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Icelandic-owned Sterling announced today that they are filing for bankruptcy and ceasing all operations. This is the latest development in a bad year for Europe's low-cost airlines.
Check out the airline's statement. Note their depressing refusal to reimburse passengers for booked flights that will now never take off.
I'm in Cincinnati this week staying with my friends Emily and Andrew while I engage in some work that has nothing at all to do with travel. Since I make a concerted effort to keep politics out of this blog I won't say more, but suffice it to say I'm doing a bit of volunteering.
Tonight we dined on delicious fried fish picked up at Alabama Fish Bar, a gem of a take-out restaurant in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine historic district. The menu is pleasingly limited, restricted to cod ($7.99), ocean perch ($7.99), and whiting ($6.99). We sampled one of each. The fish pieces are fried but not heavy, and the fish tasted quite fresh, served on a bed of white bread and fries. Tartar sauce and a little parcel of onions and peppers were thrown into our bags for good measure.
In sum: delicious. It might not be advisable to eat fried fish every day, but it certainly hits the spot when it's done this well.
Alabama Fish Bar is located at 1601 Race Street. Telephone is 513-241-2255.
Today I received a call from a bookseller at New York's excellent McNally Jackson Bookstore with the exciting message that the third edition of the Rough Guide to the Caribbean was finally in stock. I'd been waiting for this call for weeks. I happened to be nearby and walked over to pick up my reserved copy.
I spent most of February in the Caribbean updating two chapters of the guide: the Montserrat chapter and the Guadeloupe and Martinique sections of the French West Indies chapter. It's exciting to be able to hold the book, and to see some of my new discoveries in print.
While I was on the subway reading through the guide, I noticed that half the car had been turned over to the current Aruba tourism campaign, which centers around the personality-driven tagline "90,000 Friends You Haven't Met Yet." The campaign features photographs of a number of Arubans. I looked up only to see an eye-level photo of Eddy Croes, an Aruban nature tour guide. Two years ago, I had the great experience of joining Eddy on an informative Aruba Nature Sensitive Hikers tour of the island.
Back in March I predicted that Colombia would garner more attention among travel industry forecasters over the following months. The November issue of Budget Travel, which arrived today in my mailbox, would seem to support my hunch. The issue sports a gorgeous feature on Cartagena by Liz Ozaist that makes a great case for a visit. The article's blurb on the magazine cover even touts Cartagena as "The Next Buenos Aires!"
Nonetheless, I'm disappointed to note that the cheapest hotel profiled in the article costs $165 per night, with two other hotels listed in the article running $189 and $279 per night. These rates are annoyingly dear for inclusion in a feature in a budget travel magazine. I wondered if Cartagena might be a place with particularly expensive hotels and immediately got down to some cursory research. It would appear, in fact, that Cartagena is not such a place. With minimal research effort I came across a beautiful guesthouse that charges $81 for a double room from mid-December through mid-January and $66 at all other times.
I haven't visited this guesthouse. It might be far less charming than it looks. But times are tough, and people throughout the US are all very likely cancelling their vacations right now because they're not sure they can afford them. The last thing that budget travelers need to see in a magazine feature ostensibly tailored to a pennypinching demographic is hotel recommendations that begin at twice the nightly rate of charming local accommodation alternatives.
None of this is to suggest that hotel splurges are not worth writing about in budget travel magazines. Indeed, a well-placed hotel splurge can make an otherwise shoestring vacation extra special. But splurges shouldn't form the backbone of a budget travel feature. In my book, $165 isn't cheap—and $279 certainly ain't budget.
JetBlue's revamped Terminal Five at JFK opened today. Matt Phillips of the Wall Street Journal takes a look at the terminal here. Not to be outdone, JetBlue is live-blogging up a storm. Anyone who lives for the aesthetics of travel, for its very form as well as its content, can't help but be excited by the reopening of such an iconic terminal. Here's hoping that its unveiling will have a psychological effect on JetBlue and even facilitate its return to high-functioning efficiency and, well, greatness.
Last night I returned from Buffalo, where I spent the last week and a half. I didn't have many opportunities to run around rummaging for local culture, but I did discover Buffalo's traditional sponge candy.
Sponge candy is a chunk of caramelized sugar with a dry sponge consistency, covered in milk chocolate. See this site for a description of the candy. Sponge candy is similar to Australia's Violet Crumble candy bar and the Canadian Crunchie candy bar, though all the versions I tried came in diminutive little squares far smaller than standard-size candy bars. It's a delicious candy that crunches and then dissolves quickly in the mouth. I tried three varieties of sponge candy while in Buffalo. The first of these—the in-house version created by the Wegman's supermarket chain—piqued my interest. It led me on to superior varieties of sponge candy manufactured by Fowlers and Bella Mia. I'd give the edge to Bella Mia if I had to choose a favorite. Bella Mia's Tom Margarucci filled me in on the sponge candy phenomenon. He stressed that the candy is only created by five or six local companies, and on a seasonal basis.
And while I'm at it, I should make note of The Chef's Table, a catering company in the Buffalo area that sells ridiculously good key lime pies. I've had more immediately flavorful key lime pies in my day, but Chef's Table's thick layer of whipped cream with bits of lime zest takes their specimen to a different stratosphere altogether.
Via Airscoop comes the news that SkyEurope and Myair.com have signed a Memorandum of Understanding en route to a possible merger. Several of the potential European LCC mergers under discussion this year have floundered. Today, for example, came the news that the Clickair-Vueling merger has been delayed until early 2009.
My chief concern with a SkyEurope-Myair merger is aesthetic. How on earth will SkyEurope's corporate blue and red mesh with Myair's bright red and green motif?
One of my projects this past summer was an update of EuroCheapo's London city guide. The guide is now up and running. It's exciting to be able to peruse my reviews along with those written by others within the expert hotel reviewing EuroCheapo cohort. I also have to admit that I'm proud of my city guide articles. Sue me.
Given the increasingly doable rate of the US dollar against the pound—$1.74 buys you a pound right now, against the terrifying $2-for-£1 exchange rate in play at various points this past summer—I'm hoping the EC London guide will get tons of visitors over the autumn and winter.
Thanks for the gig, EuroCheapo!
Alexander Basek emailed me this image, captured on Nathan Road in Kowloon.
One of the best pop songs of the year, Tilly & the Wall's "Beat Control," is tragically stalled in the UK singles chart, falling this week from Number 77 to Number 84. What's wrong with UK? Doesn't the British music-downloading public realize that it's their job to popularize quirky indie bands from the US heartland?
