornia in search of Sasquatch, also known as Bigtoot, the famous giant ape, which has many sightings dating as far back to the mid-1800’s. Looking for something a bit less mundane when you go on a monster hunts? Then how about going to West Virginia to look for the Mothman, a strange creature that looks like a man with bug eyes and giant wings.

So, who wants to organize a monster hunt? After we get done looking for Sasquatch, we can head to Roswell, New Mexico too. We’ll make a road trip out of it!