travel

By LINDA LANGE
Scripps Howard News Service
Tuesday, May 29, 2007

"Every drop of whiskey you see in this world that has 'Jack Daniel' on it comes from right here in Lynchburg, Tennessee, and nowhere else," declares William Conn.

He's leading a tour at Jack Daniel Distillery, the oldest registered whiskey distillery in the United States.

By DAVID BEAR
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Dissatisfaction with accommodations is the second-most-common travel complaint, after airline problems.

It's happened to every traveler.

By DAVID BEAR
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

What constitutes Five Diamond luxury?

As I raised the flute of champagne to my lips and contemplated the placid view from my hotel-room veranda of the green carpet of golf fairway, it was a natural question to consider.

According to Webster, "luxury" is "A material object, service, etc.

By CHRISTOPHER ELLIOTT
Fine Living Network
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

California's Sonoma Valley is the kind of destination that offers a quiet but civilized getaway. But as Neil Gehani and Tonie Cox discovered, it's more than an ideal place for a romantic escape.

By CRISTINA ROUVALIS
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

The butler has drawn my bath.

How often does a working stiff like myself get to say that?

I repeat that thought to myself as warm bubbles ooze over me and the candles and imported orchids wrap me in a warm glow.

"May I adjust your head pillow, Ms.

By BILL WAGNER
Scripps Howard News Service
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

While Hawaiian green sea turtles (honu) are still a threatened species, they are not that hard to find in Kahalu'u Bay.

Turtles swim and feed in the waters off Kahalu'u Beach and plod along the bottom of the tidal pool of the adjacent Keauhou Beach Resort in Kona on the west side of Hawaii, the Big Island.

The placid reptiles are vegetarians, content to munch on algae all day.

By REGINA McCOMBS
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Please hold for caption check

skedded

REGINA SAYS WE CAN RUN IT ...ART READY....

The Tsarevets fortress looms over the tidy medieval city of Veliko Turnovo like an image from a fairy tale. Its crenellated stone walls and turrets, ideal for damsels in distress, crown a steep hill. But instead of heading up toward that restored beauty, the city's largest tourist attraction, my Bulgarian friends drove down toward the river at its feet. They were intent on a different destination.

I looked longingly at the fortress as we parked in a dirt lot. We walked under an archway into an unimpressive scene. Piles of rubble lay on the ground. A stone church was attractive in the October sunshine with its series of arches and a red-tiled roof, but I had seen others far grander in Bulgaria.

My friends, though, were eager to take a look. I wondered why, until Raissa Yordanova explained that this was the Forty Martyrs church and monastery, a linchpin of Bulgarian identity and history. The complex was built in 1280 and destroyed during centuries of Turkish Ottoman rule. A prophecy proclaimed that Bulgaria would return to prosperity only after the church was restored.

Those piles, I realized, weren't random, but delineated the outlines of the monastery as it once was, with tiny monks' cells and larger worship spaces. It was reopened to the public last summer.

Inside the church, some of the murals of bearded saints glow brightly, while others, unrepaired, are chipped and barely visible. The restoration of the monastery and church is hauntingly beautiful, but unfinished _ much like the former Soviet-bloc country itself.

Last fall was my second visit to Bulgaria and to Veliko Turnovo, a charming old city that was once the capital of Bulgaria and is now one of the country's more popular tourist magnets. One guidebook calls the well-preserved town "the next Prague," which got a laugh from the Bulgarians I was traveling with when I read it aloud.

I understand the skepticism. The year before, when a friend invited me to join her for a media conference, I admit that I had to look up Bulgaria on a map. Last year, my return felt like a chance to spend time with old friends.

We began with a few days in Sofia, the capital, moved on to Rousse in the north, swung back in a loop through the tourist town of Turnovo, as the locals refer to it, and returned to Sofia. Even though just a year had passed, these towns, like the whole country, are in an energizing state of flux.

Bulgaria joined the European Union in January, becoming a more modern nation amid a wealth of history.

The Archeological Museum in Sofia houses hundreds of pre-Christian artifacts from the Thracians and the Greeks. Forts, statues and other remains of the Roman Empire are being dug up and restored _ or plowed under for new development. Ottoman Turks overran the country at the end of the 14th century and held on until the early 1900s. Then came the world wars and Soviet oversight, which ended in 1989.

Despite earlier domination by Turkey and the Soviet Union, the only heated talk I heard about either country concerned the best places to vacation in Turkey. I found it odd that a Balkan country with such a history holds so few grudges. As we drove around the countryside, I asked a Bulgarian friend about it. He shrugged.

"That's past," he said. "We are thinking about the future."

Rousse sits along the Danube River on Bulgaria's border with Romania. The city was once a Roman fortress and later considered the cultural center of the region, partly because of its close ties to Vienna. The Austrian Hapsburg Empire influence is obvious in the architecture, with baroque curlicues and curious stone faces.

Change is obvious, too.

The year before, an ornate building across the street from my hotel had been crumbling and shrouded in scaffolding. This time, it was brilliantly restored, with pink and blue lights showing off the gleaming white facade every evening.

In Sofia, when a Bulgarian journalist gave me a tour, he was dismissive of the massive marble and granite Soviet architecture, some of which struck me as quite impressive.

As we wove our way around cars parked on cobbled sidewalks, he showed me where the entrance to the presidency had been moved away from the central avenue, a symbol of communist power. He told me how the country had rid itself of such symbols, replacing a Lenin statue with one of Saint Sofia, blowing up the mausoleum of a communist leader.

In spite of the effort to shed the recent past, Bulgarians do embrace their ancient past.

My modern hotel in Sofia was built around a circular fourth-century church. Just outside the front entrance sits a weighty, domed 19th-century Bulgarian Orthodox church, and tucked inside the nearest subway underpass is a small 14th-century church, all well _ and fairly newly _ preserved.

As we headed underground at the subway, we passed the saved remains of a Roman building. Often, street musicians were perched on one of its walls. Last year, we saw Japanese tourists posing for pictures with a little girl playing the violin.

Another sign of growth: a developing wine industry. I toured a winery in Rousse housed in an old Turkish armory. The vineyards now are marketing wines beyond their border. Earlier this year, I spotted a Bulgarian wine in a liquor store near my home.

And still another sign: Ugly Soviet-style apartment blocks go on for miles, but many Bulgarians now own their flats and have the means to spruce them up.

One impact of Soviet rule lingers. A poster on the wall of a hip bar in Rousse made clear, in succinct English, what you could do with yourself if you supported the smoking ban the government had imposed. It was confirmation of an observation I'd slowly made: Bulgarians don't much care for rules.

"Rules are more like guidelines," English teacher and translator Angela Spassova told me. During Socialist times, so many bad rules were imposed that people started deciding for themselves whether to follow them.

Oddly enough, what came to define Bulgaria's transition for me was not an ancient monument, or a barroom poster, but the restrooms _ WCs, or water closets, as they call them there.

At a tiny roadside cafe, I went to the back, pushed open the door and looked down. It wasn't a welcome sight: a squat toilet _ a dirty concrete hole in the ground.

On another day, at a wood-paneled restaurant in Rousse that served a platter of meat called "wolf's hunger," I went to the restroom. It was recently remodeled, immaculate, and had a new, porcelain squat toilet. Somehow, I found it charming.

Bulgaria _ still one of the poorest countries in the European Union, only ahead of northern neighbor Romania _ is not for the visitor who likes easy travel. The unfamiliar Cyrillic alphabet makes getting around a challenge. Tobacco smoke is omnipresent, air pollution common. Drivers disobey traffic laws. Most people, including many cabdrivers, don't speak English, making even simple journeys an adventure.

On the other hand, the rewards of visiting can be terrific.

The EU and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization are pouring money into renovating historic sites that are crumbling under years of neglect.

One of them is the fresco-lined Ivanovo rock monastery perched high above flooded plains.

On our way from Rousse to Veliko Turnovo on a rainy October day, we made a detour to the caves, cut into sheer stone cliffs.

We were the only visitors. The view of the autumn leaves from the monastery was stunning as we peered down from the aeries where monks lived their isolated lives of prayer.

The renovation at that point largely consists of covering the cave openings with wood to prevent more damage. Small openings let in enough light to illuminate the labor of monks from centuries ago. Every rock face of the cave was covered with a biblical story or a patron saint.

The artwork was stunning, and I took lots of pictures. As we climbed out via a wooden stairway, I noticed a paper sign that had a camera in a red circle with a slash through it.

I stopped and then moved on, sure that in Bulgaria, I wasn't the first person to break that rule.

(Contact Regina McCombs at regina@startribune.com.)

By REGINA MCCOMBS
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Bulgaria is a bargain for the traveler.

We had appetizers of white and yellow Bulgarian cheese with three kinds of thinly sliced sausages, tomato and cucumber salads, and then a steaming pot of beef, cheese and egg for about $15 _ including wine.

A dry paprika spice mix is served with crusty bread for dipping. The fare reminded me of Greek food with plenty of German sausages thrown in. Portions tend to be large, and restaurants are required by law to list the weight of each course on the menu. Rakia, a traditional brandy, is often drunk with salad. Good espresso is available everywhere. Even the machines in the subway dispense a decent cup for about a quarter.

Try to talk the talk

The Cyrillic alphabet can be the biggest challenge to getting around in Bulgaria. On the larger highways, you'll see signs that use Roman letters under the Cyrillic, but city street signs in Sofia and around the country are in Cyrillic only.

Learning at least a little of the alphabet can help a lot, even if it's just to pick out words like "restaurant" (PECTOPAHT).

Many people in the larger cities speak at least some English, enough to help us find our way. One afternoon in Sofia, I went to the market by myself and easily managed to buy a hair dryer, sujuk (a flat, tasty sausage) and English map of Bulgaria.

No one expects you to know Bulgarian, and if you learn a few words, it is fun to watch how surprised and pleased people are. Many Bulgarians also use "merci" for "thank you" and "ciao" for "goodbye."

I spent three days trying to learn to say "blogodarya" ("thank you"). Angela Spassova, one of the translators, tried to make me feel better about my struggles: "It's the most difficult word in Bulgarian. Children here can't say it correctly until they're 3 or 4 years old."

Use cash

Between our visit last year and the year before, there was one small but important change for tourism: More stores and restaurants accept credit cards. The State Department and guidebooks on the country warn of widespread corruption. That corruption, influenced by organized crime, has made local shopkeepers hesitant to use credit. Still, judicial reforms seem to be slowly having an impact. Plan to use cash at most places, though.

Getting around

Private bus lines run to most tourist areas of the country (busbulgaria.com), and they are probably the most comfortable way to get around and usually are reasonably priced. The state railway system is extensive, but not necessarily fast or clean. I'm told you want to avoid the toilets onboard at all costs. The Web site is www.bdz.bg. Click on EN for an English version.

Lodging

When looking for places to stay, keep in mind that there may be a two-tier pricing system: one for locals, the other for tourists. While technically illegal, several places where we stayed still used it. There is no centralized bed-and-breakfast or hostel bureau. Searching the Web for hotels, resorts or rooms for rent in the individual towns may be your best bet.

Sources

One of the best travel resources is "The Insider's Guide to Sofia and Beyond ..." published by two women who run the Sofia Echo, an English-language newspaper. You'll have to look for it once you get there. We picked up a copy at the hotel gift shop. They publish a limited version on their Web site, www.sofiaecho.com. Look for "Sofia Guide" at the bottom of the screen.

Other useful sites

All Bulgaria Virtual Guide: www.abvg.net/

State Department information on Bulgaria: www.state.gov/p/eur/ci/bu/

Bulgarian Focus: www.bgfocus.com/travel.htm

(Contact Regina McCombs at regina@startribune.com.)

By CHRISTOPHER ELLIOTT
Fine Living Network
Tuesday, May 15, 2007

A weekend of adventure, history and romance --without running up a big bill --may sound like a tall order. But that's exactly what Meg Ryan and Rob Wright found on a recent visit to Williamsburg, Va.

The couple stayed in an intimate inn, experienced the area's famous historical attractions and had enough time to get in a few thrills at a nearby theme park. Their budget: $900.

How did they do it?

Ryan and Wright have busy careers, so their choice of Williamsburg, which is within driving distance of where they live, made a big difference. It kept their transportation costs to a minimum and their hard-earned vacation time to a maximum. They also discovered other ways to get the most from their vacation when time and money are in short supply.

Take lodging, for example. Wright decided to go all out and bought a two-night romance package at the Cedars of Williamsburg Bed and Breakfast (http://www.cedarsofwilliamsburg.com/; 800-296-3591). That proved to be a smart buy because it included not only lodging at the award-winning inn -- it also came with a lot of extras, like dinner for two at the nearby Whitehall Restaurant, fresh-cut flowers, a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates and breakfast in bed. That was a well-calculated splurge. Price: $650.

"B&Bs are ideal because they're extremely romantic," said Ryan. "It's an experience that a regular hotel just can't offer you."

If you're not in the mood for romance -- or can do without the amenities of a special package - don't worry. A B&B in Williamsburg runs between $100 and $200 a night, but a hotel in town can cost about half that.

One of the major attractions in this Colonial-era town is the history -- and there's plenty of it, from buildings to museums. For more information on the city's historical attractions, visit the site of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation at http://www.colonialwilliamsburg.com/ or call 757-229-1000.

Only a 20-minute drive south you'll find another historic gem: the Jamestown Settlement (http://www.historyisfun.org/; 888-593-4682). The couple spent time touring the authentic settlement, where they could watch films, browse artifact-filled galleries and see outdoor living history in this real settlement. Visitors to Jamestown see a remarkable two centuries of the history of the United States, from the founding of America's first permanent English settlement in 1607 to the Revolutionary War victory in 1781. Admission to Jamestown is $12 per person.

Ryan and Wright also hopped aboard a replica of the Susan Constant, the ship that carried Captain Christopher Newport on the 1607 voyage that resulted in the settlement's founding.

"To be able to come here and actually physically touch the same things that passengers touched 400 years ago is pretty cool," said Wright. "You get a feel for exactly how they felt."

But there's more to this area than history. Ryan and Wright headed to Busch Gardens Williamsburg (http://www.4adventure.com/bgw/), a 100-acre amusement park with more than 50 attractions to thrill visitors. At $55 per person, admission to Busch Gardens was a bit of a splurge. Then again, it's not every day that you get to ride Apollo's Chariot, a 70-mile-per-hour roller coaster with an intimidating 200-foot drop.

"That was awesome," said Ryan. "That was definitely the best ride in the park."

How did this couple manage on their $900 budget? The romance package at Cedars of Williamsburg Bed and Breakfast set them back by $650. But remember, it included a lot of extras. That allowed them to budget only $150 for food. The total cost of fun on this romantic adventure weekend was just $134, which brings their total to $934 -- just a few dollars over budget, but well worth it.

Want to get the most from your vacation dollar? Tune in to "What You Get for the Money: Vacations" starting May 19 on the Fine Living Network.

Fine Living Network
Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Christopher Elliott, host of "What You Get for the Money: Vacations," on Fine Living Network, is a journalist and consumer advocate. His articles, columns and essays offer advice for people who want to become more informed travelers.

Most of Elliott's career has been spent as an independent journalist. He has founded numerous Web sites dedicated to consumer advocacy, including Tripso, which he currently edits.

His essays have appeared on nearly every major U.S. newspaper's op-ed page. Elliott is also a contributing editor to SkiSnowboard America & Canada, the leading ski guidebook in North America.

He has been featured as a travel expert on CBS, MSNBC, NPR, CNN and Britain's ITN network. Other radio appearances include public radio's "Marketplace" and "Sound Money," CNET Radio and numerous ABC network affiliates. He also has been quoted as a travel expert in a variety of publications, from BusinessWeek to The Wall Street Journal.

Before he became an independent writer, Elliott worked for Dow Jones & Co., where he frequently wrote about the stock market and initial public offerings for The Wall Street Journal. He also served as a section editor for a travel trade publication.

Elliott is a graduate of the University of California-Irvine, where he majored in humanities. He completed his master of journalism degree at the University of California-Berkeley and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1996.