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Mind Your Manors in Irish Castles
Get your own bit of Downton Abbey with the six-day
“Castles & Abbey of Ireland"
package from
Dooley
Vacations.
WHERE:
Ireland
WHEN:
16 July-22 August
FEATURES:
One night at Dunboyne Castle Hotel in County Meath; two nights at Lough
Eske Castle (seen above) in County Donegal;
two nights at Galway’s Glenlo Abbey; one night at the Fitzpatricks
Castle in Dublin; round-trip economy class airfare to Dublin from New
York, Boston, Chicago or Orlando; standard shift economy (3-door) car
rental for the duration of this trip with unlimited miles; all local
taxes, hotel service charges, government taxes/fees/facility charges on
airfare.
HOW MUCH:
$1399-1495/person (depending on city of departure).
NOTES:
Enjoy culture, scenery, history, and some of that it’s good-to-be-king
pampering. Upgrades in rooms, eats, spa treatment, etc. also are
available
More Info:
call 877-331-9301
Click
here
New Rooms At the Inn By
the Sea
Cape Elizabeth, Maine
... Portland
area boutique hotel Inn by the Sea is debuting 10 new ocean view,
luxury one and two bedroom suites in June 2012. These
freshly-constructed additions look out on the Atlantic Ocean and two
acres of restored habitat, a haven for endangered New England cottontail
bunnies. The suites have decks, gas fireplaces, dining tables, kitchens,
lavish marble-countered bathrooms with oversized tubs, outdoor patios,
flat screen TV's, ipod docking stations, complimentary high speed
Internet, and L'Occitane bath products. Add to the picture a heated
outdoor pool, lawn games, a sandy beach, the SPA at Inn by the Sea,
view-centric Sea Glass restaurant (which has several vegetarian choices)
For more information call
207.799.3134
Or click
here.
Out (and about) in Philadelphia
The Downtown Marriott in Philadelphia, located at 1201 Market St, is a
block away from
Center City’s Washington Square West, a district with many gay-friendly
restaurants, bars and businesses. Thus, the hotel has launched an “Out
in Philadelphia” package.
WHERE:
Downtown Marriott
WHEN:
Thursday through Sunday
Now-22
June
FEATURES:
Deluxe overnight accommodations; a Gay guide to Philadelphia; and
breakfast for two in the hotel restaurant.
HOW
MUCH:
$179 to $229
NOTES:
When booking, be sure to mention the promotonal code (ZJL)
MORE INFO:
call 800-834-6418
or
Click
here
Elephants, History, Fashion & Denver
Denver
Set your calendars for springtime 2012 for a new wave of Denver fun.
For one thing, the Denver Zoo’s new Asian Tropics
Center will open. It will showcase powerful elephants and rhinos, and is
being constructed according to strict environmental and energy
conservation standards—which makes it gray and brown and green all over.
The Zoo declares that the 10-acre, $50 million Asian Tropics
Center will be the largest bull elephant habitat in the world. Tapirs,
small clawed otters, fishing cats and flying foxes also will call
the new complex home.
A mere few yards of water will separate visitors from the animals on
display. For more information, click
here.
Meanwhile History Colorado (née the Colorado
Historical Society) is using that same period to open the History
Colorado Center—a three-story, $110 million multimedia museum. You not
only get to see assorted artifacts and ephemera of Colorado’s past, you
get to experience the state’s history. Gasp and gawk as you are drawn
into such virtual exploits as
mining, ski-jumping and model T Ford motoring. For more
information, click
here.
And if it’s 2012, might someone be mentioning the
Titanic? Which leads us to noted Denverite Margaret Brown (a/k/a “the
Unsinkable Molly Brown”). We are told that the Molly Brown House Museum
is prepping fascinating programs and exhibits to honor the centennial
year. For more information, click
here.
Elephants? Multimedia history? Molly Brown and the
Titanic? Wow! But wait! There’s more. How about
“Yves Saint Laurent — A Retrospective?”
Denver Art Museum contains the only North American runway, so to speak,
for the exhibit marking the legendary designer’s 40-year career.
Photographs, drawings and films plus 200
haute couture garments tell the ST. Laurent story. The exhibit runs from
25 March, 2012-25 July 2012.
For more information, click
here.
Run to the Sun
Monterey Roadside Attraction
Monterey
When you motor along Highway 101, near Monterey, you’ll know you’re in wine
country—especially since you’ll see roadside art salutes
to vintner life and culture. Although the
eight paintings by John Cerney and
Dong Sun Kare are called murals, most are presented as 12-foot
high plywood cutouts. The painting titles are
Jeff Meier, (Winemaker and Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer
of J Lohr Vineyards & Wines)(seen
above); Karl Wente (Wente
Vineyards); Touring Monterey Wine Country a Tribute to Grape Growers;
Toast to Monterey Wine Country; Silhouettes; and In the
Vineyard. For a map showing locations of the murals, click
here.
To see the murals online click
here. And for more
information about Monterey Wine Country, click
here.
Courtesy of Library Hotel
All Dewey-Eyed at The Library Hotel
New York,
Midtown Manhattan! Center of the Universe!
Madison Avenue, spiritual
home of Mad Men;
Grand Central Station; 42nd street; the stone lions outside on
the broad steps of the
massive, marble Beaux-Arts
library.
And there, just one block from the New York Public Library (and not far
from the Morgan Library) is a quiet haven: the
Library Hotel at
299 Madison Avenue. Right now, the Library Hotel is offering 15%
off on prepaid online bookings. (Or should that be on-lion bookings?)
According to
Wikipedia, "Hotel
Denouement from Lemony Snicket's The
Penultimate Peril was
modeled after the Library Hotel."
Traveler must be frank.
This is not your rock ‘n roll hotel. It is calm, clubby and (like its
namesake) a sanctuary. As
soon as you enter this 60-room brick and terra cotta boutique hotel, you
see that the hotel owner (HKHotels) used
the library both as a geographical reference and a fountain of
design.
Say you’re in town to do a bit of business – maybe see your publisher.
Wouldn’t it be great to stay in a
hotel where you’d be proud to have a few appointments and
meetings in a lovely, clubby setting?
Upon check-in, the first
things you see are a back wall which
resembles an elegant card catalog cabinet, books in the lobby,
and complimentary bookmarks waiting for you at the registration desk.
Courtesy of Library Hotel
 The designers—the Stephen B. Jacobs Group and its affiliate Andi
Pepper
Interior Design—named the hotel floors and rooms for Dewey Decimal
System categories. The fourth floor is Language;
eighth is Literature;
ninth is History.
The rooms are sub-categories. Traveler stayed on the
General Knowledge floor (okay, the tenth) in 1000.006, the “New Media”
room. The “.006” means it is a junior suite. (Bear in mind, when you’re
booking, that rooms numbered “.001,”
“.002” and “.005” are “deluxe rooms;” “.003” and .”004” are “petite”
rooms. The official “Love Room,” by the way, is1100.006; but any room
can be set up temporarily as a love room as part of a special package.
For the room menu, click
here.
And, yes, there are books galore, special ones, in every room. Our junior
suite’s own little library is chockablock with books – all related to
New Media, including Clicks and Mortars, What Liberal Media?,
and Fast Forward.
Our
New Media room, like the hotel, is quiet, classy, civilized and
gemutlich, It is done in hushed but
cheerful tones of tan, sand, beige, brown and white, with a
checkerboard patterned carpet in hues of stone and sand. Pale wood
blinds dress five windows, which is amazing for a New York hotel room.
Two windows look all the way up and a bit of the way down Madison
Avenue. You’ve a long marble-topped workspace for fiddling with your
laptop (with a handy outlet above the desktop level), collating reports,
or meditating on your collection of tourist brochures and the snacks you
bought at the excellent
Grand Central Market
(it’s in the station).
 The
usual amenities plus are here:
flat
panel TV;
safe; down blankets;
sofa (which pulls out to make an extra bed):
waffle bathrobes; slippers; hand held hairdryer; iHome mp3 dock/alarm
clock radio; multiple phone lines (and phones) with voice mail are here.
A
DVD player is standard equipment in each room and there’s no charge for
the DVDs you borrow from the hotels DVD (-er-) library based on the
American Film Institute’s list of top 100 films of the 20th Century. But
why would you? Grand Central Station is awesome, and just round the
corner.
Shampoos and goos are Zero% brand (no sulfates, no animal testing, thank
heavens, pure, odorless, but not much fun) from Gilchrist and Soames.
Alas, it is necessary to request a shower cap. (Apparently, the many
Europeans who stay here do not bother with such frivolities.) Sorry,
tourists – no coffee and tea maker in these rooms – but you can
get a cuppa 24/7 at the most amiable
“Reading Room” on the second floor. Lingering over coffee,
newspapers and magazines
is encouraged—
and what divine, unlimited coffee, cappuccinos and espressos they are.
The Reading Room, too, has
its fair share of books, mostly best-sellers and popular page-turners.
It’s got a library vibe, except nobody’s going “shush.”
And you can stare at Madison Avenue through the large windows.
Speaking
of free stuff, also included are:
free WiFi throughout the hotel; free bottles of water on arrival;
free coffee, baked goods and fresh fruits served all day; daily evening
wine and cheese receptions (5:00pm - 8:00pm); the free
“European style”
continental breakfast buffet. The Library Hotel doesn’t have an exercise
room; but it does provide guests with a free pass to a sports club a
short hike away.
Up top on the 14th floor
is the Writer’s Den, a mahogany-paneled lounge with a working
fireplace, a nice bar, and surprise, surprise, a pretty Poetry Garden,
an enclosed rooftop bar with wraparound terrace (see right). At sunset, you can
watch the skyscrapers play their dazzling, secret little games, bouncing
wild red-orange lights off one another. You would never see this from
down below, and it makes you wonder what these buildings get up to when
no one’s looking.
The
Library Hotel is artfully located. It is a only few blocks but many
decibels away from the
frantic West Side Broadway action. It is only a few blocks away from the
United Nations, a leap from the elegant Grand Central Station and
—crucially — it is just one
block from the Airport coach, you know, the big bus that takes you to
whatever airport you need. If you are coming in, exhausted, from a long
flight, you’re just steps from where the airport buses drops you off.
And if you need a 5.30 am bus to take you to the airport for only a few
bucks, Bob’s your uncle: No taxis, no nerves, you’re right here.
Bus
stop, located at 41st Street between Park & Lexington Avenues,
goes to
Newark.
Bus
stop at
125 Park Avenue, between 41st and 42nd Streets,
is for both
JFK
(JFK) and LaGuardia (LGA) Airports.
Living in midtown means never having to say “Taxi!”. Step out the door
and you’ll find the city buses that take you to toney Madison Avenue
boutiques and art galleries, as well as the fabulous museums that
populate Manhattan’s Museum Mile. Or grab the crosstown bus on 42nd
Street and zip over to the Theatre District in Times Square.
For more information about the Library Hotel, click
here.
Library Hotel
299 Madison Avenue
New York NY 10017
212.983.4500
877.793.READ Toll-Free USA
Diving in Micronesia
KOSRAE, Micronesia; Kosrae Village, an eco-lodge
and dive shop on this South Pacific island is offering a
“Divers Delight” package. Here
are the details.
WHERE:
Kosrae Village
WHEN:
Ongoing
FEATURES:
Six-nights, seven-days accommodations; four days diving- (two
tank boat dives and one night boat dive);
and Nitrox (training included if needed).
HOW MUCH:
$936-999 per
person (assuming double occupancy)
NOTES: When diving, you’re
likely to see
hard coral reefs, tropical fish,
turtles, rays, sharks octopi, shrimp, reef fish, rainbow runners,
barracuda, schools of parrotfish and eagle rays. If you’re a newbie
diver, the dive shop seen above) can provide PADI certification.
More Info:
click
here.
A New Book for Travelers
700 Places to Volunteer Before
You Die: A
Traveler's Guide
by Nola Lee Kelsey (pub. Dog's Eye View Media, 2010)
Not
Your Stockbroker's Vacation
A
quirky encyclopedia of ways to do good and feel good, 700 Places . .
.is more than a compendium of lists and global resources;
it helps the hopeful, bewildered traveler find out how to save the
world in ways tailored to his or her own temperament.
Too huge and too valuable to lug around, this delightful, 500-page doorstopper makes a stunning gift. Start with you, then look
around you; 700 Places . . will do more than awake any jaded
traveler or surprise and shift your slug-like coach potato friends into
action. It sets merry fires crackling in brains and souls yearning
for adventure, romance, and yes, the meaning in life. It's pure
logotherapy.
Nora Lee Kelsey's book first addresses the central question: how to
think about what to do and how to do it. How does one choose the right
volunteer project? Should one pay for the privilege
of volunteering? (The answer is often, surprisingly, yes - especially if
you want a shower.)
Opportunities to do one's duty or as the Buddhists have it, 'to
alleviate the suffering of all sentient beings' range from building
villages in Africa to laugh-out-loud but still tender,
small-scale projects, like the $30 a day Sloth Sanctuary in Aviarios,
Costa Rica.
The author writes, “This unique animal rescue center cares for over 100
endangered sloths and the numbers continue to increase. Many are
orphans...Sometimes babies fall from a tree and their mothers are too
simply too afraid to descend to the ground to retrieve them because of
their natural fear of predators, humans, and dogs....Adult sloths arrive
with life-threatening injuries from power lines, encounters with cars,
dogs, even cruel humans. Baby sloths are quite delicate...” Check it out
at www. slothrescue.org
and to
check out the book, go to
Amazon.
Give it to a kid, give it to your recently-retired Gran, give it to
yourself...and to hell with that spa in Davos.
J oin
the Villa People
Italia Think Sicily’s new brochure is ready for your perusing pleasure. The
company, which arranges stays in Sicilian villas (and other venues)
states, “There is always something to
do, whether it be lounging on golden
beaches, hiking in the mountains,
visiting ancient
archaeological sites, skiing on Mount
Etna or
shopping in Palermo’s
fashionable boutiques..”
The 200-page, amply illustrated publication gives you the
lowdown on 70 villas,
11 sea-front apartments and townhouses, and 12 wineries,
retreats and boutique hotels, It
also provides much information about Sicily. To get your copy (or
someone else’s) click
here.
WHEEL LIFE
San Francisco is letting the world know that
it is a great place to go biking. Several spaces are particularly
bike-friendly— Golden Gate Park (off limits to cars on Sundays on John
F. Kennedy Dr.) the
1.5 ,mile long Golden Gate Bridge, Marin Headlands offers great glimpses
of the city, bay and Pacific Ocean, Marina District (with its scenery
art deco buildings and the Presidio), Ocean Beach (Great Highway) and
its three bicycle lanes, and more. For detailed advice, visit the San
Francisco Bicycle Coalition
Web site resources
page.
 
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