Tourist First
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Argentina: Mendoza for Malbec
From top: Jane Bailey with Manuel Ferrer of Achaval Ferrer, maker of some of the most highly regarded wines ever produced in the Western Hemisphere.
The cover story in the Nov. 21 New York Times Travel section is on Mendoza, the celebrated wine region in western Argentina. It was written by Alexi Barrionuevo and it reminded me just how much I enjoyed a visit there a few years ago. The column on the right side of this blog also has an item on Mendoza.
Mendoza is the name of the province and the province's main city. The malbec grape, which is also the grape in Cahors wine from France, thrives in Mendoza's desert climate. Water for irrigation comes from snow melt in the Andes, which often look close enough to touch in photos of Mendoza's vineyards.
If you're planning a visit, be sure to include Vines of Mendoza (in the city of Mendoza) on your itinerary. It was the first collective wine shop in Mendoza. It holds wine tastings, classes, seminars, events and special vintner gatherings. It offers several flights of the region's wines. It also offers a tour service, setting up a unique wine itinerary based on your interests. With a day's notice, appointments can be set up for you at each winery you want to visit and a car and driver can be found for you. There's no fee for Vines of Mendoza to plan the trip and make the appointments, and a car with a driver for a day will cost you about 200 Argentine pesos (about $50). Most wineries offer free tours and often free tastings, but appointments are required. You can also rent cars in Mendoza, but an amazing lack of road signs makes it a confusing place to drive.
When my wife and I visited Mendoza in 2007, we stayed at Club Tapiz, a delightful vineyard inn outside town. It has a nice pool, a really good restaurant and spa services. We had hired a driver for our entire stay in Mendoza, so the inn's rather isolated location wasn't a problem. If you'll be without a car, you might want to stay in the city, perhaps at a place like the elegant Mendoza Park Hyatt. A much, much less expensive choice would be hostels. If your budget is somewhere between the Park Hyatt and a hostel, try Tripadvisor for a number of moderately priced places.
Wherever you stay, you should plan to have dinner one night at Francis Mallmann's 1884 restaurant in the Bodega Escorihuela winery. It often appears on lists of the best restaurants in the world. Salted chicken prepared on an outdoor wood-burning stove, baby goat (cheivito) and young pork (lechón) are among the most recommended dishes. Whatever your main dish, order a bottle of malbec.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Maryland: Chesapeake Bay Fishing
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Dominica: Caribbean Dreamin'
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Pennsylvania: Two Houses by Frank Lloyd Wright
About an hour and a half southeast of Pittsburgh are two Frank Lloyd Wright houses. One, of course, is the iconic Fallingwater, Wright's 1930s masterpiece. It's open to the public. Unfortunately, the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy forbids Internet posting of photos, though visitors are allowed to take exterior photos for their own non-published use. Fortunately, there are zillions of photos of this amazing house, including many on the organization's Fallingwater web site. Click here for that site.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
The Worst Airline
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
"Best" vacations
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Yellowstone's Other Attractions
The late-summer opening of a new visitors' center at the Old Faithful geyser has drawn new attention to Yellowstone National Park, the first national park and one that owes its existence partly to the wonder that is Old Faithful.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Ecuador: Quito, Capital of the Andes
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Many Reasons to Visit Prague
Prague, which 15 or 20 years ago was notorious as a low-cost destination for rowdy British football clubs on beer-drinking safaris, has come into its own as a center for music, art and architecture.
Monday, August 16, 2010
The Best of the Chesapeake
Friday, August 13, 2010
Steep Steps in the Pyrenees
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Water Water Everywhere, But ...
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Britain: 'Retiring' to a Canal Boat in Wales
Meet Beryl Ybarra, who lives full-time aboard her boat, the Anagram, on the canals of northern Wales and western England. The top photo shows how her boat's interior resembles a country cottage. The lower photo shows her Welsh border collie, Vicki, and the path that runs along the canal where I met Beryl in the summer of 2009. Slightly visible in the photo are her grandchildren -- Tom, 15; Caroline, 12; and George, 8 -- who were spending a couple of weeks aboard their grandmother's 55-foot-long, 7-foot-wide boat.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
When Cost Is a Major Factor in Deciding Where to Go
We can debate forever about the differences between a traveler and a tourist, but sometimes it pays to step off the snob stool and just go for the best value possible, especially on a vacation. Unless you’re on a really tight shoestring budget, often you can get a stupendous deal by trolling where the tourists go to book their trips.
Case in point: my just-finished vacation in Puerto Vallarta with my family. I could have booked us into a crappy downtown hotel with barely functioning air conditioning and cramped quarters for around $75 a night for three, nothing included, with the nearby beach choices a few blocks away being lousy. Instead I went onto SkyAuction.com and scored four nights at an all-inclusive hotel on the Nuevo Vallarta beach for $82 a night all-in. For that amount we got all the booze we could drink, all the food we wanted to stuff ourselves with (three of us!), a nice room with a panoramic ocean view, Wi-Fi, and lots of activities. (The boogie boarding rocked.)
Yes it was cheesy and yes we felt like your average package tourists, but so what? My daughter had a blast, there was a never-ending Negra Modela tap going, and we ate pretty well without ever taking my wallet out of the room safe. I would definitely do it again.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Spain: Hondarribia in Basque Country
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Turkey: Visiting a Hamam
Anonymous said...
My girlfriend and I will have a two-day stopover in Istanbul in November. What will the weather be like? What are the turkish baths like and is there one that you recommend? Thanks.
July 28, 2010 12:12 PM
Steve Bailey said...
It's likely to be chilly and rainy during your visit. As your visit there gets closer, use the Internet to check weather forecasts.
As for the Turkish baths, which are called hamams, the two best-known ones are near the Hagia Sophia. Cagaloglu Hamami (click HERE for its website) is one of the "1,000 Places To See Before You Die," and has had a lot of famous customers. The other is Cemberlitas Hamam (click HERE for its website). My wife and I went to both. Each charged 95 Turkish lira (about $60) for the deluxe program -- heat, body scrub and massage. At Cagaloglu, the massage part was incorporated into the scrub. At Cemberlitas, an oil massage in another room followed the bath/scrub portion. Both are beautiful places with separate facilities for men and women; most of the rooms have large, domed ceilings, often with tiny skylights. At each, the men wear towels for the whole process. At Cemberlitas, women are given panties to wear; at Cagaloglu, women are nude. At both, everything takes place in large rooms with other people. My wife and I agreed that we much prefered Cemberlitas -- the body scrub was better and the massage felt like a real massage. Cagaloglu does give you a souvenir, though: the rough silk mitt that was used to scrub you.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Turkey: Arranging a Blue Cruise
A second way is to charter your own boat – with captain (and crew, if the boat is large enough) – and set your own itinerary. Most whole-boat charters are one or two weeks, Saturday to Saturday, so you’ll need to plan the rest of your time in Turkey around the boat schedule. Outfits such as Avrupa Yachting (http://www.guletcharter.org/) can help you find a boat.
Cabin charters are a third choice, and the only choice for anyone traveling alone; they’re also good for couples. My wife and I did a cabin charter in June 2010, a Fethiye-to-Kekova three-day cruise (four nights, but the first night was in the harbor at Fethiye). It was organized by Compass Yachting (http://www.compassyachting.com/), which is based in Fethiye and seems to be primarily a booking agent. Compass put us on a boat run by Big Backpackers (http://www.bigbackpackers.com/), which actually owned the Blue Key, our gulet, shown above in a photo that I took from one of the islands we visited. The cruise was 398 euros for both of us and included all meals; we had to pay separately for all drinks, including bottled water.
We had been told that such cabin charters were “OK for European backpackers trying to save money” but that “Americans find them unsatisfactory.” Other passengers on the boat included an American oncologist and his wife and two sons, ages 10 and 15; a 20-something Brazilian medical student; a 34-year-old Australian backpacker; a late-20's Italian couple; a well-to-do Polish couple and their teenaged son; and a Turkish woman from Istanbul. It was a very amiable group. The accommodations, however, weren’t so great. The cabins smelled of mothballs; my wife and I ended up joining a few other people in sleeping on deck in the area shown in the top photo. The food, however, was surprisingly good, especially fish the first night out, with wonderful salads at every meal. Lunches were vegetarian.
From what we could see of other boats (and these boats pretty much follow each other from one wonderfully scenic spot to another), the V-Go boats (http://www.bluecruiseturkey.com/) were a little nicer than ours. They also had canvas walls that could be unrolled to provide more shade in the aft seating area. We had considered V-Go, but Compass offered the schedule that suited us best. We saw no gulets under sail -- all were motoring. Indeed, our boat's sails stayed in the forward hold. "Light wind this time of year," the captain said.
If you’re reading this, then you’re probably looking elsewhere online and you may come across one traveler’s story of finding fresh rat droppings on the bed of a cabin charter. When we boarded the Blue Key, that was the first thing my wife looked for. “No rat droppings!” she called out. The owner of Big Backpackers, Soner Ayaz, stopped by to say hello, and he said that he thought there were no “Mickey Mouses” on the boat. We saw no signs of any.
Note: we were there near the end of June and the water was still rather chilly – to the point that it took a while for everyone to work up the nerve to jump in. The water was turquoise, of course, and amazingly clear. We were disappointed that we saw few fish; the Italian couple on our boat, however, spotted an octopus, and they harvested sea urchins, cleaned them and gave us tastes. (Sort of like oysters, if you’re wondering.)
We’re very happy we did the blue cruise. Do it again? You bet.