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Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Angella's Articles

My article on Unusual and Romantic Holiday destinations appeared in the Xmas special edition of Community Times Pinner, a free magazine distributed to 4000 households in the Pinner area plus 400 supermarkets, churches and other major public distribution centres just gone up to 8000 she says.

The editor is Jas Shah, a delightful young woman.

London - My London Travel Tips

Go to trustedplaces.com
to see reviews of restaurants, hotels and other places, written by me and other members of the public.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

World Travel Market 2007 From The Carnivore Restaurant to Romantic Wedding Packages

World Travel Market 2007-11-13
In November the world’s country tourist boards, destinations, airlines, hotels and attractions held a trade show in London at ExCel to publicize their latest stories and sell their features for next year. So what's new for 2008?
http://www.wtmlondon.travel/
http://www.wtmlondon.com/

As well as teaching English I am a travel writer always on the lookout for destinations suitable for Valentine’s Day, weddings and honeymoons and anniversary weekends.

UK
Wales is offering a mid-week Valentine’s package at Lake Vyrnwy, in a country house hotel with panoramic views of Snowdonia. Some bedrooms have lake views or four-poster suites. One has a bath by the window. The hotel also has a spa pool.
http://www.lakevrnwy.com/

Dream Weddings organizes wedding packages in Larnaka, Cyprus.
http://www.palmbeachhotel.com/

Kenya
Kenya offers lots of attractions in and around Nairobi. Narobi's most famous restaurant is The Carnivore where diners can taste meats ranging from giraffe to snake. Also see the Karen Blixen Museum and the Daphne Sheldrick’s elephant orphanage. You can go walking with the Masai warriors who are now running tourist attractions. 'They don't visit the dentist. They visit the toothbrush bush.' Accommodation includes tented camps with nets over beds. Forms of transport include trains and matatu minibuses with music and spectacular painted designs. http://www.magicalkenya.com/

USA
More pampering can take place at Red Door Lifetyle Spa, Elizabeth Arden, at the Hyatt Regency Bonaventure, in Florida, where she gets a bikini wax and he gets a sports manicure.
www:reddoorlifestylespa.com

Romania
In Romania you can travel on the recently restored Royal train, or follow Jewish heritage.
http://www.romantiatourism.com/
email romaniatravel@btconnect.com
or tel:0 207 935 6435.

Israel
Israel, official travel destination of Arsenal football club, is the world’s oldest wine producing region and has 150 wineries. In the Dead Sea you can’t sink and don’t need to apply sunscreen, and you get 8% more oxygen so you breathe easily. Eilat in the south has a restaurant offering underwater views of the coral reef.
thinkisrael.com

South Africa
South Africa’s malaria free Madikwe Game Reserve has a wedding package offering the bride a spa treatment and the groom and friends archery target shooting. The Madikwe Hills Game Lodge has a honeymoon suite where the bathroom is enclosed by boulders.
http://www.madikwehills.com/ http://www.madikwecollection.com/

Italy
In Italy the beautiful bay of Naples, where fishing boats go out at night to attract fish by using lights, inspired opera singer Caruso to write Come back to Sorrento. You can stay in the Caruso Suite where he wrote it, enjoying the view from the terrace, and using the piano at the hotel Excelsior Vittoria (victory).

At Heathrow you’ll see ads for featuring fooball’s FIFA World Player of the year, Fabio Cannavaro, promoting Campania, the area of Naples, Sorrento, Positano, the Isle of Capri, Vesuvius, Pompeii and the Amalfi drive coast.
http://www.turismoregionecampania.it/ www.regione.campania.it

Looking for visit something unusual and uplifting nearer home? On the way to the World Travel Market on the train I met a friend. When I told her about my seeing the Chagall windows in Zurich, Switzerland, she told me you could see Chagall windows in Tudeley church near Tunbridge Wells.

A rich Jewish Sephardi landowner who married a Christian lost his daughter in a drowning accident and later in her memory commissioned the church windows which contain the symbolic ladder to heaven as well as images of water. The windows are beautiful on a sunny day.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to posts.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

SWITZERLAND & CHAGALL


Switzerland and Chagall
Oct 5, 2007
Switzerland has several sites of interest to Jewish travellers and I recently saw some connected with painter Chagall in the capital Zurich. Two of the city's major attractions are the Chagall windows and the art museum.

The Chagall windows are in a church. They are the main attraction in the building. The windows are in a separate chapel at the 'back', the opposite end to the altar. I'm not sure which was is north or whether the church is orientated towards Jerusalem as many religious buildings worldwide are. (Maybe somebody could comment on this.)

The chapel is small high, echoing and peaceful. People enter and stand at the back reverently looking up at the windows which are pencil thin. A few chairs are either side of the doorway and people sit contemplating. It is quite uplifting.

It was a haven of cool on a hot day in September. So calm. And restful.

I recognized some symbols. Jacob's ladder.

I bought a book about the windows, hoping for more enlightenment. What I learned was the interesting history of the commissioning of the windows. The city had run a competition for local people to submit designs but nothing was considered suitable. Then a Chagall exhibition at the nearby art gallery showed his windows in the chapel of the hospital in Israel.


Chagall, already quite old and very busy, was asked if he would consider a commission. It seemed doubtful that he would. However, he visited the site and was so delighted with its atmosphere that he accepted.

Only a proportion of the necessary funds had been raised to pay both the designer Chagall (who had to travel from France I believe) and the makers of the huge windows (plus no doubt transportation and installation and lots of other costs). However, new donors appeared.

Only a few steps across the bridge to the other side of the 'river' from the nearby lake, and a determined march up the cobblestoned alleys of the old city brings you to the skyscrapers of the new city and the art museum which houses Chagall paintings.

Travel The Pleasures & Pitfalls

I've done a lot of travelling. Lived in the USA as an expat from the UK. We used to leave early Friday afternoon and drive away for the weekend.

Also went on press trips. My spouse was a speaker at conferences. So we were given a room in the big hotel at company expense. Sometimes the hotel was full and we were in a nearby hotel. Rush, rush, rush.

Exhausting politics. Get to met VIPs at breakfast. Should you complain about being in second rate hotel or keep quiet?

Lots of the time it is not as glamorous as it sounds. You fly through the night. Lose luggage.
Arrive on five hours sleep. They don't have your booking.

You are given a room overlooking a building site. Instead of the (Sydney) harbour view you are due to spend a week looking at dustbins.

You sit listening to a party next door while you wait for your spouse to come back from a meeting which has taken two hours longer than they said.

You miss the morning's guided tour waiting for room to be changed. Then you lose more time sending off your spouse's clothes to the laundry.

The promised swimming pool is closed for repairs or for winter. The hotel is miles from the city.

At dinner you smile into space for two hours having been told not to interrupt because of some important negotiation. You dare not speak because you must not risk revealing that you diverted to that country not on holiday but because of a job interview wtih another company.

I didn't appreciate how lucky I was until I got a peeved letter complaining, 'You are a fantasist. Nobody lives that life style.'

Really? So who is in all those big hotels at conferences? Actually businessmen whose marriages fall apart because four conferences out of five the wife is left at home wondering whether her husband is sleeping with some other woman.

I'm not complaining. That's where I want to be. Using up frequent flyer miles to visit exotic locations, swim in the hotel pool, pad across the sandy beach to paddle in the surf, back to the bubbles of the Jacuzzi, buffet breakfast, souvenirs on discount from the hotel shop. American hotels are the best - doesn't every shop in America have discount of the day?

Given the choice between cleaning and cooking, shopping for food, shopping for souvenirs and clothes, and sightseeing, guess what I would prefer?

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Edinburgh Festival Travel

I wanted to buy a train ticket today, Friday, to go to the Edinburgh Festival. For the last weekend.
But I can't buy a ticket on line because the system doesn't allow them to sell any more tickets for today.
I can't buy a ticket from the station (which is what I am told to do) because my station does not have a ticket seller around in the evenings.
All I need is a real life ticket seller to be at the station to sell me a ticket and reassure me that somebody is within shouting distance if I have a question or a problem.

Friday, August 3, 2007

France - Lost in Translation

ANGELA'S TRAVELS - travel and language - lost in translationIn France Thanks Means NoThe French no: saying 'thanks' means no thanks.In France we used to be asked if we'd like tea, or coffee. We said, 'Thanks,' which in the UK means 'yes, thanks'.We were asked if we'd like more. We said, 'but you didn't give us any last time.'We were told, 'But last time you said, ''No thanks''.'At this point we reiterated our conversation, word by word, and discovered the cause of the confusion.The French use fewer words. They say, 'Yes, please,' or 'No, thanks,' and shorten those phrases to 'please', meaning yes, and 'thanks' meaning no.

Armchair Traveller's Wish List - Hank Williams Trail Alabama



ARMCHAIR TRAVELLER'S WISH LIST
Alabama, Home of Hank Williams Trail, Helen Keller and More

We drove into Alabama East from New Orleans. We didn't immediately come across any signs to tourist sights. So it is best to set off with planned route to a destination in mind.

Alabama is Northwest of Florida.


Alabama Wish List
Alabama is home of Hank Williams, so it is on my traveller's wish list, high today. It was not high previously, admittedly rather low, but it was on the wish list. Not just because of Hank, but because I have not visited it yet, although I have seen half of America's states and sites connected with singers including several in Nashville, Tennessee.

Yes, I have visited several popular places such as those associated with writers such as Poe and singers such as Presley and Parton. I have bought souvenir postcards and books on writers, songwriters, singers and songwriting.

Hank does not have a lot of rivals. How many immortally famous people, come from Alabama? Alabama is the home of two or three Americans who are watching my blogs - Alabama? I thought of asking them to tell me about Alabama but decided that it would sound rude to admit that my knowledge of Alabama is so sketchy, a bit black and white. The only images I associate with the historical deep south and Alabama were the Civil War, killing black people and marrying girls aged 12 wearing little white dresses.

Alabama As A Side Trip From New Orleans
I confess I should know better and more because I have actually been to Alabama. But although I used to be a travel writer, I never found the Alabama tourist board at the American travel trade Pow Wow, and they never found me. However, I'm always keen to add new places to my list of been there, done that, so when I was in New Orleans we drove into Alabama.

But after several miles of seeing nothing interesting my driver insisted on turning back to the jazzy attractions of New Orleans. To be polite to my Alabama readers, I should first check out Alabama on the Internet and find something warm to say about the tourist attractions of their region.

Where would I find tourist information and houses of famous residents - from the tourist board of course. One click and up on the computer screen is all you and I and anybody else would want to know to set our hearts racing - the allure of Hank Williams Trail.

Hank Williams' Famous Songs
Although I'm a rabid lover of country music, you can tie me to a chair by playing Patsy Cline, it took me a second to recall Hank Williams. What did he sing?

He sang "Hey good lookin' ". What else? "Your Cheating Heart."The Museum in Montgomery, like any good old American museum, has the coloured car - blue -with haunting memories, this being the car he died in.

Highlights and landmarks of the trail include:

1 Mount Olive, Hank Williams' birthplace.

2 Georgiana - Boyhood Home and museum.

3 Montgomery - Life-size statue of Hank holding his guitar opposite (Americans say across from) the Municipal Auditorium (now offices) where his funeral was held for 2,750 mourners, with an estimated 20,000 standing outside in the cold.

4 Oakwood Cemetery nearby has a wreath-laying ceremony on New Year's Day followed by music at the museum.

5 Alabama's Music Hall of Fame is in Tuscumbria.



Traveller's Calendar
New Year's Day - Oakwood Cemetery and Montgomery Museum.

First Saturday in June music celebration.

What else is there to see in Alabama? Any romantic restaurants with mood music and memorabilia or amazing views, or hotels with honeymoon suites?

Helen Keller's Home.

Please tell me.angelalansbury@hotmail.com
If anybody can send me a picture of Alabama, its attractions and Hank Williams, or which is out of copyright or available free to journalists and bloggers promoting something suitable. I'd be glad to receive it.
My websites include: annalondon8.googlepages.com

Alabama Tourism Websites:thehankwilliamsmuseum.comalamhof.org
Labels: ,
https://www.deep-south-usa.com/alabama/fly-drives/hank-williams-trail

Update in October 2021 - now that my son has married, I have a daughter-in-law who comes from Alabama so I have renewed interest in knowing about the place. I had If you ask around you might find you know somebody who knows about Alabama because they worked there, they were born there, their parents came from there, and who has a connection.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Packing Secrets

I shall cover packing lists, guarding against loss, and travelling light.

Packing Lists
Keep a permanent packing list on your computer and printed off taped inside the lid of your suitcase. You use it for packing. Also for re-packing. Saves you leaving behind your bathrobe or night clothes behind the bathroom door.

Leave a duplicate at home in case your luggage goes missing and you need to make a claim.
A photograph of your suitcase on a camera phone is handy to show the porter or lost luggage what you are looking for.

Your luggage label on the outside should not reveal the address of the home you have left empty. You could give the details of your office or family or neighbour and warn them about this system and that your movements and home address should not be revealed to callers.

Have a photocopy of your passport and a record of its number. Also other means of identity in case it is lost.

Luggage
Systems include, shoes on the outside to reinforce suitcase, socks inside shoes to save space and speed dressing, night clothes, swimsuit or outfit needed at destination on top of suitcase.

With a couple travelling together you could split the suitcases, so that if either suitcase goes missing you both have clothes.

Re-packing For Returning Home
When you re-pack, all your original packed items should fit in. The souvenirs can go in another bag. Or buy a second suitcase. Pack a spare bag inside the big one.

Frequent and fast travelling
The quickest way to get out of an airport is to travel light with only hand baggage.
A first class passenger can usually take a suit in a plastic garment carrier and ask for it to be hung up.
If necessary wear your fancy evening outfit to check in. If you are smartly dressed you might get upgraded. Carry your smartest track suit and change into it as soon as you board the flight.
If you are being met as VIP - eg for a wedding, change back into your suit just before arrival.
Otherwise simply carry it off with you. What you carry on is weighed but what you carry off does not matter, so long as you are not switching flights.