How Much of What You Spend Stays in Your Destination? G Adventures Knows
Posted on 10/19/2018, 11:15 PM
Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Bruce Poon Tip (pictured) for our radio show. Bruce is the founder of G Adventures, one of the most important small-group adventure operators in the world. Currently the company has 10 distinct brands of tours as well as both expedition and river cruising branches. It’s considered by many to be one of the travel industry's most innovative tour companies....
I’m Now One of Those People: A Traveler with an Airbnb Horror Story
Posted on 10/18/2018, 3:00 PM
It didn’t happen because I’m a careless idiot, or a very picky, persnickity traveler. It happened because I’m a (bit) lazy. I was heading to Chicago for work and an unrelated convention had sent hotel prices through the roof. To save a great deal of money, I decided to book a room in the apartment of a friendly-looking lady who has cats. (OK, the real reason was the cats—yes, I’m that kind of mid...
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...
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...
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...
$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 ...
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...
