A: We certainly didn t. I received an initial call from the movie s producers asking if we had any o

Last week, we solicited your questions for travel pro Arthur Frommer weekend cruise trip . Thanks for the strong response and thoughtful questions. As for Arthur weekend cruise trip s answers, below well, they are IMHO fantastic. Now I see why his books are so popular. He is opinionated, colorful, informed, passionate, and a few dozen other things. We hope you enjoy.
A: Because of the psychological, bureaucratic, and political barriers that we have erected to hinder their travels here. In many of the countries that don t enjoy our visa-waiver program, it takes three to four months simply to receive an appointment to apply for a visa. Once would-be travelers finally get inside one of our consulates, they are questioned about personal characteristics weekend cruise trip having nothing to do with security or terrorism, but rather with the possibility that they will overstay their visas and become illegal immigrants. One tour operator handling incoming travel from Poland recently said that half of the people he wishes to send to the U.S. are turned down for visas because they are young, single, without property or homes that they own, etc., and are thus more likely to stay in the U.S. illegally.
When people do travel here, they are treated like criminals upon arrival at customs, or, at best, received with cold discourtesy. The result of all this is that travel to the U.S. has fallen weekend cruise trip off by close to 20 percent since the year 2000, while most other countries are enjoying a rise of 20 percent or more in their incoming tourism! The decline of our own tourism industry creates a loss of more than $100 billion a year, tens of billions of dollars in tax revenues, and hundreds of thousands of jobs. The administration s handling of the matter weekend cruise trip is a scandal. And, by creating the impression among people of the world that we are an arrogant, cold, and unfriendly people, we make ourselves less safe.
A: It is too early to see impact of the falling dollar on the publishing of guidebooks to euro destinations. As for dealing with a devalued U.S. currency while traveling, we must all begin to travel more modestly, moving at least one category down in our choice of lodgings (like staying in tourist-class hotels rather than first-class hotels), and patronizing modest restaurants.
A: Myanmar (Burma). Its democratically elected president, the Nobel-prize-winning Aung San Suu Kyi , has asked travelers weekend cruise trip to stay away. I will not support the thuggish military rulers of that nation with my tourist expenditures. In like manner, I refused weekend cruise trip to visit the Union of South Africa (or even to mention it in my writings) during the time when apartheid reigned and Nelson weekend cruise trip Mandela was in prison.
A: They fail to prepare themselves by delving deeply into the history and culture of the destination in advance of arriving. They wander as utter novices, unable to understand the sights and institutions brought to their attention. And all the lectured commentaries of their tour guide simply add to the confusion. Advance reading a few nights at the library is the key to a successful trip.
Q: In theory, the places (restaurants, clubs, scenic locations, etc.) recommended in travel guides offer the best the country and its people have to offer, within the traveler s budget. How can these places balance authenticity with the increase of tourists who visit based on the book s recommendation? How often do you or your staff neglect to mention great places just because you don t want to see them spoiled by foreign visitors?
A: If we were to limit our recommendations to a handful, or commit the mistake (as I once did in an early edition of my first guidebook) of saying that a particular establishment was the single best value in all of Venice, then the consequences you ve imagined would occur, and a flood of tourists would reduce the authenticity of the choice. But a good guidebook recommends thirty or forty widely scattered restaurants, and just as many hotels, and thus spreads its readers among so many places weekend cruise trip that authenticity isn t damaged. weekend cruise trip As for holding back a recommendation for our own use, we joke about that happening, but it doesn t.
A: I wrote my first guidebook while serving in the U.S. Army overseas, and had no plan to become a travel writer. I wrote it because of the joy I had experienced in low-cost travel, and my conviction that this was a superior form of vacationing. When I finally returned home from my army service, I joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton Garrison (I am a graduate of the Yale Law School) and practiced weekend cruise trip law (litigation, courtroom fights) weekend cruise trip for six years until the books I had published on the side required weekend cruise trip full-time weekend cruise trip attention.
A: The sameness of all people, all over the world. From the mother of a Masai family in Kenya to a young couple in Japan to an Egyptian teacher living on a houseboat, all people have the same basic concerns and deal with the same human problems that we do.
Q: What are your thoughts on Xavier De Maistre s Voyage Autour de ma Chambre , in which the French writer urged that before weekend cruise trip we jet off to see the world, we should apply the same curiosity and attentiveness to our immediate weekend cruise trip surroundings? Do you think our obsession with travel blinds us to local pleasures?
A: I wish I could return to the Venice I first saw in the mid-1950s, where the Piazza San Marco was largely empty except for pigeons, where entrance to every museum was immediate and without lines, where Venetians weekend cruise trip sat outside their homes and wished you Buon Giorno, and where restaurants frequented mainly by Venetians were broadly available. That city was the loveliest I had ever seen.
Q: How do you select weekend cruise trip your travel writers? What are the things that make a person good at identifying and describing good travel experiences? In your training, how do you balance the need for consistency with the creativity and innovation of your writers?
A: We have made a point in recent years (in most instances) of choosing trained travel journalists weekend cruise trip who are themselves weekend cruise trip residents of the city, island or nation that is the subject of our guides. weekend cruise trip We feel their judgments will be superior to those of a writer, however skilled, who simply parachutes in to a location for the purpose of preparing a guide. We do not attempt to limit their creativity or innovation, and we pride ourselves on the individual personality that animates each guide.
Q: My wife and I would like to take a trip once a year to somewhere outside the U.S., but we are not wealthy. What travel tips do you have that might help decrease costs, etc., so that we could accomplish this goal?
A: Realize first that the less you spend, the more you ll enjoy. Embark weekend cruise trip on a conscious effort to use low-cost facilities rooms with private families, apartments that you exchange with a foreign couple, hostels now accepting people of all ages, greeters programs, local restaurants, public transportation and you will, in my experience, learn that your travels have taken on depth and meaning and are far more rewarding than the more expensive weekend cruise trip approach taken by others.
weekend cruise trip A: Mainly through recommendations from friends, weekend cruise trip relatives or acquaintances who have traveled to the destination and used the services of a capable guide. The person who devotes time to pestering friends and relatives for information before departing on a trip frequently obtains weekend cruise trip the names of such contacts. On a recent trip to Stockholm, my wife and I canvassed our friends to see if anyone knew someone in that city, and several did. We phoned weekend cruise trip these Swedish contacts, invited them to dinner with us, and spent several exciting evenings learning from them about the country and the city. One Swedish couple, sensing weekend cruise trip the questions I would put to them, arrived at the restaurant with a stack of economic statistics that they had printed up from the Internet!
A: The running of the bulls in Pamplona is of no interest weekend cruise trip to me (it s part of a barbaric, drunken ritual), and the only reason to visit Pamplona at all is during a trek to Santiago de Compostela (it s at the very start of the Way of St. James ). But Carnival in Rio is something else, and Rio itself can be visited with great pleasure at any time of the year.
A: Why not visit the exact opposite of the mid-Atlantic and New England, and make a winter trip to Paris ( how re you gonna keep em down on the farm ). Go-Today.com will send you there during the winter for just $599. Paris is an exhilarating weekend cruise trip experience, on the frontier of art and cuisine, fashion and literature, theater and opera an endlessly fascinating tribute weekend cruise trip to human achievement.
Q: I am currently deciding where to go on my next trip. I ve narrowed it down to four destinations (New Zealand, Hong Kong, Spain, or Argentina) and I was about to start throwing darts at the map until this opportunity presented itself. weekend cruise trip Any thoughts on the matter?
A: While each of the destinations you name is a fine place to visit, none of them would be on my own list of indispensables. What is indispensable, exactly? Every American should at some point in their lives go to China, weekend cruise trip participate in an African safari, and visit ancient Egypt.
A: We certainly didn t. I received an initial call from the movie s producers asking if we had any objection to our name being used, and I was also offered the chance to play myself in the film. When I learned that doing so would require hanging around Rome for as many as two weeks in order to utter my two lines of dialogue, I turned weekend cruise trip down the offer, weekend cruise trip and a noted British actor was chosen to play me. He was much better looking.