New Long-Distance Cycling Trail Links the Western Balkans
Posted on 09/18/2018, 4:15 PM
The first regional cycling trail to cross borders in the Western Balkans, the new TransDinarica route (www.transdinarica.com), has opened its first segment. Travelers can now cycle over gravel and mountains from Slovenia through Croatia and on to Bosnia and Herzegovina on challenging, remote track through areas of the Balkans that haven’t seen many tourists. The project, which aims to economically...
Is This the King of Airfare Search Sites? The Aggregator of Aggregators
Posted on 09/13/2018, 9:30 AM
For years, we've been telling you that the best places to find cheap airfare are often the "aggregators," which are search engines that scan prices from dozens of different airfare-selling websites to pick out the lowest prices and tell you which site to visit to find them. But even though these aggregators do their best to level the shopping playing field, or at least to make the shopping game les...
Switzerland Just Won the Gondola War (If That Exists) With This Crazy Tramway
Posted on 09/12/2018, 11:00 AM
Temperatures that plummet 20 degrees below zero. A hostile, windy crag 2.5 miles (4,000 m) high, totally devoid of trees. Air so thin that people can only wheeze, creeping around at 60% of their normal abilities. It's not hell. It's Switzerland!Those are the conditions that workers endured to give the Alps a new wonder: luxury gondolas on the Matterhorn Glacier Ride, the world's highest cableway. B...
A Brand New V&A Design Museum Opens This Week
Posted on 09/11/2018, 2:00 PM
The world-famous V&A museum, founded as an offshoot of the Great Exhibition of 1851, is one of London's most popular attractions, bringing in about 4.4 million visits a year. This weekend, the Victoria and Albert, the more formal name for the powerhouse of decorative arts, will have a presence in Scotland, too. V&A Dundee, billed as Scotland's first design museum, opens on the revitalized h...
Your African Dream Trip Is Now Cheaper Than Ever
Posted on 09/10/2018, 4:15 PM
In the past six months, the value of the South African rand has tumbled some 40% against the U.S. dollar. In March, one greenback would get you a bit more than 11 rand. Today, you get over 15. South Africa has been a terrific bargain for years. As long as you can swing the airfare there, which regularly costs around $1,000, you'll find it incredible how cheap things are on the ground. With the r...
Eat on Florence's Streets and You Could Be Fined $580
Posted on 09/06/2018, 12:00 PM
Lots of people choose to visit Italy because they respect the cuisine, but now, eating it with dignity is the law. On September 4, Florence instituted a new penalty for tourists who are caught loitering as they eat. On the narrow lanes of central Florence, local shopkeepers are fed up with visitors who linger in doorways and on stairwells to have a snack. The biggest complaint, it seems, was th...
Drive to Florida in a Rental Car for Only $7.99 a Day
Posted on 09/05/2018, 8:00 PM
Winter is coming, and in Florida, so are the tourists. Each year, the major car rental companies shift their inventory to where the business is, and now that summer is ending, Hertz needs to shift its cars to Florida for the winter season. That's where you come in. Hertz wants you to do the driving. The company will let you have a car for just $7.99 a day if you agree to drive it one-way from the ...
WW2 Tower Converted to Vacation Rental in Channel Islands
Posted on 09/05/2018, 1:15 PM
During World War II, the Nazis occupied the Channel Islands, a string of isolated spots floating between England and France. Using forced labor, the Germans built concrete fortifications aimed at their British enemies, and many of these structures still stand to this day.Now, a local preservation group has converted one of them to a vacation rental.Standing on the southwestern tip of Jersey Island,...
New, Heart-Stopping Bungee Catapult Launches in New Zealand
Posted on 08/29/2018, 12:15 PM
New Zealanders are like Elphaba in Wicked—they're obsessed with defying gravity. The world's first permanent commercial bungee operation was established by AJ Hackett Bungy (that's how Kiwis spell it) in 1988 over a gorge near Queenstown on the country's South Island. In the three decades since, many more places for playing human yo-yo have been set up over New Zealand's lakes, dramatic mountain va...
New Street Murals Animate World Trade Center in New York City
Posted on 08/27/2018, 2:00 AM
Ever since the events of 9/11, New York City has faced the challenges of rebuilding the area around the Twin Towers as well as finding an appropriate aesthetic for the site—tasks that have been especially difficult given the emotions involved. In early 2017, Silverstein Properties, the World Trade Center's main developer, invited 50 street artists to do what they do best all over the 69th-floor i...
