We had a couple of winners last week in our Travel Trivia Thursday contest. However, the 1st place award goes to Emilie with her correct answer of Amsterdam. However, remember there are two parts to the question, the first person to answer BOTH parts of the question wins.

The picture last week was of the Heineken brewery in Amsterdam, which has a great tour and free beers at the end!

I’ve got an interesting one for you this week:

Hint: This ancient castle is host to one of the most popular European music festivals.

Comment in with your guesses, and also tell us who you would see play there if you could pick any band from the past or present.

I look forward to hearing your answers,

Safe Travels,

Ted Phelps
Customer Travel Consultant

For those of you that enjoy the thrill of testing your luck at games of chance, the opportunity to play in some of the most luxurious and historic casinos in the world would be a dream come true. Being a fan of the skillful wager myself, I thought I would make a list of the top 7 casinos in the world, both for those who have the opportunity to go, and for those that merely enjoy the idea of sitting down in some of the finest gaming establishments on the planet. To make things more interesting, I figured I would do a countdown over the next week, leading up to what I think is the finest casino in the world. If you’ve been to any of these places, please write in, I would love to hear some first hand stories of your experiences.

7.Sun City Casino, South Africa:

Just two hours outside of Johannesburg, the Sun City Casino is a mind-boggling resort in both its scale and luxuriousness. Set in the heart of South Africa, the resort itself boasts stunning views, easy access to scuba diving and guided tours of the jungle. There’s even a giant wave pool. Located in the most opulent part of the complex is The Palace of the Lost City. Here you will find the immaculate and architecturally stunning casino, with 852 slot machines and 38 tables to play American Roulette, blackjack, stud poker and Punto Banco. Put on your best clothes and stroll through the main floor, removed from the every day world in the heart of the African bush landscape. Playing here is not only incredibly exciting; it’s a truly surreal experience in and of itself.

6.Grand Lisboa, Macau, China:

Here you can test your luck in one of the oldest gambling destinations in the world. Originally the casino tables were licensed to the Portuguese back in 1847. A visit here will make you see why 20 million visitors come to Macau each year to gamble. The area has some of the finest Casinos in the world, but you’ll definitely want to visit the Grand Lisboa. Shaped like a giant yellow Lotus flower, the casino has 200 tables and 300 guest rooms on 40 floors. Macau is the only place in China that has legalized gambling, so let it ride in this modernized Forbidden City. Play your favorite games with people from all over the world in one of human history’s oldest countries, regardless of the outcome; you will never forget your time in Macau.

Next week we’ll continue the countdown, until then,

Safe Travels,

Ted Phelps

Customer Travel Consultant

Once again, nobody was able to guess correctly on last week’s Travel Trivia Thursday. The correct answer was the famous Szechenyi Chain Bridge in Budapest, Hungary. The Chain Bridge was the first permanent bridge across the Danube, and was completed in 1849. The bridge connected the cities of Buda and Pest, after being united by the bridge the two cities became “Budapest.”

This week’s photo is pretty easy, so hopefully one of the readers out there knows the answer.

Hint: The hint for figuring out the location is in the photo (literally).

As usual, comment in with your guesses as to the location of the photo. If you could take any souvenir with you from this place, what would it be?

I’m looking forward to hearing all of your guesses. Have a great rest of the week.

Safe Travels,

Ted Phelps

Customer Travel Consultant

Although the word “tourism” often conjures up the positive notion of visiting foreign places and learning about them, something that people don’t often think about is the impact of humans on the environment that they are visiting. This issue is something that has become increasingly important to address, but doesn’t get a lot of play in the news or in public forums. This needs to change, or many of the world’s most popular environmental destinations will be destroyed, and unavailable to future generations.

In 1992, 182 countries signed Agenda 21, which states that “Tourism should contribute to the conservation, protection and restoration of the Earth’s ecosystems.” While this is a nice thought, more often than not, tourism ends up being the exact opposite of Agenda 21’s definition. The major problems that stem from environmental tourism occur in the form of:

· Disruption of the ecosystem’s cycles

· Pollution

· Collection of environmental objects as souvenirs

· Erosion due to foot traffic

· Illegal hunting

I’ll give you a few examples to bring this into perspective:

· In the New Forest in southern England 25,000 empty bottles are removed each year.

· On Mt. Everest 16,510 kg (36,400 lbs) of trash have been deposited on the mountain between 1952 and 1991. In destinations like Mt. Everest, there is really no easy way for the trash to be removed. Leading a trek to try and haul trash back down the mountainside is just too dangerous.

· On Mt. Kilimanjaro hikers and mountain climbers have caused severe soil erosion because of too much foot traffic.

The destruction of these environments presents a serious challenge to the countries where they are located, and the global community as a whole. For many countries, especially some of the third world nations, tourism is a significant source of revenue. A happy medium has to be found where tourism and protecting the environment can balance out.

Destinations at risk need to be well managed, and the number of people that are allowed to visit needs to be limited to a reasonable number. Furthermore, visitors as a whole need to be more cognizant of how they interact with the environment around them, and also make sure that they are not creating trash. 182 countries have signed the Agenda 21 agreement, but it doesn’t seem to me that many of them are taking their own words to heart. Instead of making Agenda 21 a hollow commitment, it should be seriously addressed in the worldwide forum, and used to create a strategy to realistically combat this problem.

As gas prices have shot up over the past year, many have been forced to cope with the severe impact that fuel prices have on everything we do. The impact on summer travel plans has been significant and far-reaching. Not only will people taking summer road trips have to spend more at the pump, but they will also have to cough up more cash for just about everything they purchase on the road, and at their final destination.

The impact this has had on people is all across the board. In some cases it has had a minimal effect, in other cases families have simply had to cancel their plans altogether. Unfortunately, there is not a whole lot that people are able to do about the situation.

I would be interested to know how everyone else is dealing with this. Are you and your families just staying home, or are you trying to cut costs in an effort to make a summer vacation work? Or, is there just a lot of media hype around how much people are struggling, and you aren’t really feeling the push of gas prices in relation to your plans this summer?

Safe Travels,

Ted Phelps

Customer Travel Consultant

Well, for the first time we had nobody guess correctly on the Travel Trivia Thursday photo. Kudos to Stephanie for giving it a shot with her guess of Lake Van in Turkey. However, the correct answer was a rock formation in Australia called the “3 Sisters.” Scientific analysis of the way that these three rock pillars were formed seems to indicate erosion from a massive flow of water (speculated to be the flood referred to in the Bible). Since I finally succeeded in stumping everyone, I am going to make this week a little bit easier.

Hint: Two stone lions guard each side of this famous bridge.

Comment in with your guesses as to the location, and also, if you could drive any kind of car across this bridge, what would it be, and how fast would you drive?

Good luck everyone!

Ted Phelps

Customer Travel Consultant

Air Rage. It’s a catchy phrase, but not such a nice reality. Sometimes it’s humorous in its outlandishness. Other times it verges on frightening. Let’s explore some of the most recent outbursts of air rage to have hit the news:

Let His Behavior Slide?

Enraged that passengers flying in the economy section were exiting the plane before him, a man in first class pulled the escape hatch and slid down the emergency chute onto the tarmac in Georgetown, Guyana.

Preaching to the [Unruly] Choir

After a flight was delayed for more than 12 hours with no explanation, over 100 passengers were directed to the flight desk where one attendant was there to take care of everyone. After several hours of waiting, employees and passengers began to shout at each other. When police attempted to arrest passengers for getting out of line, a priest attempted to tell the officers that the passengers were the ones that had been mistreated. He was told to “shut up,” or he too would be arrested.

Nicotine Nightmare

A NY woman on board a plane was disorderly, and after being told to calm down she proceeded to light up a cigarette in the middle of the flight. When flight attendants confronted her about it, she shouted obscenities and racial slurs, and then punched a flight attendant in the jaw. The plane had to be re-routed 300 miles to another airport, where the woman was put under arrest.

Frat Boy Flight Fiasco

A 21 year old college student boarded a plane, where he proceeded to consume an entire bottle of vodka that he had smuggled onboard. Incredibly drunk, the boy began to shout at passengers, flight attendants, and do things to himself unsuitable to describe on this blog.

These incidents are by no means isolated. Is it the recycled air? The ever-escalating price of tickets? Or something else altogether? Send in your most atrocious Air Rage stories or any thoughts as to the cause of this phenomenon. I would love to get your input.

Safe, happy, and air rage free travels,

Ted Phelps

Customer Travel Consultant

Last year I accepted a forensic anthropology grant to investigate skeletal remains in the Abruzzi region of Italy. My hope was that I could find physical remnants that would give us a better understanding of ancient burial ceremonies. My wife accompanied me on the two month excavation, hoping to do some traveling around Europe while we were over there. My brother has worked for Auto Europe for a number of years, so we decided to use them for our rental car services.

Our decision to rent a car (we were both a little nervous to try driving in Italy) ended up working out really well. We’ve had a couple of pretty bad renting experiences in the past, and this one went the smoothest by far.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect in terms of navigating, but the road network was for the most part just as good as in the states. We used the Auto-Europe travel planner to plot out our trip so we didn’t have to take 10 different maps. We chose to come in on the A25 Highway, which runs from Rome all the way to the town of Pescara. We definitely made the right choice picking this highway, not only was it efficient, but it also contains these neat elevated sections. The highways switchback their way up steep mountain faces, which is really an incredible driving experience, I must say. The A25 has a nice way of meandering along the sides of the hills, often coming around a bend to an incredible panoramic view of the surrounding countryside. My wife actually got some great pictures out of the car window (there weren’t really any scenic overlook stops, at least none that we noticed).

The historical significance of this region is very evident in the surrounding landscape. It seems that everywhere you look there are remains of castles and other ancient buildings. Not to mention that the natural scenery is quite beautiful as well. You definitely don’t have to be an anthropologist to enjoy everything that this region has to offer.

I wanted to write this letter to thank Auto Europe for all their help with my study. They were able to supply me with a really good discount rate for the car that I used during my stay there, and even helped me out when I ran into some car trouble moving around boxes full of stuff from the dig site. If you are headed to Italy, make sure that you pay a visit to the Abruzzi region of Italy.

Sincerely,

Brett Taylor

Travel Trivia Thursday continues with Week 3. The winner from last week is Dean Uphoff, who correctly guessed The Black Sea as the destination in the picture. Dean opted to travel the sea with Jason and the Argonauts (whom the hint referred to). Jason succeeded in a quest to capture the magic Golden Fleece from a dragon of the Greek war God, Ares.

I’m going to try and make Travel Trivia Thursday even harder this week.

Hint: This rock formation is thought by some to be evidence of the flood referred to in the Noah’s Ark chapters of The Bible.

Hopefully I can stump you all for more than a day this time! Comment in with your guesses as to the possible location in the photo. Also, please tell us, if you had a choice of any time period, past, present, or future to visit this location, what would it be, and why?

Safe Travels,

Ted Phelps

Customer Travel Consultant

I love wine. This is why, when asked the best time to travel to Germany, I often reply, “Mosel Weinfest!” Maybe I’m just a bit thirsty, but I believe that the wine fest is one of the best reasons to travel to Germany. It is my firm belief that celebrations and festivals make excellent travel memories. I find that visiting a place during a celebration brings out the best in locals. They are showing off what they do best, and are doing it not only for tourists, but for each other. The Mosel Weinfest – which takes place from May all the way through October – is no exception. The long date range makes the Mosel Weinfest perfect for busy travelers who have a hard time scheduling their summer travel plans.

Throughout the summer, hundreds of wine festivals are held across the Mosel River Valley in celebration of the region’s wine producing culture. (Hint: don’t miss the most famous of the region’s varietals: the Riesling). But these festivals don’t only focus on wine; they also feature live music, food and locally produced arts and craft sales. I find there’s no better place to buy thoughtful gifts or one-of -a-kind home decorations than in festivals like this. You’re sure to discover something that no one else you know will have.

Another reason I recommend visiting Germany during the Mosel Weinfest is that it is a fun, beautiful, “off the beaten path” destination. Small, romantic towns dot the river banks and friendly faces pour liberal glasses of wine. There are amazing castles (don’t miss the Eltz Castle) and other historic landmarks to visit along the way. Best of all, it is a place where you can create a vacation that is all yours – no official itinerary necessary. Just make sure to pack a handy language translator, as fewer locals speak fluent English in the Mosel Valley than they do in larger metropolitan areas.

No matter where or when you visit Germany, be sure to raise a glass of fine German wine to your lips and heartily declare, in the spirit of the locals, “prost!”

(That’s like “cheers!” …didn’t I say to remember your translator?)

Isabel

The Travel Guide