When all is said and done, the most powerful method for finding the lowest airfare to your destination is to go to not one but to several of the sources for that data. It can't be sufficiently emphasized that no one source of airfares will always have the best fare for your particular date and time of flight. If price is that important to you, you have got to spend the time to survey at least three or four airfare websites before you make your final choice. And after you have found what appears to be the bargain fare for your date of departure, you should then go directly to the website of a couple of airlines to see whether they are improving on that price.
The aggregators of airfares -- namely, the websites that don't sell you tickets but simply advise where the best fares are -- total around a dozen different websites. Some are:
And there are more. They are to be added to the online ticket agencies (OTAs) -- Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity. I'm not suggesting that you go to all of them, but I am recommending that you spend ten minutes or so in quickly scanning the results shown on a few.
For domestic flights on which you sense the possibility that you may have to later change the date or time of your flight, and on which you will be checking a suitcase round-trip, you might also consider going directly to the American Airlines website. That carrier has recently announced a bundled airfare privilege costing $68, which includes the $50 cost of checking a suitcase round-trip. The remaining $18 then gives you the right to change the flight date or time without penalty -- thus avoiding the forbidding $150 penalty you might incur for doing so. It's an insurance policy, in effect, for people somewhat unsure of the exact day on which they plan to fly, and it is made available only to persons who make their booking directly with American Airlines.
Otherwise, use one of the aggregators, and one or more of the OTAs, and then check their information against the prices offered by one or more airlines.
Although a few travel shows have already been held in these early weeks of 2013, the real season for such events -- and especially for the big, newspaper-sponsored travel shows -- will start this weekend in New York City, when The New York Times Travel Show takes place for the public on Saturday and Sunday, January 19-20, at the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. My daughter, Pauline, and I will be kicking off the NYTimes show (we're the first speakers) at 10am on Saturday, with an hour-long speech divided between the two of us.
But there's a slight problem: We're scheduled to speak first at 10am (we'll also appear in the afternoon, at 2pm), but the doors to the show also open at 10am. How can anyone get to the downstairs auditorium in time for the opening moments of our speeches?
I plan to deal with the problem by delaying the substantive part of my speech for about five minutes, to commence at 10:05am and thus permit early arrivals to take their seats. And I'm also hoping to persuade the Times to open the doors around 10 minutes early for persons wanting to hear us, in order to give them the time to reach the auditorium and take their seats. So if you're a fast runner, you'll be able to get there just in time to hear the substance of "Important New Developments in Travel." Later in the afternoon, at 2pm, we'll be speaking on "The Top New Destinations for Travel in 2013."
Following each speech, Pauline and I will be signing books at a booth located on the main floor of the show -- and we're looking forward to meeting with a great many readers at that time. It's always fun to exchange hellos, and travel memories, on those occasions. And what then happens after this weekend's Manhattan appearance?
Exactly one week later, on Saturday January 26, Pauline will be speaking at the Chicago Travel and Adventure Show. Shortly thereafter, on February 9, she'll be speaking at the Boston Globe Travel Show. And later in the month, on Saturday February 23, I will be speaking (morning only) at the Los Angeles Times Travel Show in the Los Angeles Convention Center. Details on our appearances in March will follow soon. Hope to see you in New York, Chicago, Boston or Los Angeles!
Just as the Sydney Opera House made a touristic hit out of its Australian locale, and the near-completion of Gaudi's Cathedral in Barcelona brought torrents of new tourism to that city, while the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum brought hundreds of thousands to Bilbao, Spain, which had hardly enjoyed any such visitor numbers until Gehry's fantastical structure was built, in the same manner a new opera house in Oslo, Norway, has completely revitalized that capital. Designed by a hot new firm of Norwegian architects to feature a giant slanting roof on which Oslo's residents congregate and stroll, the Oslo Opera House has made architectural stars out of its designers, who have currently been given the task of redesigning the pedestrian thoroughfares of New York's Times Square and the pavilion just outside the September 11 Museum at Ground Zero.
To gain a glimpse of what these precedent-shattering designers are doing, take a look at the current January 21 edition of The New Yorker, which features a photograph of the Oslo building being heralded as one of the architectural masterworks of the 21st century (just as the Sydney, Australia, Opera House is the usually-acknowledged architectural masterwork of the 20th century).
In a slightly less dramatic fashion, involving constructions that are not really architectural in nature, three inanimate objects -- "the ship, the shuttle, and the rock" -- have created potent new reasons for visiting Los Angeles. These were described this past Sunday on our Travel Show by my daughter, Pauline, who had just returned from a whirlwind trip to California's entertainment capital. The maritime construction is the S.S. Iowa, a giant battleship of World War II fame, which has just been moored for onboard viewing in the port of Los Angeles, a place that hardly anyone had ever imagined visiting in the past. Yet hordes of tourists are now making trips by rented car to what is the largest container ship port in the world. Although they come to visit the Iowa, they remain entranced by the sight of gigantic container ships entering the port from a Pacific Ocean crossing and then being relieved of their container cargo by skyscraper-sized cranes. It is apparently a remarkable sight, according to Pauline.
The shuttle is the space shuttle Endeavor, NASA's vessel for orbiting the earth, which has now been brought from the Los Angeles Airport to which it was recently flown from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and placed for viewing in the California Science Center, creating a major new attraction for the city. And the rock is the new artistic construction Levitated Mass by using a 340-ton boulder now found at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) -- and drawing crowds. So architecture, battleships, spaceships, and huge rocks can sometimes be creators of tourism, another example of the broad variety of travel attractions.
For many, a visit to New Orleans is an occasion to get drunk, or to hear superb jazz, or to imbibe the gourmet specialties that so many restaurants here provide. But increasingly, visitors to New Orleans are spending a day or two at that city's World War II Museum, which is currently being expanded into one of the leading collections of important history in the world. The third of some three adjoining buildings opened last week, and the eventual aim is to expand the museum into a complex of six gigantic structures.
I visited New Orleans' World War II museum some years ago (it opened in 2000), when the guides were mainly veterans of that historic conflict (1940 to 1945). There probably won't be many survivors continuing to provide an escorted experience on the occasion of your own trip, but the museum contains so many movie theaters, video auditoriums and large, explanatory, video screens that even a person with no knowledge of the events leading to that war, and the conduct of that war, will be able to understand the exhibits and their larger themes.
The museum deals with the warfare on and under the seas, in the air, and on land. It displays numerous actual aircraft of the warring powers. It presents you with an actual World War II submarine, with the landing craft that enabled the invasion of Europe by American, British and Canadian troops. It relates the experiences of American soldiers. It tells the story of the Holocaust, the Battle of the Bulge, the London Blitz, the second front in Russia, every other major phase of that war. The events it covers have now grown to such an extent that a single day is insufficient to cover them all. If asked, I would respond that a two-day visit must now be planned to gain a full understanding of the museum's story.
New Orleans' World War II Museum is within walking distance of the French Quarter; there's no need to take a bus or taxi to reach it. The museum is open seven days a week from 9 to 5, and one-day admission is $21 for adults ($6 for a second day), $12 for students (with ID) and children 12 and under; free for children 5 and under; and there's an extra charge for visiting the theater. Don't fail to visit it on your stay in New Orleans.
This has been a week of unusual travel offers. Perhaps the oddest -- but a spectacular bargain -- is the price of $1,199 for a one-way flight across the Atlantic to London, a night in a four-star London hotel, all transfers from airport to hotel and from hotel to Southampton, England, followed by a six-night crossing of the Atlantic from Southampton to New York City, aboard the brand-new Norwegian Breakaway, which will be going into service for the first time with that ocean crossing. When you consider the price of a normal one-way transatlantic flight, a night at a good London hotel, and the glamorous six-night crossing of the Atlantic, you realize what a remarkable bargain can now be considered.
The date of departure from Southampton? April 30, 2013, just slightly more than three months from now, a more-than-adequate time for doing your planning and anticipating a one-week, transatlantic adventure.
And what will the Norwegian Breakaway be like? Well, according to the hype, it will correct all the design flaws that made its sister ship, the Norwegian Epic (launched a couple of years ago), less of a total success a few years ago. Epic was the gigantic ship that nevertheless seemed crowded and confined by a great many passengers (including myself). Its cabin-layouts were especially unusual, and not for the better. Ships of its size and shape will now be corrected in design to seem spacious and leisurely in terms of crowd control and the like. And a great may people will be eyeing this new seagoing architecture very carefully.
After this initial transatlantic crossing, the Breakaway will be stationed in New York City, for sailings to Bermuda in the summer, and to Florida/Bahamas/Caribbean in the winter.
This $1,199 air-and-sea-crossing package is offered by Travel Themes and Dreams of Miami (tel. 877/870-7447; www.travelthemesanddreams.com).
In recently suggesting Miami and Miami Beach, Florida, as offering strong vacation attractions and colorful ethnic variety this winter, I mentioned all the standard companies for obtaining apartments and vacation homes for your stay in the Miami area: Homeway, VRBO, Endless Vacation Rentals, AirBnB, and others. I should also have mentioned that several local real estate brokers have become especially popular among people who spend from two weeks to a month in south Florida every year.
Of these, FeelMiami.com seems to be the realtor best catering to cost-conscious vacationers and offering top values -- that means, low rental rates--and often features discounts of as much as 30% for last-minute rentals.
By contrast, realtors such as Miamihabitat.com seem to emphasize the elegant quality of their inventory, as does Miamibeachstays.com. Miamihabitat's website is especially well illustrated, offering a helpful glimpse into the quality and features of its condos, villas, and homes, but all these leading companies will also provide you with photos of the properties you've chosen. Finally, Vacaationrentalsmiami.com (phone 305/517-1297) is still another well-regarded source of short rentals, and prides itself on being open to your phone calls and visits seven days a week, throughout the day. By talking with its personnel, I can't imagine that you won't find a suitable lodging for a reasonably-priced visit to Miami or Miami Beach.
The most disconcerting travel story in recent years appeared in The New York Times on Monday. It told of a decision by executives of Walt Disney World, in Orlando, to eventually replace cardboard admission tickets to Disney theme parks with rubber bracelets capable of containing and transmitting personal information about the bearer.
The bracelets will contain the most sophisticated computer components: radio frequency identification (RFID) chips able to retain information, metallic transmitters able to convey it to electronic posts scattered about Walt Disney World and in the clothing of Disney characters. Purchasers will be asked to reveal their personal data on buying these wrist-band tickets: name, gender, date of birth, marital status, hometown, personal likes and dislikes. Then, instead of passing through a turnstile on entering a particular theme park, they will simply swipe the bracelet in front of an electronic device, which will let them.
Oh, and the bracelets will also act as credit cards recording expenditures, so that Disney will collect not simply information about spending habits, but every penny of the expenditures made by visitors, without commission to a credit card company. When those visitors do spend the money, that information will stored within the bracelet and transmitted to a giant, super-computer.
And how will this information be used? There are first the funny examples. On bending down to greet Donald Duck, Donald will respond to you by exclaiming, based on precise knowledge: "Hi, Jack. I hear today is your birthday." Or: "Hello, Mary, you've come a long way from Scranton, Pennsylvania."
It will all be comical to a fault -- until... The games will end when the bracelet will advise you of the need to take a mid-afternoon snack after you have earlier had lunch at a Disney restaurant. It may list all sorts of enticing foods, all kinds of toys and games suitable to your personality. It will save you a place at exhibitions you wish to visit, and then advise you to rush over immediately and you will be spared a wait in line. It will do all these things, nominally for the purpose of enhancing your enjoyment, but mainly to make you spend more money than you otherwise might have.
Is it only me? Am I among the few who detests this invasion of our privacy, this deliberate manipulation of our decisions, this constant advertising -- from voices coming from your wrist -- of what you should or should not do? Or is it that we Americans no longer wish to be left alone in such matters?
The Disney organization is apparently convinced it will make additional millions from the use of these rubber bracelets. I hope the idea enjoys a quick death.
In drawing up a recent list of the hot travel destinations for 2013 -- the places expected to enjoy the sharpest rise in their incoming tourism -- I got hit by a barrage of dissent when I included Miami and Miami Beach, Florida. Ridiculous! cried a number of readers. Dubai is the kind of place that deserves mention -- it's booming beyond doubt, they said. But Miami?
Today's blog is therefore by way of defending my choice, and a subtle means of suggesting a vacation trip for yourself in the immediate months ahead.
To begin with, the statistics are unmistakable and un-refutable. The Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau has flatly gone on record in stating that 2013 will see a record-breaking number of tourists to Miami and vicinity -- so many South Americans among them (especially from Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela) that the nearby Ft. Lauderdale tourist agency will soon open an expensive office in Rio or Sao Paulo. Miami's hotel capacity is now up by more than 7,000 rooms from the year 2008.
What's drawing them here? Well apart from the delicious weather and the safety that U.S. real estate and banks offer to those South Americans, there's been a surge of construction in the fields that serve tourism. The opening in November of the ultra-luxurious ($500 a night per room) SLS South Beach Hotel was perhaps the nation's top hotel event of 2012, as was the completion of the new St. Regis in Bal Harbour. The cruise terminals in both Miami and nearby Port Everglades received refurbishing treatment valued at over $50M. One recent development of major significance was the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center, home to Michael Tilson Thomas' New World Symphony, which has created an extraordinary free cultural opportunity with its "wallcasts" where people sit outside on the lawn to watch concert simulcasts projected on a huge blank area of the building's facade. And finally, new hotels are going up all over the city: an Aloft property by Starwood Hotels, a boutique lodging called the Lennox Hotel across from the Setai, the Edison and a new Marriott, and a mammoth revamp of the famous Doral Resort.
Add to all this a souped-up schedule of festivals and boat shows occurring almost every two weeks in winter, and you have a jumping scene that's fun to experience.
Long-time readers of this blog may recall that my wife and I stayed here for a time (in a rented condo) last winter, and were especially impressed by a blossoming cuisine scene that had scattered multiple Peruvian restaurants, in particular, across large areas of the city. I rhapsodized at that time about the Mistura in north Beach and its classic dish of aji de gallina. We are considering a return visit later this winter, when we will be among the sharply increased number of visitors who have made Miami and Miami Beach into a hot destination. While the rest of the country emerges only slowly from the recession of 2009-2010, Miami seems to be booming at a record pace. I feel confident in correctly including it among the stars of this year's tourism.
Last week, I collected a dozen typical questions phoned in by listeners to the Travel Show presented every Sunday on nationwide radio by my daughter and myself. I have since been aware that many additional such questions deal with entirely different travel topics, and might be helpful to consider. So here are a dozen more, all culled from the most recent broadcasts.
Q. We find the procedures for obtaining visas to several countries -- Russia, China, Brazil, India -- to be complex and difficult to understand. Is there any company that can help us?
A. ItsEasy.com is one of the oldest visa-expediting and passport-expediting organizations, in business since 1976. You can contact them for either ordinary or emergency assistance by phoning 866-ITS-EASY.
Q. Where can we find a tour for people interested in "ikebana" (flower arrangements), or [and here they name any number of other specialties, from stamp collecting to ballroom dancing to weaving rugs]?
A. A website called Specialtytravel.com collects and groups the offerings of more than 500 tour companies operating special-interest tours to all parts of the globe. You insert your own beloved specialty and more often than you'd dream, there's a tour operator who gathers like-minded people to travel with you.
Q. We enjoy the walking tours in several major cities, conducted by graduate students and other experts in particular aspects of each city. Where can we find a comprehensive list of the unusual city tours that focus on serious topics or on special aspects that might never be covered on the average, once-over-lightly motorcoach tour?
A. Vayable.com and UrbanAdventures.com are both made for you. They list quirky tours for intellectually-curious people, usually conducted on foot, in more than 200 heavily-visited cities.
Q. I'm 47, and my wife a few years younger, and we're looking for a cruise that's totally unlike the "party sailings" that are often depicted. And we don't want to take a cruise booked by large numbers of families with children. In other words, a relaxing, dignified cruise. (But we don't want to pay the high rates of the ultra-elegant cruiseships). Which cruiselines should we avoid, and which should we consider?
A. To be avoided: Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, and MSC. To be considered: Celebrity Cruises and Holland-America.
Q. Is it safe to go to Spain or Greece or any of the other European countries where street protests have occurred against austerity policies?
A. Perfectly safe. No tourist has ever been harmed by the street demonstrations in those countries, and the sole problem you face is that civic life comes to an end on the day when such a mass protest is planned. It's hard to get about, and many touristic establishments are closed. But this occurs only for a single day, in almost all instances.
Q. I'm taking a first trip to Italy with my 17-year-old daughter. What shall we do there?
A. The fact that you're posing such a question means that you haven't engaged in any advance preparation or reading for the trip. It's absurd to visit Italy without having read either a history or cultural appreciation of that nation, or even a fictionalized novel about such outstanding figures as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. There are other books in your local library on the history of Rome or Florence, and if you fail to consult such texts, and others, you will waste a grand opportunity to view Italy with a background of knowledge that will immensely enhance the enjoyment of your trip. And if you do, you will not later be asking "what's there to do there?"
Q. I'm 75 and planning a month-long cruise of the South Pacific. I have insurance, but my insurance policy doesn't include emergency evacuation to proper medical care, if that should become necessary. Whom shall I consult?
A. The company for you is Medjetassist, which offers a reasonably-priced policy of medical care that includes emergency evacuation to the U.S.
Q. My family and I have rented a villa in Italy for late April of 2014. We shall be flying in and out of Naples. Is it best to book the flights now, or will the airfare be better closer to the date of departure?
A. Booking it now, some 16 months in advance, you will pay top price for your tickets. Wait until the fall of 2013, when the various aggregators of airfares -- Kayak.com, Momondo.com, SkyScanner.net, or Do-Hop.com -- will be offering discounts off the standard rates.
Q. My family and I will be vacationing in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Will we need to use dollars or pesos, and must we caerry our passports with us once there?
A. You will need to use either your credit card or pesos for your ordinary expenditures once in Playa del Carmen, and you can obtain pesos at the best rate from the many ATM machines you'll find almost everywhere. Be sure to bring a card that works with a four-digit pin number. As for your passports, you'll need them only for arrival purposes, and afterwards they should go into the hotel safe.
Q. Where can I view tango in Buenos Aires?
A. You answer such questions best by consulting an authoritative guidebook. Michael Luongo has authored multiple Frommer's guidebooks to both Buenos Aires and Argentina, and tango performances (as well as tango lessons) are heavily featured by him.
Q. I've heard that some airlines are installing kiosks where you will print out your own luggage tags, thus avoiding a need to interact with a live attendant. And one option will also be to print out those tags at home, on our computers. Is that for real?
A. It is if you follow the advice I've seen of obtaining transparent sticky tape to wrap around the luggage tags printed at home, thus insuring that they can't later be ripped off the suitcase.
Q. Can you direct me to several cheap lodgings in the British Virgin Islands?
A. You've chosen one of the Caribbean's priciest locations, where hotels cater to free-spending tourists, and it is well-nigh impossible to obtain "cheap" lodgings in the British Virgin Islands.
Q. The cruiseship -- run shore excursions seem completely booked on our cruise from Hawaii to islands of the South Pacific. Where can we obtain such tours?
It is 120 miles north of Lima, Peru, its fame so new that it has only a single hotel of twenty-two rooms to house the growing number of people who come to view it. It spreads over an arid, desert plateau, where impressive ruins of pyramidal religious structures, tombs, sporting arenas, residences, and other ancient structures mark the location of the oldest large city of the Western Hemisphere.
Its name is Caral, and it flourished at least 5,000 years ago, long ante-dating such other ancient cities as Machu Picchu and Chichen-Itza.
In fact, Caral is as old as the ancient pyramids of Egypt, and in its unexpected Peruvian location has turned most histories of ancient times topsy-turvy. Mention its name to professional archaeologists, and they will turn giddy with excitement.
So why haven't you heard of Caral before? And why aren't more Americans heading there? To begin with, it is only in the past half-century that archaeologists began writing about Caral -- and then, usually only in scholarly journals. And the tourist authorities of Peru have been late to publicize it (in my humble view) as a major touristic lure. Finally, because most recent visitors have been professional archaeologists living in tents and the like, there hasn't until recently been a reason to develop standard accommodations for normal tourists.
That housing shortage began changing within the last year, with the opening of the nearby (to Caral) Hotel Empedrada, a somewhat upscale boutique hotel with only 22 rooms. But with most of those rooms now rented by comfort-seeking scientists, it's unlikely that the Empedrada can be relied upon for reasonably-priced vacancies. To learn whether you can use it for your own self-drive trip from Lima, see Hotelempedrada.com. And note, too, in that website, the remarkable aerial photograph (or drawing) of the densely-packed Caral, looking like a miniature Manhattan.
Though I myself don't know of budget-priced lodgings near Caral, travel journalist David Appell, doing the research at my request, has recently discovered a few housing options. In a late-night e-mail to me, he wrote:
There are several towns within reasonable distance of Caral, and I found one particular guesthouse in Supe Puerto, on the coast about 14 miles from Caral, with various tours and transportation options to the ruins. It's probably the best and most interesting option because right near it is another set of ruins, called Áspero (AHSS-pe-ro), a smaller settlement that was part of the Caral civilization and dates to the same era (it traded fish and other products from the sea for Caral's farm produce): La Casa de Isidora -- no rates given but quite modest.
For a larger town (pop. 140,000) with more amenities and more/better lodging choices than Puerto Supe, Barranca, also on the coast, about an hour from Caral, is a good choice. Lodgings include Hotel Chavín (Cha-VEEN), $30-$35/night, full amenities including restaurant and pool in center of town; and Chorrillos Beach (cho-REE-yohss) out at the beach, also full service with pool, etc.
It's probable that you can also cadge a room in someone's home, or a makeshift B&B, in the several other small villages on the way to Caral, and thus live inexpensively if unpretentiously on a visit there. (That uncertainty about lodgings is part of the adventure that awaits you if you do decide to be an early tourist there). And there are also full-day tours to Caral from Lima that various small bus companies offer.
Whatever approach you choose, you'd be wise, and enlightened, by a trip to this large, ancient urban site -- a city linked to the very rise of civilization -- on a trip to the northern part of South America.
