Trade in 10 plastic water bottles for a free night at Starwood’s Element Hotel

by Amy Chen on

You’ve probably seen the reusable eco-chic totes that proudly proclaim “I’m Not A Plastic Bag.” Well starting today (April 5), now you can book the “I Am Not a Plastic Package” at participating Element Hotels — in exchange for turning in 10 single-use plastic water bottles at check-in, you can get a free night at a Element property if you’re one of the first 100 people to call 1-877-ELEMENT and mention the promo code GOGREEN.

The eco-friendly Starwood offshoot currently has locations in or just outside of Baltimore, Denver, Dallas, Houston, and Las Vegas (about 15 minutes from the Strip), as well as suburban areas such as Lexington, Mass. (about a 30-minute drive from Boston) and Ewing, N.J. (about 40 minutes from Philadelphia, 1.5 hours from Manhattan). Each extended-stay property has rooms with in-room kitchenettes, Energy Star-rated appliances, compact fluorescent light bulbs, and low-flow faucets — and green amenities such as complimentary bike rentals and electric car charging stations.

Though the idea is to reduce the use of disposable water bottles, I have to wonder how many people are going to actually pack 10 empty water bottles in their carry-ons or suitcases. Even so, if you are among the lucky 100 to book this Earth Day promotion, please don’t buy 10 water bottles at the nearest store once you arrive, guzzle the water (or dump it out), and then present the bottles at check-in. We all know that’s not the point.

Details: The Earth Day promotion is limited to 100 rooms at participating Element properties, where room rates typically start at $125 per night. If you are among the first 100 people to book this package, your one-night stay must be redeemed between April 22 and 25. To qualify for the free room, you must bring and turn in 10 water bottles at check-in. In addition to the free night, you’ll get a free Element-branded reusable water bottle to remind you of how it’s possible to save a little green by being green. Room taxes are also waived, but you are responsible for any incidentals. Limit one free room per guest.%Gallery-73514%

Red Roof Inn offers rooms at 1 cent

by Grant Martin on

Need a cheap hotel room in the next fortnight? Scoot on over to The Red Roof Inn website where they’re having an epic sale on rooms. For the next two weeks the discount hotel brand is offering one room at each hotel for ONE PENNY every day, plus taxes, of course.

The only catch? Rates are only good for the following day, so if you want to book a room for tomorrow you need to get online today and be the first person to book. Rates are published every day at 9AM PST (that’s lunchtime for you Red-Roof-Inn-rabid New Yorkers, so be sure to get there at 8:55 with a quick trigger finger and your browser set to reload every 5 seconds.

Check out Red Roof Inn’s frontpage for more details on the promotion. One cent rooms run until April 15.

Gondar: Ethiopia’s Camelot

by Sean McLachlan on

The road north from Lake Tana, Ethiopia, gradually ascends into the mountains. The landscape grows greener and the farms look richer here.

The combination of rough mountains and good farmland made it an obvious place for a capital city, and for many years it was. Gondar is nestled in a mountain-ringed valley at 2133 meters (6,998 ft.) altitude and is free from the malaria that plagues the Lake Tana region. It appeared so attractive that the Emperor Fasilidas moved from Lake Tana and made Gondar his capital in 1635. He built the impressive castle pictured to the right and gathered his court and supporters around him.

If the castle looks a bit European, that’s because Fasilidas took his inspiration from the Portuguese. A group of Portuguese adventurers had helped his father, Susneyos, defeat the Muslim conqueror Ahmed Gragn. Susneyos converted to Catholicism and tried to convert his subjects too, but the Ethiopian Orthodox faith was too strong for such a change. When Fasilidas came to the throne he quickly reconverted everyone back to the traditional church and ejected the Portuguese. This didn’t stop him from learning a thing or two from the Europeans, however, castle architecture being one of them.

Gondar makes a good rest stop after a few days of driving. The mountain breeze is cool and refreshing. The Italians liked it too, and during their brief occupation of the country from 1936-1941 they built an attractive European-style downtown that still retains some faded glory.

%Gallery-87470%Gondar is a place of song. The town’s many churches broadcast prayers and hymns over loudspeakers from the early morning until late at night. While this is common practice across Ethiopia, here the prayers bounce off the slopes and echo across the valley. They are especially audible at the palace complex, where Fasilidas built his castle and his successors vied with each other to make their own mark on history. There are a total of six castles by six different kings, built during Gondar’s 280 year run as the empire’s capital. The entire complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

While that of Fasilidas is the most imposing, each castle has its own distinctive style. A walk around the grounds is best done in a leisurely manner, and some castles offer fine views from the upper windows and battlements, although it takes some convincing to get the guards to let you up there!

Two related sights nearby should not be missed. One is the “Bath” of Fasilidas, actually a giant baptismal font for his famous mass reconversion. Usually it’s left empty, but for Timkat, the celebration of Epiphany, it’s filled with water and the faithful gather around, dressed in white and carrying candles.

The other sight is the Trinity Church built by the Emperor Iyasu in 1674. Of the 44 churches in Gondar, this is the only one to survive the attack of the Mahdi’s forces from the Sudan in 1888. It is said that the bees kept in the orchard on the church grounds swarmed against the Muslim looters and stung them so badly that they fled. The soldiers tried several times to burn the church, but each time they were driven off by angry bees.

However the church was saved, every visitor is grateful that it was. The interior is filled with elegant paintings of miracles and Bible scenes. Even the ceiling is covered in art. Winged angel heads are painted in neat rows along and between the roof beams. They look in every direction, a symbol of God being able to see everything at once.

If he has an eye for beauty, he must be looking at Gondar a lot.

Coming up next: Ethiopia’s wonderful children!

You can read the rest of the Ethiopia series here.

Four ways to safeguard your camera

by Amy Chen on

There’s a certain amount of trust that we all display when we ask a stranger to take our photo. I tend to barter services with another camera-toting tourist, as in “I’ll take your photo if you take mine.” But it’s always a bit unnerving to entrust a stranger with your camera and memory card.

Here are four tips to help make sure your camera doesn’t get ripped off. And with a bit of luck, perhaps you’ll come home with frame-worthy photos.

Ask a stranger who has a camera similar to yours.
As a form of informal insurance, it helps to believe that you just handed your camera to someone who is less likely to steal yours because he or she already has the same one. To increase the chance of getting better shots, if you have a fancy SLR, it’s probably not a good idea to ask someone who is still carrying around a point-and-shoot film camera. Even if you switch your camera to auto mode, all the buttons can be overwhelming for the stranger you’ve accosted. When in doubt, ask the stranger to fire off a few rounds and hope a wayward finger isn’t smudging your lens.

I’ve heard of other travelers seeking out a parent with kids because moms and dads are more likely to have experience operating a camera. I suppose parents are also less likely to run off with your camera if they’re trying to wrangle their offspring. However, I try to avoid asking parents with small children because it doesn’t really seem fair to impose when their hands are already full with diaper bags.

Get to know your self-timer.
It’s harder to tell if the stranger can compose your shot just the way you’d like. There’s nothing more disappointing than reviewing your photos on the LCD display and seeing the Eiffel Tower poking out of your head. When that has happened, I’ve let that well-intentioned stranger walk away before I flagged down someone else and tried again. I don’t mean to appear ungrateful, but I didn’t travel that far to come home with mediocre photos. To maintain some control, I’m a fan of the self-timer. I prop the camera on a ledge, rock, or bench, adjust the shot, and hit the self-timer. As always, it’s best to check your surroundings before plopping your camera down unattended even for those 10 seconds. For a better grip on uneven surfaces, the Gorillapod is an inexpensive tripod (from $22) with adjustable legs that can help keep your camera from tipping over. There’s also now an iPhone-compatible version ($40).

Fall back on self-portraits.
Say you’re surrounded by sketchy-looking people so you decide to take your own photo. One drawback is that your head usually looks so large that it obscures the scenic background. Plus, those awkward vanity shots usually take a few tries because you accidentally cut off your head or someone’s. Thankfully, there are now high-tech options like the Samsung DualView TL220. When the 12.2-megapixel point-and-shoot first came out in September, I was psyched because it features not one but two screens to help you better frame that shot. In just six months, the $300 retail price has already dropped; Best Buy is selling it for $250 this week with free shipping.

Consider a waterproof camera.
Whenever I’m at the beach and leave my camera on my towel, I’m always a bit anxious that someone is going to walk away with it. I used to buy cheap disposable waterproof Kodak film cameras but have switched to the 10-megapixel Fuijifilm FinePix Z33WP ($130, Amazon.com), which is waterproof up to 10 feet. Though I haven’t had the chance to snorkel with it yet, I used the camera last summer while paddle boating on a lake. Just being able to take my camera into the water makes it easier for me to relax and not have to constantly watch my stuff.

Major camera manufacturers are rolling out more waterproof models; Olympus makes an affordable line of waterproof cameras (from $230) while Vivitar’s 8.1-megapixel ViviCam 8400 goes for $100. As for the likelihood of someone stealing my wallet or keys off my beach towel, well, those things can be replaced more easily than a memory card full of irreplaceable moments.

Medieval monasteries on Lake Tana, Ethiopia

by Sean McLachlan on

The Christian communities of Ethiopia have an eye for dramatic settings. From the sweeping views of Debre Libanos to the many monasteries perched atop sheer cliffs, the surroundings of a holy place are often as beautiful as the place itself.

It makes sense from a religious point of view. If you’re going to spend your life celebrating Creation, where better to do it than a place where Creation is at its most awesome or serene?

This is certainly true of the monasteries and nunneries on the islands of Lake Tana. These religious communities are set in a placid lake surrounded by green hills and fields. At 65 km (40 miles) in diameter it’s the largest lake in Ethiopia and has been a center of worship for more than 500 years.

Hiring a boat is pretty straightforward at the lakeside town of Bahir Dar, and our first stop is a peninsula a few miles along the coast where stands the 16th century church of Ura Kidane Mihret. The boat docks at a little pier and my wife and I take a narrow path through a dense forest. Coffee grows everywhere under the shade of the forest canopy. I’ve never seen coffee growing before. Splitting open one of the red berries I find the bean inside, a pale yellow, sticky thing that bears little resemblance to the roasted beans I’m used to. We drink Ethiopian coffee every morning at home so it’s nice to see where it comes from.

We climb a hill and pass though a simple stone gate. In the yard the monks are busy laying the foundation for a new building. All the monks have to work hard, either at farms on the mainland or helping out around the church and monastery. The church itself is deceptively simple on the outside–a large, round building topped by an elaborate cross–but when we pass through the tall wooden doors we’re stopped short by brilliantly colorful paintings reaching from floor to ceiling.

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The outer wall of the church shelters an inner wall that encloses the worship area and holy of holies. Every inch of this wall is covered in paintings. Some scenes are familiar, like the Crucifixion and St. George defeating the dragon. Others are strange to us, coming from holy books that have been discarded by or lost to the Western tradition, like the Miracle of Mary and the Kebre Negast. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church includes many such books in their canon. The books of Enoch and Jubilees were translated into Ge’ez, the ancient Ethiopian language still used in church services, but were lost to the West and survive in the New Testament only in a few quotations. If it wasn’t for ancient Ethiopian translators, these books would be almost entirely unknown.

The paintings are vivid, showing scenes of miracles and worship. Mary is a popular figure and every phase of her flight to Egypt is shown in detail. There’s also a brilliant painting of all the souls in Hell being freed after the Crucifixion.

The paintings sometimes take interesting twists to familiar themes. For example, the common image of St. George killing the dragon has a unique legend attached to it in Ethiopia. There once was a village that worshiped the dragon and made human sacrifices to it every day. A maiden named Brutawit was going to be sacrificed and St. George told her that if she believed in God that she would be saved. She was, thanks to George’s skill with a lance, and she took the dead beast back to the village to show that God was more powerful than the dragon. The entire village then converted to Christianity.

A short boat ride away is the island monastery of Kibran Gabrael. Like many monasteries, it’s off-limits to women so my wife hung out in a shady grove while I went to see the monastery’s famous library of medieval manuscripts. The monastery is quiet, most of the monks being on the mainland tending crops, but the librarian is in and he leads me to a little building stuffed with books. As a dedicated bibliophile I’ve been to some of the great libraries of the world and looked through many rare illuminated manuscripts, but I was very impressed with what I saw on this peaceful little island. The level of artistry in the books is equal to any of the great works of medieval France or Italy, yet completely different in style. The librarian opens up book after book of sturdy goatskin, showing me richly colored paintings of Bible scenes. Each of the Gospels has its own book, and there’s a hefty New and Old Testament that weighs in at 17 kilos (38 pounds)! Also in the library are a selection of icons. When a monk goes off on his own to pray in solitude for a few days, the abbot gives him a book to read and an icon to meditate on. Thus the monks get some fine art to admire and think about while they are cut off from the rest of humanity.

Lake Tana has several other monasteries and churches other than the ones I mention here. Some take an entire day trip by boat to visit. Someone seriously interested in seeing them all would need about a week to do it properly. Hopefully some day I’ll go back and write about them all here.

Next stop: Gondar–Ethiopia’s Camelot!

You can read the rest of the Ethiopia series here.