A Da Vinci Code Vacation

by Karen Walrond on

About a month ago, Neil Woodburn told us about Da Vinci Code tours — tours which take place at the sites of various scenes in Dan Brown’s now-famous book, The Da Vinci Code.

Well, Tara Dooley, a writer for the Houston Chronicle, has taken a trip following the entire trail of the Da Vinci Code plot, in an effort to decide whether it would be a vacation worth taking, mirroring the steps of the characters in the book — and the movie, scheduled to be released in about a 10 days’ time.

You can read her thoughts here.  The short answer?  Yes — traveling from Paris to London to Edinburgh is definitely worth the trip — but consider removing your Da Vinci Code “blinders.”  You might miss out on the beauty of the three wonderful cities.

Secretplaces.com

by Karen Walrond on

So, the other day, I mentioned I’d stumbled across Unusual Hotels of the World — a website featuring … well, unusual hotels of the world.  Well, I found a similar site, with more of a niche market:  Secretplaces.com.

This website features beautiful little hideaways in five countries:  Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, and Morocco.  According to the site, the founders, Michael Bendixen and Beatriz Parra Stucky, profile “a superb collection of hotels that stand for something very special, be it their excellent service, tasteful decoration, singular architecture or beautiful surroundings.”

Definitely worth a look if your next vacation will be taking you to one of these five countries. 

A $37,000 Hotel Room

by Erik Olsen on


Here is a post about those upon
whom you might wish some form of harm. Not necessarily bodily harm. Just a little bit of psychic harm might be fine. But
something that smacks them upside the head and says, hey dummy! Don’t you now there are starving people in Africa? Poor
people without homes in New Orleans? Kids without computers in schools? Can’t you find a better place to put $37,000
than into one night’s stay at a hotel?

OK, that some mean blustering, but take a look at this post over at Luxist. It turns out
that there actually IS a hotel called the Hotel Martinez
that actually offers a suite that costs $37,200 per night. The Hotel is in Cannes, France and needless to say has wide
appeal among the overpaid, over-celebrated celebrity types. The penthouse suite is known as the Exceptional 7th Floor Suite, and
sprawls over 2,000 sq. feet. There are four bedrooms, marble baths, several dining rooms, a plasma screen TV or two or
three, and a spa on a terrace with panoramic views of the Mediterranean.

If it were me, I’d have the
TV tuned permanently to the UNICEF channel so the tenants would have to look into the haunting eyes of poor children as
the clock ticks off each $26 minute that they spend in the suite.

Provence Photo Gallery from National Geographic

by Karen Walrond on

About
eight years ago, when I was still single and childless, I took a vacation with two girlfriends to Europe.  Our
vacation took us from Paris to Barcelona, with a brief stop in Avignon, a town in Provence.

It was TOO
brief.

Provence is beautiful, with fabulous restaurants, quaint towns, rich history and lots of romance (I
think all three of us were quite disappointed we didn’t have any male companions while we were there!).  And now,
National Geographic is
featuring a photo gallery of some of the best Provence has to offer.

Be sure to take a look.  If
you’re thinking of traveling to Europe anytime soon, I strongly recommend you make sure to explore this beautiful
region.  And take my advice:  spend more than 2 days there.  You’ll be glad you did.

Adventure Tours

by Neil Woodburn on

The centerpiece of this year’s Men’s Journal Adventure Issue is the adventures
themselves.  The May issue highlights a great selection of
“Classic Adventure Trips” and tells
us how to do them right.  Although I’m always a little skeptical when such articles point us directly to
tour outfitters who will help us do such things, the writers have at least included enough information to whet
appetites and get the old adventure spirit pumping.

While some of the Classic Adventures can be accomplished easily enough on your own—diving the Great Barrier
Reef, cycling through Tuscany, and surfing Scorpion Bay in Mexico—others are far more involved and you might do
well to consider some of the tour operators even if you hate this type of organized travel as much as I do. 
Let’s face it; you’re never going to raft the Zambezi River or race a sailboat across the Atlantic on your
own.