Tour Operator to Pay Passport Fees for Travelers Age 18–35
Posted on 01/13/2018, 9:30 AM
More than half of Americans age 18–35 don't have passports, according to Contiki, a tour operator specializing in that very demographic. For a limited time, Contiki is offering some passport-acquiring incentive to first-time international travelers—at least, those who fall within the 18–35 age range. Contiki customers who book one of the company's trips lasting longer than seven days can get the...
Days When You Can Visit U.S. National Parks for Free in 2018
Posted on 01/04/2018, 9:00 AM
Each year, the National Park system throws open its gates for a few days and spreads the good word by admitting everyone without charging entry fees. It's a great way for low-income families, students, and seniors to experience the parks, and hundreds of thousands of Americans take advantage of the invitation annually. The Department of the Interior has announced the free days for 2018—and they'v...
Want a Cannabis Vacation? Now There's a Whole Town for That
Posted on 01/03/2018, 12:00 AM
One day after California, America's most populous state, made recreational cannabis consumption legal, the Los Angeles Times reported on an entire town where getting stoned is the whole point of the joint. It's called Nipton—as in Nipton in the bud. The village was purchased last September by American Green, a publicly traded, Arizona-based cannabis company. Nipton is a speck of a century-old mi...
Two New Biographies Are Indispensable for Trips Through Europe or America
Posted on 12/27/2017, 12:00 AM
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are currently purchasing and avidly reading two monumental biographies in book form about two monumental figures in world and American history. In position number one on every bestseller list is Walter Isaacson’s 900-page volume on the life and achievements of Leonardo da Vinci (Simon & Schuster). The other, ranked closely behind and almost as large, is R...
Two Brand New Museums Dedicated to Mississippi History
Posted on 11/28/2017, 6:30 AM
Side-by-side history museums in Mississippi's capital city, Jackson, will open to the public on December 9—one day before the state's bicentennial. The brand-new institutions share an entrance and a downtown address (222 North St.) in the mid-state city because the stories they tell are inextricably entwined, as you can see from their names: the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi C...
The Trump Slump Claims Another Victim: Students Coming to Study at U.S. Colleges
Posted on 11/17/2017, 9:00 PM
In earlier blogs, I discussed the recent sharp decline in foreign tourism coming to vacation in the United States—far more than a few million fewer visitors compared to previous periods. To those figures, in statistics released just days ago, we now need to figure in a drop of several hundreds of thousands of fewer foreign students coming to the United States to study in our places of learning. ...
The Changing Situation of Married vs. Unmarried Folk Is Affecting Tours
Posted on 11/06/2017, 6:00 PM
In a surprising announcement, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that fully 50 percent of America’s adult population now consists of unmarried single people. And because another smaller percentage of the population is married people who nonetheless prefer to travel alone, the result is that more than half of our adult population are persons who travel without a spouse. That interesting f...
Study: Booze Boosts Foreign Language Skills
Posted on 10/24/2017, 9:30 PM
Alcohol improves your ability to speak a foreign language, according to a new study in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. Researchers from the University of Liverpool, Maastricht University, and King's College London devised an experiment in which 50 native German speakers who had recently learned Dutch were asked to down either booze or an alcohol-free control liquid. Participants were then inst...
One Key to a Successful European Vacation Is Planning Several Months Ahead
Posted on 10/10/2017, 12:15 AM
When is it best to begin planning your trip to Europe? Though some of the experts disagree, the majority of them say just after the start of the new year, when airline tickets tend to be priced at their lowest level. The optimum advance period is 120 days (four months), which means that a smart traveler purchases those tickets in January or February for a vacation in May or June. What about a t...
A Tragic Backpacker Death Teaches an Important Travel Lesson
Posted on 09/20/2017, 11:00 PM
What happened to Kit Mallinson was the nightmare every parent has when they send their child away on a trip. Last December, the 18-year-old backpacker from Dorset, England, boarded a night bus in Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat. He had just completed a seven-week engagement as a volunteer building clean water pipes in Borneo, and he wasn't feeling very well, so he hoped the overnight trip would give ...
