Arthur Frommer's Blog, page 48

In Addition to Free Greeters Programs, You Can Now Find Pay-What-You-Wish Tours in Several Other Cities

At last count, no fewer than 21 major cities have created "greeters programs" operated by persons who volunteer to lead visitors around the town they love. These are officially sponsored civic programs in which the tour guide receives nothing for his or her services (and would be offended if offered payment), although the visitor is supposed to pick up any costs of transportation or snacks consumed en route. The number of such cities has rapidly grown in the last two years and they presently amount to 21. In addition to the U.S. cities of New York, Chicago, Houston, and San Francisco, they include Toronto, Melbourne and Adelaide in Australia, Paris, Moscow, Belgrade, The Hague, Buenos Aires, Brussels, Marseilles, Brighton and Kent in England, and several others. For further details, see www.globalgreeternetwork.info .

[image error] But travelers should know that several other, somewhat similar programs are offered by individual entrepreneurs in a slowly growing group of other cities. These, quite frankly, have only recently come to my attention, and it should be stressed that people taking such tours are expected to pay something for their tour -- an amount which they, the visitors, determine, and which usually should be about $10. In effect, you accept a free-of-charge tour, but tip the tour guide at the conclusion of the tour.

Examples? D.C. by Foot ( www.dcbyfoot.com ) runs what it characterizes as "free, tip-based walking tours," two hours in length, of the nation's capital, on which participants are expected to slip about $10 to the guide. Tour Guys (www.tourguys.ca) operate free-of-charge walking tours in both Toronto, Ontario, and Vancouver, British Columbia -- they rely on tips for their remuneration and charge no fee for their basic tour in each city. And finally, RunnerBeanTours of Barcelona ( www.runnerbeantours.com ) does the same, and provides an excellent tour by highly-motivated young graduate students of local universities; currenly they offer a "Free Gaudí Walking Tour" and a "Free Old City Walking Tour", and they are working on a free "Kids & Family Walking Tour" to be offered at some time in the future.

I'll be naming other tip-based walking tours as they come to my attention, and would appreciate receiving the names of companies that may be known to readers. Everyone with whom I've spoken about the Washington, D.C., Toronto, Vancouver, and Barcelona free walking tours has been absolutely enthusiastic about the experience they had.

Photo Caption: Brussels' rue du Marche aux Charbons. Janet M. Powers/Frommers.com Community.

Back by Popular Demand: Gate 1 Travel's 8-Day Costa Rica Fly/Drive Trip for $699

At a cost of only $699 per person including round-trip airfare between Miami and San Jose, Costa Rica (with other U.S. departure cities also available), Gate 1 Travel's 8-day fly and drive of Costa Rica is surely an outstanding value, [image error] and it has enjoyed heavy sales. Consequently, the aggressive Gate 1 (tel. 800/682-3333; www.gate1travel.com ) has again offered the air-and-land package for departures on Aug. 27 and Sept. 3, 17 (and probably will extend it even beyond those dates). The uniform price for all departures: $699, which brings you round-trip flights between Miami and San Jose, airfare fuel surcharge, seven nights' accommodations with breakfast daily in your choice of hotels in San Jose (two nights), Arenal (two nights), and Manuel Antonio (three nights), and an 8-day car rental of an SUV mini.

Photo Caption: Lake Arenal. David Tollington/Frommers.com Community

Back by Popular Demand: Gate 1 Travel's 8-Day Costa Rica Fly/Drive Trip for $649

At a cost of only $649 per person including round-trip airfare between Orlando and San Jose, Costa Rica (with other U.S. departure cities also available), Gate 1 Travel's 8-day fly and drive of Costa Rica is surely an outstanding value, [image error] and it has enjoyed heavy sales. Consequently, the aggressive Gate 1 (tel. 800/682-3333; www.gate1travel.com ) has again offered the air-and-land package for departures on August 27, September 3, 10, 17 and 24, October 8, 15 and 22 (and probably will extend it even beyond those dates). The uniform price for all departures: $649, which brings you: round-trip flights between Orlando and San Jose, airfare fuel surcharge, seven nights' accommodations with breakfast daily in your choice of hotels in San Jose (two nights), Arenal (two nights), and Manuel Antonio (three nights), and an 8-day car rental of an SUV mini.

Photo Caption: Lake Arenal. David Tollington/Frommers.com Community

Here's a 13-Night Repositioning Cruise from Copenhagen That's Packed with Air, Hotel, and Other Perks for Only $2,049

Most of the lowest-priced, autumn repositioning cruises start in Mediterranean cities, to which you're flown free from the U.S., and then cross the South Atlantic to Florida, the Caribbean, or New Orleans. Now, by contrast, for Americans wanting to experience Scandinavia, Scotland, and Iceland before completely crossing the Atlantic, another of these remarkable voyages is currently offered for a total of $2,049 (including airfare and two nights hotel -- it's as if you're paying about $800 for the 13-night cruise). The cruise broker with this deal? It's Online Vacation Center ( www.onlinevacationcenter.com ), using Royal Caribbean's Brilliance of the Seas , a well-regarded ship.

You are first flown from the U.S. to Copenhagen for no extra charge, put up for two nights at a fine hotel, and then board the ship for a 13-night sailing, bringing the total length of your arrangements to 15 nights. After a sojourn in that delightful Danish city, you cruise for two days to Scotland (visiting the Shetland area), then to the Faroe Islands, and then half-way across the Atlantic to Reykjavik, Iceland, where the ship stops for two days, enabling you to enjoy a thorough tour of that city and area. From Iceland, you then continue cruising to St. John's, Newfoundland, and then take two more days of Atlantic sailing to reach Cape Liberty near New York City. The entire hotel-and-sailing, which starts on September 6, 2011, costs only $2,049 per person, including airfare to Denmark, the two-night hotel sojourn in Copenhagen, and the 13-night cruise. And you can make the booking by simply phoning tel. 800/329-9002.

Although I've blogged a fair amount in recent days about these amazingly cheap re-positioning cruises, this one is somewhat different in its starting point in Scandinavia, and the port cities of northern Europe and Iceland which it visits on the way to New York. A great many Americans will be attracted by that unusual itinerary.

To Rewrite Shakespeare: Something is Promising in the State of Denmark -- Namely, an Effective New Hotel Search Engine

Just a few years ago, an enterprising group of techies in Copenhagen, Denmark, proved to the world that you didn't need headquarters in a giant North American city to operate an effective airfare search engine. The website they created out of headquarters in a suburb of tiny Copenhagen, called Momondo ( www.momondo.com ), shook up the entire industry of airfare search engines and often disclosed low fares and innovative routings (even those within the United States) of which the big players -- Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz -- were either unaware or unwilling to offer. To this day, Momondo is an effective website for discovering the very cheapest ways to fly, not simply overseas, but domestically, too (although you'll always do well to compare its results with those of the other services).

Emboldened by their success, these jolly Danes have just entered a new field, that of hotels. Their new website, MomondoHotels.com ( www.momondohotels.com ), is an extremely impressive and apparently comprehensive tool for finding excellent hotel rates in whatever city you wish to visit. I was impressed with the clear listing of 740 hotel possibilities in New York City, in order of price, starting with the very cheapest and going upward from there, that MomondoHotels.com recently disclosed to me, in response to a test booking for New York accommodations that I ran on it.

Next time you need a hotel, anywhere and for any length of time, you might do well to use MomondoHotels.com.

Semester at Sea Offers Enrichment Programs for Adults Seeking Two or Three Week Escapes

You have probably heard of the Semester at Sea program which places undergraduate college students on a cruise ship offering classroom instruction (and college credits) while the ship is at sea, together with instructive shore excursions at the ports it visits. Obviously, such trips require that the student in question signs up for at least a four-month, semester-long program.

Less known is the fact that in vacation periods, these ships accept adults sailing aboard for only two or three weeks, during which time they participate in "enrichment programs" -- courses in the liberal arts taught by accomplished and eminent instructors. My own attention was brought to this program by a recent e-mail advising me that:

"The Institute for Shipboard Education runs the long-running Semester at Sea college study-aboard program with which you may be familiar. The Institute also runs a series of other programs that include the three-year-old Forum on Global Engagement program and the Enrichment Voyages, which have been operating for the past 18 years, since 1993. Enrichment Voyages run twice a year and are a unique opportunity for travelers who don't have four months to spend at sea, to experience some of the same intellectual interactions with fellow passengers, lecturers and workshop leaders."

The next two Enrichment Voyages are from December 22, 2011 to January 12, 2012 (Nassau, Bahamas, to the Caribbean and South America), and May 4 to May 19, 2012 (Ecuador, the Galapagos and Beyond: Central America, the Panama Canal, and Ecuador). Instructors on previous voyages have included Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, civil rights activist Julian Bond, U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove, and many other eminent figures.

For more information, including details of onboard amenties, port details, and activities, go to www.enrichmentvoyages.org .

The Resort Cities of Whistler and Blackcomb Are Exciting Summer Destinations to Be Visited Alongside Vancouver

An hour by car from Vancouver, on a modern superhighway built for the 2010 Winter Olympics, are the twin resort cities of Whistler and Whistler/Blackomb, best known for the skiing on their awesome slopes in winter. The tourist authorities of British Columbia make all sorts of claims for Whistler and Whistler/Blackcomb: that they are now the largest ski areas in North America, that they receive more ski visitors than any other place, etc., etc., which I am not in a position to confirm. But one thing is clear: the two areas are surprisingly active in the non-ski seasons of spring, summer and fall, as my daughter Pauline learned on a two-day visit last week.

Mountain biking, for one, is a highly-developed activity there, a sport that takes bikers up to the top of mountains on ski lifts, and then releases them to follow ski trails to the bottom. "Black bear safaris" take thousands of visitors to view the remarkable number of black bears that roam the area, and that are amazingly free of violent impulses; the authorities claim that no one has been mauled in decades. Other ski lifts are devoted simply to bringing visitors high up to view the mountain scenery of the area. And there are hiking trails galore, along with museums of the "First Nation" (Indian) culture of British Columbia. Pauline found the entire area as fully interesting as Vancouver was.

Best of all, prices here seem more moderate than in Aspen and Vail, and numerous first class resorts had rooms renting for $100 and less a night. If you are still looking for a summer destination, you might consider choosing not simply Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia, but also the nearby resort cities of Whistler and Whistler/Blackcomb.

Vancouver Is Fast Emerging as One of the Most Unusual of North American Cities

Americans traveling to large Canadian cities in the eastern two-thirds of that country, often complain that the atmosphere isn't much different from what they know at home. They can never make that statement about Vancouver. Fully 50% of the population of Vancouver is now Asian (32% are Chinese), another few percentage points are accounted for by recent talented, well-educated immigrants from other countries, and no one can fail to notice the difference in lifestyles, atmosphere, and physical decor resulting from that ethnic diversity. Canada has shown us all how to benefit from an enlightened immigration policy designed to attract fresh new blood from other lands.

[image error] Photo Caption: Vancouver skyline. bogdanbrato/Frommers.com Community

It all began in the late 1980s, when the British handover of Hong Kong to China persuaded a large number of affluent Hong Kong Chinese to move to Vancouver. The Canadian government gave support to that movement by promising speeded-up procedures for obtaining Canadian citizenship to Hong Kong'ers who purchased land for homes in Vancouver. Most of the earliest immigrants settled in a suburb of Vancouver called Richmond, which then proceeded to become 92% Chinese. My daughter Pauline, who traveled to Vancouver last week, visited Richmond and was stunned and exhilarated by the evidence of dynamic Chinese leadership in developing that area. The prosperous, thriving Richmond is covered with the most extraordinary restaurants and shops (Taiwanese food is the latest favorite), including grocery stores housing gigantic tanks of crabs as large as your head and fish as long as the torso of a six-year-old child.

Since my own recent stay in Vancouver was only about a year ago, I can confirm Pauline's reactions to the city, which is also filled with extraordinary musems, theatres, superb shopping, a Canada Place dock where cruiseships leave for Alaska, a highly esteemed, in-city university, and many more outstanding facilities. But what mostly marks Vancouver is its population of bright young Asians, the children primarily of those immigrants from Hong Kong of two dozen years ago. As you walk along the streets, you can not fail to encounter them, and you will be impressed with their smart, optimistic attitudes.

If you have never been there, you might want to consider a trip.

Hotels in Western Europe Are Filled With Business Travelers and Tourists from BRIC Nations -- Try an Apartment Share

You can stop feeling sorry for European tourist interests. Every indication is that the major capitals of Western Europe are awash with tourists, although most of them aren't Americans, but from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and other nations far removed from the United States. This, despite the fact that Europe's economy is not entirely healthy, but affected negatively by financial problems in Greece, Spain, Portgual, and Ireland.

A friend of mine recently sought accommodations in Paris for the period June 20 to June 26, and was dumbfounded to discover that every hotel there was booked solidly for the period in question. Although the reason was the annual Le Bourget Air Show, which brings tens of thousands of persons from the aviation industry into Paris, there are numerous business trade shows that do the same for London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Madrid, Milan and more, and to Paris in other weeks of the year. Western Europe remains an immensely popular attraction for business meetings of every kind.

The city of Istanbul is thus virtually sold out, for touristic purposes, in May, early June, September and October, mainly because of the visits of tourists from Brazil and India (my source for that assertion is Tom Brosnahan, widely acknowledged to be the U.S.'s foremost travel expert on Turkey). The Venice Biennale occurring throughout June makes hotel space difficult to obtain in that city, as does Carnival earlier in the year (according to Reid Bramblett, a much-published author of travel reports on Italy). Some observers claim that a financial downturn in western Europe and Great Britain has also persuaded a great many Western Europeans to vacation closer to home, in Europe, and to forego trips far afield, thus further filling the hotels of Western Europe.

So what you take away from all this is the need to consider alternative accommodations in homes or apartments. Though I will sound like a broken record, emphasizing a point made before, this is pre-eminently the year when American travelers should consider renting a room in someone's home or apartment, or else renting an entire apartment for their stays in capital cities of Western Europe. The company that was created specifically for the purpose of supplementing the hotel capacity of San Francisco at the time of a popular conference in that city, was Airbnb ( www.airbnb.com ), which has grown into a large service. They now have a competitor in iStopOver ( www.istopover.com ). Still other companies like Rentalo.com ( www.rentalo.com ), VRBO ( www.vrbo.com ), and others exist for the purpose of making short-stay apartments and homes available to tourists around the world.

And these are, in turn, supplemented by the many local apartment-renting firms that have sprouted in all major cities. Go, for example, to "apartments in Rome" on Google, and you'll find more than a dozen major firms offering moderately-priced apartments for short-term rental in the Eternal City, The same for London, Paris, and most other major cities around the world. And by the way, although local governments in New York and Hawaii have made the practice of short-term apartment-renting illegal, their statutes do not apply to the rental of a room in an apartment whose owners remain in residence. Thus we come full circle to the two best sources of such accommodations: Airbnb and iStopOver. 

The Idea of Tourism for the Poor is Gaining Increasing Comment in the British Press

If I want to guarantee that a post of mine will touch off dozens of angry protests from readers, I have only to write about "social tourism" -- namely, tourism for the poor. In numerous European nations, programs of social tourism exist, designed to assist poor families to enjoy a yearly vacation from their toils. In many cases this can be done without public expenditure, as by permitting persons of a low income level to enjoy a yearly free trip to a vacation area on a state-owned railway, or by enabling poor families to enjoy free access to national parks or museums.

I am well aware that in the current political thinking of the United States, it is impossible to even contemplate that a program of social tourism could ever pass the Congress. I am further aware that social tourism in the United States must, at least for the time being, be confined to charitable programs enabling poor children to attend summer camps, like the Fresh Air Funds in many states. So for the time being, it's best that I simply desist from writing about the subject.

But I simply have to note that in recent weeks, the subject of social tourism has become an actively considered one in Great Britain, where a group known as the Family Holiday Association has encouraged several members of Parliament to launch a study of social tourism for Britain. A British travel website that covers news developments in travel, TravelMole ( www.travelmole.com ), has recently pointed out that Director John McDonald of that Association has urged

"an All Party Parliamentary group...to recommend a pilot scheme for social tourism ... He claimed other countries in Europe had already recognized the value of social tourism and were reaping the rewards. In France, a holiday voucher scheme enabled seven million families to take a break last year, adding 3 billion Euros to the economy... and the Spanish got back 1.5 Euros for each one Euro they spent on holiday vouchers for the retired... Social tourism is not widely accepted in this country but in the rest of Europe it is huge."

"The Family Holiday Association, a charity supported by the travel industry, takes 2500 families on holiday every year but McDonald said more should be done to help the 2.5 million poorest families to get a break within the UK."

As the British campaign for social tourism receives more press comment, I'll report on it in this blog.