THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 11, 1994 TAG: 9412100041
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: TRAVEL-WISE
SOURCE: STEPHEN HARRIMAN
LENGTH: Long : 179 lines
THERE'S A NEW, free map of Virginia just out. It's a must if you enjoy traveling the lovely backroads and byways of our state. The cartographers and researchers have done an excellent job.
It's called A Map of Scenic Roads in Virginia, and it offers travel suggestions for more than 2,000 miles of roads that are off the beaten path of interstate highway travel.
For a copy of the map, or other Virginia travel information, call (800) VA-LOVE1. FROM HERE TO THERE
Old Dominion University alumni association will sponsor a 14-day guided Zimbabwe safari, May 12 to 27, guided by Dwight W. Allen. The tour will include visits to Harare, Victoria Falls, Bumi Hills and Masvingo. Cost: $3,995, includes round-trip air, some meals, all intra-Zimbabwe transportation and most admission charges. Info: (804) 683-3097.
Chrysler Museum of Norfolk will sponsor an Alpine Art Treasures tour of Switzerland, May 18 to 29, guided by Jacqueline Tofte. The tour will include visits to Zurich, Winterthur, Lugano, Martigny, Montreaux, Bern and Basel. Cost: $3,363, includes round-trip air, accommodations, some meals and all sight-seeing and excursions. Info: (804) 664-6287.
Mariners Museum of Newport News will sponsor a 13-day cruise to Greece and Turkey aboard the Renaissance. The tour will include Istanbul, Ephesus, Delos, Crete, Santorini, Piraeus and Athens. Cost: $3,528 to $5,778, (depending on choice of ship accommodations), includes round-trip air from Dulles, deluxe hotels in Istanbul and Athens, most shore excursions and meals and round-trip motorcoach from Newport News to Dulles. Info: (804) 591-7795. FROM THERE TO HERE
. . . And beyond. American history, from colonial times to the Civil War, is the focus of a two-week Clipper Cruises voyage up the Intracoastal Waterway from Jacksonville, Fla., to Washington, D.C. The Nantucket Clipper departs April 22 with historian and Baltimore radio news anchor Alan Walden aboard. Stops in Savannah, Ga., Fort Sumter and Charleston in South Carolina, Wilmington and New Bern in North Carolina, Norfolk, Richmond and the James River, the Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore, and Alexandria, Va. Fares start at $3,600, per person, double, with meals, not including airfare. Info: A local travel agent or (800) 325-0010. TRAVEL BARGAINS
Fly to London for $169 (one-way, based on round-trip purchase from New York) through Wednesday, and Dec. 25 through March '95. New Frontiers also offers low airfares this winter from JFK to Paris (starting at $179, depending on date) and Nice ($239). Info (800) 366-6387.
Take the Express - the Holiday Inn Express - in Canada and the U.S., where rooms are being offered at a discounted rate of $39 to $59 through February. Holiday Inn Express, a streamlined version of a full-service hotel, offers free local phone calls, complimentary Breakfast Bar, and kids 19 and under stay free in parents' room. There are 128 participating properties. Info (800) HOLIDAY.
It's getting cheaper to fly to the Bahamas this winter. USAir has reduced its 14-day advance purchase leisure fares between the United States and Nassau by up to 27 percent. The fares are good through April 14.
For what amounts to less than the price of the current airfare to Beijing, you can buy an eight-day package to China from IPI/InterPacific and Northwest Airlines. The tour, including three nights in Beijing and three nights in Shanghai, is $1,219 per person, based on double occupancy. The package rates include round-trip airfare, superior hotels, transfers and air travel within China. For $300 more, you can add three nights in Xian. Info: (212) 953-6010. TRAVEL BITES
Vacationing in Switzerland is already expensive for Americans and, beginning Jan. 1, prices are going even higher. That's when the country's first value-added tax goes into effect, adding 6.5 percent more to the cost of lodgings, car rentals, meals, ski passes, movie tickets and other services.
What the new tax, coupled with a strong Swiss franc against a weak dollar, really means is that ``Americans, who paid $169 for a single room last Christmas, will pay 22 percent more for it on New Year's Day 1995, or about $206,'' calculates James Wade, publisher of the Lausanne-based newsletter, The Switzerland Advisor. (800) 296-9455.
Comparing a batch of items and services, Swiss prices averaged out about 170 percent higher than U.S. prices, the newsletter found. For example: a Big Mac, about $2.10 here, is $4.42 there; a roll of film $5.40 here, $7.67 there; an hour's babysitting $5 here, $11.63 there, and dry cleaning a suit, $8.50 here, $15.50 there. This should make New Yorkers feel much better about prices in the Big Apple. SEEKING GUIDANCE
``Take only photographs, leave only footprints.'' That's the motto of All Adventure Travel, which offers an alternative to the cruise or beach vacation. Guide book (800) 537-4025.
``How to Spa Like a Pro'' is a free guide available through Carefree Resorts, if you're considering a spa but aren't sure how to begin. Call (800) 979-2999. FOR THE DISABLED
Who'd think that travelers who can barely walk could ski? But that's the point of a new book, as the very athletic listings in this unique guide make clear: Disabled folks' main vacation handicap is we able-bodied folks who plain don't think - about things like sit-ski programs, prescription-mask snorkeling, hiking trails with Braille signs and hundreds more rural AND urban-accessible adventures.
The book: Great American Vacations for Travelers with Disabilities, Jillian Magalaner (ed.): New York, Fodor's Travel Publications, 1994; 600 pp. ($18).
Ten of the top U.S. attractions listed as ``entirely accessible'' to travelers in wheelchairs in the book.
1. U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C.; 2. World Showcase (except Norway), Epcot Center, Walt Disney World, Fla.; 3. Sea World, San Diego; 4. Caesars Palace, Las Vegas; 5. Universal Studios Hollywood; 6. Radio City Music Hall, New York; 7. Viewmobile sightseeing trains, Niagara Falls; 8. Pike Place Market, Seattle; 9. Faneuil Hall, Boston; 10. Trail to Yosemite Falls, Calif. BEST OF THE BEST
Each year, readers of Conde Nast Traveler rank hotels, resorts, cities, islands, cruise lines, spas, airlines and car-rental firms. These are the 10 ranked highest overall regardless of category in the 1994 survey:
1. Hotel Imperial, Vienna; 2. Lodge at Koele, Lanai, Hawaii; 3. The Regent, Hong Kong; 4. The Oriental, Bangkok; 5. Ritz-Carlton, Naples, Fla.; 6. Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, Calif.; 7. Four Seasons, Wailea, Maui, Hawaii; 8. Ritz-Carlton, Mauna Lani, Big Island, Hawaii; 9. Shangri-La, Singapore; 10.(tie) Manele Bay, Lanai, Hawaii;10. Ritz-Carlton, Chicago; 10. The Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. WINTER WONDERLANDS
Three- and four-day snowmobiling trips through Yellowstone National Park are available on various dates in December, January and February. Participants ride on wide, groomed paths from lodge to lodge and see different areas of the park including Old Faithful and the site of Buffalo Bill's hunting lodge. Frozen waterfalls, steaming geysers, herds of wild buffalo and other wildlife are spotted along the way. Travelers are outfitted with insulated gloves, snowsuits, helmets and boots and are given a demonstration on handling their high-powered snowmobile. Cost: $745 for three days and $945 for four days per person, including lodging, equipment and meals. Info: American Wilderness Experience, P.O. Box 1486, Boulder, Colo. 80306; (303) 444-2622.
Five-day cross-country ski, snowshoe and dog sled adventures begin Dec. 29 through March 8 at Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area near the Canadian border. Participants stay in a rustic lodge only accessible by ski, snowshoe or sled dogs. The area is famous for 300-foot palisades, frozen waterfalls and plenty of snow.
Wilderness guides give instruction in outdoor activities and equipment is included. Meals are cooked at the lodge. Cost: $545 including lodging, meals, equipment and guides. Transportation from Minneapolis to Camp Menogyn Lodge is available for $60. Not included: air fare to Minnesota. Info: Wilderness Inquiry, 1313 5th St. S.E., Box 84, Minneapolis, Minn. 55414; (800) 728-0719. ROOTS IN AFRICA
Manhattan Tours sponsors its first Black History Month Tour to Dakar, Senegal, Feb. 5-12. Led by fashion designer Jon Haggins, the tour includes a visit to the Island of Goree to see ``The Door of No Return'' in the dungeons where slaves were imprisoned before being shipped to America. Cost is $1,103, per person, double occupancy, including tax and airfare from New York on Air Afrique, four-star hotel accommodations, some meals, some tours and the services of an English-speaking guide. Info: (212) 563-2570. CANADIAN TRAINS
Up north, Rocky Mountaineer Railtours has doubled the number of independent package tours in western Canada for 1995. Tours include a variety of rail/cruise and rail/drive programs, all featuring a two-day, all-daylight rail trip (stay in a hotel overnight, back on the train in the morning). Rates start at $332 per person, double occupancy, for the two-day train trip and at $3,171 for a 12-night Seattle-to-Seattle circle including the rail tour, an Inside Passage cruise and a couple of other stopovers. Info: A local travel agent or (800) 665-7245. MOST STRESSED
Texan Rita Carver earned the dubious honor as the ``Most Stressed Business Traveler,'' citing a pair of mismatched shoes with different heel heights, a three-hour flight that became an 11-hour journey up and down the East Coast, and a limo ride on the sidewalks of New York. Her reward? A week in Little Dix Bay resort in Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands, courtesy of Hotel Crescent Court in Dallas, which conducted the search from 200 applicants in the U.S. and several foreign countries. Oh, yes, her assistant also won a prize. MEMO: Travel-wise is compiled from wire-service reports, news releases, trade
journals, books, magazines and the deepest recesses of the writer's
mind. Send comments and questions to Travel-wise, The
Virginian-Pilot/The Ledger-Star, P.O. Box 449, Norfolk, Va. 23501-0449. by CNB