World's Tallest Statue Unveiled in India
Posted on 11/06/2018, 10:00 PM
The average height of adult males in India is 5 feet, 5 inches (165cm). Throw in men made of bronze, and that figure might jump up a few notches, at least as of last week. That's when Prime Minister Narendra Modi helped dedicate the country's new Statue of Unity, a monumental likeness of Indian independence leader Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel that stands at the incredible height of 597 feet (182m)—...
Arthur Frommer: Canada Legalized Marijuana, But Visitors Should Know the Rules
Posted on 11/05/2018, 12:00 AM
The recent decision by all of Canada to legalize the sale or use of marijuana was hailed by U.S. users and advocates of that drug. On careful study of Canada’s action, those cheerleaders may be less enthusiastic about what has happened. Although Canada acted as a single nation in legalizing the substance, it has permitted individual provinces of Canada to enact specific rules governing its sale a...
Colorful New St. Louis Hotel Wants to Give You the Blues (or Reds or Yellows)
Posted on 10/31/2018, 4:45 PM
"Got the St. Louis Blues," goes the old W.C. Handy song, "just as blue as I can be." Those lyrics take on new meaning at the Angad Arts Hotel, which opens this week amid the many galleries and performance venues of the Grand Center Arts District in St. Louis. Guests who book one of the hotel's 146 rooms or 38 suites don't just pick bed sizes but also a color to match one of four moods—red for pa...
You Can Stay in Ralphie’s House from ‘A Christmas Story’
Posted on 10/30/2018, 1:00 AM
Ultimate fans of the American holiday film classic A Christmas Story might already own a replica of the Major Award leg lamp, nightmarish bunny pajamas, or even a toy Red Ryder BB gun (warning: you may shoot your eye out). Yet, how many of them know that they can spend the night inside Ralphie Parker’s actual house? Located in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, the real-life house use...
National Veterans Memorial and Museum Opens in Columbus, Ohio
Posted on 10/29/2018, 3:00 PM
More than 40 million people have served in the U.S. armed forces. They've been honored with monuments, memorials, and museums in Washington, D.C., across the country, and even around the world (as at the D-Day Beaches in Normandy, France). But those sites focus on individual conflicts or branches of the military. The new National Veterans Memorial and Museum (NVMM), which opened in downtown Colum...
Paris' Henri Cartier-Bresson Photography Venue Moves to Meet Tourists
Posted on 10/26/2018, 12:00 AM
The gallery and archive dedicated to one of France’s most iconic photographers reopens this week in a new space in the artsy Marais district, where more tourists will be able to see it. Henri Cartier-Bresson was instrumental in the development of modern photojournalism, particularly through his candid street photography. He was also, along with Robert Capa and several other contemporaries,...
The Game Is Afoot at London's New Sherlock Escape Room
Posted on 10/11/2018, 4:45 PM
Would you want to be stuck with Sherlock Holmes in an escape room—one of those games where players are locked in a confined space and have a limited amount of time to find clues, solve puzzles, and crack codes in order to get out? On the one hand, the super-sleuth of Baker Street would have every mystery on the premises cleared up faster than you could say "Hound of the Baskervilles." On the oth...
Police Destroy Semi-Submerged Sculpture Park in the Maldives
Posted on 09/26/2018, 5:30 PM
Police officers wielding saws, pickaxes, and ropes have destroyed the world's first semi-submerged sculpture park. Located in the Maldives, Coralarium—which Frommer's covered this summer when the work opened to the public—was an over-/underwater project designed by British-born artist Jason deCaires Taylor to be explored by swimmers and snorkelers. It stood amid calm waters belonging to the luxe...
Acclaimed Houston Art Museum Open After Renovations
Posted on 09/24/2018, 8:00 AM
After more than six months of renovations, the Renzo Piano-designed main building of Houston's Menil Collection—home to an eclectic horde of 17,000 artworks, from antiquities to contemporary creations—reopened to the public on Saturday, September 22. The interior has been extensively reconfigured to make the place less cluttered and to make room for new and expanded galleries, allowing for the p...
New Foodie Arcade Opens on Paris’s Left Bank
Posted on 09/20/2018, 12:00 AM
Visitors to Paris have a new one-stop destination for gourmet delicacies from the city’s top chefs and food purveyors. Beaupassage, a refurbished historic passageway in the heart of the stylish Saint-Germain district, has opened on the Left Bank. Unveiled on August 25th, the vast 10,000-sq.-m (32,800 sq-ft.) space flows through three connecting pedestrian lanes built in 1703. By the mid-1850s...
A Brand New V&A Design Museum Opens This Week
Posted on 09/11/2018, 6:00 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...
Two New Non-Travel Books May Change The Way You See the USA
Posted on 09/09/2018, 8:30 PM
You drive into a new town. It is not a famous place and it certainly isn’t a tourist magnet. But it has a certain vibe, a personality. You start to explore, stopping by a local store, walking through a park, trying the coffee joint where townspeople are congregating. It’s an interesting exercise, but the takeaways are vague: seems like a nice place, you think. But you don’t think more than that, ...
Arthur Frommer: The Biggest News is the Dominance of Tourism by the Chinese
Posted on 09/05/2018, 12:00 AM
Suddenly, the press that deals with travel is full of articles about the sudden rise of Chinese tourism. All over the world, Chinese citizens have become the largest source of tourism, edging out the American, German, British and French. This doesn’t happen by accident. In recent years, the Chinese government has encouraged the movement towards international travel as a means of accomp...
New Street Murals Animate World Trade Center in New York City
Posted on 08/27/2018, 6:00 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-floo...
