Weekend travel media top five: July 17-18, 2010

by Alex Robertson Textor on

This weekend’s most interesting travel stories include a take on apartment rental listings services, an overview of the delightfully uncrowded White Mountains of Crete, an exploration of boutique caravan rentals in Cornwall, a search for pies in southern Alberta, and a list of NYC hotel rooftop bars.

1. In the New York Times, Benji Lanyado explores new developments in the orbit of inexpensive apartment rentals. Lanyado’s article got a lot of attention this past weekend, all of it deserved. His is essential ammunition for the budget-friendly fight against gratuitously expensive hotels.

2. In the Financial Times, Henry Shukman walks all over Crete’s White Mountains. The article ends with a quick guide to four additional European island hideaways.

3. In the Guardian, Gemma Bowes explores the new wave of boutique caravans (or trailers, as we know them stateside.)

4. In the Globe and Mail, Cinda Chavich embarks on a road trip across southern Alberta’s Cowboy Trail, sampling pie in towns with names like Black Diamond, Twin Butte, and Okotoks.

5. In the Los Angeles Times, Sherri Eisenberg provides a primer to Manhattan’s hotel rooftop bars.

(Image of Crete’s White Mountains: Flickr/bazylek100).

Five hot weekend travel media stories

by Alex Robertson Textor on

In today’s round-up of the weekend’s newspaper media travel stories: delicious pork, among other edibles, in the French Basque Country; American summer road trips; the Italian border city of Ventimiglia; biking along the Danube; and a guide to the world’s waterfalls. These five stories inspire fantasies of several types, and hit on less popular spots (like the French Basque Country and Ventimiglia) as well as some of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, including Niagara Falls.

1. In the Guardian, Andy Pietrasik goes on a fishing trip in Basque France and gets seriously sidetracked by small-scale local culinary specialties.

2. Also in the Guardian, Jamie Jensen and Max Grinnell offer seven road trip itineraries across the United States. These include a Lake Superior North Shore drive and Highway 61 from Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

3. In the Globe and Mail, Shawna Wagman explores the Italian city of Ventimiglia, which she hilariously refers to as “the Windsor-Detroit corridor of the Riviera.” Wagman is especially taken by Ventimiglia’s Friday open-air market.

4. In South Africa’s Sunday Times, Marilynn Berrington narrates her bike journey with Rad & Reisen from Passau to Vienna.

5. In the Independent, Harriet O’Brien provides a snappy guide to some of the world’s best known waterfalls.

(Image: Flickr/Alberto Mari)

Exciting Repositioning Cruises for the Fall

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Repositioning cruises are the leftovers of cruising. When cruise ships need to move from one port to another at seasonal cusps, they take less conventional itineraries to get from one home port to another. Repositioning cruises can often be booked for less than more conventional cruises on a per-night basis.

Repositioning cruises are also, somewhat ironically, a good option for independent (even round-the-world) travelers. A well-priced repositioning cruise can deliver travelers from one continent to another, sometimes for not much more than an airline ticket, and also permit visits (however short) to many ports in-between. While RTW travelers seldom look to repositioning cruises for inspiration, they should.

One of the more exciting repositioning cruises on the schedule this fall is Holland America’s 43-day Vancouver-Sydney crossing on the Volendam, which will take in Seattle, four ports in Hawaii, American Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, several ports in New Zealand, and several ports in Australia. It leaves September 22. The least expensive stateroom on offer comes to $3899 per person.

Holland America is also selling the above cruise with a termination in Auckland (29 days in total) for $2399.

For less ambitious prospective repositioning cruisers, Cruise Critic has published a useful list of some of the more intriguing shorter repositioning itineraries for the fall: 17 nights between Copenhagen and New York on Costa, leaving September 4; 18 nights between Vancouver and Fort Lauderdale on Holland America, leaving September 25; and 16 nights between Rome and Rio de Janeiro on Princess, leaving December 4.

(Image: Flickr/pmarkham)

Top Caribbean bolthole to offer iPads to guests

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Lighthouse Bay Resort, an exquisite Barbuda resort recently tipped by Vanity Fair’s George Wayne as an appropriately majestic honeymoon location for Prince William and Kate Middleton, already cocoons its guests in utter bliss.

It offers isolation along a miles-long stretch of insanely stunning beach; a skilled chef who produces wonderfully personalized meals; an appealing list of activities, all gently on offer; and free long-distance telephone and use of laptops-and, as of this coming week, use of iPads on the property.

In stocking its rooms with iPads, Lighthouse Bay will advance a luxury hotel micro-trend. Back in April, Gridskipper noted that several hotels had begun to incorporate the iPad tablet into their amenity tallies. One of the hotels mentioned in that round-up, Rhode Island’s Ocean House, at the time planned to offer iPads as a basic amenity for guests; the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Berkeley in London (the latter reported in Gadling) both provide iPad in selected suites.

Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s Ale House Inn ups the ante by providing iPads to guests in all its “Deluxe” rooms. By providing four iPads for its nine suites, Lighthouse Bay provides similarly broad guest access to iPads. Next season, Lighthouse Bay plans to roll out iPads in all of its nine suites.

The iPad is still very new and it’s unclear how broad its adoption will be. But if this micro-trend continues and luxury hotels will soon be providing the magic tablet for guests in greater numbers, the iPad may progress from amenity to utility fairly quickly.

Remembering the magic of domestic travel

by Mike Barish on

Sometime during last week’s trip to Yellowstone National Park, it hit me. It was a simple realization but also one of those kicks in the ass that only a place as massive and magical as Yellowstone can give you. With rolling hills and snow-capped peaks lining the horizon and bison mingling with antelope on either side of the road, I remembered just how diverse, majestic and wonderful the United States really is. After spending the last six years focusing extensively on international travel, I realized that the stigma that we often attach to domestic travel is nothing more than snobbery. That stigma often keeps people from exploring the vast beauty that awaits in our own backyard.

Many travelers take great pride in being able to announce the exact number of nations and territories that they have visited without a moment of thought. These passport stamp collectors and country counters often exude a special kind of pretentiousness that is meant to intimidate lesser-traveled individuals. These are the people who turn travel into a contest. These are the people who insist on engaging in the traveler versus tourist debates, mock of cruises and further other nonsense arguments that attach judgment to travel. These are the people who ignore domestic travel.

This is not to say that we should all eschew international travel. I am as guilty as anyone of ignoring domestic travel to explore the world. I do not regret those trips and learned a tremendous amount about the world and myself by leaving the friendly confines of the United States. However, I have come to realize that there’s a balance that can be struck between setting off to far away lands and introducing yourself to your own country. There’s as much to see from Anchorage to Miami as there is from Reykjavik to Ushuaia.

The sheer magnitude of the United States means that its landscapes run the gamut from mountains to prairies to pristine beaches. We have major cities and small towns, industrial centers and sprawling farms and created the concept of national parks. It’s those national parks that provided me with this epiphany. An epiphany that so many Americans had long before I did. As I spoke with strangers in Yellowstone and heard their stories of driving from California, the Dakotas and even Florida, I was embarrassed that I had neglected the wonders of domestic travel for so long.

While I may be late to the party, I found that I was welcomed with open arms. Unlike the country counters, the people who are driving around America exploring our national parks and enjoying the diversity of our massive nation seemed genuinely interested about exchanging stories rather than boasting. They offered tips, shared memories and displayed none of the arrogance of the people who ceaselessly find reason to mention how often they need to order more pages for their passports.

There’s room for domestic and international travel in all of our lives. We can mix excursions to Bali in with road trips through Texas. There’s a great big world out there, but we also have a massive backyard. You can safari in Wyoming. You can hike through a rainforest in the Pacific Northwest. We have deserts and Great Lakes. We have ethnic enclaves and regional cuisines.

Let the passport stamp collectors pass judgment. I’ll be in the backyard.