Florence With the Experts: A New Program Italy-Bound Travelers Should Know About
Posted on 10/26/2015, 12:15 PM
Florence (photo by PapaPiper/Flickr) Italia Rail, the company that has been, for the last decade, the largest international vendor of Italian rail tickets, is taking that expertise and branching out into rail/hotel/tour packages. Its first program, available from now until the end of March, allows travelers to see the iconic city of Florence in a no muss, no fuss way that's wonderfully...
Celebrate New Year's Eve in a Free Hotel Room
Posted on 10/23/2015, 4:00 PM
And we're not talking the Motel 6 in Akron. CitizenM Hotels, a growing chain that has made a name for itself with stylish pod hotels (read: the digs are tiny, but very high design), has announced that it will be giving away 500 rooms for New Year's Eve stays in such party cities as New York, London, Glasgow, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. They're even picking up the room tax (such "extras" as Wi-Fi...
Innovative New In-flight Safety Video Animated with 1,000 Delft Tiles
Posted on 10/16/2015, 2:15 PM
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is the latest entrant in the battle to come up with the least boring in-flight safety video. The novel concept: Create an animated version of the pre-flight safety admonition by hand-painting Delft Blue tiles—because they're Dutch, so points for authenticity—and then using those tiles as a ceramic form of hand-painted cel, shooting one after another to animate the instr...
The Way of Wanderlust: A Delightful New Book of Travel Essays
Posted on 10/13/2015, 2:45 PM
By their very definition, travel memoirs introduce readers to corners of the planet they may never get to themselves. But The Way of Wanderlust, a collection of travel essays by accomplished travel writer Don George, not only allows the audience to “mind-travel” to Pakistan, Paris and Peru (among many, many other places), it takes them on a poignant journey through the long and eventful life of...
New App Deletes Photobombers From Snapshots
Posted on 10/12/2015, 4:15 PM
Software giant Adobe recently unveiled a new smartphone application that should appeal to amateur photographers on vacation. Called Monument Mode, it eliminates photobombers and other tourists from your photographs. Basically, it works like this: It can tell the difference between moving objects and stationary ones, and it records the stationary object—the tourist sight you're shooting—and di...
Everglades Airboats To Be Eliminated
Posted on 10/10/2015, 4:15 AM
For most of the twentieth century, airboats have been a staple of touring the Florida Everglades. New rules, though, are about the silence them once and for all. When the National Park Service acquired additional land for Everglades National Park in the late 1980s, the acquisition included some 110,000 acres where professional airboat pilots operated, many of them for tourists. It has been...
Foreign SIM Cards Come with Censorship
Posted on 10/05/2015, 9:00 AM
Bringing an unlocked, out-of-contract smartphone on vacation and buying a temporary local phone number remains far and away the cheapest way to use a mobile phone in Europe. Just be warned: If you use social networking apps, though, you may have to waste time jumping through hoops to circumvent child protection measures. That's because travelers who purchase SIM cards for lower-cost mobile ph...
Foreign SIM Cards Come with Censorship
Posted on 10/05/2015, 9:00 AM
Bringing an unlocked, out-of-contract smartphone on vacation and buying a temporary local phone number remains far and away the cheapest way to use a mobile phone in Europe. Just be warned: If you use social networking apps, though, you may have to waste time jumping through hoops to circumvent child protection measures. That's because travelers who purchase SIM cards for lower-cost mobile ph...
Et tu, Amtrak? Baggage Fees Coming to Rail
Posted on 10/01/2015, 2:00 PM
Amtrak is taking a page from the airlines. No, make that two pages. Starting today it will start charging for bags. And it's telling us this is for our own good. According to the railroad, passengers have been trying to bring too many large bags onboard. So it will now start enforcing a limit of two carry-on bags. Those who have more bags will incur a $20 fee for each. And if the bag weighs...
The Vatican Gets More Liberal...With Visitor Hours
Posted on 09/29/2015, 3:15 PM
I'm assuming we can thank Pope Francis, though this wasn't one of his bigger announcements. But quite quiety, several months ago, the Vatican extended its hours for half the year, on Fridays only. From May through July and again in September and October, on Fridays, the doors of the Vatican will open between 9am and 4pm and again for 7pm through 9:30pm visits. Visitors will be allowed into th...
