Having just returned from an appearance this past Saturday at the Los Angeles Times Travel Show, where I met a great many readers of this blog, I need to announce that the next such appearance will be about two weeks from now, on Saturday, February 11, at the Boston Globe Travel Show at the Seaport World Trade Center. This time, I'll be sharing the stage with my daughter, Pauline, and we will be speaking twice, at 11am (talking about new developments in Travel) and 2pm (speaking about ideas for your next vacation). Each talk will be followed by book-signing at a nearby bookstore booth, and we hope to meet and converse with a great many of our readers at this time. We hope you'll stop by.
On Saturday March 3, Pauline and I will be speaking at the giant New York Times Travel Show in the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. Times and topics will again be the same, followed again by book signing. We very much look forward to meeting with you.
Rushing to complete a number of matters, I find that I have failed to point out that tomorrow at 11am, I will be speaking at the Los Angeles Times Travel Show (http://events.latimes.com/travelshow/) at the L.A. Convention Center, and would hope that a great many readers of this Blog might be in attendance. Afterwards, I'll be signing books at the Distant Planets bookstore booth from around noon to 12:30pm, before rushing back to the airport to catch a return flight back to New York (for tomorrow's radio Travel Show).
Again, I hope to meet with many of you at that Show, one of the largest in the nation. If you do attend, you'll be able to examine the travel offerings of some 500 major travel firms -- airlines, cruiselines, state tourist offices, tour operators, makers of travel products, and the entirety of the colorful travel industry.
The days of an air-and-land package to Kenya for under $2,000 are long gone, wiped out by the high cost of aviation fuel. But a price of only $2,499 for such a trip, for two departure dates in March of this year, is still a value in these times of high airfares. And that's the price currently offered by our friends at Lion World Tours (www.lionworldtours.com). On its program known as Kenya on Sale, and for $2,499 per person, Lion World will supply you with:
Round trip international Economy Class airfare from New York (JFK) or Washington, DC (Dulles) to Nairobi, Kenya, aboard Ethiopian Airlines.
All Fuel Surcharges and Taxes
1 night at Serena Mountain Lodge, in the wildlife area
2 nights at Sarova Shaba Lodge, in the Shaba Game Reserve
1 night at Sarova Lion Hill Lodge in the Lake Nakuru National Park Rift Valley Province
2 nights at Sarova Mara Game Camp in the African bush, staying in luxurious tent accommodations.
Game drives as specified in the itinerary
6 Breakfasts / 6 Lunches / 6 Dinners
A Lion World Tours representative meeting you on arrival
All Transfers
The price of $2,499 per person is valid for the departures of March 29 and March 31, ascending only slightly to $2,699 per person for all other departures in March, April and the first half of May. Inexpensive air add-ons are available from most other U.S. cities.
An African safari -- and especially one situated in such interesting and varied locations as this one -- at the prices offered, is a major value. If you have never been on safari, you will never again have the opportunity to do so at rates as moderate as these.
As I end my mid-January vacation in Miami Beach, certain observations should be made.
From every indication, Miami is back to its normal popularity. Yesterday's Miami Herald exulted over the fact that condominium sales in that sunshine city were up by an amazing 46% in 2011, reflecting a greatly improved real estate picture in general and a probable economic recovery. Though many of those condo purchases were by foreigners seeking a safe haven for their funds, there's no doubt that rentals and visits by U.S. residents are up as well. As you walk along the brightly-lit, pedestrian-only Lincoln Road in south Miami Beach, thronged with tourists shopping madly and filling every one of almost continuous sidewalk restaurant tables, the feeling is inescapable that Miami is back as a top vacation destination.
But despite the heightened tourism, the city is so packed with large hotels and condominiums available for rental and needing to fill tens of thousands of rooms and apartments -- including brand new residential skyscrapers spotted up and down all the main touristic boulevards and beach roads (the product of a real estate boom of several years ago) -- that the chance to negotiate a bargain for your own stay remains almost as strong as during the recession of 2008-09. When you call a condominium owner or a hotel reservations office, you should bargain -- tell them the price you're looking for, and stick to it (as I recently did for my own stay). In my experience, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Not only has beach-and-seaside tourism returned to the Miami area, but it appears that its cruise industry has not suffered in any meaningful way from the recent tragedy of the Costa Concordia off the shores of Tuscany. On a Saturday in the course of my stay, I drove to the port of Miami and there saw no fewer than eight giant cruiseships filling up with thousands of excited passengers who flocked to the rails of the upper decks to look out onto the Miami scene as their stately, 4,000-passenger behemoths sailed slowly out of Miami waters on their way to the Caribbean. Those laughing, smiling, confident passengers seemed to have not a care in the world, and appeared just as exuberant as in the days prior to news of the recent tragedy in the Mediterranean.
Back on shore, the dining quality of the city's restaurants has soared, mainly because of the emergence of dozens of new Brazilian, Argentinian and Peruvian restaurants. When I recently had dinner at a new Peruvian stand-out called Mixtura (in North Beach at 7118 Collins Avenue), and asked the waiter to suggest that establishment's best entree, he responded with aji de gallina, a classic dish of chicken sliced razor thin and topped with a sauce of yellow peppers mixed with heavy cream and combined with garlic and other tangy sauces. It was the highlight of one of the best meals I've had in years. The night before, we went to a nearby seafood restaurant called Fi Fi's (6934 Collins Avenue, two blocks down from Mixtura), started with stone crab (as good as in Miami Beach's legendary Joe's Original Stone Crab), and followed up with a freshly-caught fish superbly prepared.
From the sublime to the ridiculous: at the many exercise classes and sessions in hotels and condos here, a new aerobic work-out is a wildly-popular series of steps known as Zumba. Instead of simply undergoing aerobic exercise for 40 minutes to the standard beat-beat-beat of various rock songs, Zumba achieves aerobics to the insistent and just-as-rapid beat of Latin dance rhythms. In short spurts of 10 minutes apiece, separated from the next session by a one-minute pause for rest, you attempt to imitate your skilled instructor while he or she does lightning-fast renditions of samba, rumba, tango. You end up drenched in sweat, completely exhausted, but wonderfully entertained by stepping, running and prancing to the sound of Latin American bands, played on records and discs supplied by the instructor. Your next visit to Miami Beach, ask your hotel front desk clerk where you can engage in Zumba.
In the course of my eight-night vacation in Miami Beach (still in progress), I had occasion to visit the famous independent bookstore located in the attractive Coral Gables neighborhood of Miami. A long, low-slung, hacienda-like building of two wings on either side of a large garden café where visitors drink coffee and converse, Books & Books, as it's called, is a remarkable success that has withstood the competition of e-books and created four other outlets in other sections of Miami.
In addition to selling books, the Coral Gables branch serves as a community center that attracts standing-room-only audiences to its nightly free lectures presented by prominent authors of important books. And it well may be that the success of Books & Books is in part because of these evening gatherings attracting book-lovers who then proceed to purchase books before they leave.
The success of Books & Books, and the immense attendance at its nightly lectures, has reminded me that tourists visiting almost any large city in the United States may find companionship or acquaintances at the book lectures that almost all of the large and famous independent bookstores in those cities present almost every evening. From the Tattered Cover in Denver, to Book Passage in the San Francisco Bay Area, to Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., to Powell's in Portland, Oregon, to Moes Books in Berkeley, to Elliott Bay Books in Seattle, at least 30 giant independent bookstores continue to thrive because they have become centers of discussion in addition to simply stores (each one of the several I've listed schedules near-nightly events). And each one of them has a café to which you repair following the lecture you have heard, there to meet and converse with intellectually-curious residents of the city in question.
When you visit any of the largest independent bookstores in America, you will usually find an evening schedule of free lectures and a large number of residents who show up for these talks. I can't think of a better way to meet residents of the city in question and learn something about their attitudes and opinion. It's the best way to turn an ordinary vacation into a vital one.
I am surrounded by Brazilian restaurants, Argentinian steakhouses, Peruvian grills. As I walk along a beachside boulevard, I pass Cuban groceries, and sidewalk cafes frequented by people reading books with Spanish-titles that I can easily see.
And where am I? I'm in Miami Beach, Florida, which has definitely become one of the most cosmopolitan cities in America. As I enjoy favorable January weather (daytime temperatures of 79 and 80 degrees), I am also responding happily to the novelty of a pervasive foreign culture.
Defying all the difficulties of obtaining American visas, a large number of newly prosperous Brazilians and Argentinians are flocking to this vacation center, occupying condominium apartments in the real estate developments that erupted onto Collins Avenue and in elegant Bar Harbour in the late 1990s and very early 2000s. Without them, the promoters of these residential complexes would be in bad trouble. What's even better is that our neighbors to the south are primarily choosing the U.S. summer months (which is winter in their climes) for their most popular time to visit, supplying off-season business to Miami Beach and at the same time creating this year-around infrastructure of new restaurants and shops. Plenty of Brazilians are here during our winter, but even more of them arrive in summer.
And so it was fairly to easy to consult the want ads on the Internet for an available condo in January. My wife and I are in a modern and extremely comfortable one-bedroom apartment facing the sea, at a reasonable price. We conducted the entire transaction of renting through the exchange of a few e-mails and a deposit easily made to the U.S. bank account of the foreign gentleman who rented us his condo. I simply strolled to the branch of the U.S. bank where he maintains his account, and deposited a check to it in a ten-minute effort.
Ensconced in our kitchen-equipped Miami Beach condo, we make breakfast for ourselves from the ingredients purchased from a nearby grocery, and we usually make lunch out of the salmon- or tunafish-filled bagels we've obtained from a nearby deli and stored in our refrigerator. For dinner, we go to one of those surprisingly-good South American restaurants, and make believe we're in Rio or Buenos Aires -- the experience is remarkably similar. We bathe in the heated swimming pool of our condo, or dip into the sea; we go power walking along the beach; we went to see Meryl Streep in Iron Lady last night; and on several occasions we've signed into yoga sessions made available by the operator of our condo or to engage in a form of aerobics called "Zamba" (all the rage in Florida -- a form of aerobics but to the beat of Latin dance rythms).
This may not strike you as much of an exotic vacation (we'll be traveling internationally next month), but it was reached in a flight of only two and a half hours, and the arrangements for it took only a few minutes. If you have a patronizing attitude towards a Florida beach vacation, or look upon it as a cop-out, you haven't been keeping up with the Latin invasion of one of our southernmost U.S. resort cities. Those Brazilians, Argentinians and Peruvians have made it into a colorful and interesting, Latin-style place.
Smart travelers have known for a long time that the prices set forth in cruiseship brochures are fictitious. They are meant to be discounted, and they are discounted when you call the various cruise brokers and (often) the cruiselines themselves. Only the chump pays full price.
That lesson takes on even greater relevance when you book a river cruise of Europe. The world of river cruising has become enormously competitive, with close to a dozen river cruise companies offering essentially the same cruises (in terms of service, staterooms, itineraries, level of cuisine, and extras, like free wine and beer with your meals). Comparative bargains have become so important to the sales by the river cruise companies that many of them are now offering two-for-one pricing on many of their departures. And on many occasions, two for one means two for one airfares as well as actual cruises. In effect, you are offered a 50% discount off the price of your cruise.
So that river cruise selling for $3,500 per person in the initial advertising for it, is really being charged at $1,750 per person -- about $250 per person per day for a what would be called a deluxe river cruise. (Almost all of them are characterized as "deluxe"). In fact, $250 is a rather standard per-person, per-day price for a standard river cruise (like one along the Rhine). And since you receive high quality arrangements (including meals that would put the offerings of the ocean cruise companies to shame), that price should be considered by you to be an excellent value.
So phone the river cruise companies (either the brokers or the cruiselines themselves) and request to be told the dates and the itineraries when two-for-one pricing is offered. Though some of them will be cautious about ever listing those discount opportunities openly, they will reveal the deal to persons who pick up the phone.
An example of this are the river cruise prices offered by RiverCruise.com (tel. 800/510-4002; www.rivercruise.com), a subsidiary of VacationsToGo.com. Unlike the ocean cruise offerings of its parent company, RiverCruise.com does not show the discounts it's able to offer in its unusually comprehensive list of European river cruises. Instead, it alerts you to phone one of its river cruise specialists to learn what these are.
When you're connected, describe the cruise you're after and your desired dates. And then ask them to advise you of the discounted prices they're able to offer you. You'll be glad you did.
It's hard to predict how long the seats will remain unsold. And the last date you can purchase them is January 23 (for travel that must be completed round-trip by February 29). But if you can make those deadlines, you and a spouse or significant other can enjoy a remarkable Valentine's Day holiday in Istanbul, Turkey, for a round-trip airfare of only $599 per person, including all taxes and fees, and not simply from New York but from Washington, D.C., Chicago or Los Angeles as well. Such are the details of a Turkish Airlines bargain just offered by them.
Here's one of those occasional airfare deals that seems almost too good to be true, but it's confirmed by top officials with the airline, and it's the perfect basis for a romantic Valentine's Day-period round-trip, with Valentine's Day falling on February 14. The airfare must be purchased by each of two persons traveling together.
To book, tickets must be purchased by calling tel. 800/874-8875. Note: A $20 per ticket service charge applies for all tickets purchased on the phone with a Turkish Airlines sales office.
In the course of a quick trip to Philadelphia last Saturday to speak at the Philadelphia Inquirer Travel Show, I learned of upcoming developments in that City of Brotherly Love that will make it a real contender for the top American position in the world of art. Three imminent openings of new art museums and museum exhibits will make Philadelphia the equal of any other U.S. city in the cultural field.
The first event, of extraordinary significance, is the opening on May 19 of the new Barnes Foundation Museum in the heart of the city, making available to art lovers hundreds of masterworks that have been available for viewing in previous years only in the most limited sense. In downtown Philadelphia, visitors and residents will be able to view and appreciate some 69 rarely-seen paintings by Cezanne, 59 by Matisse, 49 by Picasso, and a staggering 181 by Renoir, among others--the legacy to our generation from an immensely skilled collector of art, Albert Barnes, who died in 1951.
Barnes was the Philadelphia chemist who invented and produced Argyrol, an effective drug for the cure of infant blindness. He amassed a huge fortune and took it to Europe to purchase masterworks of art at bargain prices -- impressionist, post-impressionist and modern works that he sometimes picked up for a little as a few hundred dollars per painting. His collection is now valued at between $20-30 billion. He gave every such work to a foundation whose resulting activities, however, he severely restricted. They were to be displayed only in a small museum in Merion, Pennsylvania, a difficult-to-reach Philadelphia suburb (he apparently had a dislike for Philadelphia itself), where they could be displayed only two or three times a week, and sometimes not at all. Stories are told of celebrities who begged to view the Barnes collection and were rudely turned down by Barnes himself.
In the years following his death, the trustees of the Barnes Foundation embarked on highly controversial course designed to overcome the limitations he had placed upon them. Ironically, poor financial decisions and terrible leadership did what decades of legal maneuvering couldn't -- a court broke the will in order to save the collection. The works will now move from the crowded walls of Barnes' Merion mansion to an impressive new museum on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in the heart of Philadelphia, to attract what I believe will be millions of new visitors to Philadelphia in the years ahead.
But that's only the start of the new upgrades to the cultural treasures found on Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Parkway. This coming spring, on a date soon to be announced, the newly refurbished and expanded Rodin Museum will be re-opened after a partial closing. And that museum, also on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, houses the largest collection of sculptures by Auguste Rodin outside of Paris' Musee Rodin.
Earlier, on February 1, and throughout February, March and April, the famous and equally impressive Philadelphia Museum of Art (also on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway) will unveil a major exhibition of works by Vincent Van Gogh -- the only museum in North America to show those paintings, presumably on loan from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
When you add these attractions to an already-existing array of smaller but excellent art and science museums in Philadelphia (and add also the historic area centered around Independence Hall, and the National Constitution Center), you find that Philadelphia will become an ever-more-stellar destination starting this Spring. You'll be well advised to study the procedures for obtaining tickets to showings that will undoubtedly be heavily booked -- and thus plan your own visit to this remarkable American city.
On three different websites that appear in my list of incoming e-mails, I've been advised by helpful travel journalists that more than a hundred major national parks will be waiving their entrance fees this coming weekend (January 14-16). These include the Grand Canyon (normally charging $25 per automobile load), the awesome Yellowstone National Park ($25; you simply have to visit this one), and Yosemite ($20). On the off-chance that some of our readers may not have received similar alerts, I'm repeating the news here. The National Parks are the pre-eminent destinations for thoughtful, cost-conscious travelers, and if you haven't been to Yellowstone, Grand Canyon or Yosemite, you're missing the most important attractions of America. The same observation applies to those sites of Civil War importance (Gettysburg, Shiloh, Antietam) and to Great Smoky Mountains.
Put down on your calendars that the same entrance fees will be waived three months from now, during National Park Week (April 21-29), and on June 9 and September 29.
