Cirque Dreams Travels The Country, Tours Military Bases Worldwide

by Chris Owen on

The first-ever Cirque Dreams World Tour performed at 17 U.S. military bases throughout ten countries in January. Now, Cirque Dreams Holidaze promises to light up the 2012 holiday season transforming stages at five military bases in Korea and across the United States into a magical holiday wonderland.

This is not your mother’s Christmas pageant either. The traditional elements are there but that’s about where tradition ends. Gingerbread men flip in mid air and toy soldiers march on thin wires. Snowmen, icemen, penguins, Christmas tree ornaments and dancing puppets all come to life to an original music score.

Honoring tradition, seasonal favorites accompany hundreds of astonishing costumes and holiday dreams in a setting of gigantic gifts, colossal candy canes and 30-foot towering soldiers creating a wonderland of spectacle.

Fans won’t have to travel far to see the international cast of multi-talented and brilliantly costumed artists come to life and perform astonishing feats of disbelief.

The Cirque Dreams Holidaze U.S. tour begins on November 13 in Abilene, Texas, then travels up the West Coast, down through the Midwest, into the South and ends in Schenectady, New York, on December 30.

Here’s a preview:




Cirque Dreams’ stable of popular shows include Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy, Cirque Dreams Illumination, Cirque Dreams & Dinner onboard Norwegian Epic and upcoming Norwegian Breakaway, Cirque Dreams Rocks, and Cirque Dreams Holidaze, now in its fourth consecutive touring season and success from The Kennedy Center.

[Photo Credit: Cirque Productions]

Travel Troubles: How To Have A Travel Fling

by Rachel Friedman on

In a recent fit of travel nostalgia, I pulled out the diary I kept while living in Ireland when I was 20. I expected it to be filled with precocious ramblings about the people and culture, a la Steinbeck’s “A Russian Journal” or at the very least to offer up some “Eat, Pray, Love”-style insights about myself. Instead I found pages of minutely plotted grocery lists (I was so broke I had to shop meal to meal) and endless entries about… boys. Numerous paragraphs, for example, are devoted to flirtations with a witty Irish bartender. There is also much speculation over whether or not the long-lashed Spanish neighbor has a girlfriend. And a cute, scruffy lawyer who frequented the pub where I worked earned a full four pages before I even learned his name.

Ah, youth. Ah, travel. Ah, romance. As mortifyingly boy crazy as my young Ireland journal is, re-reading it did remind me of the excitement of being with someone new somewhere new. A small portion of these international romances endure but many are as short-term as our visitor visas. Still, you want to make the most of your foreign fling. Here’s how.Seek Out Locals
Are you the kind of person who takes those frenetic group tours where some perpetually grinning guide leads you and 30 others down the beaten track of whatever city you’re visiting, occasionally letting you stop for ten minute intervals to snap photos? No? Great. Me, neither. I want to experience the local culture as much as an outsider can and one great way to get a glimpse of it is by hanging out with an actual local. Let your Romeo lead you through a Verona only a Juliet would get to see. I guarantee he’ll take you to the best Renaissance balls and only the finest apothecaries. Just don’t stay too long. I hear Romeo’s last relationship ended rather badly.

Widen Your Net
Got a 20-point checklist of all the qualities your future wife should have? Did you ditch the last guy you were dating because Cosmo told you he wasn’t the “one”? Well, you’re in luck. Since you’re only in country X for a week, you can drop all preconceptions about long-term mates and hook up with someone without worrying about pesky little issues like soul mates and divorce rates. So go on. Indulge your inner rebel and date the Dutch guy whose arms are covered in tattoos of his dead pets. Fantasize about mortifying your uptight mother with the chick who swears like a sailor. The world could use more tolerance and open-mindedness and it might as well start with you and your travel fling.

Kiss and Tell
Being a writer is great because I have a professional excuse to do ridiculous things for the sake of a story. And I’m not talking only about adventures I plan to publish. I consider this imperative to investigate people and places fundamental to having a great life story, the kind you tell wide-eyed grandkids whom you want to know the highlight of your day wasn’t always gumming a cheese sandwich. Yes, this means I’ve made many stupid mistakes – and it should go without saying that you should exercise the utmost caution when getting involved with someone you don’t know in a foreign land – but it also means I’ve had some amazing, spontaneous experiences. If you say yes to that Austrian drummer who invites you to an underground concert in Vienna, you just might, too.

Manage Your Expectations
You meet a guy in Buenos Aires one balmy night. You laugh. You drink. You dance. And somewhere around 3 a.m. you two lust birds find yourselves making grand plans to travel the country together, a romantic version of “The Motorcycle Diaries.” Be wary, traveler. These are heady times. It’s easy to get swept up in the moment, especially on the road, where, among strangers, we sometimes imagine reinventing ourselves and our lives. The thrill of so many new experiences is powerfully intoxicating; it makes us want to say yes to everything, including romance. But travel flings often disintegrate like vampires in the sun. Be prepared to appreciate them for what they are – exciting and often temporary – and to move on.

Cool It
I once had a friend who went to Barcelona with the singular goal of having an affair with a tall, dark Spaniard. She announced her intentions on multiple occasions before the trip – to me, to our other friends, to pretty much anyone who would listen. I imagine she also relayed her plan to every man within earshot she met in Spain that week. You might not be surprised to hear that her “spontaneous” travel romance never materialized. You will not snag an awesome guy or gal simply because you are a new face in an old town. And don’t depend on that American accent to charm anyone but the waitress who hopes you don’t realize that you don’t need to tip 20 percent in Europe. A friend of mine offers this wise but important travel fling advice: “remain cool and mysterious and let things happen naturally.” Actually, this is pretty great life advice, too.

[Photo Credit: Grant Martin]

Looking For Holiday Airfare? Better Hurry

by Chris Owen on

When to buy holiday airfare is often the most difficult part of the process. Deciding where to go, when we want to fly there and who we might travel with is easy. Knowing when to pull the trigger on buying airfare seems to require a crystal ball. Since most of us don’t have mystic forecasting abilities, we look to what or who we believe are qualified sources for guidance. Experts seem to agree, the best time to buy is sooner than later.

“You don’t have a moment to lose,” said Rick Searcy, CEO of FareCompare in an ABC News report, cautioning travelers, “Holiday flights are going to be expensive.” Searcy believes that prices will be up to 70 percent higher than normal pricing, depending on routes, and those looking for direct flights can expect up to a 20 percent premium price.

So when to buy?

Those who have not bought flights for Thanksgiving travel are already too late for the best pricing. Looking at Christmas travel, Searcy suggests buying before November 10 for the best pricing and consider traveling during off peak times.Other ways to save on airfare?

Try a travel agent- Expect to pay a fee of $20 to $50 per person on top of the airfare but that fee can quickly become a great investment if a travel agent finds great flights at a lower price in less time than we might invest on our own surfing websites.

To get the best results with a travel agent, have very specific but flexible travel plans. Establish what agents call a “travel window,” basically a period of time within which you are able to fly. Note the time you need on the ground for holiday plans and throw in any hotel, car rental or other needs at the destination.

Also, send along past guest/frequent flyer numbers and available points to that agent to have on file and take advantage of if possible.

Pay attention to airline promotions- I got one today via email from American Airlines doubling miles every time I fly on American Airlines, American Eagle or the American Connection carrier from November 16, 2012, through November 26, 2012. Those miles might mean a lot to me and swing my vote toward American if two options come up roughly equal.

Regardless of what airline we fly, what airport we use or when we go, it’s clear that this year prices will be up and availability down as airlines trim fleets to fly full planes.




[Photo Credit- Flickr user matt.hintsa]

To Understand America, Check Out the Nation’s Reddest And Bluest Places

by Dave Seminara on

We are a deeply divided country with red states, blue states and a handful of battleground states that will decide who is elected President on Tuesday. As a frequent traveler who also follows politics, I often feel the need to hit the road just to understand the country I live in.

The country wasn’t always so geographically polarized. According to the New York Times, John F. Kennedy campaigned in 49 states in the 1960 presidential election and Richard Nixon visited all 50. This year the candidates have campaigned in just 10 states since the conventions. Many of us now live in communities that are overwhelmingly blue or red and we inhabit parallel universes with little knowledge about the people on the other side of the electoral landscape.

I’ve spent my whole life living in very blue places: Buffalo, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. I’m an independent and I have friends and relatives who support both parties, but living where I’ve lived has, in some ways, kept me isolated from red state culture.

I don’t know a single person who owns a gun (at least that I’m aware of). I don’t know any evangelical Christians, at least not well. None of my friends have pickup trucks. I’m used to walking out my door and having my choice of Thai, Vietnamese, Middle Eastern, Indian or any number of other ethnic restaurants, and I go out for chicken vindaloo more often than chicken fried steak.

And most of the people in my social circle listen to NPR or sports talk radio, not Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck or Shawn Hannity. I live in a very blue world.

And so, I love to get out and see what the rest of the country is like. It’s amazing how you don’t have to drive very far to be in a completely different world – a country where even the people working in fast food restaurants are white; a country where people would sooner eat rats for lunch than buy a Subaru; a country where people say “yes, sir” and “no, mam,” and mean it. It sounds silly but traveling from blue state to red state or vice versa can be real culture shock.


But of course, it can also be fun to travel within shades of blue or red. A couple years ago, I visited Boulder and, even coming from a blue state, couldn’t help but notice how seemingly almost everyone there drove a Subaru Outback, most with Thule ski carriers on top. President Obama carried 72% of Boulder County in 2008 and 70% in 2012, probably closer to 90% in the city itself. Obama supporters like Subarus. But you could drive across the entire state of Oklahoma, carried by Senator McCain with just a hair under 66% of the vote in ’08, and not see a single one, at least not with Oklahoma plates.

If you take the time to meet some locals when you travel, your politics probably won’t change but your perspective and understanding might. And you might not even have to leave your state to enter a whole different country. In my adopted home state of Illinois, for example, President Obama took 76% in urban Cook County in ’08. (74% in 2012)

And much more in some places. According to NPR, the residents of Altgeld Gardens, a public housing project on Chicago’s South Side where President Obama worked as a community organizer, supported the President in 2008 by the tune of 1900 to 12. But drive an hour to the south, to rural Iroquois County, which straddles the Indiana border, and you enter another world, one in which Senator McCain took 64% of the vote and Governor Romney took 71% of the vote.

A couple years ago, I attended a fair in the town of Sandwich, Illinois, just about 60 miles west of Chicago and while my son was entranced by a pig exhibition, I fell into conversation with a pig farmer named Brice who was absolutely certain that President Obama was: A) born in Africa, B) a Muslim, and C) the antichrist. If he had espoused any of these viewpoints in River Forest, where I lived, he would have been laughed out of the room.

But standing outside the pig corral in Sandwich, 60 miles to the west, his diatribe resonated with two other farmers in earshot, who told me they agreed with him. After listening to the man for a bit, and only challenging him very diplomatically, I ran off to find my wife, like a child who’d just discovered a rare species normally found only in Madagascar.

“I want you to meet this pig farmer who thinks Obama’s a Muslim!” I said excitedly to my wife, but alas, she wasn’t interested.

Brice’s viewpoints didn’t influence mine whatsoever, but now when I see something like this Pew poll from this summer, showing that 17% of the country thinks that Obama is a Muslim, I don’t have to wonder who those people are, because I know Brice and his friends in Sandwich.

In many cases, you don’t have to go very far to travel from one political extreme to the other. Check out Macon County in Alabama, for example, where 87% of voters, mostly African-Americans, went for President Obama in ’08, then drift over to Elmore County, which borders Macon on the northwest side, where 75% of the electorate, mostly whites, voted for Senator McCain. The same applies to the neighboring counties of Glascock (84% Obama) and Hancock (81% McCain) in Georgia.

In January, I had an eye-opening venture into red-state country on a visit to the Richmond, Virginia vicinity. I got a whole heaping dose of Southern gun culture after stumbling upon a “Guns Save Lives” rally in front of the capitol building. I sat and listened to a host of speakers, some of them ordinary citizens, others low-level elected officials, but they all had one thing in common: an all consuming fear that President Obama’s “radical socialist agenda” included taking away their guns.

I was fascinated, and later that day when we passed a busy looking gun store called Green Top Hunting and Fishing in nearby Glen Allen, I pulled over and brought my family inside for a look. I have zero interest in hunting and guns but the scene inside captivated me. It was a little after noon on a Sunday, right after church time, and the place was swarming with men, mostly fathers and sons who were checking out all kinds of very intimidating looking firearms.

There were row upon row of rifles you could pick up and handle on your own and then behind the counter, there were much more dangerous looking weapons you had to ask a salesperson to see. There were three salespeople at the counter and yet there was a scrum that must have been 20 deep waiting to get their hands on these weapons. I was less than a 100 miles away from my home at the time in Falls Church, but it was a world away from where I lived in and I’m glad I went.

When this election is over, hopefully on Tuesday and not weeks from now after a myriad of court proceedings, half the country is going to be furious. How could they elect that guy! My advice to everyone, no matter what the result is, is to get out and see the part of the country you’ve been missing. Most of us live in red or blue places but don’t get out enough into that other world.

I’d like to take a dozen people from Ochiltree County, Texas, where Senator McCain captured 92% of the vote, and lock them in a room with voters from Washington, D.C., which supported President Obama to the tune of 93%, for a few hours just to let them have at one another. I guaranty you that both sides would learn something form the other.

Get out and see how the other half lives. Your politics probably won’t change but if you take the time to talk to people, you might at least understand where they’re coming from.

Where to go to get a taste of red- 2008 & 2012 election margins for 10 of the country’s reddest counties

· Uintah County, Utah (NE Utah- 83% McCain, 90% Romney)
· Madison County, Idaho (NE Idaho- 85% McCain, 93% Romney)
· Garfield County, Montana (E. Montana- 82% McCain, 89% Romney)
· Crook County, Wyoming (NE Wyoming- 81 McCain%, 85% Romney)
· Ochiltree and Roberts Counties, Texas (North Texas- 92% each, McCain, 91% Romney, 93% Romney)
· Beaver County, Oklahoma (NW Oklahoma- 89% McCain, 89% Romney)
· Blount County, Alabama (North-Central Alabama- 84% McCain, 87% Romney)
· Holmes County, Florida (NW Florida- 82% McCain, 84% Romney)
· Glascock County, Georgia (East Georgia- 84% McCain, 85% Romney)

Where to go to get a taste of blue- 2008 & 2012 election results for 10 of the country’s bluest counties

· Multnomah County, Oregon (Portland area- 77% Obama in ’08, 76% in ’12)
· Alameda County, California (S.F. area- 79% Obama in ’08, 78% in ’12)
· Sioux County, North Dakota (Standing Rock Indian Reservation, South-Central ND- 83% Obama in ’08, 79% in ’12)
· St. Louis County, Missouri (St. Louis- 84% Obama in ’08, 83% in ’12)
· Orleans Parish, Louisiana (New Orleans- 79% Obama in ’08 and ’12)
· Claiborne County, Mississippi (SW MS- 85% Obama in ’08, 88% in ’12)
· Macon County, Alabama (SE Alabama- 87% Obama in ’08 and ’12)
· Hancock County, Georgia (East Georgia- 81% Obama in ’08 and ’12)
· District of Columbia (D.C. – 93% Obama in ’08, 91% in ’12)
· Bronx, New York (The Bronx- 88% Obama in ’08, 91% in ’12)

Note: Election results were updated on 11/7.

[Photo credits: Dave Seminara, Flickr users James Jordan, aesedepece]

Photo Of The Day: Boats Off Jimbaran Beach

by Chris Owen on
This Photo of the Day is titled “Boats Off Jimbaran Beach” and comes from Gadling Flickr pool member philbardino. It shows a variety of fishing boats anchored off Jimbaran Beach in Bali, Indonesia.

Jimbaran beach, on the West Coast of Bali, is small, secluded and offers stunning sunrise and sunset views.

For more on Bali, see Jonathan Goldstein’s “In Bali With Baggage” series here on Gadling.

Upload your best shots to the Gadling Group Pool on Flickr. Several times a week we choose our favorite images from the pool as Photos of the Day.

Tips for getting featured: include the camera you used along with any other equipment or processing software that might help other photographers know more about your image.

[Photo Credit: Flickr user philbardino]