Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Stretching the Dollar in the City of Light
By Linda Tancs
Few expenses irk travelers more than transport costs from airport to inner city, and the pain is more keenly felt when the traveler’s currency is trading downward (like the U.S. dollar). Thanks to Paris’s still relatively new light rail at Charles de Gaulle Airport, you can transfer free among the terminals, and catch the Roissybus to L’Opera Garnier for less than $15. Transfer there via cab to the inner city for less than $10. That’s a savings of $50 or so from the price of an airport cab. What to do with that extra cash? Why not order the plat du jour at that sidewalk cafe you’ve been meaning to visit. You’ve earned it.
If you enjoyed this post, please share it on sites such as StumbleUpon, vote for it, or bookmark it. Thanks for your support! Travelrific® was featured as Blog of the Day on NJ.com!
Share this:
A Cool Trip
By Linda Tancs
As record breaking heat grips the northeastern U.S. this late spring (spring!), it’s time for our collective mindset to turn to cooler climes. How about Iceland? Coming in this time of year at a delightfully cool 56 degrees fahrenheit in Reykjavik, you can run, hike, swim, bike, kayak or glacier hop without breaking a sweat. And it shouldn’t hurt that Budget Travel cites Iceland as one of few places where the U.S. dollar goes further. Of course, budget is a relative term. If fuel costs, airline downsizings and surcharges have you staying closer to home, then you can always enjoy Icelandic culture vicariously through the Puffin cam on the tourist board’s website.
If you enjoyed this post, please share it on sites such as StumbleUpon, vote for it, or bookmark it. Thanks for your support! Travelrific® was featured as Blog of the Day on NJ.com!
Share this:
Ted, You’re Grounded
By Linda Tancs
In a move surely not surprising, United Airlines is abandoning its low-cost carrier, Ted. Founded in 2003, Ted’s expanding route map and low fare guarantee will meet the executioner’s axe as fuel costs continue to spiral and forecasters predict airline losses in the $2B range. Ted, meet Maxjet, Eos, and Silverjet. Just goes to show that economic tides don’t play favorites.
Share this:
Tourism Survey Measures P’s and Q’s
By Linda Tancs
How well tourists mind their p’s and q’s was the subject of a recent survey of hoteliers commissioned by Expedia. The results for American tourists (ranking eleventh overall) are mixed, scoring high points for generosity and low points for tidiness and civility. German tourists scored highest for neatness while the Italians and French topped the best-dressed list. Americans, whose fanny packs and white tennis shoes apparently do little to impress the front desk, are number one on the traveler’s equivalent of Blackwell’s worst-dressed list. So how does one become a model tourist? You’ll need to ask the Japanese, who ranked first overall.
If you enjoyed this post, please share it on sites such as StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg, or bookmark it on del.icio.us. Thanks for your support! Travelrific® was featured as Blog of the Day on NJ.com!
Share this:
The Pretzel’s Demise
By Linda Tancs
After hearing that US Airways is abandoning the pretzel snack on domestic flights, I decided to check out their food offerings online. On “select” flights (suggestion: call ahead for confirmation), here’s a sampling of their mouth-watering options (sans pretzels): fruit and cheese plate, turkey ham on sweet Hawaiian luau bread (aloha!), and a classic chicken Caesar salad.
Readers, I’d like you to rate the meals you’ve had on a domestic flight–from 1(lousy) to 5 (great, or at least pretty darn good). The results, best to worst, will be tallied and posted.
Share this:
E-Ticketing Touted as Cost-Saving Measure
By Linda Tancs
You may have noticed that, effective 1 June, paper airline tickets have gone the way of the dinosaur. In a move initiated by IATA about 3 years ago, e-ticketing is now the standard for processing passengers. According to IATA, this move will save the industry over $3 billion per year in expenses. Now the question is: as carriers realize the savings to come through effecting electronic transactions, will we see an elimination of the checked bag charges now being widely introduced by carriers, a reduction in surcharges, and–better snack foods? Stay tuned.
If you enjoyed this post, please share it on sites such as StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg, or bookmark it on del.icio.us. Thanks for your support! Travelrific® was featured as Blog of the Day on NJ.com!
Share this:
The Aqueous Paradise of Venice
By Linda Tancs
World famous for its canals and gondoliers, Venice is an aqueous paradise often emulated but never rivaled. Find out what it is about this city that charms so many. Visit Travelrific® Travel Show.
Share this:
Moving at a Glacial Pace
By Linda Tancs
A glacial pace is taken to mean a slow, lumbering movement. Not that there’s anything wrong with that– unless we’re talking glaciers. Ice movements in New Zealand and Greenland are causing some consternation among naturalists and scientists alike, not to mention the uncertain effect on tourism. Consider this: New Zealand’s 2 million-year-old Tasman Glacier in Mount Cook National Park is losing 500 meters each year, an uncomfortable progression for a skiing destination touted as the ultimate New Zealand alpine adventure. On the other side of the world, Greenland’s glaciers have been shrinking for 100 years, losing some 150,000 tons of ice each year. That’s bad news for Disko Bay, where adventurists travel to marvel at a colossal collection of floe. Better get there before the glaciers leave town.
If you enjoyed this post, please share it on sites such as StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg, or bookmark it on del.icio.us. Thanks for your support! Travelrific® was featured as Blog of the Day on NJ.com!
Share this:
Hiawatha Lives in Ironwood
By Linda Tancs
At the door on summer evenings
Sat the little Hiawatha;
Heard the whispering of the pine-trees,
Heard the lapping of the waters,
Sounds of music, words of wonder;
‘Minne-wawa!” said the Pine-trees,
Mudway-aushka!” said the water. – “Hiawatha.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Hiawatha still hears the lapping of the waters–from his bird’s-eye view of Lake Superior–in Ironwood, Michigan. There, bearing an appellation that reads “World’s Tallest and Largest Indian,” stands an 18-meter high statue of Hiawatha, a chieftain credited with founding the Iroquois Confederacy. Fans of roadside americana such as this can get directions here.
If you enjoyed this post, please share it on sites such as StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg, or bookmark it on del.icio.us. Thanks for your support! Travelrific® was featured as Blog of the Day on NJ.com!
Share this:
Ivy League
By Linda Tancs
When author and former Princetonian F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in This Side of Paradise that Princeton, New Jersey is good-looking, he must have been inspired by a stroll through its public parks and gardens. Boasting a range of heirloom plants, bulbs, wildflowers, mature trees, peeking peonies and exploding irises, the springtime blooms of the town’s greenways await you. Start your tour at Morven, the official governor’s residence from 1945 to 1981. As you walk the rolling back lawn of this estate named after a mythical Gaelic kingdom, you’ll spot towering trees that are at least as old as our country. This Georgian-style mansion was, after all, the ancestral home of Richard Stockton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Step gingerly around the beds of heirloom annuals from the 18th and 19th centuries and onwards to a re-creation of a Colonial Revival-style garden of the early 20th century.
For a less antique perspective, roam through Princeton’s nature preserves, parks and refuges. In the northeastern section of town, you’ll find Herrontown Woods, a completely wooded park best noted for its color-coded, three-mile hiking trails ringed with oaks, red maples, flowering dogwoods and Japanese honeysuckle. Claiming six of its 35-mile tract in Princeton in a north to south stretch, the Delaware & Raritan Canal evokes images of the Irish immigrants who forged the waterway with pickaxes and shovels to create a passageway for coal transport. The tree canopies, some extending up to 50 feet in height, provide lush cover for several species of warblers that predominate in the spring from the Charles H. Rogers Wildlife Refuge nearby. A noted ornithologist, Rogers played a key role in establishing the sanctuary, where springtime blooms amidst its 39 acres include trout lilies, violets and irises. At the steepest southern ridge in town, Woodfield Reservation greets visitors with a full understory of wildflowers and a convergence of spring leaves in the park’s center that locals say is not to be missed. You’ll find convergence of another kind—wetlands and meadows—at Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve, a Y-shaped valley originally granted to colonist William Penn from England’s King James II. Particularly stunning are the “seven sister” cluster of red oaks at the northern boundary, flowering daisies and buttercups in the meadows, and an array of spring beauties in the wetlands. Finally, in the western area of town lies Marquand Park, host to an arboretum including eleven trees that are the largest of their kind in the state. And that’s not the park’s only distinction. It also sports two record-setting fir trees from North Syria and Greece. Thankfully, most of the 200 species of trees found here are mapped and tagged.
Beauty may rest in the eye of the beholder, but Fitzgerald certainly was on to something.
If you enjoyed this post, please share it on sites such as StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg, or bookmark it on del.icio.us. Thanks for your support! Travelrific® was featured as Blog of the Day on NJ.com!
Travelrific® Travel Journal 