I’m not a big fan of the Rome Metro but I was persuaded by my Italian friend that the Naples one is just about the best in Italy. So I decided to take a chance. To start, there is the usual Italian problem of any Metro entrance – where do you buy a ticket?! It’s a struggle. The ticket machine does not work, the guy that has the booth by the entrance does not sell them, and the woman at 
the top where the newsstand is wasn’t there. After five minutes of inquiry, we discovered a shop where you could buy these train tickets. I guess Neapolitans have season tickets or something but it sure was a bit of a struggle to figure out how to get on the train. Once down in the dungeon of the Metro though, it all looked 
pretty cool. The trains were clean, it was highly logical, and unlike the chaos of the streets above, the metro had a quiet sense to it. We were able to travel clear across town with ease. Sure, the Metro map was a little graffitied up and maybe some of 
the posters were a bit too raunchy for some tourists, but the trains were perfect. I quite liked the idea that Helmut Newton photographs were being advertised here and exhibited at a palazzo nearby.
Not far away from the nativity street is the entrance to the National Archaeological Museum right on the edge of the Centro Storico. Here there are lots of statues and art that easily rival or outperform anything to be found in the British Museum, the Louvre, or the Vatican. These are the great marble collections of ancient Rome, Pompeii, and Herculaneum. However, the main draw for me 
was that this is the only place in the world where you can actually see the artwork paintings of Pompeii. They are still as beautiful as if they had been painted on a wall only a few years ago. This is where you get to see the people, the backdrop, the landscape, and how 
people dressed in Pompeii. The most iconic fresco in the room is the “Woman with Wax Tablets and Stylus” also called “Sappho.” I wanted to stare at her forever. If you have never been to this museum, jump on a train and enlighten yourself. It’s a mindblower.
stroll from the station and around the city for about two hours before heading back to Rome. It was interesting but I really didn’t get a sense of the city. Now we have a client that I know that would like to go to Naples but the rap on the city is that it has a lot of petty crime. So off I went with my man bag in hand for a virgin overnight in Naples.
Here’s the thing about Naples – it’s handy to know your way around, there are lots of hills, it’s a chaotic, and there are lots of different areas with very different characteristics. The first stop was the Palazzo Mannajuolo which holds an incredible staircase; probably the most breathtaking internal staircase in all the world, la scala ellittica. We strolled around the hilly Chiaia and stopped at an old-world candy store in San Ferdinando. We came across a beautiful piazza with the pantheon-like structure of the church of San Ferdinando. The piazza here is open and full of light with Vesuvius in the background. The opera house, Teatro di San Carlo, was showing La Traviata. There is a spectacular galleria, the Galleria Umberto I, close by as well. It houses thousands of panes of glass sitting in a cross formation with a whole series of panels of Jewish stars that form part of the glass decoration. The history of Naples is more or less the entire history of the our ancient civilization. One thing’s for sure, it makes Rome look like a young lad.
railway station in Rome. The traffic setup was crazy. They are renovating the station and there is no great place to drop-off or pick-up passengers. Then suddenly, we walked through the utterly dysfunctional part of the Stazione Termini and were presented with a sign reading “Lavori in Corso”. Essentially meaning “Men at work.”
would be able to sail through the station in a way that seemed entirely impossible now. Of course, I had to peek behind the plastic. Couldn’t resist. But sure enough, the utter stillness of the other side provided every evidence that indeed there were no men at work, nor women, nor 
anybody. Maybe tomorrow or the next day. The station would wait, not just f or me but for my children and my children’s children. Roma, non basta una vita….Rome, a lifetime is not enough.
museums and grand theaters. I love the neighborhoods that stretch all the way from the Battery to the Bronx and the new Brooklyn, unrecognizable to my wife now who went to Bayridge High School and grew up a stone’s throw from the Verrazano Straights. New York has a busyness to it with its big, broad avenues, and trying to catch the pedestrian lights as you walk so you don’t need to stop and can just zig zag your way from 30th to the park. I love Soho and the Village and always wondered where I would live (probably Soho although the park is stunning). So my question on New York is why is it so ratty in places? London can be patchy and the outskirts of Paris are dreadful, but we are talking downtown New York City. It’s very uneven to me. Fun, but dirty, and even the late-night scene is sketchy.
My favorite restaurant in the city is Esca. I love this place – great seafood, nice wine list, but honestly, it’s stuck in the seediest part of town on 43rd Street and 9th Ave, next to porn shops and dodgy quick bites. It’s weird, New York. The transportation hubs just seem to be seedier than they need to be. Grand Central is a beautiful station but it’s confusing. The shops and kiosks around it are grim. Penn Station is even worse and is surrounded by dodgy hotels. Yet here in the thick of it is Madison Square Garden. Let’s not forget to mention LaGuardia Airport, antiquated and inefficient, with no great transportation link into town. Welcome to New York. 
learning fun and frivolous. She ended up obtaining a following of 350,000 people who wanted to know why Brits drink pimms and take tea at 4:00 pm, why they pronounce fruit as “froot” and not “fru it”, “choobe” and not “toobe”, and “choona” not “toona”. She compiled a list of the 100 must-to words that you need to know in English, she did a Christmas swear words special, and her website launched her into the English language stratosphere.
Finally, we are seeing the government recognizing that consolidation is creating an arrogance in service and in amenities. After deregulation in 1978, industry charges like baggage fees and bumping passengers have been pretty much left to the airlines. And 80% of USA domestic business is now in the frightening hands of four airlines. Power to the few and less power to the consumer.
money where their mouth is. Dragging a guy down the aisle sounds like a bad wedding arrangement. It nearly cost them their business. CEO Munoz stated that he is committed to making things better and now overbooking as a policy is going to be phased out. Southwest, the darling of consumers, actually has the highest overbooking of any airline. They were just smarter and nicer about it.
produce a travel magazine; essentially Airbnb Magazine. The rationale is that nobody knows better where people want to go than Airbnb does. They see it in demand and deals and have it resourced from billions of data points. As such, they can provide stories for people and places that are hot and can write about places that are trending. Savannah, for example, is one of Airbnb’s biggest sourced destinations, Porvoo in Finland is another. Go figure!
Now airports are moving into food and drink technology. Many airports have iPad ordering systems set up around bars and themed food restaurants. The deal is that you sit down, swipe your credit card, choose items from the iPad menu, and then food or drinks come flying out at you from places that you had no idea. Meanwhile, there are bartenders that you cannot order from and wait staff that appear randomly with your food in no apparent order. The basic problem with that system is that it’s not that good. Somebody has to keep coming in to manually assist and more often than not, the timing is all screwed up. Sometimes you get wine when you should’ve received coffee, or pizza when you were looking for dessert. It helps to pass the time and the idea is to simply centralize the operation center, but the problem is that it doesn’t work that well.
travel companion. However, it doesn’t get to go to Italy with me and I hate that. The cab company lobby there is just too powerful. So apart from not being able to see the sights of Ancient Rome and renaissance Florence, Uber does pretty well with me.
possibly canceled, one word of advice, pray to God that you are not stuck at LaGuardia Airport. It sucks. Watching delays unfold and getting bad updates and then inevitable cancellations are frustrating and bring out the worst in all of us. Airline staff is not helpful and nobody has a clue. Usually, they point to a gate complaint line that is a mile long and have you wait there. If you are really lucky, you get a snack voucher. As for a hotel, dream on! 
much better. It’s as if they have no training on what happens when stuff goes wrong. That’s the only time they have to worry and that’s when they can really overperform. We know the airline food is bad, the seats are cramped, and the service in general on the plane is very average, so how about excelling at this? Help passengers who are trying to figure out what to do, concentrate on the pre-
boarding service, calm people, assure people, and take a genuine interest in getting people into a good frame of mind. Maybe they should have yoga attendants at the gates helping passengers breath. It’s a shame. This is an area where you don’t have to do much. Just be service-oriented and kind. Is that too much to ask?
Inbound travel to the US is certainly getting impacted by Trump’s travel ban and the rhetoric that surrounds it. 
drag the airline industry in another direction. But inbound flights to the US that carried highly profitable passengers that spend serious amounts of money are not easily going to be replaced soon.
All I knew about the German city of Baden Baden was that it was a famous spa town. But I also recall the English football team had boot camped there with their WAGS one infamous tournament of which there have been so many. So I equated it with failure, inevitability, and the hopelessness of England to ever be successful at soccer again after one great and surreal moment in 1966. Off I went to visit Baden Baden and try to heal the memories and expunge the dreadfulness of overpaid footie players.
gardens and people were strolling along its banks as if they were in a French impressionist painting. It was so damn civilized.
50 years. I didn’t get to go to a spa. It seemed complicated and difficult to figure out how to gain entrance. You knew the spas were somewhere but it just didn’t seem that if you wanted to go for a spa holiday, you would
credit from a canceled reservation a year ago over to a new reservation this year. So my son and I hit Telluride. I had never been before although I had heard lots about it. We both love to ski so this seemed like a perfect storm.
territories. Not more than 20 minutes from Montrose is Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. The canyon is as deep as the Grand Canyon but not as wide. It was spectacular in the early morning mist to see this giant chasm in a national park right next door to a very bland, modern town like Montrose.