Arthur Frommer: Remove Ryan Zinke as Secretary of the Interior
Posted on 08/20/2018, 6:00 AM
The Secretary of the Interior of the United States is supposed to preserve and protect our national parks, national monuments, and public lands from commercial exploitation. He is supposed to endorse the plea of President Theodore Roosevelt some hundred-or-so years ago that these cherished properties are to be preserved for generations to come. By his recent statements and actions, the cur...
In Late Autumn, Fly to Iceland for $99 Each Way
Posted on 08/17/2018, 12:00 PM
The following is in the nature of a “believe-it-or-not” category of travel. A scrappy budget airline of Iceland (the aptly named WOW Air) has just announced that for scattered flights to Reykjavik in August, September, and October, it will charge only $99 each way! Specifically, you’ll be able to fly to Iceland’s capital from 10 U.S. cities at that remarkable price. And these take-off...
Arthur Frommer: Climate Change Is Jeopardizing the Travel Experience
Posted on 08/17/2018, 6:00 AM
Is climate change for real? And is it having an impact on the recreational travels we undertake? If you would put that question to relatives of mine living in England, they would loudly respond, “Yes!” They live near an English province where temperatures recently reached 111 degrees Fahrenheit (44 Celsius). While such heat would only slightly affect residents of, say, Phoenix, Arizona,...
Epic New Zealand Rail Line to Reopen After Quake
Posted on 08/15/2018, 12:00 PM
New Zealand's gorgeous Coastal Pacific rail service, which runs between Picton and Christchurch on the South Island's east coast, announced it will return on December 1. KiwiRail's popular five-hour, 335-km (208-mile) trip was halted in November 2016 after a major earthquake devastated the Christchurch area. For much of the journey, the route hugs the coast, with the sea on one side and the ...
Huge Projections and New Architecture Center Added to Chicago Riverwalk
Posted on 08/15/2018, 7:00 AM
The Chicago River has had about as strange a career as any waterway in North America, starting with its namesake city's decision in the late 19th century (enacted in the early years of the 20th) to reverse the river's course in order to keep sewage out of Lake Michigan. Of course, that just sent the sewage—including the foul runoff from the same meatpacking factories that gave Upton Sinclair the...
The Arctic's Most Remote Cruise Destination Gets Less Remote
Posted on 08/08/2018, 12:45 AM
Polar expedition cruises—the industry term for active voyages in remote, icy waters—are a big trend at sea right now. They appeal to contemporary travelers' taste for unique adventures, while climate change has made routes in the Arctic and Antarctica passable for longer stretches of the year (a development it's impossible not to feel ambivalent about to say the least). Even the famously faraway N...
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...
Partially Underwater Artwork Welcomes Snorkelers in the Maldives
Posted on 08/02/2018, 3:30 AM
The world's first semi-submerged sculpture park is now open for snorkel-equipped art lovers off the coast of the Maldives in the southern Indian Ocean. Dubbed Coralarium, the over-/underwater project was dreamed up by British artist Jason deCaires Taylor, who, according to Smithsonian magazine, has worked on similar installations off coasts in Grenada, Mexico, and the Canary Islands. Those were ...
Georgia in Hawaii: O'Keeffe's Forgotten Island Travels
Posted on 08/01/2018, 2:15 PM
Georgia O'Keeffe had a strong sense of place, and that place was usually New Mexico. But having a powerful affinity for one locale didn't leave the painter immune to the allure of others, as she discovered, seemingly to her own surprise, during a 1939 stay in Hawaii. "My idea of the world," she wrote in a letter sent from the islands to her husband, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, " . . . h...
WWOOFing: Explaining a Different Way to Travel, Farm by Farm
You Can Now Go Glamping on NYC's Governors Island
Posted on 07/18/2018, 4:45 AM
A secluded campground has opened in New York City. There are no typos in the preceding sentence. A grouping of 37 tents can now be found on Governors Island, a 172-acre piece of land floating between Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Once an Army and Coast Guard outpost, the redeveloped isle is partly a national monument and partly a setting for concerts, art exhibits, and other events open to the...
A Deadly End for the Yellowstone Daredevils
Posted on 07/09/2018, 12:00 AM
Two years ago, in the spring of 2016, a few young Canadians created an international scandal by treading into forbidden, protected areas of Yellowstone National Park and recording it for their social media followers in the name of living life to the fullest. The men were famous for shooting videos of themselves doing extremely dangerous things in beautiful places. We wrote at the time: "Hundreds...
Arthur Frommer: This Is Surely the Year's Greatest Travel Bargain!
Posted on 06/28/2018, 12:00 AM
About a dozen years ago, a tour operator called China Spree, headed by a Chinese-American expert, astonished the travel world by charging only $999 for a one-week stay in Beijing including air fare from America (or $100 more for one week in Beijing and Shanghai) and quality accommodations. Then, the founder of China Spree was able to accomplish those travel wonders by negotiating rock-bottom pr...
Current Volcanic Eruptions Bring Memories of Vesuvius, Says Arthur Frommer
Posted on 06/27/2018, 12:00 AM
I have found it odd that in all the media coverage of the eruption of Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawaii, no journalist has drawn a comparison to the eruption of Vesuvius outside Naples in 79 A.D. That may be because Kilauea is a “baby” by comparison with Vesuvius, the latter (pictured above) having become one of the greatest tourist attractions in all of Italy. The cataclysmic eruption of ...
James Bond Museum Opening in Austrian Alps
Posted on 06/26/2018, 11:45 AM
You'll have to wait until the fall of 2019 for the next James Bond movie, which is being directed by Danny Boyle and stars Daniel Craig in what is reportedly his last outing as 007. Starting on July 12, though, the debonair British spy's fans (Live-and-Let-Diehards?) can visit a new Bond-themed museum set at one of the shooting locations for the previous installment, 2015's Spectre. The 007 Ele...
Arthur Frommer: Quintana Roo, Mexico, is Gaining as a Tourist Destination
Posted on 06/26/2018, 12:00 AM
While numerous destinations in Mexico are suffering from what some describe as an overly sensitive spate of tourist warnings from our U.S. State Department, one area is obviously resisting that trend. In 2017, some 22 million tourists visited the state of Quintana Roo, in sharp contrast to some declines in Mexican tourism elsewhere. Quintana Roo is the location for super-popular Cancun, Pl...
Arthur Frommer: National Parks Devotees Can Utter a (Brief) Sigh of Relief
Posted on 06/25/2018, 12:00 AM
In the early months of the Trump administration, it was widely rumored that the new head of the Department of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, would propose a doubling of the entrance fees to some 100 national parks that charge admission. The reaction to that drastic proposal was so negative, and from both sides of the aisle in Congress, that it was since assumed that a far milder increase would be ...
