Turtle Ride!
Brookfield, Illinois, home of the famous Brookfield Zoo, passed a 25-cent amusement tax, as seen in an article in the Riverside/Brookfield Landmark. Seemingly irrelevant, this small fee is a taste of things to come for travelers in 2011, who will see increased fees and taxes throughout the year as cities and states try to plug their budget deficits on the backs of someone besides residents. Continue reading
I am featured in today’s L.A. Times Travel article by editor Catharine Hamm. The article “What Travelers Can Expect in 2011” discusses many predictions for travel in the new year Continue reading
“I was going there to ‘get around Christmas,’ leaving on December 25 to avoid the commercialism and loneliness and impossible expectations that constitute the holiday for us.”
–Pico Iyer
The TKTS booth is famous in New York & London, but Washington DC has something similar for half-price theater tickets in Washington. Continue reading
Airport landing at night. dreamstime.com
On the nighttime runway, the blue lights are home. I zip up my coat, stepping down the stairs into the fluorescent lighted terminal, spookily welcoming us like a futuristic spaceport or a 1950’s black and white film. There is a clock on the wall, borrowed from my grade school classroom, telling me a time that can’t be real. I rub my eyes and look again. It is real.
We plod past the bored TSA agent Continue reading
Don't judge a book by its cover
Travel book review: Atlas of Remote Islands
Do not be fooled. At first sight it is a beauty, appearing like an old-time adventurer’s tale, from the font to the pretty gray island illustrations. But this retro-styled book is a Pandora’s box, depressingly morose, almost void of sunny skies and palm trees. The theme is desperation and hopelessness, expressed through troubling tales. Continue reading
Where are all of the hot holiday travel deals in the cold weather? Try some of these holiday travel tips from Tourism Professor Matthew Stone. As featured on WBAL-TV. Continue reading
It’s not too late for hot holiday travel deals. See Matthew Stone on WBAL-TV Baltimore on the 6:00am news (December 11) to let you in on some secrets.
Key West Palm Tree. Definitely not on Duval Street.
Tourists by the hundreds sauntered down Duval Street in Key West, the same street as last night, looking in shop windows, eating overpriced seafood and stopping by famous bars to see Jimmy Buffet, a hippie pirate, or the ghost of Hemingway. Instead they only found other chubby tourists half-blitzed since 2 p.m. sitting on the stools where those now-famous folks once sat.
Looking for local culture was as easy as picking up the local paper. Continue reading
“People say you’ve got to live through the winters to appreciate the summers, but I don’t buy that.” -Donnie Walsh
