Top 10 European Attractions

TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel community, today announced the top 10 attractions in the Europe according to traveler popularity and TripAdvisor editors.

1. British Airways London Eye, London, United Kingdom
2. Tower of London, London, United Kingdom
3. Eiffel Tower, Paris, France
4. Musee du Louvre, Paris, France
5. Colosseum, Rome, Italy
6. Anne Frank House, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
7. Musee d’Orsay, Paris, France
8. State Hermitage Museum and Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, Russia
9. Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen
10. The Alhambra, Granada, Spain

10 great places to catch a whale of a sighting

If you are a true lover of Sea and whales, then you must read the latest book “A Global Guide to Watching Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises in the Wild.”.

Here is the list of good whale-watching during any season

• The Azores – Portugal
• Dominica
• Hermanus – South Africa
• Glacier Bay – Alaska
• Hervey Bay – Queensland, Australia
• Monterey Bay – California
• Stellwagen Bank – Massachusetts
• Península Valdés – Patagonia, Argentina
• Vancouver and Vancouver Island – British Columbia, Canada
• Sea of Cortez – Baja California, Mexico

You can see the complete information here.

Cheap and Healthy: Eat in London

Hey, just got an article which was published on 23rd of April, 2007. I really find it interesting and thats the reason I am covering it on my blog. This is really for newcomers who are visiting London for the 1st time.

The International Herald Tribune’s In London, Where to Eat on a Budget offers suggestions for dining on the cheap in this fabulous (and fabulously expensive) city. Picks include Spanish tapas, classic Brit fare and Asian fusion in neighborhoods like South Kensington and Notting Hill (destinations not ordinarily associated with budget finds). With the dollar at 50 cents to the British pound right now, American travelers heading to the UK need all the help they can get!

Enjoy:)

Disney becomes no Smoking Zone

Disney becomes no Smoking Zone

From June 1, visitors to Disney will no longer be allowed to smoke in rooms or outdoors on balconies and patios at any of the company’s 22 hotels, resorts and time-share properties. Smoking is already limited to designated areas within theme parks and public spaces. Hotels that are near Disney, but not owned by the Walt Disney Company will not affected by the ban.

Few undiscovered Parks in California

Are you tired with all over crowded places? Are you in search for a crowd-free Parks? Then, I think you must look at these National Parks in California which are rated among the crowd-free parks here….

Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon

Less busy than Yellowstone, Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon are two separate National Parks managed as one, which means you only have to pay one entrance fee for the both of them. Sequoia National Park truly is an undiscovered California treasure. In the park you’ll find the General Sherman Tree, the largest tree in the world; Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States; the second-largest road-free wilderness area in the United States, and Crescent Meadow, a Sequoia-rimmed meadow called the “gem of the Sierra” by John Muir.

Channel Islands National Park

Each island has its own endemic plants and animals, leading the Channel Islands to often be called California’s Galapagos. Over 2,000 species of plants and animals can be found within the park, which consists of five of the eight Channel Islands along the southern California coast from Point Conception near Santa Barbara to just north of Los Angeles. The park is lightly visited, never crowded and beautiful year-round. Fall is the best time to visit this California National Park though, because blue and humpback whales can be seen migrating.

Death Valley National Park

Home to one of the starkest landscapes in California, Death Valley is a geological wonder filled with exposed rock and sparse vegetation. With 3.4 million acres, Death Valley is the largest National Park in the contiguous U.S. The 18-mile drive from Furnace Creek to Badwater is a must, along the drive you’ll see fantastic salt formations, colorful views and the lowest place in the western hemisphere.

Mount Shasta

According to John Muir the beauty of Mount Shasta turned his blood to wine. Located in Northern California, Mount Shasta is the largest volcanic peak in the contiguous U.S., a towering mountain with one of the highest base-to-summit rises in the world. Snowcapped Mt. Shasta has pristine mountain lakes and rivers, majestic forests, and miles of backcountry to explore plus plenty of skiing, snowboarding, fishing, golfing, mountain biking, rock climbing and hiking.

Joshua Tree National Park

Located in south eastern California, Joshua Tree National Park includes two deserts, each with an ecosystem whose characteristics are determined primarily by elevation. This California National Park gets its name from the unique looking Joshua tree which can be found in the higher, slightly cooler Mojave Desert. The geologically unique landscape of the area features hills of bare rock, broken up into loose bolder, making the area huge for rock climbing and scrambling enthusiasts. Barker Dam, Keys View, which offers views of the Coachella Valley and Salton Sea, bird watching, and Hidden Valley (not the salad dressing) are all must-sees of the Joshua Tree National Park.

7 Mistakes Not to Make on Your Next Family Road Trip

You’ve no doubt thought of everything. The enormous suitcase that brained you when it slid from the closet is now nestled in the trunk, well-packed with your family’s wardrobe for the week. Your kids have enough snacks to forestall whining for days if necessary. You spent the morning neatly stapling computer-generated directions for each leg of your trip. And if you drive at high speeds — with the flow of traffic, of course — you’ll make the eight-hour drive in excellent time. So what are you missing? Well, for starters, you’ve already made several mistakes that could turn your family car trip into a disaster.

Mistake #1: Make sure you are not Packing the wrong bag
When you’re driving, there’s no advantage to consolidating your family’s clothes in that indestructible bag you use for flying. Think nylon or canvas duffel bags — 24 to 30 inches long — one for each person’s things. You’ll be carting more bags around, but you’ll be able to put your hands on everything more quickly. Plus, repacking the trunk will be easier, especially if you’re fitting small bags around a stroller and all those jugs of laundry detergent you bought.

Mistake #2: Altering meal times
A common road-trip blunder is disrupting your family’s normal meal schedule. If you don’t hit the road until late morning, there’s a temptation to drive through lunch and snack your way to dinner. You know your kids will have no restraint when it comes to snacks, and neither will you. Plus, if after hours of gorging you make a spontaneous lunch stop, you’ll be wolfing down food while your kids complain about not being hungry. And if lunch is thrown off, you’ll all be out of synch by dinner. By evening, your kids will be starving after both refusing to eat lunch and losing interest in the car snacks, and if it’s later than you usually eat, dinner will be a miserable whinefest. Solution: Keep it simple and eat all your meals at the usual times.

Mistake #3: Pacing the day badly
Nothing will sour a car trip faster than hitting the road at the wrong time. It’s all-too-tempting to leave work at 4 or 5 p.m. on a Friday to get on the road for a weekend getaway. The good thing about this is that, regardless of their ages, your kids will immediately slide into comatose naps. The bad thing is that when you pull into your destination at 8 p.m. they’ll be up, all night. A different tactic, hitting the road after 9 p.m. so that your kids will fall asleep and stay asleep works wonderfully — until you stop a few hours later. If they don’t come to immediately, chances are they’ll be wide awake by the time you’ve carried them inside. Best bet: Sacrifice the evening escape and leave the following morning (or early enough the next afternoon so that a nap won’t be disruptive) and ensure you’re off the road for the day by dinnertime.

Mistake #4: Denying you could get lost
Computer-generated directions are nifty, but accurate to a fault; one wrong turn and they’re next to useless. Bring a real road map. Also, invest in a portable GPS device or request one for your rental ($10 or less daily fee) — Hertz and Avis fleets are well-equipped with them. The first time a GPS generates an accurate course correction is the first time it pays for itself. Still, GPS isn’t perfect. Like computer algorithms and your well-meaning friend’s husband, they can overcomplicate directions and, at times, fail to identify streets. So pack the map no matter what.

Mistake #5: Driving like an idiot
We do stupid things on vacation that we don’t do at home: skydiving, paying retail, eating organ meat we can’t identify, and, curiously, driving more cavalierly than we normally do. This is a mistake no matter who’s in the car, but the fact that the stakes are higher when you’re driving with your family can’t be overstated. One of the more perplexing things we do on the road is break traffic laws, making illegal turns or speeding down the highway because we’re keeping up with the flow of traffic. Sure, you can get away with it, and if you’re a good driver you might rationalize the risk to your family. But don’t underestimate the risk of being pulled over. Any leniency you might have been hoping for from that approaching highway patrolman will evaporate when he sees you have kids in the back.

Mistake #6: Not setting a budget for the little things
It’s puzzling that many of us tirelessly research airfares, hotels, car rentals, and online coupon codes with the hope of saving a few dollars, yet when it comes to buying incidentals on the road, we’re essentially careless. You wouldn’t dream of giving your second grader a $50 weekly allowance at home. But for a week on the road, if you dare consider the sum of a pack of sour candies here, a souvenir pen there, a keychain for her BFF over in that store, and the other little things for which you’re constantly breaking $5 bills, giving each kid a $50 allowance with a “once you spend it it’s gone” proviso can end up being a good deal. A debit scenario works equally well for grown-ups, too.

Mistake #7: Forgetting that the journey is the destination
If your goal is to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, you probably shouldn’t be traveling by car. One of the benefits of road trips is that you can pull over at the farm rather than give the kids a blurry glimpse of a cow; eat the best steak and eggs of your life at that nondescript roadside diner; and take that throwaway snapshot over by the guardrail that ends up being the quintessential photo of you and your daughter. Hundreds of potentially undiscovered moments are around the next corner, which is why treating a drive as a means to an end rather than as part of your journey is the biggest mistake of all.

Is Expedia spamming its customers?

According to ZDNet’s columnist David Berlind, Expedia has manipulated its information systems and business processes in a way that extends the life of a transaction so that the travel site can spam its customers with special travel deals and offers even though its customers may have opted out from such offers.

For whatever reasons, Expedia apparently believes that its e-mail qualifies as a transactional e-mail and is therefore exempt from the Can Spam Act. It’s probably for this reason that e-mail is also void of any instructions or links for unsubscribing. So, is that it? Since Expedia sees its coupon offers as transactional e-mails, does that mean I’m stuck and that I must receive them from here until eternity?

There’s no coupon in the e-mail, just a reminder that you have access to one. So maybe that’s how Expedia does it. It loads everyone’s account with a special coupon and then, Expedia thinks because they’ve loaded one into your account, it gets to send you e-mail about it.

Sorry, that work-around doesn’t work for me. My sense is that Expedia is way out of line and is operating in open violation of the Can Spam Act on at least two counts. First, ignoring the e-mail preferences of its customers. Second, sending commercial e-mail with no clearly marked unsubscribe links.

Mini-hotel rooms on tap for Gatwick, Heathrow

“Soon you’ll be able to rent a chic, mini-hotel room at Gatwick and Heathrow airports. The new concept, called Yotel, is a mix between the tiny cubicles popular in high-rent Japanese cities and British Airways’ stylish first-class cabin. (Customers are called ‘passengers.’)”

“The ultra-modern, windowless Yotel rooms cost about $50 for a four-hour block, with hourly extensions available. Overnight stays start at about $110. Price includes free Internet access, workstation, on-demand movies and mood lighting. The first Yotel at Gatwick opens in May; the second opens at Heathrow in July. In the future, you could see Yotels pop up in other airports and central-city locations.”

Source: USA Today

‘World’s greatest hotels’

So what currently are the top hotels, resorts and spas?

It’s a question sure to inspire much debate, but Travel + Leisure has just come out with a book containing its second annual compilation of top picks. About 450 properties around the world made the grade, including some that are not yet household names. Among them are the Nine Zero hotel in Boston; the 21c Museum Hotel in Louisville; The James Chicago; the Alden in Houston; and the revamped Sunset Tower Hotel in West Hollywood. I peeked into the Sunset Tower recently; its restaurant is a hotspot for celebs including Jennifer Aniston.

In Asia, Thailand’s Chiva-Som health resort, voted top destination spa by T+L readers, is clearly a rising star, too.
The Best of 2007 book is sold in softcover for $19.95 and hardcover for $34.95 at bookstores and via the T+L website.

Meanwhile, Small Luxury Hotels of the World (members include the fabulous Post Ranch Inn in California) was just rated the most prestigious hotel brand in a survey of about 1,600 Americans with an average net worth of $3.3 million done for the Luxury Institute. Ritz-Carlton was second and Peninsula was third. What do readers think of this finding?

Airport Check-in: Rentals easier in Vegas

New rental car facility opens

Las Vegas McCarran opened its new consolidated rental car center last week. The $170 million facility, which had been under construction for several years, is 3 miles south of the airport terminal. Located on Gilespie Street, it houses 11 rental companies and has a capacity of 5,000 cars. It provides the convenience of renting, price-shopping and picking up cars all in one place.

Passengers get to the center by taking shuttle buses. Now that rental companies no longer run their own shuttles, the airport hopes the new garage will help ease curbside congestion.

Rental car customers have been paying $3 per day since 2004 to help pay for it, an arrangement that will continue indefinitely to help pay for its maintenance.

HOUSTON – Making Customs friendly for visitors

The federal government last week designated Houston Bush Intercontinental as its first “model port of entry” for international travelers. U.S. Customs and Border Protection will add airports after it improves their international arrival areas to ease the Customs process.

The program has been planned by the agency for a year and responds to criticism from the travel industry and others that post-9/11 security measures have discouraged foreigners from visiting the USA. To help visitors clear Customs, the program calls for providing them with more and better information about what’s expected.

New and bigger signs are in Spanish and English. Videos are in four languages: English, Spanish, French and German. Houston’s international arrivals building, which opened in 2005, has separate lanes for travelers with electronic passports designed to thwart forgery.

The agency chose Houston and Washington Dulles as the first prototype airports because they have large numbers of foreign visitors. Dulles will complete the process in the spring. The agency will study customer feedback at the two airports and may make similar changes at other airports, says Customs spokeswoman Kelly Klundt.

ATLANTA – Retractable steps help kids wash up

A new fixture that helps small children reach restroom sinks is now cropping up in airports. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta bought it last year for Concourses C and D, and recently bought more for other concourses, says Paul Sumpton of Step ‘n Wash, the Atlanta-based maker of the product. A metal step about a foot tall, it is installed under sinks. Parents pull it out to enable children to reach the faucet. Using hydraulic pressure, the step retracts by itself. Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky and Salt Lake City also are customers.

LOS ANGELES – Runway reopens after 55-foot move

Los Angeles International last week reopened its southernmost runway. It shut the runway last August to move it 55 feet farther south to reduce incursions. A runway incursion occurs when an aircraft or other object gets in the way of an aircraft landing or taking off, creating a potential for collision.

From 2000 through 2003, LAX experienced the highest number of runway incursions of any U.S. commercial airport.

Airlines had been initially concerned about delays due to the closure, but the airport said the work resulted in less than 1% of all flights experiencing delays.

The project, which cost $250 million, is part of a larger program to overhaul the airport’s south airfield. The airport also began last week the more difficult work of building a center taxiway between two active runways. The project will take about 18 months to complete.

PALMDALE, CALIF. – Upgraded regional airport opens

LA/Palmdale Regional is preparing for its first commercial service in more than a year. Starting June 7, United Airlines will begin two flights daily between Palmdale and San Francisco on regional jets.

Situated 60 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles, Palmdale Regional has a 9,000-square-foot terminal and can handle up to 300,000 passengers annually. The airport, which is now used by the Air Force, shut down its commercial service in early 2006 when Scenic Airlines ended its flights to Las Vegas.

With a rapid population growth in the region, city officials are hoping Palmdale will help relieve traffic at Los Angeles International. Los Angeles airport commissioners are spending $835,000 to upgrade the small airport.