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WALK HOME: Musicians heading home after performing in the central square in Granada. By Josh NoelI happened to arrive in Nicaragua’s oldest city on September 14, a day before of the anniversary of Central American independence.Upon checking into my hotel, La Gran Francia, a two-story building dating back nearly 500 years, the receptionist warned me that the next morning might get a bit festive. If I heard celebrating, he said, don’t be alarmed. It’s just the holiday in action, he said.It seemed an odd warning — but only until the next morning arrived.Curtains drawn tight and just a glint of golden light seeping through, I awoke to the sharp crack of drums. And then the roar of a crowd. And the bleating of horns and heaving of tubas. Had I slept strangely late and missed all the fun?I fumbled for a clock and found that, nope, it was 7 am — prime time, apparently, for celebrating Central American independence in colonial Nicaragua. I wiped the sleep from my eyes, found some coffee and walked down the block to join the fun in Granada’s historic square.The whole town seemed to be there: boys in polo shirts, men already selling shaved ice from metal carts, teenage girls in matching green-and-white cheerleading outfits and women wearing long dresses and holding umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun.The boys with the drums that had woken me sat dressed in red-and-white uniforms at the edge of the town’s handsome, historic cathedral, painted mustard yellow and receiving a steady flow of visitors.By noon, the party was finished. But Granada’s historic charms didn’t end with the celebration; they endured around the clock.One of the oldest European-settled cities in the Americas, Granada was founded by Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba (who named the town for his home in Spain) on the shores of Lake Nicaragua in 1524. The city grew into a centre of trade and opulence as a conservative ruling class came to dominate the city.The city clings tightly to those roots. Though relatively small, with a population of about 120,000, Granada remains among the most essential and vibrant examples of Central American history. The chains peppering the capital, Managua — TGI Friday’s, the local Tip Top fast food chicken restaurant — are not here, thankfully. Instead, Granada boasts generations-old buildings of stucco and cement painted vivid rainbow hues: sherbet orange, lime green, deep grape and beyond.Without a modern construction boom to its name, much of Granada dates to the 1800s, including, for instance, both the hotels where I stayed: La Gran Francia and Mansion de Chocolate, which was built in 1860 as the home of former president Evaristo Carazo.Even the city buses — former school buses imported from the United States — have been painted and refurbished to contribute to the worn-in vibe: trimmed with red and green and adorned with a colourful beach scene, New York Yankees logo, Bible verse or the Playboy bunny.Not that I was missing it, but I asked a woman working at the hotel whether there was anything modern in the town.“Maybe the supermarket with the sliding automatic doors,” she said.I asked if there was a movie theatre.“The one here is very antique,” she said. “It is better to watch at home.”Yet, like anywhere else, Granada grinds with daily life. It’s a relaxed, easy-going place, with life centred on the cathedral square, where you’ll see far more locals than tourists socialising, getting their shoes shined and cooling off with shaved ice.The streets surrounding it are a swarm of horses, scooters, motorcycles, cars, pedestrians and bicycles that are just as likely to carry two or three people as one. (Three people on a bike is possible with one person on the handlebars and another on the crossbar).Packed into a maze of narrow streets just off the downtown square, the town’s market sees women carrying babies, hunched seniors, kids, infants, teens, everyone coming or going, buying or selling while bikes, cars, taxis and buses squeeze through the humanity. Raw chicken is for sale, as is cheese in large spongy blocks, produce, shoes, notebooks, clothes, electronics — anything, really.Granada adds up to the sweet spot between hardscrabble and historic, with just enough tourism infrastructure to ensure that the hotels and restaurants make for a comfortable stay (while also offering world-class chocolate, coffee and rum).The country gets about a sixth of the visitors of Costa Rica to the south, which keeps it far from being overrun by tourism. Granada is a tourist centre for its proximity to attractions that include the Apoyo lagoon nature reserve, Mombacho Volcano and the lake, which includes Ometepe, an island featuring two more volcanoes. But even spending just a couple of days in Granada on the way to the coast is worth the effort. It’s a great walking city, both for the history and for contemporary life.It even has a mighty little food scene.Espressonista offers an eye-opening menu of fresh, creative dishes (the breakfast in particular is memorable). The Garden Cafe abounds with fresh, creative and vegetarian dishes and an eclectic menu throughout the day. And El Zaguan, a tourist steakhouse favourite, turns out to be quite worth the reputation and the fuss.Between the history, the food, the colonial architecture and the gentle buzz of activity, the 7am Granada wake-up call became most welcome before long. — Chicago Tribune/TNS

THE GATEWAY: The Gateway of India, overlooking Mumbai’s harbour, was built to commemorate a royal visit in 1911. By Dave HageOn our second morning in Rajasthan, we awoke to the sound of birds chattering, vendors barking and taxis beeping in the lane below our window. It was the merry din of an Indian city waking up to a busy day.We rolled over, relished the cool serenity of our hotel room, and resolved to take the morning off from being tourists. And why not? Our “hotel” was a 16th century Rajput palace — an elegant compound of shaded cloisters, winding stone passageways and domed turrets.In short, a museum in itself.Without realising it, we had devised a strategy for coping with India. You visit this remarkable country knowing you are plunging into a maelstrom — birthplace of two great religions, home to countless temples and palaces, a society that throbs with the energy of 1.2 billion people.But you also risk jet lag, malaria, dysentery, smog, sleep deprivation, dehydration and pure sensory overload from constant immersion in colours, smells, sounds and crowds.Sometimes you just need a break. Fortunately, India offers these, too, in rich profusion. And so we soon fell into a comfortable rhythm: a morning foray into India’s pulsing markets, slums and historic sites followed by retreat into the tranquillity of a temple, mosque or garden.In a wonderful book called The Last Mughal, historian William Dalrymple describes the royal procession that rode across Delhi on the evening of April 2, 1852. Elephants, camels, torchbearers, drummers and princes on horseback issued from the Lahore Gate of the great Red Fort to commemorate one of the last royal weddings of the Mogul dynasty.Today you can walk that same historic route. You will share it with beggars and rickshaws rather than elephants and princes, but it’s still a riveting introduction to India past and present.An essential starting point is Lal Qila, the Red Fort, whose imposing sandstone walls enclose the royal compound of Shah Jahan, who came to power in the 17th century as the fifth of the great Mogul emperors. The gardens and pavilions are a bit decrepit today — a hint that India’s Hindu majority lies uneasy with the great Muslim chapters of its past. But it nonetheless showcases Mogul architecture — the signature peaked archways, lace marble screens and floral inlay walls — and it conveys the splendour of an emperor who ruled 10 percent of the world’s population.Leaving by the Lahore Gate, you cross a busy plaza and plunge into Chandni Chowk, a commercial artery that runs through the heart of Old Delhi. In this pulsing bazaar you can buy anything: silver bracelets, Persian slippers, Nike T-shirts, beaded necklaces, baby shoes, incense, chewing gum, Pashmina scarves, brass statues of Ganesh, a lamb kebab, a shave, a head massage, bumper stickers with Shiva.On advice of our friend and host Grace Morgan, we hired bicycle rickshaws to navigate the throng. The lanes are so jammed with scooters, pushcarts, bicycles, donkey carts, pedestrians, panhandlers and other shoppers that you can’t take it in unless you leave the driving to someone else.The ride was occasionally heart-stopping, but the experience was spellbinding.Even after the relative luxury of a rickshaw, we were soon ready for some peace and quiet. We found it in Lodi Gardens, a quiet, stately park in south Delhi. Its winding paths, lined with magnolias and boxwoods, are popular with joggers and walkers in the morning mist, and soon you fall into their meditative pace.But the park also opens another chapter of Indian history, for it is dotted with handsome tombs built by the Sayyid and Lodhi sultanates, the royal families that preceded the Moguls. Though we sought Lodhi Gardens as an antidote to urban hubbub, it was so beautiful that I would add it to my list of must-visit sights in Delhi.MumbaiOn our last morning in Mumbai, I got up early to catch sunrise at the Gateway of India, a huge ceremonial arch overlooking the city’s harbour. The arch was built to commemorate the 1911 visit of England’s King George V and Queen Mary, but it also served as a departure point for the last troops of the British Raj, so it captures both the grandeur and the tragedy of British colonialism.Rising early paid off: The vast plaza was empty but for a few pigeons, and the rising sun lit the basalt arch in tones of gold and pink.Most guidebooks describe Mumbai as a city for eating and shopping, not high culture, and that was our experience. Still, the Fort District near the Gateway arch provides a magnificent walking tour of what has been called the world’s greatest collection of Victorian Gothic architecture.Among the highlights: the Taj Mahal Hotel, a massive balconied facade that rivals New York’s Plaza Hotel for sheer splendour; the imposing but graceful Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalay (formerly the Prince of Wales Museum) where palm trees sway above the sweeping front lawn; and farther north, the Victoria Terminus, a massive railway station whose exterior bristles with cupolas, spires and gargoyles.You can complete that tour in an hour or two, but it means navigating some of India’s busiest streets — broad avenues that swarm with taxis, lorries, motor-rickshaws, food vendors, cows and pedestrians. By the time we finished, we felt we had shared our morning with all of India’s 1.2 billion citizens, and we were ready for some approximation of solitude. We found it on the Oval Maidan, a huge lawn ringed by palm trees that serves as a public garden for this part of the city.On weekdays the Oval provides a respite from the city and a spot to view some of Mumbai’s finest architecture. A row of enchanting Art Deco apartment buildings lines the west side and the University of Bombay’s Gothic towers rise above the trees on the east. On Sundays, Mumbai’s impassioned cricket players take over, and the vast lawn is bats and balls as far as the eye can see.JaipurOn the day we visited Jaipur’s great Amer Fort, our guide was in a hurry. The elephants go off duty at 11am — before the heat of the day — and if we wanted a ride we had to get there early. Assured that the elephants are not mistreated but feeling more than a little sheepish, we climbed aboard a great gray mount for a winding, swaying and unforgettable climb to the fort’s high ramparts.Of all the palaces we saw during 18 days in India, this was the showstopper — a hilltop fortress that overlooks its own artificial lake and an abandoned medieval village below. It was in this palace, begun by Rajah Man Singh in 1592, where the Moguls’ signature architecture met Hindu motifs of lotuses and elephant heads, where royals cavorted in mirrored chambers and water-cooled gardens. From its upper towers you look down not just on ceremonial plazas and royal apartments, but on fortified walls that climb up and down the Aravali hills so far into the distance that you think you’re looking at the Great Wall of China.Even a palace, however, can get crowded. When the tour was over, we retired to a palace of our own, two hours away in the village of Deogarh. The Deogarh Mahal, built in 1670 by one of the district’s 16 feudal families, today operates as one of India’s many “heritage hotels,” genuine royal palaces that have been converted for tourists. Others are more elegant — the Samode Haveli in Jaipur, for example, or the unforgettable Lake Palace in Udaipur.But here you feel as if the royal family just left — you can imagine a young princess composing a letter at your writing desk or running a bath in the vast marble bathroom. In fact, they haven’t entirely left: Descendants of the Singh family still occupy one wing of the mahal and will share their history over afternoon tea if your timing is right.As evening closed in, we sat on one of the mahal’s countless rooftop terraces, a fire burning in a caldron as two young women in saris and ankle bells swirled through a Rajasthani dance. The waiter came around with spicy snacks and cool drinks, the fire crackled and sparked, and by the time darkness fell, we felt recharged for the next day’s plunge. — Star Tribune

AFP/WashingtonHackers could exploit inflight entertainment systems to sabotage the cockpit electronics of the growing number of commercial airliners connected to the Internet, a US government report says. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified inflight cybersecurity as "an increasingly important issue" that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is just starting to address in earnest. "Modern communications technologies, including IP connectivity, are increasingly used in aircraft systems, creating the possibility that unauthorized individuals might access and compromise aircraft avionics systems," it said. In the past, the electronics used to control and navigate aircraft -- known as avionics -- have functioned autonomously, said the GAO, the audit and investigative arm of the US Congress. "However, according to FAA and experts we spoke to, IP networking may allow an attacker to gain remote access to avionics systems and compromise them," the GAO said. In theory, firewalls ought to protect avionics "from intrusion by cabin-system users, such as passengers who use in-flight entertainment systems." But four cybersecurity experts told the GAO that firewalls, being software components, can be hacked and circumvented "like any other software." The FAA has yet to develop regulations to make "cybersecurity assurance" for avionics part of its process for certifying new aircraft. However, FAA officials told the GAO that cybersecurity is an increasingly important issue and that it is shifting its certification focus to address it.

By Josh NoelTwo challenges accompany a visit to this lovely, pine-studded north Idaho town in the United States.One involves the name, which translates to “Heart of an Awl,” meaning the sharp instrument used to punch holes in leather, which apparently was a big thing back in 1878, when Coeur d’Alene was founded. How do you pronounce the town’s name? How do you spell it? The good news is that neither much matters. Locals mostly call it “CDA,” and you can too. In fact, it will make you sound even less like a tourist. So cross that off your list of worries.Second, and much more vexing, is deciding what to do in Coeur d’Alene — that is, CDA. As much as any town I’ve visited, Coeur d’Alene is a “choose your own adventure” sort of destination. Step out of a downtown hotel and turn one direction for bistros, bars and quaint small-town shopping. Head the other way and you find (get ready, it’s a long list): hiking, biking, swimming, kayaking, paddle boarding, jet skiing, water skiing, lake cruises, a biplane waiting to whisk you above the Lake Coeur d’Alene, wind surfing or just lounging on the beach.On the average pleasant summer day, all those pursuits happen side by side in the town of 46,000, which is tucked between the lake and the national forest that share its name. Add it all up and Coeur d’Alene feels like one of nature’s most glorious theme parks: small-town charm crossed with the glories of the wild. Coeur d’Alene holds an easy, laid-back magic built for tourism but never overwhelmed by it. Though it sits at 2,200 feet, its northern latitude gives it the feel of a higher-elevation mountain gem, like Flagstaff, Ariz., or Durango, Colo.Perched high in the Idaho panhandle, Coeur d’Alene is both literally and figuratively far from the places that conventional wisdom considers aspirational getaways, like, say, Martha’s Vineyard, Tahoe or Aspen. But the anonymity only feeds Coeur d’Alene’s charm; if you don’t know about it and don’t make the effort to find out, well, more for the rest of us. But once discovering Coeur d’Alene, you might wonder how you were ever so incurious about northern Idaho.It’s a stop particularly worth the effort for road trippers bouncing among the great cities and sites of the Northwest, which is exactly what Kray and Pattie Hensley, of Sonoma, California, were doing when I met them one afternoon at Crafted, a restaurant that opened last summer in downtown Coeur d’Alene. The Hensleys had just come from Yellowstone National Park, seven hours southeast by car. I asked if they agreed that Coeur d’Alene belonged in the same sentence as the nation’s most picturesque getaways. Did it, for instance, remind them of their near-to-home getaway, Lake Tahoe?“A lot,” said Kray Hensley, 71. “But I’d rather be here.”“California is more built up,” said Pattie Hensley, 70. “This feels more loose. It’s more pristine.”“Loose” is a fair description of Coeur d’Alene. There’s no pretence here — just a quick, seductive charm and progressive Western mentality. The downtown farmers market, for instance, included a woman pouring three of her homemade kombucha teas (which she sold to an eager local audience — on tap no less); another stall hawking locally grown wool in a rainbow of colours; and, of course, because this is small-town America, local fudge.But the town’s secret weapon becomes obvious soon after arriving: that lake. Sitting beside downtown and ringed by piney hills, Lake Coeur d’Alene is an absolute thing of beauty. It’s as deep as 250 feet and hosts all sorts of action, from the aforementioned joys to young children building sand castles on its beach. Such pleasures lie in all directions in Coeur d’Alene, including the world-famous “floating green” at Coeur d’Alene Resort golf course. It’s exactly what its name implies: a green on the 14th hole that floats on Lake Coeur d’Alene, and it’s accessible only by boat once a golfer chips a shot over.“I’m a Southern California girl, and I never would have guessed I’d end up here,” said Carol Kime, 52, who moved to the town five years ago, after her parents did. Until then, she had never even heard of it. “The people are so friendly. They just talk to you on the street. And you’d never honk your horn at someone like in LA (Los Angeles). You just don’t do that here.”I met Kime at the dock where the boat tour, which spends 90 minutes skimming across the lake, begins. The tours are an easy way to gain perspective on the town and the beauty surrounding it, so I boarded a cruise one afternoon with several dozen people, mostly families with young children or groups of adults with festive mindsets. The captain announced on the intercom, “They say this is one of the five most beautiful lakes in the world,” and whoever “they” were, I believed them. I believed them even more when a local clued me in to which house on that glistening shore belonged to retired football player John Elway and which belonged to the actor Dennis Franz. (They’re neighbours, apparently.)The next morning I visited Tubbs Hill, a rolling 130-acre pine-shrouded peninsula jutting into the lake. It has been protected land since the 1970s; in the hands of a less savvy town, it’s not difficult to imagine that it would have been ploughed and developed to the hilt. But Coeur d’Alene had the good sense to leave Tubbs Hill alone, resulting in a rustic, piney two-mile hiking trail just beside the downtown. On a warm, sunny Saturday, I walked the loop, passing the secret coves and beaches below. Locals swam, splashed, threw sticks for their dogs into the lake and dared each other to jump from the rocky cliffs into the blue-green water below.The town, and most sense of civilisation, disappeared after about 10 minutes, and at its farthest point, it seemed I might have been in the middle of nowhere. It was just me and a quiet view across the broad mountain lake. It was a wonderful sliver of peace, but I won’t lie — I was glad to know that at the end of the loop, I would be a mere five-minute walk to wood-fired pizza. Such is life in Coeur d’Alene. Ahem — CDA. — Chicago Tribune/TNS

It was Friday, February 13, a 15-degree winter morning. But that did nothing to discourage the thousands of travellers who turned up to seek happiness alongside the ice-slick docks in Bayonne, New Jersey.The attraction? Quantum of the Seas, which is not a James Bond sequel but a $1billion Royal Caribbean cruise ship. It launched in late 2014 and will soon head to China. Some people think it’s the future of cruising. Others aren’t so sure.But plenty are curious. By 3:45pm, we passengers — about 4,800 of us on a seven-night itinerary to Florida and the Bahamas — were racing from novelty to novelty on the 1,141-foot-long ship. On Deck 16: simulated skydiving in a 23-foot-high vertical wind tunnel that looked like a see-through smokestack. On Deck 3: the casino. In the SeaPlex recreation area: bumper cars. At the Bionic Bar: robots mixing drinks.And don’t forget North Star, an observation capsule on a long arm that lifts passengers 300 feet above the sea and (when it’s not too windy) swings them over the side for staggering bird’s-eye views. Before anybody could go up, however, the ship’s captain, Henrik Soerensen, broke in on the public address system to welcome us and enlist our help.“Please keep an eye on the temperature,” Soerensen said. “If it doesn’t get warmer, that means we’re going in the wrong direction.”How long, I wondered, until that punchline is tweeted? Eager to spread the word of this ship’s wonders, Royal Caribbean has outfitted Quantum to be the Web-friendliest cruise ship ever so passengers can post their vacation tweets and snaps (after paying as much as $30 a day in Wi-Fi fees).Conde Nast Traveler calls it “the first cruise ship built specifically for selfies.” The cruise line calls it the world’s first “smartship” and has a new app to help passengers book meals and activities.Quantum isn’t just big and busy and filled with new technology. It’s also a telling move in the cruise industry’s global chess game.In May, the ship moves to a home port in Shanghai, where Royal Caribbean hopes to entice a mix of Chinese and Western travellers. Meanwhile, Quantum has a near-identical sibling (Anthem of the Seas) due to debut in April and start sailing the Caribbean in November.So how much fun is this smart new ship? It’s fun and it’s vexing, depending on what you’re up to.Perhaps the ship’s biggest hit was the North Star observation pod, which holds up to 14 passengers at a time (first come, first served). Passengers waited up to two hours for their chance to spend about 10 minutes in the sky, looking down on the ship and out to sea. The warmer the temperature got, the longer the line. I went up three times, on three different days, after waits of five, 20 and 90 minutes. On the way down, I asked my capsule companions whether the view was worth nearly two hours of waiting. The grins and yeses were unanimous.The simulated skydiving classes, Ripcord by iFly, were almost too popular. Trainers said most of the available slots were booked before the cruise began, which left some passengers grumbling and others competing to fly “standby” when no-show spots opened up. (That’s how I got my chance.)As for the faux flight itself, after you don a flight suit, watch a video and get a little personal training, you spend about a minute in the air with an instructor, hovering, spinning and getting buffeted from below. If you’ve ever wanted prominent cheekbones, have somebody snap your picture while you’re looking down at that big fan on the floor.Unfortunately, Quantum’s new “dynamic dining” system isn’t as uplifting. Instead of relying on one grand dining room like ships of yesteryear (formalwear, captain’s table, ice sculptures, two assigned sittings per night), Royal Caribbean has re-imagined that space as 18 restaurants, including Asian, Italian, buffet, pub and steakhouse options, from ultra-casual to formal.This gives passengers more choice — and the cruise line more revenue, because eight of the restaurants charge extra fees, from a few bucks for a snack at Johnny Rockets to $45 per person for an evening of cutting-edge gastronomy at Wonderland.The idea is that passengers will scan the choices and book their dinners online before boarding. Passenger Kevin Marshall of Pennsylvania said it worked perfectly for him. In fact, he said he would be back aboard in April for another cruise.But many passengers viewed booking before boarding as a burden, and many had trouble making reservations. Every day, dozens appeared at the Passenger Services desk or at the restaurants’ entrances, stating their cases.Although many passengers praised their meals, when I asked seven of them to grade the reservation system, the median rating was 6.5 out of 10.“It was a lot of work to do this cruise,” said Sue Bonelli of Long Island, New York.“I feel nickeled and dimed,” said her husband, Guido Bonelli, referring to the dining and Wi-Fi charges.At a Q&A session on Day 7, Dean Bailey, the ship’s hotel director, told passengers that the dining programme “is still evolving. ... It’s not where we want it to be.” Indeed, the ship had already added personnel and items to menus to appease passengers who prefer to stay put in the biggest dining rooms. But it’s clear there’s work to be done.The ship’s Wi-Fi was hit-and-miss for me. After paying $140 for eight days of access for two devices, I lost my laptop and smartphone connections just about every day, sometimes more than once. (Conversely, I got so fond of my “virtual balcony” — the monitor disguised as a window in the ship’s 375 inside staterooms — that I left it on for the entire cruise.)The ship’s entertainment got high marks for the singers who rose above the plot of the ABBA musical “Mamma Mia!” and for the dancers and musicians in striking original productions called “StarWater” and “Sonic Odyssey.” The 1,300-seat Royal Theater is a pleasant venue, and the space known as “Two70” is a multilevel entertainment area enlivened by six suspended video screens that tilt, slide, merge and regroup to create remarkable visual effects.The roster of family-friendly activities is long, including the FlowRider wave-maker (for surfing and boogie boarding), the rock-climbing wall (next to a 30-foot-tall magenta bear by sculptor Lawrence Argent), circus trapeze lessons, roller-skating, basketball and, in a nod to decades gone by, one lonely shuffleboard court.“I tried rock climbing for the first time,” said Emanuel Strong, 40, a New York corrections officer who was travelling with his wife and two kids.Heather Rubinstein, a veteran cruiser and wheelchair user who came from New York with her husband and two kids, told me that access on the ship was “pretty good.” (However, her husband had just lifted her to a spot that she couldn’t reach independently because crew members couldn’t find a key to some accessibility equipment.)Passenger Tom Murray, who brought his family from London, loved the artwork and service. But he called the dining-and-entertainment reservation system a waste of time, found the main promenade cramped and the ship “too gimmicky.”Passengers Miranda Tso and Katty Lam, New York moms who brought a friends-and-family group, didn’t like the restaurant reservation scheme or the food. Next time, they said, they’ll try another cruise line.I’m guessing the cruise line has already solved some of these problems. But the equation is about to change.Before the ship moves to Shanghai, Quantum’s workers say, they’ll tear out the Music Hall bar, expand the casino, add shops, retune the restaurants and bring on more Mandarin-speaking crew. Tailoring the ship to Chinese passengers, many of them new to cruising, will surely mean more trial and error.In other words, the world’s first smartship still has plenty to learn. — Los Angeles Times/MCT

‘You may think polar bears are cute,’ warned the Fram’s expedition leader Corinna Skrindo before the excursion, fixing a stern eye on a couple wearing cuddly-bear shirts. ‘But they are lethal,’ she told Anne Z CookeIf it weren’t for the red flags marking the tundra trail to the glacier, some of us — passengers on the Hurtigruten cruise ship MS Fram, sailing out of Spitsbergen — might have been tempted to leave the slowpokes behind and bushwhack across country.But as newcomers are relentlessly reminded here in Svalbard Archipelago, where white is the new black, that polar bears are the Big Dogs. More numerous than humans (3,500 to 2,750) and a protected species, the bears have the run of the islands, 24,209 square miles of wilderness, just 800 miles from the North Pole. Curious, stealthy and fast on their feet, they’re not fussy about their food.“You may think polar bears are cute,” warned the Fram’s expedition leader Corinna Skrindo before our first shore excursion, fixing a stern eye on a couple wearing cuddly-bear shirts. “But they are lethal,” she said, slinging her rifle over her shoulder. “We’re all trained in the use of firearms, but killing a bear is the very last option. If we spot a bear sitting on the beach or even on the next ridge, we go to Plan B.”Plan A, our first shore excursion, began when the 318-passenger Fram sailed into the Hornsund Inlet and the crew landed in Burgerbukta Bay to reconnoiter. Scanning the slopes with binoculars, they flagged the safest trails, chose a landing site on the beach and radioed the “all clear” to the bridge. Then with rifles slung on their backs, they stood guard while the ship’s PolarCirkels (six-passenger inflatable landing craft) ferried everyone to shore.As for bushwhacking, who would want to rush surrounded by such scenery? Climbing uphill we stopped, started, looked and stopped again, taking in the enormous glacier flows, the raw, ice-capped peaks at the head of the valley and the Arctic’s famously luminescent skies. Tiny pink, yellow and white flowers underfoot, the tundra’s cleverest adaptation, testified to the north-flowing Gulf Stream, its temperate waters moderating Spitsbergen’s west coast climate.A set of bear tracks pressed into the mud, shoe size 20, quickly attracted a coterie of admirers, raising everyone’s hopes that the owner was in the vicinity. But polar bears weren’t the only reason many of us had chosen this “circumnavigation” cruise around Spitsbergen. Themed “In the Realm of the Polar Bear,” it would take us north to the 80th parallel and the polar ice pack in person.Melting ice is an abstraction, something you can’t wrap your head around. But a sea of broken chunks viewed at eye level is real. With the planet at risk — global warming, species extinctions, extreme weather and rising sea levels — climate change was the subtext of the voyage. Struggling into our orange survival suits for a tour among the bergs, we were elated but a trifle somber. When you’re wearing a survival suit you’d rather not imagine why you’d need it.“Orange is the new black,” quipped my husband, Steve, as we zipped up, tightened buckles, snapped snaps and shoved our feet into waterproof boots. “And to complete the outfit,” he added, “your orange life vest.”As the MS Fram passed the 79th latitude, the edge of the ice appeared, 26 shades of silver under the midnight sun. A shifting soup of floating bergs and icy slush, it froze, cracked and refroze as the crew brought the PolarCirkels around to the gangway to pick up the afternoon’s first passengers.In a remote location such as Svalbard, where miles of tundra are uninhabited, it’s easy to think you’re on virgin territory. But people have anchored offshore since the late 16th century, explorers, whalers, miners and more recently, research vessels. But with interest in the polar regions currently at historic highs, cruise companies poring over maps have discovered Spitsbergen, adding it to their itineraries.The MS Fram, built in 2007, is Hurtigruten’s newest ship, with eight decks, small but efficient cabins, an inviting restaurant, a snack bar, two lecture rooms, and adjacent lounges with big windows. When the outside decks are too cold, passengers retreat to the Qilak Observation Lounge on Deck 7, where upholstered chairs and panoramic windows bring outside in. Also on this deck the bar, fitness center, hot tubs and the outdoor sun deck.Since the Spitsbergen cruise’s port stops are limited, each day’s activities depend more on chance than on the clock. Prowling the sea for sights might yield a bird rookery, a reindeer herd, arctic foxes, whales, scenic glaciers or unusual geologic formations. Meals are regular, but shore excursions are always flexible.Our first bear sightings were nothing more than white specks in the distance. But the trip’s last two bears were on the ice pack, close to the ship. Still, as exciting as it was to watch them nap in the snow, stand up and stretch, lie down again and finally walk away, it took a long lens to take a good photo. In fact, the only passengers disappointed with the cruise were a half-dozen semi-professional photographers who’d expected to book a special photographers-only excursion.“It’s my fault for not checking more carefully,” said Keith Pointon, from England, an award-winning photographer. “I’m having a good time and it’s a pleasant vacation. But it’s billed as an expedition cruise when it’s really a small-ship cruise. With 300 passengers onboard, seven PolarCirkels aren’t half enough to take us on and off or to make one available to guests willing to pay.”Since the cruise begins and ends in Longyearbyen, population 2,100, the capital of Svalbard, the town deserves a second look. A postcard might say: One mighty mountain, two streets, red and green pre-fab buildings, countless new cars, 10 bars, eight restaurants, a bank, grocery story, lots of bikes, kids’ toys, dead grass and the world’s best Arctic museum.But we arrived a day early and discovered that as bare though it looks, Longyearbyen — and Svalbard — are more utopia than outlier. Administered by Norway, Svalbard is an international territory where citizens whose countries signed the 1920 Treaty of Versailles can live and work. Thus there is a global seed bank, numerous research stations, a concentration on the Arctic and related sciences — climate change, geology, astrophysics and biology.“This is a fantastic place to live,” said Anika Paust, with Hurtigruten International Sales, who sat down with us for a cup of coffee. “We’ve got 42 nationalities represented, and people are interesting because they’re doing science. Everyone’s between 25 and 40 so businesses cater to a younger crowd. There are lots of great restaurants and no retirees because there’s no senior housing or low-cost services for the elderly. You can be out playing in nature all day, hiking or snowmobiling, and come back for a party night out with your friends.”But there are rules, she explained. To stay here you have to be self-supporting. There’s no welfare and no jail, so undesirables are simply deported. Since bears roam everywhere, you have to own a rifle and learn to use it. And if you’re not an environmentalist at heart you won’t fit in.Saying goodbye to Paust, we spent the rest of the day sampling the Spitsbergian dream. We hiked along the beach, walked to the museum and the cemetery, checked out the bars in town, changed money at the bank and had dinner at a restaurant. It was the perfect send-off for a trip to the ice. — Tribune News Service/TNS

By Richard Scheinin“Oh my God, look at that!”My wife, Sara, and I have just driven around one of those hip-hugging turns on Highway 1 in California, USA’s Big Sur. They used to make me nervous — you know, the fact that there’s nothing but a guardrail between you and the death-fall. Now they make me greedy for what I know is coming next. And sure enough, this one has opened up onto a straight-shot view down miles of coastline: the jutting cliffs, the shining sea below.We’ve been coming here for more than 25 years, in the early days with our three young sons, stopping at Nepenthe for an Ambrosia Burger and a vista, then continuing on to Jade Cove Beach and a night of camping on the foggy bluffs. One time, 20 years ago, Sara and I left the boys at home and got away for a memorable night at Ventana Inn and Spa, the ocean-view resort that was founded in 1975 by Hollywood investor Larry Spector, who helped produce “Easy Rider.” Now the kids have grown and flown, and we’re simply getting away, heading back to Ventana for a re-pampering.We intend to earn it, however, by hiking a steep trail up into the Santa Lucia coastal range. The trek requires fortification, and so we precede our Big Sur adventure with a stop at that foodies’ paradise known as the Big Sur Bakery and Restaurant.11am — The SandwichThe bakery is in a converted ranch house built in 1936 by a descendant of William Brainard Post, the 19th century pioneer who worked at a Point Lobos whaling station before moving to Big Sur as a ranch foreman. He married Anselma Onesimo, who was of Costonoan Indian heritage, and their family became famous on this twisty stretch of coast. All that history adds to the bakery’s rustic ambience, though I’m not prepared for the cost of our little meal: $41 for two coffees, a ham and cheese croissant and a couple of sandwiches to go? Come on!But the coffee is rich, the croissant is, like, ridiculous. And when we get into the car and begin the drive toward our trailhead, Sara and I are groaning, literally, as we pass Sandwich No 1 back and forth. It’s overstuffed with curling ribbons of fresh Italian meats, spilling out of the perfect, crusty sourdough, accented with pepper jack mayonnaise and mustard. Profuse with flavour, it’s a full meal. (No need for $10.75 Sandwich No 2).And now we are ready for the Ewoldsen Trail.Noon — The HikeLeaving the trailhead — alongside the parking lot in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park — we follow a babbling creek, hopping across rocks and roots, and then begin our climb. The trail slants steadily upward, switch-backing through redwood groves, cleaving to the sides of McWay Canyon, passing over small wooden bridges and breaking into dramatic cloud-shrouded views of the Pacific. The silence is profound. Dotting our way are redwood sorrel and wild sweet pea with pale lavender blossoms — and sporadic poison oak, blooming early this winter. Climate change?At the 90-minute mark — about halfway through the 4.6 mile loop — we come to a fork, with a sign pointing up toward the Waters Trail. We climb another 100 yards or so, hang a left and plunk ourselves down on a bench marked with a rickety “End of Trail” sign. More than 1,000 feet above the ocean, we are practically at cliff’s edge. It feels like the top of the world, as the delicious cold mists fly up into our faces. On our way down, following a ridge overlooking Highway 1, the clouds suddenly vanish, and there’s nothing but open skies and endless waters, along with the mingling fragrances of forest and ocean.7:30pm—DinnerThe Restaurant at Ventana is a sleek and intimate place, softly lit. My four-course meal ($75) includes a grilled New York strip steak with hen of the woods, mushrooms and other accoutrements, a mingling of flavours that demands slow eating. Sara is silenced by her roasted duck breast — that’s how good it is.We linger for three hours over the meal, overindulging in dessert. And then we stroll back to our room, don our robes and — laughing in the dark —find our way to the Japanese bathhouse, where we slide into the warm waters and stare up at the sky, naming the constellations, counting our good luck.10am — One More HikeThere’s a storm coming in the next morning, but trail guide Greg Ambrosio is ready to lead his daily tour of the Ventana property: 243 acres, a mere corner of the surrounding Ventana Wilderness, which is 165,000 acres large. “Let’s take a hike,” he says.He’s a raconteur, a local, and it isn’t long before he’s pointing out tracks in the earth: bobcat, rabbit, wild turkey, deer. Ambrosio takes us to a secluded redwood grove: Native Americans treated it as a sacred spot, some woo-woo-ers have called it an energy vortex. Looping the property, he seems familiar with each blossom and tree. He snaps off fragrant sprigs of white sage, yerba buena and penny royal. He picks a leaf of California bay laurel, snaps it in half and offers us a whiff of the menthol aroma: “When I was a boy, my great aunt told me, ‘Smell that every day, and you’ll never catch cold.’ “He offers to take us several miles down the road to a spot with 15 waterfalls. But now the wind is picking up, the rains getting ready to wallop. Fifteen waterfalls? We’ll be back.    —San Jose Mercury News/TNS    

By Gail RosenblumYoung adults gathered outside the large front windows of the opulent Hotel Parque Central, in the cultural core of Old Havana. Many wore designer jeans. They raised their arms high. For a moment, I thought they were holding lit matches, rock-concert style. Then I moved close to see what glowed in their hands.Smartphones.Those teens and 20-somethings, whose entire lives were shaped by the United States’ 54-year embargo, had come to access the hotel’s Wi-Fi. They were using 21st century technology to connect to a vast world, just as we giddy Americans arrived to devour the lost-in-time mysteries of their long forbidden island.Of every marvellous, multicoloured memory I could share about my September trip to Cuba, this one is my favourite. Even then — three months before President Barack Obama’s dramatic call to “chart a new course” through the re-establishment of diplomatic ties and the easing of sanctions — I sensed profound change.During an eight-day “people-to-people” educational exchange, my group of 18 saw a nation in flux. That was evident as we walked beneath blocks-long scaffolding abutting architectural restoration projects. We tasted it at numerous privately owned restaurants, called “paladares,” springing up throughout Havana. We heard it straight from the Cuban people, gracious, welcoming and surprisingly candid about their political and economic frustrations.The new rules, in part, allow US citizens to travel to Cuba without a special government license, though they will still need to declare one of 12 purposes, including family visits, professional research, humanitarian projects and educational activities. US travellers can bring back up to $400 in souvenirs, including $100 worth of cigars, two no-nos before December.But as exciting as Obama’s announcement is, “Planet Cuba,” as our captivating Cuban tour guide called it, will remain elusive, and expensive, at least until the country’s infrastructure catches up with pent-up demand.With the exception of high-end options, hotel rooms are limited. The bed-and-breakfast industry is promising, but young.Many city streets remain torn up. Few shop owners have the capacity to process credit card charges, though US citizens are now free to use theirs.Then there’s getting there: US airlines won’t be flying regular commercial routes for a year at the earliest, according to predictions from those in the know.Airlines seem keenly interested in expanding commercial service to the Caribbean’s largest island, a mere 90 miles from US soil, but they cannot rush in.Delta Air Lines operates about 250 charter flights to Cuba annually, “and seeds have been planted to allow things to start moving forward” on the commercial end, said spokesman Anthony Black. “But we will have to take aircraft from somewhere else, allocate slots, determine the price of tickets and flight times.”Sun Country also takes charter flights to Cuba; the airline did not respond to questions about whether it plans to offer regularly scheduled air service there.For now, most people who want to travel to Cuba will need to go with a tour company, and those prices can be steep.According to our knowledgeable Cuban tour guide, an estimated 250,000 Americans visited Cuba in 2013, about half of them on sanctioned tours. (The other half likely entered illegally through Canada or Mexico, which could lead to sizable fines and serious heart-racing while clearing US customs.)Former US diplomat William Bundy, who has travelled to Cuba for 15 years, predicts that a complete end to travel limits would send 5 million US tourists to Cuba in the next three years, and that would not be good for anybody.“The tourism infrastructure isn’t there to support an influx like that,” he said. “Tourists would be sleeping in the streets.”“The last thing you want to do is advertise a product that everybody wants to buy and you can’t provide that product,” he added. “No one will ever come back to your store.”Adventurers have long wanted a glimpse of Cuba. The challenge, of course, is figuring out when to experience the island, after travel becomes more affordable but before the country may become overrun.The US embargo was imposed in 1960, shortly after the American-supported Batista regime was deposed by the Cuban revolution. And there Cuba remains.It’s that Cuba — of horse-drawn carts galloping down highways, immaculately preserved 1950s car bodies painted turquoise and bubble-gum pink, ubiquitous street music, and not a single McDonald’s anywhere (with the exception of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base) — that drew us there like children to an ice cream truck.The Cubans don’t want a Starbucks on every corner any more than we do.“I do think the Cuban people will try to maintain their culture,” said Bob Stacke, who has absorbed Cuban rhythms during five trips there. Stacke is the retired chairman of the music department at Augsburg College in Minneapolis.Former diplomat Bundy agreed. He believes that even with an influx of money, Cuba will not turn into just another tourist destination. “I am quite convinced that the Cubans are well aware of this problem and will not open the country willy-nilly,” he said.Still, say many, don’t wait to find out, and if you can afford it, go now.“People want to go now because you’re going to see the authentic Cuba,” said Robyn Hawkinson, Cuba product manager for international tour company Go Next. Since its first tour to Cuba in 2013, the Bloomington, Minn.-based Go Next has organised more than 30 trips, and expects to do at least 40 this year.“I always say, ‘Go now,’” said Tom Popper, president of New York-based InsightCuba, the first travel company to receive a people-to-people license in 2000.“This is such a historical time,” said Popper, whose organisation offers six types of tours annually with 170 departure dates. Since Obama’s December 17 announcement, Popper’s Web traffic has increased six fold, and bookings have tripled.Tours range in price from a low of $2,800 to as high as $6,000. Many include four- and five-star hotels, entrance fees, most meals and airfare from Miami.My luck in seeing Cuba, especially at this fortuitous juncture, came courtesy of my world-travelling 82-year-old mother, Estelle. Our people-to-people exchange was developed for the University of New Mexico Alumni Association, in partnership with Go Next.Don’t let “educational exchange” scare you. Yes, we were required to put in eight hours daily of engaging with the country and its citizens in Havana, Cienfuegos, Trinidad and Santa Clara. But “engaging” with Cubans was generously interpreted. At 9am on our first Sunday, we were welcomed with our first lesson: a tall glass of “Vitamin R.” Our days included a concert by the world-class Orquestra de Camara and a demonstration by elite young dancers at an art high school. We practiced our salsa skills at lunchtime (prompted by Vitamin R consumption), shopped at open-air markets and visited master novelist Ernest Hemingway’s retreat, largely intact since he left it in the early 1960s.We stepped inside Che Guevara’s sombre mausoleum, visited a coffee plantation and an organic farm. We toured the massive Christopher Columbus cemetery, where the guide joked that, “until four years ago, this was the only place in Cuba where you could own private property.”In 500-year-old Trinidad, I hiked with fellow travellers up 167 steps to the top of a bell tower overlooking railroad tracks and sugar cane fields, then climbed down and gave my straw hat to a grateful lace vendor working under an oppressive sun.One evening before sundown, our group rode in a procession of ridiculously fun and noisy “Coco Taxis,” basically covered seats fashioned onto a scooter, to Havana’s famous Palace Hotel.On our many scenic bus rides, our 26-year-old Cuban guide, Laura, regaled us with an encyclopaedic knowledge of her country, the good and the challenging.Education is free, through graduate school. Everyone enjoys excellent government-funded medical care. Literacy is reported to be nearly 100 percent. Voter turnout is 97 percent. Forty-five percent of legislators are female.But with jobs scarce and the average salary $40 a month, people rely on ration packets to make ends meet. (Those packets limit Cubans to 5 pounds of rice per person per month, as well as a pound of chicken and 10 eggs.) The black market is alive and well for everything from fresh fish to car parts to Breaking Bad reruns.Surprisingly, we had lots of time to venture out on our own once our educational day was complete.One afternoon, I walked past horses, hanging sides of beef and men smoking jumbo cigars and soon realised I was lost. A kind young man with a cycle rickshaw pedalled me back to the hotel.Toward the end of the week, others in my group and I piled into a taxi, held together with duct tape, it seemed, and took a laugh-inducing, non-sanctioned taxi ride to the beach, where we swam in pristine waters alongside tourists from other countries, for whom Cuba is a regular vacation destination.I saw the future there: Americans travelling in droves to finally experience a country that is safe, rich in history, abundantly gifted with artists and musicians, fiercely independent and capable because it had to be, and warmly welcoming.Go now to Cuba. Or go when you can.But go.     — Star Tribune (Minneapolis)/TNS

SCENIC: Kurhaus Baden-Baden with an enchanting view of the Kurpark Garden. Right:  ADDRESS: Angelika Renate Storz-Chakarji, German ambassador to Qatar, addressing the audience at the event.By Anand HollaSpoilt for choice is a cliché that gets thrown about for even the most lukewarm experiences and events these days. For those interested in truly fathoming the weight of those words, a stroll through German Tourism’s popular annual roadshow Dallal fi Almania (Feel Good in Germany) would have sufficed.Of a nation boasting some of the world’s most awe-inspiring scenery and a seemingly endless supply of enchanting castles, romantic palaces, beach resorts, art museums, theatre, music, theme parks, wildlife, cross-country driving, nature walks, cycling and shopping opportunities, the German National Tourist Office’s (GNTO) recently unveiled show at Sheraton Doha, was certainly expected to present plenty on the platter for travellers of all kinds.Yet, the sheer quality of the range of travel destinations across Germany would compel the wanderlust-stricken to extend their two-week-trip to at least a month-long one.The recurring annual event that promotes Germany as a tourism destination in the GCC sees GNTO and its 18 partners, like those from various reputed airlines, tourism firms, hotels, travel and health care organisations, and marketing firms, organise this event in GCC countries such as Kuwait, UAE (Abu Dhabi, Dubai) and Qatar.While representatives of a host of travel agents and tourism boards in these nations gathered to update themselves with the latest in German tourism industry, a steady stream of Qatari travellers could be seen enquiring at the various stalls — representing various tourism hubs of Germany, apart from the usual hits such as Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt and Hamburg.Maria Amaral, Director of the Marketing and Sales Office of the GNTO in the Gulf Region, told Community, “Statistical data reveal that overnight stays by travellers from the GCC between January and November 2014 totalled 1,755,725. That’s an impressive increase of 20.6 per cent compared with the same period of the previous years, and makes the GCC Germany’s third-largest non-European tourism source market.”In fact, the GCC traveller demographic has been on the upswing for the past five years, according to the GNTO. “When I speak to locals in Qatar, Kuwait or UAE, I know for certain that it’s a destination they know very well,” Amaral explains, “They have been travelling there for many years. They feel comfortable there, as it’s easy to travel in Germany and it’s very safe. Not only do you get good hotels at affordable prices, it also offers an amazing shopping experience and a lot of medical tourism.”A lot of Arabs fly to Germany for diagnosis or treatment of various diseases, Amaral points out. “Most of these hospitals and clinics are prepared to receive the Arab guests, as they have an Arabic-speaking staff, Halal food options, and are able to accommodate families since Arabs often may be travelling with their families,” she says.“After Ramadan, in the summer holidays, for instance, they travel with families, and they feel comfortable to rent a car and drive around. We have noticed that they return every year,” Amaral adds.Backed by a stellar transport system and a pleasant climate, Germany sure is on the top of any traveller’s wish-list — and even more so, for Qataris and other Arabs. Angelika Renate Storz-Chakarji, German ambassador to Qatar, said, “Qataris love Germany, and love travelling to Germany. I was surprised to know that a lot of Qataris speak German.”Despite the economic downturn in Europe, the contribution of the tourism sector to its economy surpasses even its food, automotive and chemical industries, statistics show. “More than 9 per cent of the European workforce is employed in the tourism sector, mostly in small and medium-sized enterprises,” Storz-Chakarji says.Tourism, in fact, accounts for 4.5 per cent of Germany GDP. “Germany has established itself as the second-most popular destination in Europe and it is among the top 10 worldwide destinations for tourism and culture. The fact that more than 30 per cent of Germans spend their holidays in their own country speaks for itself,” she adds.It’s tough to not be swayed by the winsome features of each of the booths at the event. Take Cologne, for instance. This city on the Rhine, located in the heart of Europe, boasts of a rich 2,000 year history as a trading centre and a place of pilgrimage, as evidenced by a dozen Romanesque churches, among a sea of touristic delights.Gregor Gosciniak, Head of Marketing, Cologne Tourist Board, says, “Besides the beautiful Cologne Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is also Germany’s most visited tourist attraction with an annual footfall of 6.5 million, there are many more highlights for the Arabian market.”The Chocolate museum, Gosciniak says, takes one through the making and history of the chocolate. “The highlight is certainly the Cologne chocolate fountain — a huge six-metre-high, four-metre-wide chocolate fountain, where you can eat fluid chocolate all day,” he says.“For men, right next door, there’s Germany’s only Sports and Olympics museum, where you could see Michael Schumacher’s racing car or play soccer on a rooftop field. And at the football lounge, you can watch all the best football goals in history,” Gosciniak continues.“You can also visit the flagship store of the famous Eau de Cologne, originally from our city, housed in a beautiful building in downtown Cologne. Families can book seminars and make cologne with their hands, and take it back as souvenir,” he says, “We are certainly the economic powerhouse in Europe but Germany has so much more to offer in tourism.”Facing Cologne’s Gothic Cathedral is the only, five-star luxury hotel in town, the more than 150-year-old Excelsior Hotel Ernst. Jan Meyers, Assistant Director of Sales at the hotel, says, “From offering halal food to having an Arabic-speaking concierge or offering a lot of connecting rooms for families, we try to cater to the Middle Eastern market as best as we can.”The ultra-sophisticated city of Wiesbaden is one of Europe’s oldest spa towns and its name translates to “meadow baths.” Like the Romans in their time, visitors today, too, are enthralled by the healing effects of the 26 hot springs of Weisbaden. For years, it has been known as a recognised centre for the treatment of rheumatic and orthopaedic disorders.Claudia Meyer, Marketing Manager, Weisbaden, says, “Take a bath in it if you have bone disorders, drink it and it heals your insides. These springs are truly a gift of Mother Nature.”At the foothills of the Black Forest in Southern Germany, is the 2,000-year-old elegant spa city Baden-Baden, which is famed for its pristine atmosphere and a lifestyle to pamper you silly. “Baden-Baden is known not only for its healing thermal spa water, but also for its innovative, top-quality medical wellness,” says Anne-Greth Paulus, Head of International Sales and Marketing, Baden-Baden, “Moreover, many exquisite spa-hotels such as the Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa pamper you with their unique wellness and various day spa treatments.”In case you want to return to the city buzz in style, you can head to Stuttgart where the stunning Mercedes-Benz and Porsche museums stand side by side. At the Mercedes-Benz Museum, for instance, visitors are carried by lift to a height of 34 metres above the ground and transported back in time to 1886 — the birth year of the legend that surrounds the pioneering invention of Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz: The automobile.“One Legend room follows the other in a chronological tour that descends through seven floors and through more than 125 years of automotive history,” says a note on the museum. Nicole-Joy Henzler, Head of Sales, Stuttgart Tourism, points out, “The museums are not just for car lovers but for everyone to experience the influence and impact these two brands have had on world history.”And to top it all off, Stefan Kopp, who represents Fraport AG Frankfurt Airport Services Worldwide, or Fraport, recommends starting off your Germany trip by flying to the superbly connected Frankfurt airport.“It’s the easiest way to truly discover Germany,” Kopp says, “That’s because if you want to do a romantic River Rhine cruise, it’s just 30 minutes away from the airport. Only 50 minutes away is Cologne and the Frankfurt airport has its own train station where more than 400 trains run every day. And of course, there are the finest of hotels near the airport.”Once you land at the airport, you can download the official app which will show you around the place, says Kopp.“We also have a VIP service that guarantees to spoil you to bits. From offering luxury car pickup right at the aircraft, to having you relax at the lounge or a private room with a personal assistant in tow, from having the immigration and custom officials come to you to complete all paper work, to offering a superb variety of food or drinks before letting you have a shower and a luxury limousine ride to wherever you wish, this service will surely take good care of you,” he says.

Southern California’s Oxnard has almost all the activities you can imagine, but none of the crowd in its southern neighbour of Los Angeles. By Luaine LeeTourists know about the treasures found around Los Angeles, but just 65 miles north lies one of the best kept secrets on the West Coast. The little seaside town of Oxnard offers almost everything that you can find in its southern neighbour, but none of the crowds.The area boasts two harbours located just five miles apart, offering every water recreation you can imagine: boating, jet skiing, whale watching, gondola gliding, kayaking, sports fishing. All of that is skirted with seven miles of pristine beaches, picturesque sand dunes and an historic downtown.It’s duly championed for what it doesn’t have: traffic, long lines, weeks-in-advance reservations, swarming beachcombers and wallet-busting prices.But the truly unique thing about Oxnard is its proximity to the uninhabited Channel Islands, located just an hour off the coast.Eight islands, sculptured by faulting and volcanism, were once tethered to the land. Five of them are part of the National Park system. The nearest, Anacapa Island, features some of the best diving with its deep sea caves, kelp forests and crystalline water. The sea life is so abundant it’s not unusual for a diver to spy a cormorant diving past him on its way to breakfast. More than 145 species of plants and animals thrive on these islands that are not found anywhere else.The islands permit camping for up to 14 days, but equipment (including water) must be carried in — except for Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz islands, where water is available.Pygmy mammoths once roamed the rocky terrain as did the Chumash Indians. For years pirates commandeered Santa Cruz Island (the largest) for lucrative smuggling, and it was the site of one of California’s first wineries.Crossing the channel you can spot bottlenose and Risso’s dolphins skipping along the wake of the ship, seals bobbing in the briny, and whales blowing geysers of water through their blowholes. These waters host the world’s largest congregation of blue whales, sighted June through September; the grey whales predominate December through May.Cruises may be arranged through Island Packers at islandpackers.com. There are all-day, half-day, evening, dinner and harbour tours, all at various prices. A half-day cruise to Anacapa runs $37 for adults, $27 for kids. An all-day trek to Santa Cruz costs $59 for grown-ups and $41 for children.For bicep-building kayak trips, tours, lessons or rentals try Channel Islands Kayak Center, www.cikayak.comThe Channel Islands Maritime Museum provides a dandy little visit to our seafaring past. It’s open daily 11am to 5 pm and located in the harbour. Downtown Oxnard is singular in several ways. For one, it offers free parking all over town. Try THAT in Los Angeles. Sequestered on South A Street is Heritage Square where 15 historic structures have been relocated to a city block and restored. Since the area was settled because of its abundant agriculture, most of the dwellings are historic farmhouses. Guided tours are available Saturdays 10am to 4pm and Sundays 1pm to 4pm or by appointment. The one-time Andrew Carnegie Library looks like a miniature Parthenon plopped in the middle of downtown. Donated to the city in 1906 it’s seen a variety of uses, but today it houses Oxnard’s Carnegie Art Museum.Specialising in California artists, the museum changes collections quarterly, but one small room is dedicated to local artists. Located at Plaza and Centennial parks, admission is free.Just 31 miles northeast sits Simi Valley, which houses the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, well worth the trek. Adults $16, youths $9. Daily from 10am to 5pm.The loamy soil of the Oxnard Plain proved perfect for sugar beets, and in the 1900s the Oxford Brothers built the largest sugar-beet processing plant in the nation. The area is still rich with produce — strawberries, leafy vegetables and the explosive lima bean. Eleven percent of the lima beans consumed in the U.S. still come from Oxnard. To celebrate their agricultural heritage Oxnard holds a Strawberry Festival in May and a muy picante Salsa Festival in July.There’s a bountiful choice of inns and hotels in the area. The Residence Inn by Marriott features a scrumptious complimentary breakfast and a golf course next door. Prices range between $129-$149.Embassy Suites is the only Southern California suite-hotel situated smack on the beach. Prices range $159-$264. The Vagabond Inn, near downtown, welcomes furry little tourists — and dogs too, $74-$129. There are great places to eat and most of the restaurants feature farm-to-table victuals. Moqueca Brazilian Cuisine, in Channel Islands Harbor, specialises in seafood stewed in a tangy tomato sauce, simmered in handmade clay pots.The Kitchen downtown is deceiving. It looks like a brew pub, but it serves some delicious grub. It’s located at the corner of Fifth and A streets.If you’re game for breakfast or lunch, you’re in luck. BG’s Cafe, favoured by locals, sports some of the best food in town, and so reasonably priced. Try the Chinese chicken salad — the best ever. 428 S. A St.La Dolce Vita, located in Heritage Square, brings a touch of Italy to these Pacific shores. The Waterside Restaurant in Channel Island Harbor offers entertainment every night but Tuesdays. For nightlife try the Lookout Bar and Grill, The Shores, Pirates Grub ‘n Grog or the Beachcomber Tavern. —TCN

By Ellen CreagerAt a cramped little shop on the edges of the Grand Bazaar, I balance a small white plate and fork in my hand. Rain pours outside while people keep pushing in the front door, a mass of humid, damp bodies all waiting for caramel custard called trilice. Men shout sharp orders. Money is exchanged. Forks clink on the white counters.I manage two bites. Delicious.“Now we go to another favourite place for sage tea,” says Senem Pastoressa. She opens the door to the rain, then speeds off down the winding cobblestone alley, five tourists hurrying after her under their insufficient umbrellas. We turn the corner to a covered open-air tea shop. Men smoke hookah water pipes along one wall. We sit on red sofas under an awning and drink sage tea with lemon out of tulip-shaped cups.Whew. After 5 hours and 11 stops on the streets of Istanbul, it is a quiet coda to the culinary walk offered by Istanbul-based Culinary Backstreets.The company was started by Americans Ansel Mullins and Yigal Schleifer five years ago as a food blog, Istanbul Eats (www.istanbuleats.com), to find authentic, tasty local restaurants and share them with visitors. Now, its culinary walks have spread to Barcelona, Spain; Athens, Greece; Rio de Janiero, Brazil; Mexico City, and Shanghai.Appealing to younger travellers and foodies, walks take you to hidden spots in one of the most culturally rich cities in the world. Along the way, you absorb Turkey’s many influences from the Mediterranean, Asia, the Black Sea and the Middle East.Although Turkey’s tourism as a whole is growing quickly, with a record 30 million visitors between January and September (an amazing number considering the instability of its regional neighbours), Pastoressa says culinary tourism to Turkey is still in its infancy.“It’s becoming a thing, but tourism here is mostly cultural,” she says. “People want to come to Turkey because it is a place that is different but not difficult.“They come and are surprised.”Culinary Backstreets offers several different food tours of Istanbul. I took the one focusing on hidden dining spots near the Grand Bazaar. The Bazaar dates from 1461 and is a warren of 5,000 shops. Some describe it as the world’s oldest mall. On its red tile rooftops was filmed the opening sequence of the 2102 James Bond movie Skyfall.So what do we eat? Everything.We climb curving flights of stairs, go through secret tunnels, cut through little shops, and meander through backstreet courtyards called hans. We crowd into restaurants so small they have only three tables. We even eat breakfast with a group of porters — men who cart and carry most of the goods into the winding bazaar lanes too small for vehicles.At one street stand, we eat grilled meat made of sweetbreads — tasty. Another restaurant serves us flaky borek — phillo dough pastries with meat, spinach or cheese.At the restaurant Guvenc Konyali, it’s beef and baby okra soup, a recipe from central Turkey. Then it’s on to another spot for hummus and for manti, a white dumpling-like ravioli in a yogurt sauce. We eat pak pide, a type of Turkish pizza, covered with minced meat and Turkish cheese. At another place we have kadayif, a dessert of sugar, lemon and shredded phyllo. Some tourists try Turkish coffee, thick, with grounds in the bottom of the cup.Along the way, we see the back streets of the Grand Bazaar, the historic wholesale gold district, bridal district, silver district and leather district. We stop at a copper pot-making shop, Soy Turkiye, which is so famous it even makes pots of pure silver for royalty and billionaires.Turkey is a grower of apricots and figs, hazelnuts, pistachios and olives. These and fresh vegetables — tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini — are featured in many dishes. Spices commonly used are red sumac, red pepper, oregano and cinnamon, but spices will not overwhelm you in Turkish food.Just one thing: This tour is not for vegetarians, vegans or people with food allergies. It is a sampler, so there is some meat — lamb or beef; many dishes may use meat-based liquids, and many desserts include every sweet thing and wheat and dairy. But the tour is offered up with a happy stream of conversation from Pastoressa, who has been a guide for many years. She grew up in Turkey and has seen the food scene change a lot. You can get anything in Turkey these days, she says. The world is changing. The only thing her husband brought with him from Italy? His cappuccino maker. — Detroit Free Press/TNS

Sri Lanka is a paradise, boasting an alluring environment for holidays. People are always looking for new destinations. Sri Lanka is that new destination, A M Jaufer, top tourism official, tells Umer Nangiana A rendezvous with Sri Lanka — Ceylon to historians — is not all about serendipity. A little effort, which does not entail a great deal of time and space, and chances are you’ll be rewarded with attractions that are right after your heart. Lord Buddha’s Temple of the Tooth, Adam’s Peak, Dambulla Cave Temple, Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage, Sigiriya, Yala National Park, Knuckles Mountain Range, Diyaluma Falls and Kandy Lake — to name just a few — are breathtaking tourist destinations in an island nation, dubbed as the ‘Pearl of the Indian Ocean’. Once marred by a prolonged insurgency, the tourism industry is booming in the post-war, and entirely safe, Sri Lanka. With a special focus from both the government and private organisations, the local infrastructure is rapidly taking the tourism potential to the next level. Tourists from all over the world are once again flocking to this serene island nation of 20.6 million. “During the war, Sri Lanka got only 400,000 to 500,000 tourists up till 2009, but after the war ended and the entire international community supported Colombo to bring about peace, the tourism industry has revived big time. This last year alone, Sri Lanka received 1.2 million tourists and the government is targeting 2.6 million by 2016,” A M Jaufer, President of the Chamber of Tourism and Industry, Sri Lanka (CTIS) tells Community. The head of the private tourism and industry promotion body was recently on a visit to Qatar to explore the vast untapped business and tourism opportunities. Detailing the current scenario vis-à-vis the tourism sector back home, Jaufer says many new hotels, restaurants and resorts have sprung up and several countries are investing in the industry such as India and Britain. “We are now operating eight domestic airlines to facilitate easy and fast travel between different destinations and we want to share with tourists the best of Sri Lanka. Any particular destination can now be reached within no time,” says a beaming Jaufer. The Sri Lankan government has initiated new projects to build highways and roads infrastructure on priority. The capital, Colombo, is a now a neat, clean and serene city. There are beaches, wildlife, ancient cultural sites and a lot more for people to see in Sri Lanka. Weather is almost always pleasant and the added advantage is the new upmarket hotels coming up. “I think Sri Lanka would be the only country in South Asia where a low-level to high-level budget tourist can come and equally enjoy their time out. Now, we have introduced a new concept which is that of home-stay. It is that people with, for instance, 10-room houses would rent three rooms to tourists. This way, the local community would benefit and also the tourists would get to know the local culture and life better,” sums up the CTIS president.   Some of the most popular tourist destinations in Sri Lanka are located in Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, Bentota, Negombo, Hikkaduwa, Sigiriya, Anuradhapura, etc. The new sites that have come up are Nilaveli, Pasikuda and Arugam Bay beaches which are fast becoming the hottest tourist destinations.   In Kandy, for instance, the biggest tourist attractions are the stunning 17th century Temple of the Tooth (housing left upper canine tooth of Lord Buddha) besides many natural wildlife parks and temples. The climate is serene and there are many five-star hotels, including boutique hotels, he says. “My purpose to visit Qatar was to convey the message to the world that Sri Lanka is a paradise, boasting an alluring environment for holidays. People are always looking for new destinations, and I wanted to tell people that Sri Lanka is that new destination,” says Jaufer. “We wanted to reach out and one of the most amazing markets in the Middle East is Qatar. I wanted to meet people here and convince them to visit Sri Lanka and invest in the various businesses opportunities coming up there,” he adds. The response, Jaufer says, is very good. He had very cordial meetings and the Qatar Chamber of Commerce and Industry was forthcoming and very helpful. “They are willing to come to Sri Lanka and coordinate and develop our business relationship. People in the hospitality industry in Qatar are also very keen in helping Sri Lanka,” says the CITS president. Tourism Promotion Bureau, Sri Lankan government’s official body, is already active in promoting local tourism globally. They have been doing campaigns worldwide. Recently, they held the fort in Britain, China, Japan, India, and are also going to do one in Qatar soon, he says. “The bureau is a government body and they are working globally now. We, as a private organization, are assisting them. And with this public-private partnership, I believe by 2020, Sri Lanka would the best tourist destination in the world,” claims Jaufer. A large number of Sri Lankan expatriates are already working in Qatar. Multiple flights operate between the two countries. Sri Lanka can be reached in just four hours. “People of Qatar are very nice and we would like to enhance our mutual relationship,” he says. His organisation was established in 2007 to facilitate the tourism industry at the medium and small scale in particular. There was no private body to address concerns of these industrialists so the Chamber of Tourism and Industry Sri Lanka voluntarily started to assist village level rural committees, especially in the industry. “We have six general members in the country. Additionally, there are incentives for industry people to become members of the chamber for marketing and branding of their products and also for services,” says the CTIS president. Normally, the members are hotels, restaurants, cottage industry, etc. The members are also given trainings. For instance, taxi drivers are trained on how to cater to the needs of the tourists and deal with them. The industry people also get to know how they can legalise their businesses and SME development through tourism. Jaufer says his organisation has made a substantial difference, especially in the eastern parts of Sri Lanka where there were a lot of concerns. Most of the businesses were affected by the war and nobody was doing anything for their rehabilitation. CTIS facilitated and assisted them.    

By Pam Louwagie The river rippled calmly in front of us, but we could hear the thunder of the rapids ahead. “Everybody dowwwn!” our guide bellowed in his thick accent, a command to pull our paddles from the water and crouch onto the floor of our rubber raft. No way we would stay upright on these rapids, I feared, thankful for the helmet strapped to my head. When I could finally see the swirling current, tumbling and slamming into boulders just ahead, I took a deep breath. Waves of warm water washed over us. Our boat spun and ricocheted, sending us twirling between the tall pines and lush mountain jungle. I couldn’t help but blurt out a squeal. This was my kind of Mexico vacation. I had always been tempted to try the popular seaside destinations that Minnesotans escape to each winter. Every time Facebook friends posted a palm-tree-laden photo on a subzero day in Minneapolis, I buried my jealousy under a down blanket. But I remembered how I get bored lying on a beach for more than a few hours, and I recoiled at the thought of crowded, commercialised waterfronts. I imagined feeling trapped at a noisy all-inclusive resort. Then along came Huatulco. Never heard of it? That’s probably because Huatulco (pronounced wah-TOOL-ko) is a somewhat new, less-developed tourist spot along Mexico’s southern Pacific Coast, in the state of Oaxaca. Most of its visitors are Mexicans, but the government’s tourism arm is working to draw international travellers. Huatulco is made up of nine bays tucked between dramatic cliffs that drop into the sea. Along its 22 miles of coastline, the foothills of the Sierra Madre loom in the background. Before the government began promoting it for tourism in the 1980s, the area was populated only with fishing villages. Now it is marketing Huatulco as an eco-friendly destination and has vowed to preserve much of the rugged coastline, arid landscapes and green mountainsides. Minnesota-based Sun Country Vacations started offering nonstop flights and packages there a couple of winters ago. On a subzero January morning, I was happy to board a plane with its nose pointed south, beach boredom be damned.   Adventure awaits Checking in at the open-air front desk of the Las Brisas resort a 4-hour flight later, my husband and I quickly learned why Huatulco is a good-weather bet: Every sun-filled day hovered in the 90s during our stay. The coast sees only about 40 days of rain a year. “We call it rainy season because we have to call it something,” one guide joked. Still, I cringed as a front-desk clerk strapped a bright blue, all-inclusive band onto my wrist. It would be my ticket to endless drinks and food, but it also felt like I was being tagged in a herd of livestock. That worry receded after we headed out of our sleek room to see what the resort had to offer. There were four different beaches, including a sports beach where we could use kayaks, stand-up paddle boards and catamarans as much as we wanted. “Hey!” I smiled as I said to my husband, “We can do this every day.” Two beaches over, we could use resort snorkelling equipment to explore a reef just a few yards from shore. A rocky and secluded “secret beach” was tucked around a corner. None of the beach views were obscured by high rises or billboards or neon lights. Huatulco was far less crowded and commercialised than I had expected. And there were plenty of opportunities to get away from the resort. In the lobby, tour operators set up tables hawking day trips: White-water rafting, bicycling, scuba diving, fishing, ATV riding and bird-watching along with tours of coffee plantations, ancient ruins and a butterfly sanctuary. Adventures were everywhere in Huatulco. In the seven days before our Sun Country flight would hurl us back to snow, we wouldn’t have enough time to do it all.   Beaches Huatulco’s nine dramatic ocean bays — its biggest draw — do not disappoint. For a fee, guided tours took tourists to remote bays, accessible only by boat, for snorkelling, diving or just watching the sunset. Even on the busiest bays, activity on the water was light. Iguanas sunned themselves on seaside rocks as we launched a double kayak into ocean swells in Tangolunda Bay, among the most developed with resorts and some private homes. Almost immediately, we felt immersed in nature: The shell of a large sea turtle bobbed in the distance. A pelican divebombed a fish in front of us. We circled small rock islands with waves crashing against them. Nearer to shore, I tried riding the bay on a stand-up paddleboard. Swamped by a large wave, I splashed into refreshing water. Later, we set sail on a small catamaran, learning to pull the sails as we zigzagged across the surface. Walking over to the snorkelling beach on the resort’s curving sidewalk, we passed one of the outdoor bars. We took a break for margaritas. Maybe an all-inclusive resort wasn’t so bad.   Mountains As much as the blue waters and beige sand beckoned, I couldn’t help but look at the mountain foothills behind us. Our guided rafting trip took us a couple of hours up the mountains to the Copalita River. Floating down, we gazed at dense wilderness between bouts of jitters, brought on by Class 4 rapids. The rafting trip only whetted my appetite for more mountain fun. The brochure in our room touted hiking trips, but when I asked about them, the tour operators looked at me quizzically, as though I were the first to ever inquire about the offering. “Alejandro on the beach,” one operator suggested, “he’s hyper. Maybe he’d take you.” I searched the web myself instead, and wound up contacting a Florida transplant who created the website huatulcoadventure.com. George Hurchalla, a 47-year-old travel guide writer, met us at the Las Brisas lobby before dawn to take us on a mountain hike. As his dusty Subaru climbed curvy roads, he couldn’t help but brag about the corner of paradise he called home: white-water rivers, amazing coral reefs, world-class surf breaks, great deep-sea fishing, a wide range of flora and fauna. “I finally got friends to come visit, and they said, ‘Why didn’t you tell us it was like this?’” Hurchalla recalled them marvelling. “I did. I tried. You just can’t understand it until you see it.” Hurchalla turned his car onto a muddy, bumpy dirt road and stopped at a narrow walking path. The air was a crisp contrast to the heat of the coast. Hurchalla, who stands a thin 6 feet 7 inches tall, stretched out his long arms. “That’s the coolest breeze I’ve felt in a long time,” he said. The temperature almost begged for long sleeves. As we walked, we stopped to soak in the unusual mixture of nature: tall pine trees, shade coffee plants, citrus, bromeliad puffs of palmlike leaves. A slight wind whispered as magpie-jays swooped. A second short hike yielded a different surprise: Rounding one corner, we met a local man carrying a large machete. He looked serious and spoke in hurried Spanish to our guide, who didn’t flinch. We were relieved to hear their brief conversation end with “Buenos dias!” The man wanted to make sure we wouldn’t get lost, Hurchalla explained later. The foreboding weapon? Not to worry. “It’s just an extension of people in rural areas here,” Hurchalla shrugged.   Coastal lands During a jog, I headed into the main town of La Crucecita a couple of miles away. I passed markets filled with brightly painted figurines and textiles and dodged workers sweeping sidewalks, painting curbs and trimming shrubs. I encountered a few name-brand resorts (Secrets, Dreams and Best Western), but no Hard Rock Cafes or Starbucks. Some three-quarters of the land in Huatulco is kept natural, including a national park. But there’s still room for development, and tourist magazines there boast of plans for new roads and lodging. On a morning jog later in the week, I came upon a scooter-rental business. Hoping for one more adventure, my husband and I rented a 150cc Kymco that afternoon and buzzed around the local roads, up and down the coast. With the scooter, we explored at our own pace the picturesque mouth of the Copalita River and small neighbourhoods to the east of our resort. We stopped at the Copalita Archaeological Park, where workers were slowly peeling back jungle vines to uncover ancient ruins. Rock-paved, shaded paths guided us through tropical plants that stood alongside prickly cactus. Bright blue and red butterflies and tropical birds flittered about. Driving back west, we gathered with a few locals near a lighthouse on land that jutted south into the Pacific. As the sun set, it bathed seaside cliffs in orange light. We returned the next morning before sunrise on our last morning in Huatulco. As the sun peeked from the Pacific’s horizon, a school of dolphins jumped in the surf far below, as if they were waving goodbye. I wasn’t ready to leave. I had worried about getting bored, but Huatulco had so much to offer that I might just need a second visit someday. I’ll consider that as I huddle under a blanket in January, looking at friends’ beach photos on Facebook.  — Star Tribune (Minneapolis)/TNS      

By Andrea Kitay   Big box, luxury vacations got you down? If the thought of whiling away another uninspired vacation under an umbrella is less than motivating, you may need to rethink your travel strategy. So what to do? Consider recharging through adventure rather than sloth. Add a dose of adversity, which provides for the possibility of personal growth. But by all means, add levity. After all, this is supposed to be me-time. Here, a trio of offbeat Norwegian hotels where the experience goes beyond 400-count linen sheets and dazzling bathroom amenities.   Weathering the storm in Room 47 in Alesund It’s easy to miss Room 47 if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Perched 175 steps down a jetty in the middle of Art Deco-inspired Alesund’s busy harbour, the room does double duty as a circa-1858 lighthouse still in operation. And while the archipelago may be best known as the unofficial adventure capital of the fjords for its spectacular kayaking and hiking, Room 47 may just be its best-kept secret. I first learned about the Molja Lighthouse while cruising on the coastal steamer Hurtigruten a few years ago. As the big ship was docking, a Norwegian friend motioned towards the stout, brick-red lighthouse. “If you love a good storm, that’s the place to stay,” he observed. The first floor of Molja is given over to a meticulously constructed bathroom, where every inch has a purpose and nothing vital is omitted. Heated cement floors ensure guests don’t get a middle-of-the-night surprise, and a front hall has just enough room to hang coats and stow an umbrella. Defying the typical Scandinavian stride, nine narrow stairs lead to the second-floor bedroom. One side of the bed is round to accommodate the lighthouse wall, making it feel larger than its queen size. And, other than a small walking path, most of the room is taken up by the bed. Head and footboard shelves are big enough to drop a purse and a book, and a cleverly planned cubby provides just enough room for a French coffee press and snacks. Like the little engine that could, a beacon pulsates nonstop high above the room, a reminder of the country’s reliance on the North Sea and its myriad islands where predawn boats ferrying workers are speedier than driving the subterranean tunnels connecting the city’s islands. The light, visible through a small glass pane, is only slightly annoying if you stare at it. But the sound of the storm and primo bed — unfettered with an American-style pillow top — will have you drowsy at hello. On a recent visit, I awoke early to a typically spectacular Norwegian rainstorm and snapped a few pictures just in time to greet the hotel’s delivery girl before the weather really kicked up. She shoved a basket filled with a thermos of blistering hot coffee, fresh fruit and warm mini-croissants towards me with a smile, wished us a good storm and beat it back to the hotel. In that moment, my wet bags and restless soul became a thing of the past as I took in the smell of salty sea sprays and settled in to watch the storm unfold. Good, I thought. Let it pour.   Nature within at the Juvet Landscape Hotel What do you get when you combine great design with down home Norwegian sensibility? The Juvet Landscape Hotel aimed to find out, and what they conjured up is well on its way to becoming one of Scandinavia’s most engaging destinations. Located on Burtigarden, the centuries-old farm along the Geiranger-Trollstigen national tourist route in upper Valldal, the quirky little conclave of cubes on stilts overlooks the Valldola River. It’s so well concealed, in fact, that I almost whizzed by. It was already late in the day when I stopped to watch the waterfall rushing through nearby Gudbrandsjuvet Gorge, and the sun wouldn’t be up much longer. I’d been up early, hiking the paths around the Geiranger fjord, and now clouds were collecting. I longed for quiet. I managed a quick check-in and set out to locate the wooden cube that would be my temporary home.  Stark in gray tones, it was perched among other, similar cubes on a low hillside overlooking the river. I strained to count all nine through the birch and pine trees scattered across the hill. Each cube faces the river and has a slightly different shape to accommodate the topography. Curtains are moot despite a full wall of windows facing out, and privacy is spectacular. The interiors have precisely three pieces of furniture: a bed and two lounge chairs. Devoid of ornamentation such as pictures, TV, and even a lamp, the interiors have been stained in a midnight hue. It wasn’t until I was packing up that I realised the built-in alcove was actually a table and two benches. The sauna in the Relax Room was already warm when I arrived, and after jettisoning my bag on the bed, I hiked down for a long soak. As I would later come to realise in my own cube, the full glass wall and dark interiors give an uncanny, and wonderful, sensation that you are sitting outside. The longer you stare, the wider the landscape. Owner Knut Slinning tells me over a yummy homemade dinner later in the evening this was the goal. “The architects and I wanted to exploit the scenery with minimal intervention. The room is like a camera house and the surrounding landscape, the image. Like everything we’ve built, it’s for your protection, but it’s meant to disappear.” The farm is still very much alive, as it has been for centuries. And although the cow byre has been converted into the dining room, the pigsty into the kitchen, and the old hay bridge used to store animal feed into the lounge area, milk production goes on and cultivated land tended. The farmhouse and its out buildings have also been restored, and the delightful, 1,000-year-old style of roofing with turf and plants still remains the most effective. “We tried to create a meaningful point between experiencing nature, the cultural history on the farm, and modern architecture to show what Norway is like today,” Slinning explains. Before I left, Knut pulled me aside and asked if I would mind dropping off a fellow guest at the airport when I left. This was when I knew that no matter how far I was from home, someone cared.   A pink reverie in the world’s greenest, and coldest, hotel If cold is your thing, the Kirkenes Snow Hotel delivers. Not your typical bricks and mortar construction — not even a traditional Sami lavuu tent — the Kirkenes Snow Hotel is one of those experiences that may be better experienced without a lot of forethought. For starters, it’s made of snow. Located near the Russian-Norwegian border in Finnmark County, gasps of surprise are the norm and guests sport heavy down parkas and balaclavas rather than Prada. And when I wasn’t knocking back icy shots of non-alcoholic crowberry glog at the ice bar, I passed the time debating the impact of cold on cellphones with my fellow travellers. After a quick tour of the hotel’s 24 themed rooms, in bounced Finnish sales manager Anne Koivisto, as much dorm mother as camp counsellor, offering up guidance and room assignments. “There is one common thing in every room,” she giggled. “The cold, of course! But don’t worry, you will have a very warm sleeping bag, your survival suit.” Thankfully, the temperature stayed around 25 degrees, warmer than outside. Still, I opted to stuff my phone and camera in the bottom of my sleeping bag and wear the balaclava to bed to maintain my body temperature. According to co-owner Ronny Ostrem, when the weather warms in spring, the hotel simply melts, returning the water back to the neighbouring lake in a final farewell to the Norwegian winter. “It’s the world’s greenest hotel,” he winks. If you’re feeling adventurous, the large property hosts activities such as snowshoeing, kick sledding and traditional dog sled rides. I spent the afternoon zipping around on a snowmobile across the salty, frozen fjord where we cut through thick ice to pull out king crab traps, an invasive species in lakes throughout the region. As reward, we warmed up at a cozy cabin in the woods, a well-stoked fire in the middle of the room casting a cozy glow as we wolfed down the freshly cooked crab at farm-style tables. Camping in the snow? Fun. Overnight in a snow hotel? An experience I won’t soon forget. —MCT      

  By Anne Z Cooke and Steve Haggerty   As the departing guests gathered under the coconut palms to wait for the airport shuttle, Jane began to sniffle and tears ran down her cheeks. The rest of us, startled, exchanged looks. Knowing her, a once-upon-a-time debutante with manners to match, we thought she’d been put off by Koro Sun Resort, the most family-friendly — and the noisiest — of the three beach resorts we’d visited in Fiji, southwest of Samoa in the tropical South Pacific. “I hate to leave,” she said, mopping her eyes as the Fijian staff assembled to say goodbye. Turning from one smiling face to the next, she hugged the housekeeper, high-fived the kayaking guide and gave a thumbs-up to the guitar player who’d invited her to share in a late-night bowl of “kava,” the pungent drink the locals call “grog.” “I’ll never see them again,” she lamented, blowing her nose as she climbed into the bus. “It feels like losing the family I didn’t know I had.” Compared with dreamy Yasawa Island Resort, on a pristine sand beach in the remote northwest Yasawa Archipelago, or with Nanuku Resort, a group of villas in Pacific Harbour, on Viti Levu, Fiji’s main island, Koro Sun on the island of Vanua Levu did feel a bit like summer camp in Minnesota. Each day started with a bang and didn’t slow down until the Southern Cross appeared in the sky. We were welcomed with a fruit drink served in a coconut and steered to a chair for a 10-minute foot massage. Shouting kids ran through the lobby on their way to the pool and water slide, passing a group of cyclists geared up for a ride. A three-generation family partied at the adjacent dinner table and all 108 of the resort’s guests packed into the Clubhouse to watch pounding drums and a floor-thumping “meke” (traditional Fijian dance). We donned snorkelling gear and went out with the dive boat, floating over the coral reefs while the divers deep below — shadowy but visible — snaked their way through the “Dungeons and Dragons” canyon. Meanwhile, Jane made her own plans, quietly slipping away to kayak through the cave at Bat Island with Manu, the guide, indulging in a meditative massage in the secluded Rainforest Spa, exploring the town of Savusavu alone and identifying indigenous flowers with Leba, the florist. We’d been anticipating that last morning, too, but for a different reason. As seasoned Fiji fans we knew the staff would assemble to sing “Isa Lei,” the national “love song,” the lyrics in Fijian. “Must you leave me,” sing the sopranos, their voices rising over the altos, each lingering phrase echoed an octave lower by the men’s deep notes. “Every moment my heart for you is yearning; those happy hours are fleeting,” they sing, the last refrain fading away. It’s enough to put a lump in any cynic’s throat, even sceptics convinced that “Isa Lei” is the boss’ way of ensuring guest satisfaction. But the truth is that most Fijians, wherever they live on this 322-island paradise, would sing it voluntarily. Raised in traditional villages where choir-singing is the soul of the church and children learn harmony at their mother’s knee, music is part of the culture. Think humming when you’re happy, whistling while you work. But a single song doesn’t mean that Fiji’s beach resorts are alike. Far from it, in fact. Each has a unique personality, shaped by location, climate, the topography and the owner’s vision of what Fiji is all about. This endless variety is why so many travellers come back over and over, staying at two or three resorts on any one trip. Yasawa Island Resort, where we’d been before, is a deluxe hideaway on a blue lagoon, accessible only by helicopter, small plane or boat. The experience, with 18 traditionally thatched and furnished bures (BUR-ay, a bungalow), candle-lit dinners, chef’s menus and no-pressure days, is a dream come true for self-motivated explorers, A-list luminaries and honeymooners needing space. “We’re on Fiji time here,” said Manasa Ragigia, Yasawa’s resident elder and the “Spokesman” at Bukama, the neighboring Fijian village. “You want to fish all day? Fish,” he told us, mixing drinks at the sunset cocktail party. “You want to kayak or snorkel? Whatever you like, it’s your choice.” Indeed, our fellow guests — including a honeymooning couple — knew exactly what they wanted. Mornings were filled with boat dives on nearby reefs and coral mounts, snorkelling off the beach, windsurfing, fishing for marlin or sailing the catamaran. Laid-back afternoons offered meet-the-people tours in Bukama, lolling in the infinity pool, reading, joining the cultural and basket-weaving demonstrations and beach combing. On Tuesday, Ragigia and Chef Talala Tupou prepared a “lovo” (underground oven) feast, a chance to taste most of Fiji’s favourite ingredients and dishes. Our bure, tucked among ferns, hibiscus and palms, had a private deck, plantation shutters, hammock, a cookie jar that was never empty, indoor and outdoor showers, piles of towels and air conditioning. When the honeymooners emerged from their bure, it was for an idyllic picnic alone. Set up with an umbrella, beach chairs and champagne, they were escorted to a distant beach and left for the afternoon. Asked about the experience, they said that it took only a long look west across the passage now called Bligh Water to understand why HMS Bounty Commander William  Bligh and a dozen loyal tars, put adrift in a launch and chased by cannibals, felt “they were at world’s end.” A signature outing was the boat ride south to the Blue Lagoon, flooded limestone caverns where the eponymous movie featuring 14-year-old Brooke Shields was filmed. Depositing us on a narrow beach, Yasawa’s guides waited while the cave guide, Aku Nacoba (na-THUM-ba), escorted us up the cliff and down a tunnel into the eerie, water-sculpted caves. So eerie, it turned out, that besides the two of us, Jane was the only other traveller brave enough to swim through the half-lit chamber. Back on Viti Levu, Fiji’s main island, we headed for Nanuku Resort, a gated group of new and remodelled villas on the lagoon in Pacific Harbour. The villas, privately owned but in the rental pool, are grouped around the pool and pool deck, where the torch-lighting ceremony is held at sunset. Depending on how the space is shared, Nanuku has lodging for up to 80 guests, from couples and families to reunions and small meetings. According to Karen Taylor, the manager, Nanuku’s location at the east end of the Coral Coast is why it succeeds as a Fijian-style safari lodge. “With the ocean in front of us and the mountains behind, there’s everything from hiking and river rafting to sailing,” she said. Since child care (nannies) are also included in the lodging cost, parents can get away for a few hours, or — as the couple staying below us did — “bring the nanny along every day to help with the children.” One couple said they’d played 18 holes of golf at the Country Club; another took a daylong trek across the Namosi Highlands. We saw the fire walkers, toured a hillside village and explored the vegetable market in the town of Navua. A family with teenagers signed up for surfing at “world famous” Yanuca Island; the next day they headed south across the channel to Beqa (pronounced BENG-ah) Island Lagoon, to dive with the sharks. The dive sounded so fascinating that we added it to our wish-list for next time. In Fiji, said Taylor, “even the sharks think you’re family.”        

 CLOSER LOOK: Binoculars help visitors get a better view of the herd of seals bobbing playfully nearby. Right: AN EXPANSE OF MUD: The Dutch may not have mountains, but they sure have a lot of mud. By Andrea Kitay   We’d been trudging across the mud flats at low tide for about 20 minutes with only the gentle crunch of footsteps when a loud sucking sound sliced the air. In almost perfect unison I lurched forward into the oyster-coloured mud with a yip. Elbows forward and hands skyward to protect an assortment of cameras, a rush of squishy, sulfury mud met me halfway, cushioning my fall and releasing fumes that would knock over a camel. “Good Lord, what is that stench?” muttered my daughter, grasping at my hands for the cameras. “A little help, please?” I groaned. Stuck like an unbalanced tripod in the mud, I felt the sock on my right foot dangling from my toes, which were now missing a boot. I’d proudly dragged my heavy duty, Maine-built mud boots to the ends of the earth for this little encounter with nature, and apparently the Dutch wetlands wished to keep one. “You’ll have to lace up tighter,” one of our guides, Nico, implored. “The shells will destroy your feet.” It turns out a better footwear choice for a day of mud walking, or wadlopen, in Dutch, would have been dive booties. But in no mood to be barefoot for a trek to nowhere, I hitched up my sock and plied my boot from the muck, shoving my foot deep into its gloppy depths. So much for staying dry. Wadlopen is a venerable past time in the Wadden Sea shallows stretching between the mainland and the Frisian Islands on Holland’s north coast, where, twice a day at low tide, both sand and mudflats are exposed. This makes the area ripe for tromping around in and those inventive Dutch have parlayed it into a wet, sloppy day trip. Billed as an eco-tour-style adventure called “The Ramble” by the outfitter Djikstra Wadlooptochten, our meet-up point was the picturesque village of Pieterburen. Here, we found our guides Johan and Nico huddled over a map plotting the day’s route and tides tables. Just two of dozens of guides leading both half- and full-day trips out onto the mud flats, they are a necessity required by the Dutch government for what finally seems obvious once we’re out on the sea bed: dense fog, strong tidal currents and disorientation that pose a potential threat to newbies. Less than a mile from the dike where we start hiking, the sleepy village is wadlopen’s unofficial welcome wagon. In fact, a dizzying array of supporting activities have sprung up around the simple act of playing in the mud. From the Apres-wadlopen bar to a movie of the Wadden Sea with apple pie to a visit to the seal sanctuary, the town has demonstrated a surprising level of capitalism while sustaining a typically Dutch low-key profile. Home base was the nearby university town of Groningen (pronounced Grun’n), the cultural heart of this northern province with the same name. Here, the cafe culture is as vibrant as any in more celebrated climes further south. Bikes rule the road, and equal numbers of university students as swanky seniors wile away the afternoon sipping macchiatos and people-watching in sprawling outdoor cafes. In a spectacular show of ocean-to-table, we lingered over a delightful meal of the same crab and mussels we’d soon be stepping around at the hip little restaurant Brusells Lof. Wadlopen as an organised activity began tenuously, with exploratory expeditions to the Frisian Islands beginning in the late 1930s. But it is arguably Hylke Dijkstra’s pioneering 12-mile winter trek of 1963 across the ice to Schiermonnikoog that established it as a bona fide Dutch pastime. Today, roughly 35,000 people make either the half-day nature walk or the full day trek to the islands. It would take more than half a century from that first exploratory walk before the Wadden Sea would be recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2009, a designation that confirms its vital role as one of the world’s largest and most important migratory bird areas. With 10 million to 12 million birds passing through annually, roughly 6 million can be present at the same time on the vast stretch of water whose boundaries bump the coasts of Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. Our little joust with nature would take us across slushy mud flats, over sand banks teeming with drying shells and through 3-foot deep gullies, with no goal other than a day tromping in the mud. Despite my early fumble, the hike out from the relatively new dike protecting the mainland from powerful tidal surges was pleasant, with Johan stopping here and there to point out yet another ecological wonder on ground littered with mussels, oysters and crabs. It turns out the extreme environment has created conditions unique enough to allow edible plants such as sea lavender and sea aster to grow in abundance in the shoreline’s grassy banks. According to Johan, these are not ordinary garden plants. The adaptation to a salt water environment makes them unsuitable for a garden, much the way a garden plant wouldn’t tolerate the harsh conditions of the Wadden seashore. It took about an hour to lose the view of the dike. Spinning in a 360-degree circle, I realised how disorienting the shallows would be with no guide. In fact, if it weren’t for the deep footprints we left behind there were no reference points to orient one’s self. Within a few hours they, too, would be gone. A shiny mirage hovered about 50 yards in front of me and out of reach for most of the hike, adding to a sense of otherworldliness. Not a fan of panic, I plotted worst-case scenarios as I marched, landing on the simple strategy of disgorging most of my clothes and gear for the float back to shore. After a few miles, we began a wide sweep that would briefly take us in view of the German island Borkum, when Johan piped up. “Look!” he fairly shouted, shoving his enormous walking stick towards a tiny rivulet in the mud. “What do you see?” Indeed, the small but insistent stream of water was working its way back in the opposite direction, pushing through the mud in what would turn into a sort of mini-delta over the five minutes we stood chattering over it. “This is nature’s notice the tide has turned,” Johan told us excitedly, as if this were a new revelation for him also. As we stood gaping admiringly at this miraculous bit of news, Johan explained that where we stood would not only be well submerged in several hours time, but it would also be deep enough for small fishing boats to harvest the small shrimp lurking in the gullies around us. By way of example, he reached back, dipped his net into one and brought up a gob of tiny shrimp. On the long tromp back, I mused over the vast, unrelenting barrenness of the landscape. I’d been close to the end of the world, but this felt more like it. There was something wonderfully calm about it all, and the arrival of a bevy of curious seals, bobbing and dipping as they followed us at a distance, became a pleasant distraction. The clouds dissipated while I wasn’t looking, leaving a faded blue stretching down to the horizon. While the autumn sun warmed my now-uncovered arms, the tepid 64-degree water that originated in the frigid North Sea now warmed my legs. Despite giving my boots a repeated soaking on my return home, the pungent stench of poorly oxygenated mud permeated even its laces, forcing me to offer them up to the garbage gods. In the end, the Wad had won. — MCT        

By Josh NoelPicking out the visitors who have laboured their way to the top of one of the two volcanoes on this tiny island in Lake Nicaragua is not difficult. Just look for the people relaxing as aggressively as possible.That was me on a Friday afternoon, revelling in Ometepe’s essentials: a hammock strung between mango trees, a glass of juice and an 80-degree island breeze. When that version of luxury grew tired, I strolled down to the beach to bask in the bathwater-warm waters of Lake Nicaragua, where the mainland existed only on the hazy horizon. My massage — at a very Nicaraguan price of $25 an hour — would come soon. Both literally and figuratively, it was a sorely needed day of peace.Twenty-four hours earlier, I had been climbing one of those Ometepe volcanoes: Volcan Maderas, which traces a winding path through the wet Nicaraguan jungle to a misty cloud forest and then to a dormant 4,570-foot-high crater. I spent a gruelling 10 hours climbing and descending the mountain, each step an adventure in not slipping, or, more accurately, slipping as undisastrously as possible amid the rocks and mud. I was told I would fall on this hike. I didn’t believe it. I fell, repeatedly, and always with the hope that I wouldn’t come face to slithery little face with one of the island’s poisonous snakes. It was such a slog that by the time we finally saw a howler monkey, I was too throbbing and exhausted to be impressed.So, yes, hammock, breeze, lake — all gravely needed. And in that way, Ometepe strikes an ideal balance: where extreme rustic adventure meets extreme tropical relaxation. It’s an island that couldn’t be designed more perfectly, curving through the lake like a figure 8, with each half home to its own volcanic peak. Between sits the River Istian (ideal for seeing wildlife by kayak), a couple of museums and just enough beachfront restaurants and bars to seem lively without being overcrowded. Home to about 40,000 people across its 107 square miles, Ometepe allows a visitor to be as ambitious or unambitious as desired.Much of the daily tourist flow, arriving on ferries from the mainland town of San Jorge, comes for both the adventure and the relaxation: Canadians, Dutch, Belgians, Israelis, Germans and more than a few American lefties who began coming to Nicaragua during the 1980s to support the Sandinistas.The visitors also come not to be in Costa Rica. Attracting about one-sixth of the tourists, Nicaragua is miles behind its neighbour to the south in terms of development. Whether it will ever rival Costa Rica is a subject of great discussion at the moment. Growth has been swift during the last 10 years as expats have opened hotels and built houses, but it is still in its infancy.“Everyone says it’s what Costa Rica was 25 years ago, which I guess is a good comparison,” said Roslyn Winstanley, an Australian who built the seven-room Xalli beach hotel with her Dutch husband after the pair previously opened an eco-hotel on the island. “But in the eight years we’ve been here, we’ve already seen enormous change.”Ometepe’s first airport opened this year and gets flights twice weekly from Managua. More roads have been paved, but that still adds up to less than half of the island. A 60-acre resort is coming, though Winstanley, a developer working on the project, said it will be consistent with “the island’s culture.” Perhaps the biggest change could be construction of a long-discussed Chinese-funded canal that would slice through Lake Nicaragua, connecting the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. Many vantages on Ometepe would suddenly include slow-moving freighters.But for now, Ometepe remains wonderfully slow and unspoiled, with few, if any, stoplights or buildings taller than a palm tree. It’s not odd to see cows walking down the main road or three people riding by on a single bicycle. Power outages aren’t uncommon, but it’s hard to get too worked up about such inconveniences when you walk into your hotel room to find a corked glass bottle filled with “filtered volcanic spring water” that comes from the volcano down the road.Though hiking one of the volcanoes is not the sole reason to visit Ometepe, it is undoubtedly a quintessential island experience. And so it was that after checking in at Xalli and having a couple of sips of volcano water, I made my plan for the next morning: meeting my guide, a lean 26-year-old local named Abel, at 7:30am to journey to the Maderas crater and back. At dinner that night, a father and son named Michael and Gabriel from New York’s Hudson Valley asked if they could join the climb. Of course they could.Our trek began innocently enough, one foot in front of the other in a jungle as thick as any I’d seen while the howler monkeys issued their hoary roar from the branches above. I asked Abel how many times he had climbed the volcano.“About 600,” he said.It soon became the adventure that catches many tourists off guard, as we slipped and scrambled along a terminally muddy incline. Two-thirds of the way up, Michael, the father in the father-son duo, said he was stopping and would find his way down with another group. He did.Abel, Gabriel and I pressed on to the crater, arriving in about 5 hours. Gabriel and I were breathless and caked in mud. Abel was spotless in his red-and-white polo shirt and rolled up jeans. We all grabbed a seat to marvel at the crater: 360 degrees of thick, green growth in what once spewed smoke and lava. “I’m eating this chicken sandwich in a volcano crater!” turned out to be a wonderful lunchtime thought.And then we headed down, Abel again somehow remaining clean as I fought slips and falls to the point that my feet and knees grew hot with pain. I might or might not have yelled to no one in particular, “This is the worst hike ever!” (OK, fine, I did, but I didn’t mean it.) After one fall, Gabriel briefly thought he had broken his wrist. But we finally made it back to the hotel in the dark, and, after a dinner of jalapeno chicken — chicken smothered in a creamy jalapeno sauce, very popular in Nicaragua — I lumbered off for 10 hours of well-earned sleep.The next day was reserved for Ometepe’s calmer joys. Down at the beach behind Xalli, I waded into the wonderfully warm, shallow lake and walked 50 or so yards offshore; it was still only 4 feet deep.I floated and paddled in the warm surf and spoke lousy Spanish with three siblings — a 12-year-old boy and 14- and 16-year-old sisters — who were fishing for sardines with a large red net. They had a rhythm: The girls would lower themselves and the net into the water as a wave pushed the sardines toward them. They’d gather up the net, pick through their bounty and pass off the best of the catch to their brother, who carried a small, white mesh bag. When the bag was full, they would stop, and their mother would prepare the catch that night in a stew. To our left was the volcano I had climbed the day before; through the trees and to the right was the other volcano: Concepcion, a wholly different challenge that reaches a 5,280-foot summit across a steep, exposed trail of slippery volcanic rock.After bidding the children goodbye, I walked up the beach to a vegetarian restaurant to watch a storm blow in thick and fierce. As I sipped, the storm swallowed the volcano I’d climbed the day before, and I realised that my trek could have been much worse.The next day, my last on the island, I found what might be Ometepe’s greatest joy: Ojo de Agua, a natural spring about the size of an Olympic pool with a rock-and-silt floor and stone walls. At the pool’s edge, a vendor chopped the tops off coconuts and poured in rum to create a boozy, milky drink in the shell.The pool was just cool enough to be refreshing, and the water was wonderfully bright and clear with its high mineral content and supposed healing powers. Hugged by thick, leafy trees, Ojo de Agua was a serene little oasis of splashing and relaxing worth a day unto itself. It made me wish I were spending a few more days on the island.And who knows? Had I stayed, I might have attempted that other volcano, Concepcion, though it remains active. Topping out at 5,280 feet, its steep trail traverses slippery volcanic rock. The entire way, I would have been fuelled by my all-important, recently learned secret: No matter how miserable the slog, the rest of Ometepe — the hammocks, the beaches, the lake, the natural spring — awaited. — Chicago Tribune/MCT

A typical West Sumatra house in the mini park.  DIFFERENT: A model house inside Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, literally translated as the Beautiful Indonesia Miniature Park.    Photos by the author By Umer Nangiana   Even before the plane touches down at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, you get the first of the many-to-come bouts of excitement. “Yes, this indeed is the right place,” is the first thought that crosses your mind. And the second thought when you catch a glimpse of the natural beauty outside of the airport: “Wow, am I really going to witness something that I have only heard about so far?” Tranced, you start picturing your upcoming adventures. The ideas in your mind are soon going to get real. Indonesia, the island country lying between Indian and Pacific oceans, is quite literally the Garden of Eden. Jakarta is only the starter for bigger exploration opportunities that lie all around it. Commercial hub and the capital of the country, this huge city has a lot to offer in the form of monuments, a chain of museums detailing the country’s past and present, parks, mosques, temples, colonial era remnants, street food and multiple shopping malls besides much more. However, the only thing that might annoy you is the city’s creeping traffic flow. Jakarta is located on Java, the most populated of the cluster of islands. Being the centre of business and trade, the city’s population swells manifold in the day time when people living in the outskirts move inwards. So be prepared to be patient. “Here, nobody bothers to honk at others. In fact, at the traffic lights you can read your newspaper,” joked our tour guide Ahmad Marzuki, the official Tourist Guide for Java and Jakarta. After an 8-hour flight from Qatar, you would feel the need to rest but the excitement is high. So you can have a power nap before a quick shower and get down to business particularly if you land in Jakarta during the day or evening, as we, a small group of journalists from Doha, did. First and foremost, treat yourself with some of the best seafood in the world. The highly recommended places are the old city traditional restaurants. One of the must-haves is Ikan Gurame Bakar, a dish consisting of charcoal-grilled fish. This popular eastern region dish is finger-licking delicious. There are multiple options to start your tour with if you have landed in Jakarta. It is a modern city packed with traditional values and practices — a perfect blend of old and new. “Many people start with museums or monuments, however, the old Chinese temples in the town would perfectly set the mood,” Barzuki tells us. There are so many of them. They offer the ideal photo-taking opportunities and help you form a bond with the people and the city. For a deeper connection and a closer look at some of Jakarta’s colonial era architecture, we moved on to Kota Tua, a small area also known as old Jakarta and old Batavia, the Dutch-era capital. It is reminiscent of the colonial times in the 16th century, when the city was only within the Batavia’s walled compound (today Kota), while the surrounding areas consisted of villages, orchards, and rice fields. It still houses the former Town Hall of Batavia and the seat of Governor General from where the Dutch controlled the country. The building now serves as Jakarta History Museum. To the other end, you will find a blend of old and new buildings with some colonial era cafes still preserved in the original shape. If you are interested in the history of the city in particular, the best place to find it in is perhaps Sunda Kelapa, the old port of Jakarta located on the estuarine of Ciliwung River. Situated in Penjaringan sub-district, of North Jakarta, today the old port only accommodates pinisi, a traditional two-mast wooden sailing ship serving inter-island freight service in the archipelago. Although it is now only a minor port, Jakarta had its origins in Sunda Kelapa and it played a significant role in the city’s development.“Pinisi is still manufactured in the old style, without any design on paper,” says the tour guide. Jakarta is an amalgam of tall modern buildings and establishments of tropical huts and old-style houses. The city has an efficient railways and metro bus system, however, a majority commutes by motorbikes, both men and women in equal numbers. To gauge the length and breadth of the city, we headed to the 132m tower of National Monument in the centre of Merdeka Square, Central Jakarta for an aerial view. Build to commemorate the struggle for Indonesian independence, the monument was opened to public in 1975 and still attracts big crowds every day of the week except for Mondays. Mostly, you have to wait in queue to get into the lift to reach the top of the tower. This huge city is spread proportionally in all directions. All around the tower, your gaze would meet serene gardens and tropical trees. In the basement of the tower you will find the Indonesian National History Museum, which has on display a total of 51 dioramas in a large marble-lined hall. They detail Indonesian history from pre-historic times to the period of European colonisation and uprisings against Dutch East Indies rule. Indonesia in general and Jakarta in particular has a large number of museums and each one of them will tell tales. The huge National Museum, for instance, is a must-visit place. The multi-storey building is an archaeological, historical, ethnological, and geographical museum located in Jalan Medan Merdeka Barat, Central Jakarta, on the west side of Merdeka Square. Popularly known as Elephant Building after the elephant statue in its forecourt, its broad collections cover all of Indonesia’s territory and almost all of its history. The museum has a collection of 61,600 prehistoric and anthropological artefacts, and 5,000 archaeological artefacts from all over Indonesia and Asia. The museum collections are among the richest, the most complete, and the best of its kind in Indonesia and one of the finest in Southeast Asia. “It is good to get here as early as possible so that you can spend time exploring the huge collections,” our tour guide advises. Another piece of architectural brilliance that you must visit is Istiqlal Mosque (Independence Mosque) situated close to the Merdeka Square. This national mosque of Indonesia has seven gates, the rectangular main prayer hall building is covered by a 45-metre diameter central spherical dome. The main dome is adorned with a stainless steel ornamental pinnacle in the form of a crescent and star, the symbol of Islam. The dome is supported by twelve round columns, and the prayer hall is surrounded by rectangular piers carrying four levels of balconies. The interior design is minimalist, simple and clean-cut, with a minimum of stainless steel geometric ornaments. The 12 columns are covered with stainless steel. On the main wall, there is a large metal work in Arabic calligraphy, spelling the name of Allah on the right side and Muhammad (the Prophet of Islam) on the left side. The real journey of exploring the natural beauty of this tropical country begins with the visit to the picturesque Indonesian mini park, Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, situated in the outskirts of the city. Spread over more than 250 acres, this recreational area house a synopsis of Indonesian culture. Beautiful specimens of Indonesian culture and traditional architecture, representing virtually all aspects of daily life in the more-than-30 provinces of Indonesia, are built in separate pavilions impeccably depicting traditions, customs and festivities.   A beautiful lake in the middle is a miniature of the archipelago showing the map of the country with land mass cut in the shape of every island in the country. It also has cable cars, an elevated tourist train that runs through the park, museums, Keong Emas Imax cinema, a theatre called the Theatre of My Homeland and other recreational facilities. Almost always filled with foreign and local visitors, it is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Jakarta. The Indonesian capital is too large to explore in a few days. With time-limitations, we next headed to the nearby city of Bandung, the capital city of West Java province, to see the lush green tea-plantations, Tangkuban Prahu crater, Jungle track to Domas crater and Saung Angklung Mang Udjo musical performance besides other attractions. I will detail them in the next article.        

SERENE: Lake Jean in Ricketts Glen State Park in Benton offers a picturesque place to boat and fish while enjoying fall colours. By Gretchen McKay Fresh air and blue skies are easy tonics for the stressed-out city life. Still, I was in a pretty foul mood when I rolled into Ricketts Glen State Park in this scenic, woodsy corner of northeastern Pennsylvania in America. Equally distracted by my growling stomach and the country tunes wailing on my car radio, I’d missed the rustic carved-wood entrance sign opposite Red Rock Scoops ice cream shop on Route 118. Google Maps had vaporized along with my cellphone service and, seriously, who still keeps paper maps in the glove box? Even after a kindly park ranger provided step-by-step directions to the Lake Rose Trailhead Parking lot, the best place from which to start a hike to the park’s famed Ganoga Falls, I’d managed to get turned around in the wrong direction. (I later learned there’s a really cool interactive map on the DCNR website that could have come to my rescue.) A couple of times. But finally, I found it. The road leading to Waterfall Heaven. Three and a half miles north on PA Route 118 after it intersects with Route 487 (look for the Red Rock Corner Store), up a VERY steep mountain, Main Park Road snakes off to the right. Five minutes later, I was backing into a space at the crowded Lake Rose lot. Or so I thought: I’d actually pulled into Beach Lot #2, where boaters, swimmers and anglers go when planning a day on the park’s 245-acre Lake Jean. This actually turned out OK for two reasons: The concession stand had $3.25 cheeseburgers, and a friendly couple from upstate New York I met in the parking lot had great words of advice, along with directions to where I wanted to go. Don’t forget a water bottle, they cautioned, as there’s no refreshment on the trail. And go for the 3.2-mile upper loop of the Falls Trail instead of the 7.2-mile full loop, which took the pair almost 3 hours to complete. You’ll still see most of the good stuff, including the majestic 94-foot Ganoga Falls, in a picturesque glen among towering pines, hemlocks and oaks, but with half the effort — a physical exertion, they assured me with damp brows and quivering legs, that’s quite substantial when you hike the entire, rocky distance. After hiking it, I would recommend ditching the flip-flops and sneakers for sturdier shoes or hiking boots and resist the urge to take short cuts or venture out on ledges. Some of the terrain is pretty treacherous. Adventurous hikers have been sweating their way through old-growth timber to Ganoga Falls for decades, even before the park and its many recreational facilities opened for business in 1944. Discovered in the 1860s by fishermen exploring Kitchen Creekin neighboring Luzerne County, they date to the last ice age, when increased flow in the Huntington Lake tributary from glaciers enlarged its drainage basin and cut deep gorges. It wasn’t until Col. Robert Bruce Ricketts named and built a system of trails connecting the series of 22 waterfalls in the early 1890s, however, that they became one of Pennsylvania’s treasures — and the ideal setting in which to enjoy the fall colours. Ricketts Glen State Park — which covers more than 13,000 acres over Columbia, Luzerne and Sullivan counties — is gorgeous any time of year. But it’s particularly fetching in autumn, when its many black tupelo (gum), dogwood and oak trees — some more than 100 feet tall and 4 feet in diameter — turn glorious shades of brick-red, maroon and brilliant scarlet. This year has provided a very favourable growing season so trees across Penn’s Woods are healthy and vigorous, assuring a very colourful autumn; colours in and around Columbia County are expected to peak between October 8-14. (For a weekly fall foliage report, visit www.leafpeepers.com/pa.htm or call the visitPA hotline at 1-800-847-4872.) The park also has a nice sense of history. A Civil War veteran who distinguished himself at the Battle of Gettysburg, Col. Ricketts grew up in nearby Orangeville, a tiny hamlet nearby that today is famous for its twin covered bridges. Built in 1884, the picturesque East and West Paden bridges are one of the only two remaining twin covered bridges in the country. After the war (where he led the defence against a Confederate attack on Cemetery Hill on July 2,1863), Col. Ricketts starting buying timber land in Columbia, Luzerne and Sullivan counties, eventually acquiring more than 88,000 acres. Much of it surrounded Ganoga Lake, Lake Jean and what would eventually become known as the Ganoga Glen area. A member of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society, Col. Ricketts named many of the falls after the Indian tribes that at one time lived in the area: Delaware, Seneca, Tuscarora, Huron. Others wear the names of family members or friends. Ganoga Falls, which cascades 94 feet onto the rocks below, is the highest and most spectacular. It means “water on the mountain” in the Seneca language. After his death, Col. Ricketts’ heirs sold much of the land to the Pennsylvania Game Commission. But not all: It wasn’t until 1942 that they finally sold 1,261 acres, the Falls and the Glens area to the state for use as a state park. The Glens became a registered National Natural Landmark in 1969, and in 1993 was slated a State Park Natural Area. Most of the Glens’ 22 waterfalls, scattered along 26 miles of trail marked by zig-zaggy switchbacks and dramatic drop-offs, are visible from the Falls Trail. In all, there are 11 individual well-marked trails that range from less than a mile to more than seven, with varying difficulty for hikers. The trails can be deceptive. A quarter of a mile into the Falls Trail, with the very soft, fairly level terrain cushioning my Mizunos, I was marvelling at how great the path would be for a trail run. Then I started down the hill toward the first of the seven falls I’d eventually encounter on my hike, Mohawk Falls, and all bets were off. I was praying I wouldn’t slip on the velvety green moss or twist an ankle on the narrow stone steps that at times seem awfully close to the edge of the trail. But the hike is worth it. Photos taken with iPhones don’t do justice to the sheer awesomeness of Ganoga Falls and its thunderous cascade of water. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a prettier sight in a state park, Niagara Falls excluded. As sketchy as it was going down, it was tougher still climbing back up. Most of the hikers I passed on my descent — many with walking sticks — didn’t look all that happy. Their expressions read “I’m gonna finish this” instead of “Having a great time!” I’m kidding, of course. Hiking the trail is a great time and you don’t have to be in particularly great shape to do it. Along with kids (some on their parents’ backs), seniors were well represented. From the Lake Rose Trailhead lot, it took me about 30 minutes to hike down and maybe 10 minutes longer to climb back up. And no trips to the ER. Even if you miss the fall colours, this park is a gem. Besides hiking, the park offers swimming (May to September) camping, boating, fishing, birding, hunting and riding trails (bring your own horse). In winter, there’s cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, ice fishing on Lake Jean, snowmobiling and ice climbing up the falls. And when the park closes for the evening, or you’re simply tired of hoofing it? There’s plenty of other ways to spend a few happy hours in the area. Antiquing, eating good food — it’s all part of the package. Columbia County also is known for its many covered bridges. —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/MCT    

By Ellen Creager In 1825, travellers navigated 83 locks. I crossed one. They traversed nearly 400 miles. I went 7. They saw the whole thing from mule-pulled barges. I was on the Lil’ Diamond II. We all saw no sign of a mule named Sal, but we still got to ride on the Erie Canal. Today, the Erie Canal is open for navigation from May 1 to November 15. You can kayak through its locks, bicycle its shores, fish or visit the small towns along its meandering route. You can even rent a canal boat and skipper it yourself for a night or a week through the locks and waterways. The canal’s western portion near Rochester, New York, is its most traditional and lively. Its centre portion, near Rome and Syracuse, is more modern. The Mohawk Valley area is by nature quiet. But back in the day, the whole canal was a massive, risky endeavour. Built from 1817 to 1825 by labourers hand-digging a 4-foot-deep ditch across the only low east-west spot between Georgia and Canada, the Erie Canal was a game changer for young America. Suddenly, the civilised east was connected with the wilds of Michigan and beyond. Goods were moved. Businesstrade flourished. Migration expanded. Imagine the luxury of traveling from Albany to Buffalo in just five days on a comfortable barge instead of two weeks by stagecoach! I thought of those thrilled passengers as I boarded Lil’ Diamond II at the Erie Canal Cruises port in Herkimer. On the mild, overcast day, the boat of about 30 mellow tourists, many Amish, chugged eastward down the placid Mohawk River, which has been part of the Erie Canal system since the early 1900s. We passed under a huge green flood gate and I-90, as birds chirped and the narrator talked. At Jacksonburg, we came to quaint Lock 18. The boat entered. Century-old gates closed behind us. We slowly fell 20 feet as the water drained out of the lock. Then as if by magic, the water pressure pushed the wooden gates in front of us open. The boat slid out. On the way back, Lil’ Diamond passed a sailboat going east, the Cariad — out of Grosse Pointe, Mich. Later, I called its owner, Garrett Myers of Grosse Pointe Woods. Where was he going? “Stonington, Conn.,” said Myers, who is originally from upstate New York. “It was my first time on the Erie Canal. It was a really big adventure.” He and his crew spent 11 days navigating the canal, stopping many times along the way. Among his favourite stops? Clyde, New York, where the mayor came down to meet them, and Spencerport, a pretty town. “And I learned that the Erie Canal is not a canal. Its creeks and rivers and lakes and ruins of old canals. We didn’t get bored till the very end.” Nearly 200 years ago, the Erie Canal was the coolest thing around. Then the railroad came along, and the canal became the transportation version of dial-up Internet — way too slow. When the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959, the canal’s mission was kaput. End of story? Not quite. “In the 1960s and '70s it wasn’t used much, then people started thinking, what about recreation? They started envisioning a future for the canal,” says Jean Mackay, spokeswoman for the Erie Canalways National Heritage Corridor. This century, the Erie Canal and New York’s entire 500-mile canal system was designated a heritage corridor with the aim of tourism. Now, pleasure boats and small craft still use the canal to get from the Great Lakes to the eastern seaboard. The waterways are used by tourists and anglers, cyclists and hikers. Buffalo is even renovating its old canals to make them a centrepiece tourist attraction. “I realised that the beauty of the Canal is more in the experience of the journey,” Myers said. “No breathtaking vistas, seascapes or fields of flowers, yet it was almost always interesting, simply by the changes in the nature of the canal.” Yes, there has been a lot of water under the bridge for the Erie Canal. But you know what? It’s still here. — Detroit Free Press/MCT