With the Holiday Season and the year-end celebrations in the rear-view mirror, New York City is now gearing up for the Chinese New Year. The Year of the Ox begins January 26, and New York’s Chinatown is already showing signs of turning over a new leaf, with stores stocked up with bright red decorations.

AP Travel Editor Beth Harpaz has suggestions not only for Dim Sum restaurants (Golden Unicorn, 18 E. Broadway near Catherine Street) and gift shopping (Pearl River Mart, 477 Broadway ), but also outdoor markets and gathering spots for bird owners. She also lists some upcoming events in late January and February.

Best of all, she’s got recommendations for a couple of New York hotels (Best Western Bowery Hanbee Hotel at 231 Grand St. and the Holiday Inn at 138 Lafayette St.) which cost around $200 per night. That’s about 100 dollars less than what you’ll pay at almost any other hotel in Manhattan, where the average rate is about $282, and most will end up charging you well above $300, after you factor in all the add-ons. 

More information about Chinatown NYC, including the visitable landmarks, bakeries, nightlife, and details about walking tours you can find here - www.explorechinatown.com/.

And following on the heels of the Chinese New Year comes the other big winter event of the year - New York Comic Con (www.nycomiccon.com/, February 6-8 2009 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center).

Jaunted has a pretty neat roundup of what you need to know about vacations in New York, both as a tourist and as a nerdy comic book fan.

If you want a comic book (store) tour of the Big Apple, they suggest Forbidden Planet on Broadway and 13th or Jim Hanley’s Universe, on 33rd Street. And a visit to The Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art.

I’m not too impressed with their suggestions for hotels, though. Surely, there’s better places to stay in than a Comfort Inn, Andre Balazs’ half-finished Standard and the Pod Hotel, which is in a terminal stage of tourist-trap-itis.

Time was when the Pod was a budget hotel which attracted nerds and geeks and single backpackers, with its bunk beds and tiny LCD screens. But now its just a cramped, over-priced and over-hyped hotel.

Chinatown photo by 13bobby via flickr (creative commons). Jedi Knights & Stormtroopers photos courtesy New York Comic Con. 

Posted on January 6th, 2009 by Thomas
Filed under: Festivals, NYC | No Comments »

Yesterday, we saw a hostel inside a plane - The Jumbo Hostel. Today, we move from air to water. To a hotel inside a ship, to be precise. The RMS Queen Mary, berthed at Long Beach Harbor, is probably one of the most popular hotels in Long Beach, and also likely the single most famous floating hotel on the face of the earth.

But like everyone else, even a Queen sometimes has to face bankruptcy, and in 2007, the City of Long Beach was short on ideas and funds to keep the historic ship afloat. Then Jeff Klein formed Save the Queen LLC (www.queenmary.com/), which then pulled the Queen Mary out of bankruptcy with $43 million in Nov 2007. The total financing package deal cost around $70 million.

And for this, Save the Queen now controls the site, which includes the ship with its 307 art deco hotel rooms, 3 harbor view restaurants, a popular wedding and event venue, and spa facilities, plus 45 acres of adjacent waterfront land for redevelopment, 11 acres of water rights for a marina, a Carnival Cruise line pier, the ferry to Catalina, helicopter rides and retail.

Since gaining control of Long Beach Harbor, Hostmark Hospitality Group and Save the Queen LLC have been quietly giving a makeover to the rundown Queen, spending about $6 million on capital improvements, including a stem to stern restoration.

Substantial improvements and upgrades have been made to the property including the kitchen areas, premium soft goods such as flat panel TV’s and deluxe mattresses and pillows added to the guest rooms.

And now, with the Queen having regained her stately splendor, Save The Queen are now starting to think about the development of the site. The project was supposed to kick off in 2009, starting with the marina, hotels and more entertainment outlets. But as of now, they haven’t announced a start date.

Photos by gailf548 via flickr (creative commons).

Posted on January 5th, 2009 by Thomas
Filed under: Los Angeles, News | No Comments »

There’s a reason why Will Smith keeps popping up at hotels in Miami Beach. He says Miami is the City for him. What he means is that he thinks there’s one city somewhere on the planet for everyone, where you feel at home. 

Smith explained his theory to the the Miami Herald when he was there to promote his new film Seven Pounds. ”I have a lot of strange theories,” Smith said about his love for Miami, “and this is one of them: I believe cities have emotional patterns, in the same way human beings have emotional patterns. There’s a specific place on Earth for every single person, where you’re going to feel happier, healthier, more in love, need less rest, and your skin is going to look better. You just have to find the city that matches your particular emotional pattern.”  

Well, now we know where Will Smith’s emotional pattern leads to - coke snorting hedonists, party hounds and beach bums. Take your pick…

Let’s move from hopped out movie stars with delusions of grandeur to a 36 year old Swedish entrepreuner from Uppsala who managed to set up a fully functional hostel inside a grounded jumbo jet.

The Jumbo Hostel, set up inside a mothballed Boeing 747 at Stockholm-Arlanda airport, has 25 rooms. Amenities include bunk beds, overhead luggage compartments and flat-screen televisions, reception area and café are at the front of the jet and toilets and showers at the rear. $46 (300 SEK) per room per night. The cockpit, though, will cost several thousand SEK per night.

The Boeing’s upper deck is a conference room, and the cockpit a wedding suite.  And Oscar Diös has grand plans to expand his winged hostel, by adding more rooms in the engine bays beneath the wings.

Considering that he’s already ot 200 bookings, its a definite possibility that you might soon be seeing Dios Jumbo hostels at airports all over the world. Richard Bronson must be going green with envy…

Photo courtesy Jumbo Hostel, Stockholm, Sweden.

Posted on January 4th, 2009 by Thomas
Filed under: News | 1 Comment »

To Kashif Irfan, his brother and their families, vacations in Orlando will always be a reminder of the horrible New Year’s eve day experience at Reagan National Airport. Because apparently, Sen. John McCain is the only one who’s allowed to say “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb!”

I don’t mean to single out the good Republican Senator from Arizona, considering he’s still not recovered from the whuppin’ he got at the hands of Barack Obama, but McCain is a rich white male - The kind of person who never ends up on no-fly lists and can say things like ‘bomb’ and ‘explosion’ on board a plane, and no one will bat an eyelid.

On the other hand, when three young American citizens, and two of them women, are chatting about which seat on a plane is the safest place to be in case of an accident, what happens is that they get hauled off the plane and interrogated by the FBI. And then the airline tells them to bugger off. Why? Because they’re muslims.

This is what happened on New Year’s Eve Day to a party of 9 muslim passengers from  Alexandria on board an Air Tran flight out of Reagan National Airport headed for Orlando, FL. A couple of other passengers (two teenage girls…) overheard the conversation, reported it and the pilot delayed the takeoff. All 104 passengers were ordered off the plane.

Members of the party, all but one of them U.S.-born citizens who were headed to a religious retreat in Florida, were subsequently cleared for travel by FBI agents who characterized the incident as a misunderstanding, an airport official said. But the passengers said AirTran refused to rebook them, and they had to pay for seats on another carrier secured with help from the FBI. - Washington Post

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no placard waving ACLU activist. And the fellow passsengers, the Air Tran pilot, air marshalls, airport police and the FBI were well within their rights to ensure everyone’s safety and follow the proper procedures. What ticks me off is what happened afterwards.

When it became apparent that the group was perfectly legit, the FBI cleared them and even helped them secure a flight with another airline. What Air Tran did, on the other hand, was to show them the middle finger. An Air Tran spokesperson laid the blame squarely and entirely on the muslims, and refused any compensation for the extra cost of the new tickets, and did it in a way which made it perfectly clear that Air Tran was not interested in accomodating them.

Air Tran explicitly refused to re-board them after they were cleared by the FBI. TSA says that’s standard procedure??? How the heck is it standard TSA procedure for Air Tran to refuse to accept these passengers while at the same time federal agents were helping them find and book a flight on US Airways?

Just to recap. These are young American citizens born in Detroit, and living upwardly mobile lives in Alexandria, VA - Kashif Irfan (age 34 , anesthesiologist) and his brother (age 29, lawyer) and their families including three children aged 7, 4 and 2. And compare that against the sheer callousness of the Air Tran spokesperson who said that they wouldn’t be refunding the additional cost of the new tickets, and then said that the muslims ‘may fly on the carrier’ now that the investigation was complete.

First, Air Tran owes a complete and full apology to the group. Second, they need to compensate the additional cost. Third, they need to fire the arrogant SOBs who made the decision to hang the muslims out to dry after they were cleared by the FBI. Fourth, they need to get a new and more ‘tactful’ spokesperson (as in less bigoted).

To their credit (and due to the media uproar and threat of a civil liberties lawsuit), Air Tran has now issued an apology, and offered free return tickets to them. They still haven’t taken any action against those responsible. Don’t hold your breath…

Posted on January 3rd, 2009 by Thomas
Filed under: News | No Comments »

Marc Boisclair, writing for MiMegasite, has an excellent article on the changing face of Reno and the multi-million dollar investments which are turning it into a full-fledged year around entertainment zone.

Article quotes Michael Thomas, executive director of marketing for the Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority, as saying that there’s 18 ski resorts within an hour’s drive of downtown Reno and Reno-Tahoe International Airport, and that hotels in Reno offer up a total of 20,000 guest rooms within a very short drive to the mountains.

Reno, like Tahoe, is awash in hospitality makeovers. The Atlantis, Peppermill, John Ascuaga’s Nugget, and Grand Sierra resorts alone have invested close to a half-billion dollars in renovations and expansions, much of them friendly toward incentives, such as fine dining, health spas, and room amenities.

New bars, clubs, restaurants, and spas—either in downtown or at Reno’s gaming resorts—are aiding in Reno’s renaissance, as well. “Once the slopes shut down, we have a pulse,” said Thomas. “There’s a real nightlife here, whether you’re in downtown or at one of the resorts, and that makes us a complete destination.”

Let’s move from tranformations in travel destinations to transformative travel. USAToday asked readers to sahre their life-changing journeys, and has now published some of these stories. Includes voluntourism with handicapped kids in Quito, Ecuador; a trip to a small orphanage on the outskirts of Cape Haitian, Haiti; a trip to the Pacific island of Guadalupe, Mexico where Jupp Kerckerinck zur Borg from Millbrook, NY fell in love with great white sharks; and a few more.

But the best one is a story sent in by Linda Castagna, a Milford, NJ resident, who took a family trip to the UK, and spent 3 weeks in the English countryside, spending nights in different bed and breakfasts along the way. They got hooked on the B&B routine, and are now owners of their own B&B, named Chestnut Hill on the Delaware (www.chestnuthillnj.com/).

Photo by chicadecasa via flickr (creative commons).

Posted on January 2nd, 2009 by Thomas
Filed under: News | No Comments »

The beachfront mansions on the Malibu beaches represent the much admired paradise of LA Confidential. But there’s trouble in paradise. For two reasons. First, Malibu’s Broad Beach apparently isn’t so broad anymore, and is shrinking and vanishing at an incredible pace due to a rise in the sea level (climate change…).

Secondly, there’s a class war going on for control of even this increasingly smaller sliver of sand. It’s a complex mess, as to which part of the beach is public, and which part is private and meant only for the snotty owners of the mansion along that section of the beach.

This confusion has resulted in misunderstandings between beachgoers and property owners, with the police being called in to evict truculent beachgoers who just want to enjoy a day out on the beach, and don’t take kindly to being told by some rich Studio A-lister and his security staff to clear out.

The LA Times has a neat primer which rounds up all the problems faced by Malibu’s Broad Beach and the other California’s beaches, including the shortage of sand due to the damming of rivers and streams, and statistics and scientific predictions about how fast the sea level is rising (4 ft in 100 years), and what impact its having on the beachfront (50 inches of land lost for every 1 inch of sea-level rise).

Basically, the sum of it is that you’ll be jumping off the seawall straight into the water. And sand will be something which is kept in the museums, and shown on film. Ironic…

Speaking of class war over beach access, here’s a good story, which pits an ordinary Father of three children against the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, FL. Apparently, the Ritz-Calrton is one of these beachfront resort-type hotels in Naples, but without a private beach reserved for hotel guests.

Problem came up when the hotel’s security asked Ginsberg and his three young children to leave because they had dug a 6-by-3 hole in the sand on Vanderbilt Beach. The hole was right behind the Ritz-Carlton resort.

Technically speaking, its a public spot, and the Ginsberg family had every right to dig a hole there for playing in the sand. After they were ‘ejected’, Ginsberg ended up protesting up and down the beach. Some of the hotel’s guests were enjoying the beach right next to where the hole was being dug, and they were a bit miffed with the hole, and the hole could have possiblyended up as a bit of a safety hazard for anyone who might wander by.

Who’s at fault here? Difficult question…

Malibu Beach photo by Derek Purdy via flickr (creative commons).

Posted on January 1st, 2009 by Thomas
Filed under: Los Angeles | No Comments »

What would you do if some people, male and female, around you in the subway suddenly dropped their pants? Before all you women whip out the mace and start kicking all the family jewelry within reach, think about the date. If its Jan 10, then you need to just relax and take a few deep breaths, because its Global No Pants Subway Rides day on Jan 10.

Here’s the details for the annual event in NYC, organized by Improv Everywhere. Altogether , a total of 15 cities are taking part in aforementioned pant dropping escapade including Adelaide, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Toronto and Vienna. US cities other than New York which will be caught with their pants down on Saturday Jan 10 2009 include Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, St. Paul/Minneapolis and Washington DC.

As you can see from the video, its a kinda big hit, actually. Last year, MSNBC had a video up for it. You can bet your boots it’ll be even bigger this year.

Moving from weird attractions in New York to weird attractions who come to New York, we have rock bands who’re using CouchSurfing.com to find crash pads, instead of abusing some poor fans’ hospitality, or paying through the nose for expensive hotels for the entire group.

Spin.com has a much quoted and bandied about article which examines how over 900 bands which are registered members of Couchsurfing are saving on lodging costs by making use of the non-profit website’s mechanism of facilitating stays at other members’ residences.

The Shackeltons spent 109 nights on the road in 2008 — and only paid to stay in a hotel once. The rest of the time, the Pennsylvanian post-punkers crashed at private homes, sometimes with friends, but more often with strangers they found through couchsurfing.com. After one too many nights staying with crazy fans they met at their shows — including an alcoholic sex addict who danced around them while they slept — the website seemed like a godsend. “We’ve never had any bad couchsurfing.com stays,” says singer Mark Redding. “Everyone was so welcoming, and their places were nice and clean.”

Posted on December 31st, 2008 by Thomas
Filed under: NYC, News | No Comments »

Diddy Duck has gone daffy cause he says he and Ciroc will pay New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city of New York $1 million to make the historic crystal Times Square ball Ciroc blue. In a Vlog posting on his youtube channel, Sean P. Diddy Combs explained his attempted brandnapping of the NYC New Year ball.

He says that Bloomberg can use the money to open up some parks or buy computers for schools or “whatever”.

Oh, and the almighty bleeding-heart vodka pimping Diddyness is also offering $15 cab fare for drunk revelers to make sure they reach home safely. NY Daily News says that thousands of Diddy’s $15 debit cards that can be redeemed for single taxi rides will be handed out by Ciroc street teams in Times Square and in Chelsea beginning at 11 p.m. Wednesday night.  The cards will be doled out until 3 a.m. New Year’s Day, or until the supply runs out.

In some equally unbelieveable news, some nutball German researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering and Organisation have come up with a flying saucer shaped rooms in a ‘hotel of the future’, which can change color depending on what kinda mood you’re in, with a talking computer screen to which you can issue verbal instructions, and where a mini-robot serves drinks from out of the mini bar.

The experimental room has been assembled in a giant laboratory. The idea is to show hotels how new technology can help guests relax. In the hotel bathroom of the future, you can relax in the jacuzzi and, with the help of a remote control, check your e-mails in the bathroom mirror… which doubles as a screen.

Posted on December 30th, 2008 by Thomas
Filed under: Hotels, NYC | No Comments »

Leaving aside the title, which sounds like a blockbuster porn flick, there’s nothing really controversial here. Well, you can’t really separate Paris Hilton from controversy, but this one here is just the usual run-of-the-nill celeb stuff.  

Paris Hilton, who as per recent news reports is apparently being paid $600k to party at a club in Sydney on New Year’s Eve, has arrived in Melbourne with all the fanfare usually reserved for royalty. Herald Sun report says that the Pied Piper of Paris took hundreds of fans with her down Chapel Street this afternoon, when she went shopping in Melbourne.

Paris Hilton caused one of the biggest paparazzi storms Melbourne Airport has ever seen when she walked through the arrivals gate at 10:55am, with sister Nicky, Nicky’s boyfriend David Katzenberg and Paris’s new best friend Brittany Flickinger.

And here’s one place the Hilton hellcat surely won’t be partying in. The 78 room Donna Camilla Savelli Hotel in the Trastevere in Rome, just across the Tiber River from the historic center. 

The hotel occupies a convent built in the mid-17th century and up until recently, run as a guest house by an order of reclusive nuns. Photo copyrights - Alpitour World Hotels.

The LA Times reports that Rome-based Alpitour World Hotels & Resorts chain has undertaken a painstaking renovation that has turned it into one of the city’s most enticing historic hotels.

And since we’re on the subject of hotels on holy ground, there’s this National Park Seminary in Silver Spring, MD, with a decaying Japanese pagoda, crumbling English castle and the remains of a resort hotel, which is getting a $150 million makeover.

Condos can be found in the Queen Anne-style hotel or the buildings around it, such as a former chapel that still has stained-glass windows. Pity the developer, who apparently got hold of this historic property for $1 (long story… ), isn’t putting up a new hotel. Would have been a fine addition to the not-so-fine list of existing Silver Spring hotels. 

And to top that off with something even more fantastic, the BBC reports that A 19th century chapel has been uncovered during an £8.1m renovation project at a Berkshire hotel - Beaumont House in Old Windsor. Built in 1870, the chapel’s original ceiling, altar and stained glass windows are all still intact, despite being boarded up since the 1960s. 

Posted on December 29th, 2008 by Thomas
Filed under: Hotels, Paris, Vacation, World | No Comments »

Got a spare $4.25 million? If you do, you can get yourself a fine historic mansion in Pacific Heights, San Francisco. Its a three-story house, 8,777 sq ft, built in 1887 and a registered City Landmark, glass frontage, nice garden and all. Only one teeny-weeny problem. Its haunted. And it was a hotel. Photo copyrights - SF Properties.

WSJ blog reports that, according to a previous owner, the property at 2220 Sacramento Street, formerly known as the Mansions Hotel and before that as Chambers Mansion  (owned by Richard Chambers, a silver tycoon and U.S. Senator), has been known to be haunted, with windows opening and closing of their own accord, lights flashing on and off, and sudden drops in temperature.

After the property was converted into a hotel in the 1970s, the now-former owner, Robert Pritikin, used to host lavish parties with celebrities like Barbara Streisand, Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams in attendance. And Pritikin, who’s now 79 years old, also had a practise of holding a “Claudia the Ghost” piano hour at the hotel, Mondays through Thursdays. Many guests have reported ghostly happenings over the years.

If the buyer should re-convert it into a hotel, it’ll be an instant hit. I mean, 121 years of history, haunted by ghosts, and also a former celebrity haunt. It’ll become as much an attraction as the Drake or any of the storied San Francisco hotels. If you wanna buy it, you’ll find more details here.

Sincer we’re talking about nutty old wackadoos and hotels, consider Joe Nealson from Hanover Township, PA, who has been swiping and collecting ashtrays from hotels and businesses for 40 years. He’s got 1,585 ashtrays lined up in his basement.

“I have ashtrays from Ireland, England, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Israel, Russia and, of course, China,” he said.  His biggest single collection is a complement of Las Vegas hotels. For many of those establishments – like the Sands Hotel and Holiday Casino — Nealon’s ashtrays are all that remain as they met the wrecking ball to make way for newer casinos.

And here’s the kicker. He doesn’t smoke…

Posted on December 28th, 2008 by Thomas
Filed under: Hotels, San Francisco | No Comments »