Rome, Italy outlaws eating snacks at tourist sites this summer

by Jeffrey White on

You can still marvel at the Pantheon in Rome this summer. Just don’t be eating any gelato while doing it.

Rome has passed a measure outlawing the eating of snacks at many of its most famous tourist attractions, in an effort, say officials, to preserve the city’s treasured monuments.

The snack ban went in effect this past weekend, and will last through October.

For travelers, this came as a shock, since many choose to buy food at street vendors or markets on the go rather than sit at many of the expensive cafes that have set up shot near Rome’s most popular attractions.

“You don’t want to sit at that place,” Kristin Benner of Annapolis tells the Associated Press, pointing to one of the cafes near the Pantheon. “And if you have signs, police and benches, isn’t that taking away from the monuments more than drinking near them?”

Rome is also cracking down on drunks — banning them, too — and is prohibiting homeless from sleeping near tourist attractions.

It seems cities across Italy are really cracking down lately on things deemed to take away from the tourist experience, even as though they claim it is for the good of buildings, monuments and other sites.

Venice has banned picnics and bare torsos in St. Mark’s Square (not to mention pigeon feeding); Florence is targeting the men who wait with squeegees to wash the windows of cars idling at traffic lights.

Rome also recently passed a law cracking down on street vendors.

Vacation refunds: German high court ruling puts packagers on the hook for plane crashes, emergency landings

by Jeffrey White on

Now here is one court ruling that pretty much any traveler could get behind.

According to the German news weekly Die Zeit, Germany’s Supreme Court, the Bundesgerichtshof, recently ruled that airline passengers traveling home from a holiday are entitled to a full refund of the cost of their trip if their plane crashes or comes close enough to crashing to have caused passengers fear and stress — thus ruining the relaxation won on said vacation.

Obviously if a plane crashes, more than likely there won’t be many refunds to hand out. But it’s the latter condition that is interesting here.

I’m not talking a refund of airfare. I’m talking a refund of everything that was spent on the holiday. Many German tourists book vacations through packages that include airfare, so this means they’d be entitled to a refund of the entire package.

Now, a court in the town of Duisburg must decide whether this ruling from the high court has any bearing on a case it is currently hearing involving a German couple whose plane home from Turkey had to make an emergency landing in Istanbul three years ago.

The couple’s plane malfunctioned shortly after taking off from Antalya. The couple says the plane’s door almost opened, pieces of the cabin’s ceiling starting coming down and the plane had to do a corkscrew landing in Istanbul.

The couple was on a two week Turkish vacation — some say Turkey is Germany’s 17th state — from a German packager called Alltours.

Alltours gave the couple around $430 for the delay they suffered. The couple sued for their entire package to be refunded, saying they lost all the peace and rest they’d built up during their two weeks by the pool.

The Duisburg court must decide whether the couple really thought they were going to die, which could bring the matter in line with the high court’s ruling.

But there are a few questions that go unanswered in the article, including why the high court bothered to rule on this in the first place. Had another lawsuit like this reached it? And also, isn’t this a stupid ruling? I mean, what if the packager was from the U.S. or U.K.? Can a German court compel a foreign company to pay up?

What if you weren’t on a package, and didn’t keep receipts?

However, it’s a nice thought, isn’t it? Imagine coming home from the Caribbean or Disney or what have you, hitting unusually bad turbulence, maybe even making an emergency landing of sufficient drama and getting the cost of your vacation refunded because you now feel, you tell people, so frazzled it’s like you never went on vacation at all!

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Where to find the world’s 10 best rooftop bars

by Anna Brones on

With summer in full swing it, finding good outdoor spaces to have a drink is the thing to do. Nothing says summer more than a couple of friends sitting on an outdoor terrace sharing a pitcher. But even better than your average terrace or patio has to be a rooftop.

Stopping for an evening drink is an excellent activity, but if you can find a bar on top of a tall building with an excellent view of your host city, even better. While in Vietnam last fall, my hostel in Hanoi had a rooftop bar and it seemed none of us ever wanted to leave. Our friends over at Matador Nights — part of the Matador Network — think along the same lines and have graced us with an article on The World’s 10 Best Rooftop Bars. It’s the insider’s guide to finding the best rooftop nightlife, from the ultra cool to the ultra sexy.

Here are the top five:

  1. Sirocco, Bangkok, Thailand
  2. The Penthouse, Madrid, Spain
  3. Luna Bar, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  4. Rooftop Bar, Melbourne, Australia
  5. Gravity, Dublin, Ireland

For the rest of the list and descriptions to all of the bars, read the Matador Nights article here. Do you have a favorite rooftop bar?

Greek sex scandal: British tourists face charges over oral sex show

by Jeffrey White on

Gotta hand it to the Brits: They know how to go crazy when on vacation.

A group of British women are facing prostitution charges after they took part in an oral sex competition on the Greek island of Zakynthos this past weekend, according to eTurboNews

Nine women received money to “perform” in the competition, which was recorded and posted on the Internet.

Another six British men and six Greek men (two of whom owned the bar) are also facing charges of “encouraging obscene behavior,” eTurboNews says.

Zakynthos has the reputation of being pretty full on when it comes to its party scene, not unlike Majorca and Ibiza.

The competition took place on Leganas beach, with is in the south of the island.

No word on who won it.

Amusement park ride in Sweden collapses, injuring nearly 20

by Jeffrey White on

One of the reasons I have a fear of amusement parks is because of a story like this.

Yesterday, a jam-packed amusement ride at a Swedish theme park collapsed, injuring nearly 20 people, many of who were children.

The collapse happened at the Liseberg theme park outside Goteborg, in western Sweden. The ride was a spinning arm-and-seat combination.

Swedish authorities tell the Associated Press that a malfunctioning ball bearing was behind the collapse. The ride had been checked for safety in the spring, and nothing at that time was found to be amiss.

Twenty-five ambulances responded to the scene.

Liseberg is Scandinavia’s largest amusement park, with 30 different rides, the AP says.