Legion of Angels News Archive

(Tribune Media Services) – Here’s your reward for taking a staycation this summer.

The price of a real vacation is now a bargain. A steal, actually.

Why? A lot of Americans skipped their summer getaway, forcing nervous rental companies, hotels and restaurants to slash prices. We had our reasons for staying home, of course. Record high gas prices, a soft economy and air travel woes made us miss the expensive out-of-town vacation.

So between now and the holidays — the traditional off-season for a lot of vacation hotspots — here’s your chance to make up for lost time. The deals will be good. Really good.

Call it the staycation effect.

Consider that Florida is in a deep recession, weighed down by declining real estate values and rising unemployment. In Orlando, hotel rates are expected to go into freefall, as properties get desperate to fill rooms.

Ditto for Las Vegas, which is seeing its lowest hotel rates in five years, according to a recent survey. Among the bargains: $60 a night at the Monte Carlo, $103 a night at Loews Lake Las Vegas and $199 a night at the Wynn.

But there are other reasons why you should book a vacation now, in the waning days of summer. Reasons that go beyond the bargain you’ll probably find.

It’s a “magical” time of year

When it comes to tourism, Orlando turns into a ghost town in September, which may be why many of the city’s top restaurants throw a fire sale. It’s called Orlando Magical Dining Month. The event is billed as a showcase of the globally influenced plates being served in Orlando’s “celebrity-chef studded eateries, one-of-a kind resort kitchens and award-winning neighborhood establishments.”

Participating restaurants feature three-course, prix fixe dinners for $19 or $29 all month long. These aren’t B-list places, either. Among the participating restaurants are Le Coq Au Vin and Emeril’s.

Entire islands are on sale

Few destinations have been as hard-hit by the staycation trend as Hawaii. The overall number of visitors fell about 5 percent during the first half of the year, which prompted the Hawaii Convention & Visitors Bureau to pump about $3 million into a campaign to bring people back to the islands.

The result is a comprehensive initiative offering deeply discounted airfare, free hotel room nights, free meals, free rental cars and free food and beverage dining credits. You’ll save “at least” $200 on your next trip to Hawaii, it promises. This kind of sweeping discount on meals, cars and other activities comes along once in a generation. It’s enough to make me want to say Aloha to the Aloha State.

Some vacations are free

Ever wanted to visit Lancaster County, Pennsylvania? The Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau is giving away two nights at the Lancaster Arts Hotel this fall. Lancaster County is one of my favorite places to visit during the fall. It’s quiet and the fall foliage is spectacular.

If you’re looking for something faster-paced, Las Vegas is offering a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to experience Sin City with three chances to win everything from a tattoo at Vince Neil Ink to a Zero-Gravity plane ride. If you’re reading this before the end of September, there’s still time to enter the contest. If not, ask yourself: if more people take staycations, imagine what next year’s giveaway will look like.

Good things come in packages

Not only are the package deals offered by the likes of online travel agencies like Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity getting more and more affordable, hotels are getting into the act, too.

For example, at the Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles, Illinois, guests can take advantage of one of its deeply discounted fall packages. Among its deals are a fall bonfire special, which includes a campfire sing-a-long with a direct descendent of Buffalo Bill or a horse-drawn hay wagon ride around the resort, plus a $25 breakfast voucher and, of course, accommodations. It’s available from September 5 to November 23, and rates start at $119 a night. (The cheapest rate I could find on its site during August is $139.)

Yes, even Europe is discounted

Worried about the sinking dollar? Just wait a few weeks for your European vacation, and you could save big bucks. I’ve been giving this advice for years, but this year the deals are particularly attractive. Auto Europe’s combination airfare/car rental rates, valid on departures from September 1 through October 31, include roundtrip airfare (along with the fuel surcharge) and three days of rental. Boston to Venice, Italy, is $797. With the money you save, you could get a room at the San Clemente Palace Hotel & Resort.

But my favorite reason for planning a fall getaway goes beyond these sales and specials. It has to do with the fact that almost no one else vacations in September, October and November.

One of my most memorable off-season vacations happened last year at the Marco Island Marriott Beach Resort, Golf Club & Spa in Marco Island, Florida. The summer crowds had vanished, leaving a near-empty beach and a staff eager to lavish personal attention on the guests who remained. We never had to wait for a table at Quinn’s on the Beach, a restaurant that served tasty tropical drinks and Caribbean-themed appetizers. And the highlight of our visit was a WaveRunner tour through the nearby mangrove forests, looking for dolphin and manatees.

I can’t imagine vacationing at any other time of the year, not just because of the reasonable prices, but because it’s the only reasonable time of year to travel.

Source — CNN

WASHINGTON - The political vision of a summer gas tax holiday died a quick death in Congress, losing to a view that federal excise taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel will have to go up if they go anywhere.

Despite calls from the presidential campaign trail for a Memorial Day-to-Labor Day tax freeze, lawmakers quickly concluded - with a prod from the construction industry - that having $9 billion less to spend on highways could create a pre-election specter of thousands of lost jobs.

Now, lawmakers quietly are talking about raising fuel taxes by a dime from the current 18.4 cents a gallon on gasoline and 24.3 cents on diesel fuel.

With gas prices setting records daily, Republican presidential hopeful John McCain and former Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton called for a 90-day suspension of the federal fuel tax to give drivers a little relief at the pump. The fuel taxes go into the Highway Trust Fund, which is used for road construction and repair and mass transit.

Clinton suggested making up for the loss by imposing a windfall profit tax on oil companies, an idea that Republicans rejected. McCain said the money could come out of the general Treasury fund, in effect adding to the federal deficit, and is still getting mileage from the idea.

“Some economists don’t think much of my gas tax holiday,” he said in a speech this month. “But the American people like it, and so do small business owners.”

Barack Obama, the likely Democratic nominee, opposed the idea from the beginning and the White House gave it a cold shoulder. Depriving the 52-year-old Highway Trust Fund of $9 billion at a time when it is heading into the red doomed the notion of a gas tax holiday in Congress.

The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. James Oberstar, and the chairman of the highway subcommittee, Rep. Peter DeFazio, presented fellow lawmakers with a list of how many jobs and how much money each state would lose. It ranged from $30 million and 1,000 jobs in Vermont to $664 million and 23,000 jobs in California.

“Because the trust fund is already looking at a looming shortfall, it would have moved project cancellations into the construction season,” DeFazio, D-Ore., said in an interview. He said it was “highly unlikely” that oil companies would have passed savings along to consumers.

Just three years ago, that trust fund enjoyed a surplus of $10 billion. Even without a tax freeze, the fund is projected to finish 2009 with a deficit of $3 billion. That that could grow as Americans drive less and buy less gas because of higher pump prices.

The consequence is that only about $27 billion in federal money will be available next year to states and local governments for new infrastructure investment even though the current highway act calls for spending $41 billion a year. For many, the solution is to raise rather than suspend or cut federal fuel taxes, which haven’t changed since 1993.

The Transportation Construction Coalition, a group of industry companies and unions, said that if Congress does not do something about the shortfall, states will lose about one-third of their road and bridge money in the budget year starting Oct. 1. That would put 485,000 more jobs at risk.

That message carried the day this summer. But now Congress has the bigger task of dealing with the short-term deficit crisis in the fund and coming up with a new spending plan, including revisiting the gas tax issue, when the current six-year, $286 billion highway-transit act expires in September 2009.

Senate Democrats in May tried to add $5 billion to an aviation overhaul bill to replenish the highway trust fund next year; Republicans objected. Democrats tried again in June, but this time for $8 billion; Republicans objected to that, too.

Congress should first reduce spending on pet projects, known as earmarks, argued Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. “I’m not going to let the Senate spend all this money when nobody is looking, especially when we refuse to stop wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on earmarks.”

Oberstar, D-Minn., said his committee is working on the next long-term highway bill. He estimated it will take between $450 billion and $500 billion over six years to address safety and congestion issues with highways, bridges and transit systems.

“We’ll put all things on the table,” Oberstar said, but the gas tax “is the cornerstone. Nothing else will work without the underpinning of the higher user fee gas tax.”

At the very least, the gas tax should be indexed to construction cost inflation, DeFazio said.

The nonpartisan National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission concluded in a report this year that the U.S. needs to spend $225 billion annually over the next 50 years to create a highway and transit system capable of sustaining strong economic growth. Current spending, at federal, state and local levels, is about $90 billion a year.

Among other revenue-raising possibilities, the commission recommended gradually increasing the current federal fuel taxes to 40 cents a gallon.

The American Road & Transportation Builders Association is calling for a 10-cent-a-gallon raise and indexing the tax to inflation. With construction costs soaring because of competition for building materials from China and other developing nations, the tax rate would have to be about 29 cents a gallon to achieve the same purchasing power as the 18.4-cent rate imposed in 1993, the association says.

Including state and local levies, people in the U.S. pay about 47 cents on average in taxes for a gallon of gasoline. Fuel in many European countries costs $8 to $9 a gallon, with half or more of that going to taxes.

Other ideas that will be on the table when lawmakers write a bill next year including more toll roads and public-private partnerships, congestion pricing and user fees where drivers pay a tax based on how many miles they drive.

Source — Forbes

(CNN) – Like many people, I have a “bucket list.” It’s something along the lines of the “top-10-things-to-see-or-do-before-you-die” lists published on travel Web sites.

“Set foot on all seven continents” has always been on my list. This past February, after nearly six months of planning, I was fortunate to be able to knock off two — the most amazing being Antarctica, the other South America.

I chose an optimal time to go — summer in the Southern Hemisphere — and found a tour company online that was able to accommodate my needs. It is a costly adventure, especially when traveling solo, but iExplore put together a package for me that was perfect.

Plan on spending at least $3,500 (USD) just for the tour itself. Airfare is another cost, depending on where you’re coming from and where you choose to connect from, as there are no direct international flights into Ushuaia, the jumping-off point in Argentina. I connected through Buenos Aires. There are certainly other companies to choose from, and I shopped around until I found one that suited my “solo-traveler” needs.

iExplore not only got me to the continent, but allowed me the opportunity to set foot on it. Many tour companies will put you on a cruise ship that sails through the area, weaving between islands and giving views of the shore. But to actually set foot on the continent is a rare and awe-inspiring treat.

One of the tour leaders on our boat estimated that the total number of people who have actually set foot on this land mass — tourists, scientists and explorers — would fill a very large football stadium. Think University of Michigan or Penn State University, 107,501 and 107,282 respectively. This is because tourism to Antarctica didn’t really exist until roughly 15 years ago and has only recently taken off in popularity.

There are also rules and restrictions for visiting set up by the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO). Take nothing away, leave nothing behind. Boots are scrubbed and disinfected upon each return trip to the boat to prevent contamination between stops.

My plan was simple. Arrive in Ushuaia, Argentina, and get on the M/V Orlova, an ice-strengthened Russian ship, to spend 10 days exploring Antarctica. After two days crossing the Drake Passage, suffering the ups and downs of the sea and learning to walk at a 45-degree angle, about 110 other passengers from around the globe and I got first sight of the peninsula.

Pick every word out of Roget’s Thesaurus to elaborate on “beauty” and “awe-inspiring,” and each of them ALMOST covers it. Over the course of the first four days at the continent, we ventured out in Zodiac boats twice daily and set foot on Aitchoo Island, visited research stations, passed the remains of old whaling stations and came face to face with Minke whales and elephant seals. I had the pleasure of curious juvenile penguins coming up to me to see who I was and what the strings on my jacket tasted like.

We saw paradise in a frozen form. No traffic noise, no pollution, no road rage (though some penguins fought over stones) — just clear skies, fresh air and undisturbed beauty for miles. Upon each excursion’s return to the Orlova, my newfound friends and I could only look at one another and grin. Each time saying, “That was amazing, there’s no way that they can top it at the next stop” — only to be proved wrong.

Months later, I still wish I could be there sitting with the penguins, taking it all in, smile firmly frozen in place.

Source — CNN

Unless the International Olympic Committee acts fast and makes heaving overweight carry-on bags into overhead airplane bins an official Olympic sport, my chances of visiting Beijing this summer are nil.

But if committee members do finally come to their senses, I’m ready to go. I’ve been practicing my technique on plane trips with multiple connections. And I’ve been prepping for free time in Beijing by gathering advice on how to be a well-mannered traveler in China.

Here’s what I found out:

A new meaning for spit and polish
With 50,000 visitors expected to arrive in Beijing for the 2008 Summer Games in just a few weeks, it’s no surprise that government officials are cleaning up the city and ordering citizens to be on their best behavior. By now, folks should know what that means. After all, as NBC news correspondent Mark Mullen noted in his World Blog, this past February the People’s Republic introduced a “public civility campaign,” complete with slogans and banners, aimed at getting citizens to stop spitting so much, to stop cutting in line and to stop doing other things that Mullen writes, “would not be good manners to describe.”

Like what?
Most Olympic visitors will probably not want to know. Or need to. “Beijing is an international tourist destination with modern hotels, restaurants, bars/clubs and transportation, so it’s not as scary a destination as many may make it out to be,” says John Campbell, a writer and music promoter who has lived in China for eight years. “In the Olympic areas, chances are that many visitors may not actually run into parts of the city untouched by the short-term cleanup” anyway.

That said, Campbell advises visitors to come prepared for “smelly and dirty bathrooms, restaurants that aren’t spic and span, locals who may stare at foreigners, point at foreigners, and in some cases, request to touch a curly head of hair or a beard and don’t see anything wrong with doing so; and fellow diners who talk loudly, drink loudly, slurp their soup and chew with their mouths open …”

Frequent business traveler Vickie Nauman agrees. “Remember that China has been closed off from the rest of the world, so many common practices and customs make sense in China, but they may not make sense to you — at all.”

Her advice: “Have a sense of humor about these differences,” especially when it comes to spitting and toilets. “Ladies may need to squat because toilets are often in the ground. And those toilets may smell unlike anything you’ve experienced before. Bring small packs of tissues, because there’s rarely toilet paper in the bathrooms.”

When it comes to spitting, says Nauman, “People have loud productive coughs and subsequent spitting. It is common to see men, women and even kids hocking one in the streets. Try to ignore it or it will aggravate you at every step.”

Vicky Collins, a freelance television producer on assignment in Beijing for the Olympics, says, “It is true that there’s a lot of spitting going on. Today I applauded a man on the street who was practicing some martial arts with a type of spear. He looked extremely pleased with my praise, gave me thumbs up then hawked a loogie.”

Stay safe: Watch out for topics and taxis
Bonnie Girard has lived in China for at least 21 years and is the President of China Channel Limited. She advises visitors to nix certain topics of conversation. “You risk putting your Chinese colleagues, friends, hosts or acquaintances into a sticky — if not risky — position if you try to force conversations about controversial political or religious issues. Don’t jeopardize someone else’s freedom in the exercise of one’s own.”

Girard also encourages travelers to avoid sticky situations on the road: “China has one of the worst records in the world for fatalities per number of vehicles on the road. Your life is worth more than the embarrassment or the ‘face’ of a bad driver if you happen to be in a car with one. So if you are in a car with a bad driver, say that you have a heart problem or are sick and you need them to slow down and drive sanely. If language is an issue, use sign language. Ham it up.”

Bruce McIndoe, President of iJET Intelligent Risk Systems, says things aren’t any safer or easier for pedestrians. “Getting across the street is like the game ‘Frogger.’ When you go across the street, you’re advancing lane by lane and trying to zigzag your way safely through traffic.” Accidents are so common that McIndoe urges travelers to bring along their own first aid kit and to check if their medical insurance offers coverage while in China. If it doesn’t, he suggests buying a medical insurance policy for travelers. “People need to be psychologically prepared,” says MCindoe. “This is a rough and tumble, grimy environment. It’s not like London or Washington, D.C. Beijing is congested, hot, and dirty. You have to adapt to that and live with that — and come prepared.”

Eat, slurp, and be messy
With more than 30,000 restaurants in the metropolitan Beijing area, visitors will find plenty of places to eat. But Erik Wolf of the International Culinary Tourism Association knows some Western visitors may be alarmed by sanitary conditions they encounter. “Restaurants in Western-style hotels won’t be a problem, but in more authentic restaurants you might see dirty floors and tables.”

And once at the table, says Wolf, don’t be surprised to see and hear people slurping their soup. “The Chinese people kind of lay their heads in the soup bowl. They bring the soup bowl up to their face and bring their heads to the soup bowl. It looked strange to me before someone explained to me what was going on, but it’s to keep soup from splashing or splattering on their shirt.”

Wolf also says visitors should be ready to see bits of food being spit out at the table. “If I had a piece of meat in my mouth that was too grisly or a piece of vegetable that was too tough to eat, I might cover my mouth and remove it. In China, it gets spit right out and goes right on the table.”

And, Wolfe points out, “In China, they don’t waste food. So every part of an animal gets used. It’s a great way to do it, but that means people may end up eating some surprising things.”

Vicky Collins can attest to that. “In restaurants, waiters and waitresses arrive immediately and hover over you until you order. This can be disconcerting to westerners trying to slog their way through a menu they can’t read that’s full of unfamiliar foods. My friend and I ended up ordering donkey the other day — not our intention at all.”

Faced with a situation like that, Wolf says, “You just need to go with an open mind, and realize people eat differently and do things differently. If you think something looks yucky, just don’t eat it.”

Just go with the flow
Exactly, says Jon Campbell of YGTwo Productions. While bathrooms and restaurants may seem dirty and the lines in Beijing may “resemble a swarm of bees rather than a march of ants, this is not to say that Beijing is a rude disgusting mess of humanity.” It’s just different. “And to navigate through this difference requires taking a deep breath, and remembering that.”

Well, maybe not so different. Collins reports that at a live opera performance in Beijing she heard someone talking on their cell phone. As we all know, that happens here in America all the time.

Do you have a question about what is proper etiquette when on the road? Do you have a story about a particularly obnoxious traveler?

Source — MSNBC