Tag Archives: Travel Blog

Have They Lost Their Elgin Marbles?

For the first time in ages, literally, a bit of the now infamous Elgin Marbles is on the move. Back to whence it came? No – it’s been shipped to Mother Russia as part of a temporary exhibition at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. The Greeks will not be amused – and neither is the movie star lobby that is starting to bring celebrity voice to the century-old debate about the plundering of nations’ treasures. Note Monuments Men; which based on their box-office take, not many have! Too bad they couldn’t time their release better – it would’ve been a great publicity stunt.

The British museum and the British government is having none of it, however, and Greece is crying foul! Perhaps they should make a remake of Russell Brand’s movie, “Take him to the Greek!” The “scandal” of the Acropolis Museum is still a hot topic. Plaster-case replicas of the Parthenon marbles are displayed in place of the originals, which were spirited away by Lord Elgin in the 19th century and sit a thousand miles away in the British Museum. Even Lord Byron took issue and wrote a poem of protest.

It seems a shame that after so many years some kind of reconciliation can’t be achieved, but therein lies the problem with museums. The oldest public museums opened in Rome during the Renaissance, starting with the Capitoline, the oldest of them all, in 1471. A few years back I explored the Acropolis Museum, which sits in the shadow of the Parthenon. This beautiful glass museum tells the story of all museums – specifically the way collections of artifacts mysteriously end up miles from where they started, in places like London and Paris. More or less everything came from somewhere else and most of the time there was a shady deal. You could say it’s a reflection of history in general-intrigue, treason, and plot! It’s one of the many reasons I love to travel: You learn something new every time.

So will the Elgin Marbles ever make their way back to Greece? Only time and a ton of Russian Rubles will tell.

Airline Lounges getting Lazy?

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Airline Lounges Getting Lazy?

Clubs and places to hang out at airports are reaching a troubling intersection. Once the harbor of calm and safety, where you might feel like a million bucks, airline clubs are fast becoming overcrowded and unreliable.

Take American Admiral’s Club for example. What Admiral are they referring to? Certainly not Nelson! Please. It’s awful. Or the Delta Sky Club– there’s not much to eat: a few pretzels and some awful nuts that even if you’re not allergic to, you should be! You have to pay for the alcohol and if you were planning on a meal before a long flight…good luck! And what’s worse, Delta won’t even allow you in with stuff you have been forced to grab outside – probably for fear that others will catch on that there’s absolutely no value inside! You’re better off taking your chances in the vastly improving terminal buildings.

New concessions have opened, healthy and actually decent – places you don’t mind hanging out at. The other day at Chicago O’Hare I even noticed that Starbucks, the only bastion in days gone by, of decent coffee and half decent sandwiches, had no line. People had found healthier options and better coffee!

So, McDonald’s and Auntie Anne’s and those awful places that are still hanging around, watch out! Your concession license may cost more than your daily take – at least let’s hope so!

But it’s not all bad. Has anyone been to a Virgin International lounge recently? It’s actually good. There’s food to eat – variety, free drinks ! And if you have an American Express platinum card there’s a great club called Centurion Club. Sadly it’s only in 4 locations: LAS, DFW, SFO, and LGA. But the service is great, food decent and it made my transit and the vastly improved Dallas airport actually pleasant. Did I say Amex did something nice for its customers? Where’s the Visa lounge!?

The Town and The Gown

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The Town and the Gown

A friend of mine is a Baroness – I have classy friends! Anyhow, she had invited me over for tea at the House of Lords, and I, ever keen to add this to my resume of drinking spots thought no more than a second before finalizing the time. “Meet me at the Peers entrance,” were my instructions. I took the tube to Westminster (it seemed the right thing to do), to balance out the afternoon, to ride with the masses ( “the commoners”), to alight under the shadow of Big Ben, walk right by the House of “Commons” – no need to go into that place, and head on to the Lords itself.

It’s quite dramatic really, there are TV guys outside by the Commons waiting for politicians and several policemen mind the store outside which gives the visitor this sense of self-importance (completely undeserved). I was sent to the wrong place first, but eventually found my way to the inner sanctum where I was dutifully screened, assigned a photo badge and waited to be greeted by my friend. Eventually we met up, took tea in china cups and I saw the odd famous face as I caught up and spent an absolutely delightful hour in the belly of the beast.

It is not corny to say that these kinds of experiences are remarkable: the history, everywhere, drips through the woodwork – it’s not difficult to imagine this place 100 years ago. In fact…it’s all about tradition. Ironically, just that day the labor party under Ed Milliband had introduced the idea once again of abolishing the Lords as an institution. I have never really been a great fan of the lords, but given the very limited influence they have, it would feel very un-British to not have such an institution part of a government that is constituted by a monarchy that has no power, but is an anachronism that has been more or less a continuous part of the system in England for over a thousand years. And anyway, where would I go for a cup of tea and a crumpet in the afternoon. It beats Starbucks.

Let’s Go Fly a Kite

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Let’s Go Fly a Kite

At the recent World Travel Market in London, which is held every year in the Dock Lines area at ExCel I decided to fly with the Emirates Air Line. It was quite a thrill, actually! You take the underground to North Greenwich and it’s a five minute walk from there to the entrance. It’s right next door to the O2, the magnificent dome with bits sticking out of it that was built for the millennium and has since been used for everything from concerts to tennis tournaments. You can use an Oyster Card, they simply charge you an extra £3.30 on the card or if you don’t have an Oyster Card the “airfare” is £4.40 one-way. And there you are, stepping into your very own cable car, most people don’t seem to know about it or aren’t willing to shell out for the extra money, so chances are you do get your own gondola.

The journey time is 10 minutes and it reaches 90 meters altitude as you have this fantastic view of London – everything’s on display, the Shard, the Walkie Talkie, the Onion Dome, and in the background you can just about make out the London Eye. This is East London’s new skyline and probably London’s most vibrant reclaimed area. You get a neat little history of the East End of London piped into the cabin and I have to say that for $5, it was one of the highlights of my very quick trip to London. Gotta say that London is a city that embraces the new – I used to always imagine that Paris had the gold medal for this: the new opera, the pyramid, but London has just simply taken off and it seems to perfectly manage innovation, integration, and restoration a lot better than most other cities. If you take a blank canvas like the docklands of London, it’s so cool. It’s like you’re making history all over again for some other generation to enjoy.

I love strolling around the floor at the World Travel Market – you pass through every single country that is, from a tourist’s point of view, “visitable.” For example, no Syria, no Afghanistan and no Liberia – you get the picture. I stroll from a chat with somebody about Mongolia, wander up into the highlands of Bhutan or just get real hedonistic and hanging out at the Mauritius stand. It’s a way to travel the world for the price of an Oyster Card, no jet lag, no baggage except the stuff they give you (resist it all!) and attend pretty interesting seminars on travel trends, social media, you name it – all under one roof.

Poshtel

I’ve noticed now that “poshtels” are popping up everywhere. Those good old days when you could find a really awful cheap guaranteed bed bug place to stay, are disappearing fast. Now it’s the 5-star hostel – chic and groovy, but basic and cheap. You can book your own at PoshPacker. These poshtels are everywhere and for the budget traveler they’re reliable and a great way to stay in the center of the city without paying silly prices.

Incidentally another trend that came out, and I find myself slightly at fault here, is the move away from golf to biking. Apparently as middle-aged men think they’re young, they are donning Lycra biking shorts and it looks pretty grim. Those outfits were made for 20-year-olds, Tour de France winners, and Ironmen Triathletes – not granddad on the weekends. It’s frightening – see Spanx for men! Anyhow, the good news is, there are a whole bunch of designers out there willing to help. Biking clothes, see Paul Smith’s 531 collection, don’t have to be as hideous as they are – loose is good and kind and forgiving to the wearer and to the observer.

Bring back the Travelers Checks!

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Bring back the Travelers Checks!

I just get really tired of spending money or paying for services that are not there. My credit card bill is peppered with tiny charges per transaction every time I use the credit card overseas. That really irritates me! There are cards that advertise no international transaction fees; if you have an Amex Platinum, then it’s automatically waived. But my whole thing is how can you waive something that shouldn’t be there in the first place? It’s just another revenue stream and another rip-off. So consider this, go look for a credit card that does not charge the fee and also go look for a credit card that has enough access points overseas so that you don’t have to constantly get ripped off at the ATM machine.

There was a recent research survey on Brits who travel and according to that, £180 Million in bank fees were charged at ATMs outside of the UK and the average charge of a cash machine overseas is between $7 and $10! So the bottom line is, do the research first and if you’re desperate and you need to pull money out, pull as much out as you can – which of course brings us back to that other almost amusing circle. What happens if I’m ripped off the legitimate way, given the fact that I’ve already been robbed at the credit card machine? You’ve taken out too much money because you don’t want to pay for another credit card robbery – you then are robbed legitimately on the metro by hardworking honest to goodness thieves, rather than those corporate bandits, who barely laid a hand on you. So take all that money you get from the ATM and go see if you can find an American Express office and convert that into traveler’s checks. Yah, I know it’s a fantasy, I know those offices have long since gone, but it sure makes you think.

Belfast

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Belfast

My Italian friend insisted that we do something at the end of the Dublin conference. He had concocted an idea that we should drive to Belfast. I had never been, he had never been, so we rented a car and headed off into the unknown. My first mistake was to forget my passport, drive twenty miles back to retrieve it, only to discover as we entered the environs of Belfast, that there was no border patrol and no passport officer waiting behind the bushes. It was a seamless entry, with only a cell phone notification to indicate that we had passed from the Republic of Ireland into the United Kingdom. The countryside between the two cities is actually rather splendid. Rolling hills, lots of sheep – about as far away as I had imagined from my earlier nightmare visions of the “Troubles” during the 80s.

The funny thing is that when I asked several of my Irish friends who lived in Dublin if they had ever been to Belfast, they looked at me horrified. Who would go to Belfast?! It’s too dangerous they said. We won’t be going there in a hurry. What was I letting myself in for? Well as it turned out it all seemed pretty harmless to me. There is an area of the city now on a sightseeing tour, where you can see the various points where some of the major confrontations took place between the British military and the IRA. But beyond that, most of the place looked a bit like a suburban English town on a bad day.

We had decided to head to the Titanic Museum, constructed in the shipyards where the Titanic was built. It is a modern day masterpiece with six floors that even has a Disney-like train journey as part of the tour. You really need about three hours in the museum; the cost of entry is about £15, less if you’re a student. And frankly it’s worth an afternoon excursion from Dublin. You get to see the fascinating history of Belfast, the city that was built on flax and linen and eventually became one of the world’s major shipyards. This was almost the beginning of the luxury cruise liners we see floating the ocean today.

Disasters are always fascinating and eerie. The museum pitches the final moments and creates this austere atmosphere with only the last words of the telegraph operator and a recreation of the ship going down to provide the backdrop to the tragedy. The heroic stories pull you in and I wish I could’ve stayed there longer. Outside the museum there is a piece of graffiti on the wall that someone scrawled; it made me smile. It said simply, “it was alright when it left here.”

A Day at WYSTC

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A Day at WYSTC

It stands for the World Youth Student Travel Conference. WYSTC is where buyers and sellers get together in the student travel business. It runs every year and the locations read like a bucket list for the world traveler. Last year it was in Australia, this year it’s in Dublin, and next year in Cape Town. It’s a place to network, see a new city, find out about new trends in student travel and have fun.

The setup is like most conferences – a healthy mix of seminars and keynotes. But it’s the 6 hours of speed-dating where the real action happens. You get 20 minutes with a vendor face-to-face on an open table – will this be the match? Will the palpitations begin? Where will this lead? Can this person be an important person in my life?

You meet people from all over the world, some work in game parks, some work in conservation centers in South America, and others spend their time selling hostel and hotel rooms. Sometimes you develop a decent contact, and most of the time, you don’t. There’s a gala farewell where everyone gets drunk in a hotel and tells everyone else that they love them. I can’t wait for Cape Town next year!

Dublin

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Dublin

My grandmother is Irish, she’s from County Clare on the western coast. It’s not really relevant, but every time I touch down in Ireland I feel that somehow I belong to the place. My mate is from Dublin, my neighbors are from Dublin, and on a good night with a couple of drinks inside me I can do a half decent Dublin accent.

So here I am arriving in Dublin’s new terminal building late at night (cold and raining of course) and heading to an unfamiliar area around the convention center. http://www.theccd.ie/ I’m staying at the Malvern Hotel on Cardiff Lane (http://www.maldronhotelcardifflane.com/), its most distinguishing feature being that it’s right opposite the convention center and right by the river. The hotel was ok, nothing to write home about, but certainly adequate. The breakfasts were those awful buffet things where everything looks like it’s been sitting around for hours and hours. I risked it once and smothered the whole plate with brown sauce to take away the taste and cut through the grease. My Italian friend watched me in horror. When you’re used to cappuccinos and brioche, it can be off-putting, I guess.

I was in Dublin for the WYSTC conference (http://www.wystc.org /) and in between meetings and seminars I found the time to do a little sightseeing and get over to two great restaurants: Peploes (http://peploes.com/), just off of St. Stephen’s Green and Fade Street Social (http://www.fadestreetsocial.com/) where the grilled meats are cooked in a brick oven. Two great restaurants, two great areas and neither time did I have to go down to Temple Bar, thank goodness. Dublin is a happening place, new buildings are shooting up everywhere, restaurants are full and in spite of tales of woe and recession, I saw little evidence moving around the city. It’s a cool place. And the coolest thing of all, it’s actually a cosmopolitan city at last.

Long day at the Airport

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Long day at the Airport

Hotels always give out bad information on the time it takes to get from them to the airport. It’s not that they’re overly cautious, they’re just wrong. I just often wonder how many of the people who give us this advice, have actually ever been to the airport that they’re guiding us to. Case in point, Marmaris center to Dalaman airport. The journey takes less than an hour. Hotel advice is that it takes two hours and of course they recommend, given the problem of security, that you get to the airport at least 2.5 hours before departure. Of course it’s all about the rooms really. They wanted the bloody rooms! I should have known.

I hate being at airports too early. I am a “maximum of 1 hour before” guy. As it were, traveling is like marriage. Once you’ve been at it for while you become ever more inventive in your ways to keep it fresh. I like the excitement of possibly missing the flight. I like to see how fast I can move through security, how economically I can buy souvenirs (if I really have to) and it means I don’t have to spend endless hours drinking dreadful coffee and eating plastic sandwiches in some awful lounge.

So here I am, spending endless hours drinking dreadful coffee in some awful lounge, wondering why I fell for the bad information yet again. To add insult to injury, my flight to Istanbul, of course, is delayed. From Istanbul, to London there’s a change of terminals before connecting to Dublin. More delays. More plastic sandwiches. This day, a mélange of Turkish Air, British Airways and Aer Lingus, a feast of cultural diversity and sweaty planes (lovely), started at 6am in the morning. It will not end until Turkish time, 2pm the next day. In other words, Australia would have been a more convenient option and certainly more fun!

Gulet Sailing through Aegean Seas

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Gulet Sailing through Aegean Seas

If you find yourself traveling to Southwestern Turkey then there is a good chance that you’ll be taking or at least you’ll be tempted to take a Gulet charter boat http://www.admiral-tours.com Most of the great charter companies are based in either Bodrum or Marmaris and the Gulet boat, which varies in size from 14 to 35 meters, is an ideal vessel to sail the calm waters of the Aegean. All of these boats have sails, typically two-masted, but most of them poodle around the coast on engine power alone. They have a huge back seating and dining area with lavish bedroom space underneath. In the height of the summer months, the harbors of Antalya, Marmaris and Bodrum are full of these types of vessels. Originally much smaller and designed for fishing, they evolved to meet the rise of tourism in the 70s. They are a lot cheaper than renting a boat in Greece and so ideally if you wish to stay away from the crowds, then an itinerary that starts in Bodrum and skips over to the tiny airport-less islands in Greece is optimal.

Gulet

For those of us who’ve managed to sail throughout the Greek Islands and along the Turkish coast, there is nothing quite like entering the port of a beautiful horseshoe harbor at night. It is both magical and mystical. My favorite Greek Island…well that would be giving the game away, but I would say that Symi and Sifnos come to mind and of course there’s always Mykonos for a good party. Recommended tips on Greek Island navigation is to plonk yourself down in a place like Symi, grab a small hotel room and rent a small Zodiac speedboat for a couple of weeks. Every day take that boat, cruise around the island, find a deserted spot or a deserted beach, or a tiny restaurant on a deserted beach (yes, they do exist!) and just pretend that this is the way life is forever. And every evening eat in one of the many restaurants that are dotted around the harbor. I don’t care how many times you’ve had grilled octopus and a Greek salad, it never tires…unless you’re a vegetarian. Best time to go and cheapest rates, mid-September through mid-October. The weather is still amazing and the crowds have decidedly dimmed.

Marmaris

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Marmaris

If there is a town to avoid in Turkey, than that would be Marmaris. We had docked there on the last day of a Gulat trip and for some reason we had thought it would be a great idea to have a wander through the town. It was, I recall a very hot day and Marmaris’ harbor fans out and is full of bars, restaurants and a very cheap and tacky arcade.

Marmaris Gallery

The shops sell soccer shirts and awful souvenir trinkets and the tourists are decidedly a blend of Brits and general Euro northerners; most of them sporting tattoos, tank tops and walking with their kids while smoking cigarettes. Cheap cruise ships dish out the hordes, every few hours or so.

Marmaris Harbor

As one departs, another seems to pop up in the harbor, as everyone heads to the fake bazaar to buy souvenir fezes and tacky shawls. No cappuccinos along this waterfront; it’s all pints of lager. Marmaris is about as Turkish as Turkish Delight. We didn’t stay long. It was so scary to my upper class English friend that he thought it was one of the most terrifying experiences of his sheltered life! We fled to our boat and retreated to a distant cove. We would come back under cover of darkness to grab some grilled octopus. Late at night, after a glass or two of wine, it seemed decidedly less tacky.

Bodrum is a short distance down the coast from Izmir and a 45-minute flight from Istanbul. In late September the weather is absolutely stunning. The last time I was in Bodrum was around 15 years ago; it was a lively town, I recall, some nightlife, a castle by the harbor and a few restaurants dotted here and there. So the change I saw was significant, it was surprisingly moderated by taste and relatively careful development.

Bodrum

Bodrum is a port city. It is the hub way of the Gulet boats and although there are few beaches within easy access, once you have driven around the bay, the inlets and coves provide spectacular settings for the hotel industry. And what better hotel to have nestled about 30 minutes away from Bodrum center, than the Kempinski Hotel? There is an incredible swimming pool, a wonderful spa, fabulous views and a strip of private beach that looks as though it has been painted onto the landscape.

If you like swimming, the large infinity pool is as good as it gets, and the water in the Mediterranean in late September is perfect for long swims or short splashes. I would return to this hotel anytime. The rooms and service were brilliant. It’s a pity we had to work.

Turkish Arrival

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It is at once an exotic place, a border country between Asia and Europe which has this veneer of Euro sophistication, spotty in places, but reassuringly there. Istanbul’s airport is actually quite a welcoming place. A fairly modern arrival terminal that has pretty much all the stuff that Boston’s terminal E seems to lack (shops, restaurants, Starbucks – anything that would make your journey more pleasant). The only hold up is the visa processing, which is done ahead of time yet still tacks on a couple of minutes to each passenger’s stamp of approval. I avoided the long lines by grabbing a fast track pass. Even though they should not have given it to me, the British Airways’ staff seemed quite accommodating, dishing them out like nobody’s business. Thank goodness, otherwise the line would’ve been a bit of a nightmare.

The drive from the airport into the center of town takes around 30 minutes, depending on traffic. And traffic indeed, is the first thing that awaits you in this mega-city of around 14 million people. It is the usual mess of airport sprawl that greets the traveler until at some point you have this sense of the city; the Bosphorus in the background, the great Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, and suddenly you’re in. One of my great wishes transferring from airports into town is to somehow whisk past all the ugliness and surface in the city itself. I guess I’d call that the London Underground and the Piccadilly line – where are they when you want them?

This place is so steeped in history and diversions you can feel it oozing from the buildings around you. This is after all Constantine’s capital, the first move towards Christendom and the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire. This was the center of the power of the Ottomans that stretched into the 20th Century. This is modern day Turkey, profoundly changed by its prophet Atatürk, and to this day a secular political institution with deep Islamic roots. Imagine this, it is bordered by Syria, Iraq, Iran, Bulgaria, Georgia, and Armenia. It practically touches the Greek Islands of Kos and Rhodes. It is economically more prosperous than many European countries, and is a key ally to the US. Its economy is booming and we need it to boom, we need it to prosper. It makes our world a safer place. My favorite hotels to stay at would be the Four Seasons Hotel, formerly the infamous Sultanahmet Prison; the Ciragan Palace Hotel Kempinski on the Bosphorus with an incredible infinity swimming pool that gives you the impression, God forbid, that you are actually swimming in the Bosphorus itself!

Istanbul for a 3-day getaway is absolutely perfect. It’s two time zones away from London. It has great restaurants, a fantastic nightlife, amazing stuff to see and buy and it’s kind of edgy. It’s a good time to go, to see a side of Islam that is not often portrayed. Good for the spirit, good for the soul and good for a better worldview of stuff. And incidentally, the Syrian border is nearly a thousand kilometers away!

We ended up at a hotel in Taksim Square. Being here is simply to take advantage of less expensive hotels and essentially it’s a jumping off point. There is a main street with lots of shops, bland restaurants and a San Francisco-type tram that goes up and down the hill. Taksim Square could be called “tacky” square, so it was fitting that our hotel was called, of all things, The Titanic (http://www.titanic.com.tr/). Maybe they hadn’t read the book, maybe they had seen another film altogether? We hoped our stay would be disaster-free! Check into the room and out on the streets, there is stuff to do in this city and I haven’t been here for a while.

I had not been for several years and so I immersed myself in re-sightseeing, refreshing or simply being in denial about my forgetfulness. The Hagia Sophia was closed the day we were there, so we took in the Blue Mosque, we went down to the cisterns and saw the Medusa, we spent some time at Topkapi Palace, which has beautiful views across the water and rummaged around the spice market and the Grand Bazaar. The city is tightly woven like a fine cloth, nothing is too far away from each other, and everything really, is on the other side of the Galata Bridge. The smells from the spice market waft through the air, mingling with the call to prayer. The guys selling tea on portable stands pop up like Starbucks and the Turkish ice cream guys play with the ice cream as if it were molten metal, drawing the tourists in – me included. Incidentally if you are crazy enough to want to go to a soccer game, the stadiums are in the center of town and Turkish fans make English fans look docile.

Hampstead Heath

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I popped into London for a couple of days, primarily to check in with mum and to do some other business. I love London! I had arranged to meet with her over by Hampstead Heath, a feast of childhood memories for me. Hampstead Heath is a real wonder in the center of London. It dates back to 986, was bought by the City of London in the 19th century and has been protected land for Londoners to enjoy ever since.

I jumped on the 24 bus and jumped off at the bottom of the hill that leads to the Heath itself. Unlike the Royal parks, Hampstead is a wild and rambling forest-like place, beset with a necklace of ponds nestled amongst the hills and valleys that comprise acres and acres of endless walking paths. My mum used to swim in the ponds of Hampstead Heath. In those days the ponds were separated into male and female. In these most liberal days they are now mixed! This is where Londoners retreated in the 17th Century to avoid the Great Plague. They even called one of the ponds, the “Vale of Health.”

We walked to the top of Parliament Hill, from the Heath side, and there was the view I almost remembered as a kid. The skyline has changed so much, modern buildings like the Shard and the Gherkin, provide a spectacular vista of the new London. London’s skyline in the distance, only 4 miles away and yet we could have been in another world.

Nowadays the houses that abut the ponds have this wonderful disheveled upmarket feel to them. The stately house of Kenwood serves as an anchor on one side of the Heath, while on the other is the running track and open air swimming pool, providing recreational space for London’s summer needs. I remember the fairs at Hampstead Heath, fishing in the ponds, long walks through the acres and acres of woodland and biking clear across to Highgate. All of these places became my backyard. We had no garden; we didn’t need one. We had Hampstead.

We finished our day at the pub by the railway station and I took the 24 double-decker back into town. I thought to myself what a wonder it is to have a space like this in a busy metropolis like London. There’s a whole debate right now about the new Garden Bridge project in London. On one hand you have the desire to protect London’s cherished architectural landscape, on the other hand you have the greening of London. The Garden Bridge promises to be an iconic tourist attraction and something for Londoners to enjoy as they cross from North to South on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I love this idea. It’s probably one of the most exciting concepts out there at the moment. It’s funny really. Hampstead was probably its inspiration.

Watch Pietro Place’s Insiders’ Guide to Ashfield, Massachusetts, to see my favorite snacks and sights, from my adoptive city!