Looking for a Classic Caribbean Vacation? Arthur Frommer Suggests Belize
Posted on 09/20/2018, 12:00 PM
Although nearly a million American cruise passengers enjoy momentary contact with Belize each year, the number of its actual tourists is only 250,000 persons, and the country is therefore uncrowded and somewhat innocent of commercial development (except in Belize City, to which no tourist goes). A stay here is like a trip to Costa Rica many years ago, before tourism enveloped and changed that ...
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...
New Long-Distance Cycling Trail Links the Western Balkans
Posted on 09/18/2018, 8:15 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 economica...
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...
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...
$999 for a Week in Vietnam, Including Air! Outstanding, Writes Arthur Frommer
Posted on 08/24/2018, 9:00 AM
To enjoy a travel miracle—a memorable tour to an exotic nation, for less than the cost of airfare alone—is to lend excitement to life. Several months ago, we described an awesome Chinese-American named Wilson Wu who operates two-week tours of Vietnam for as little as $1,599 per person, including round-trip air from the U.S. West Coast. Now, the same Mr. Wu, through his company called World Sp...
“Crazy Rich Asians” May Feel a Lot Like Going to Singapore, Says Arthur Frommer
Posted on 08/22/2018, 3:00 AM
Let me be entirely frank. I greatly disliked the movie Crazy Rich Asians, which I recently saw. I was so horrified by its fawning depiction of irresponsible wealth that I almost walked out of the theatre during the first half hour of the show, and only stayed because things improved a bit in the remaining hour and a half. Crazy Rich Asians is a two-hour romantic comedy about an ultra-rich ...
National Comedy Museum Opens in New York State
Posted on 08/13/2018, 12:00 PM
Think of the word museum and you’ll probably think of old paintings. You might expect the sound of footsteps crossing a quiet gallery or guards standing watch over masterpieces. The National Comedy Center, which just opened in Jamestown, New York, shatters that lofty picture in favor of something more fun. If this museum is doing its job, attendees will be laughing their way through more ...
Two New Non-Travel Books May Change The Way You See the USA
Posted on 08/09/2018, 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, ...
The 'Mamma Mia!' Sequel is a Lie: That's Not Greece!
Posted on 08/02/2018, 8:30 PM
You may remember—or perhaps you studied it in your Great Achievements of World Cinema class—that the first Mamma Mia! movie was set in Greece. Based on the hit Broadway musical, the film was famously, dazzlingly Greek, so Greek it made Zorba look shy. Meryl Streep's American character has decamped there to run a preposterously picturesque cliffside inn, where old flames hover and neighborhood teens...
Former High-Security Prison in Tennessee Opens to Visitors
Posted on 07/30/2018, 6:00 PM
Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary was not a spot often visited for just one day. This former maximum-security prison held dangerous criminals with sentences exceeding 200 years. The penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee, about 40 miles west of Knoxville, has been closed since 2009, but last Saturday it opened to the public as a tourist attraction, giving outsiders access to this rustic lockup like ...
