Travel

Looking for a beach front hotel in Belize on a beautiful Caye, then look no further than Mata Chica on Ambergris Caye. Mata Chica has been described with good reason as the Caribbean’s last and best secret. This is an escape from all that is ordinary, to one of the very best hotels in Belize, sitting alongsider a long stretch of shimmering white sand, arguable the best beach in Belize, and beautiful tropical lush green rainforest and multicoloured flowers and bushes on the other.   Matachica is literally a stones throw off one of the most abundant coral reefs in the world, some five miles north of the town of San Pedro.   When you arrive at this hotel whether or not you have selected Matachica for your romantic honeymoon package in Belize, or you were here because you were told it was the best and most romantic beach front hotel on Ambergris Caye, you will be very impressed by the resort’s majestic lobby. It has been elegantly designed and created under a
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Have you heard about the Superhighway? It is this super highway that is being built between Texas and Canada. It is also known as the ‘NAFA Superhighway’, the Trans-Texas Corridor, the SPP highway. It has many names, and will be four football fields wide. It is a means of getting goods and services expeditiously through the United States.Also, Wal-Mart has a contract to exclusively serve this superhighway, and will be the only merchant allowed on the superhighway. The purpose of this is to bypass America! Guess who is behind it? No surprise, the great and evil George Bush and all his corporate cronies. If you know me, you know I have nothing but contempt for this criminal administration.I have heard various theories as to how completed it is. Some say it is in progress, others say it is completely done. How come no one is sure? “The fed won’t let anyone get near it. It is a well-guarded secret.”This is big and sinister stuff, folks. Small problem,
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Deals this week could make 2007 the biggest year in history for planemakers as soaring crude oil prices drive orders for new, more fuel efficient airliners such as the A380 superjumbo and Boeing’s mid-sized 787 Dreamliner. The Gulf’s biggest airline bought 70 A350s and took options on 50 more while extending its lead as the biggest buyer of the Airbus A380 superjumbo by adding another 11. Emirates’ orders included 12 long-range 777-300ERs from Boeing Co worth $3.2 billion. The industry is in the third year of a record level of demand spurred by new aircraft as well as the spread of budget airlines. Boeing’s biggest deal came from Qatar Airways, which ordered 30 787s and options to buy 30 more. It also bought 27 777s and took five options. Boeing entered the air show leading Airbus in their annual race for orders but the gap narrowed on Sunday. While the 787 is already the fastest-selling new Boeing in history, the Emirates order for the A350 XWB (Xtra Wide Body) is a major boost for
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The new open skies agreement between the U.S. and the European Union has generated a lot of attention in both trade and consumer media. Much, however, has focused on benefits to and challenges for airlines and airports rather than on benefits for the flying public. As a listener recently asked me on a call-in show: “How will the new European agreement benefit me as a consumer?” The short answers: Starting next March, you will see new nonstop routes to Europe, most notably from a few key inland hub cities to London’s popular Heathrow Airport, as well as additional competitive nonstop flights on the very busiest transatlantic routes and more small-plane business-only flights. You probably won’t see reduced economy fares or improved economy service.For those of you who want more detail, here’s my extended take on the overall situation.Less than it seemsThe basic idea is that the agreement will almost totally deregulate air service between Europe and the U.S. Any airline based in the
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Quinn’s Almost by the Sea: located across the street from the King Kamahamaha hotel. We liked the casual dining. We ate on the patio: it had a fan and a nice fountain. The waitress was fast and efficient. The food wasn’t fancy but it was very good. We could have had steak sandwiches, Teriyaki burger, salad plates, and fresh fish of the day. (which is what we had for our fish and chips… ) They have t-shirts if you wish to shop while you dine…. We liked this place…. It was fun and it appeared the locals use it (which we think means it is a good value….) Casual inexpensive good food fountain Part of the Mahala Hawaii travel blog Quinn’s sign…. cool place Eating on Quinn’s patio dining a… Fish and Chips …. Fried Calamari: David said it wa… Shrimp Fish basket: This was Syl…

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) — The elegant iron-railing balconies were once catwalks where guards stood watch over the inmates to make sure they didn’t try to break out. If you look closely, you can still see the outline of the holes from the iron bars on the windows. At the newly opened Liberty Hotel, it’s hard to escape what this building once was: a decrepit jail where Boston locked up its most notorious prisoners. But that’s just the point. After a five-year, $150 million renovation, the old Charles Street jail is now a luxury hotel for guests who can afford to pay anywhere from $319 a night for the lowest-priced room to $5,500 for the presidential suite. The hotel, at the foot of Boston’s stately Beacon Hill neighborhood, opened in September. Architects took pains to preserve many features of the 156-year-old stone building and its history. The old sally port, where guards once brought prisoners from paddy wagons to their cells, is being converted into the entrance to a new
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Global airline alliances rule. Whether they rock or not remains a matter of debate. In spite of their importance to the world’s largest airlines, the trend toward global hook-ups is not widely appreciated or understood by American travelers, who tend to travel within the boundaries of their own country. Alliances are networks of airlines which have agreed to cooperate in such areas as schedule coordination, mileage program integration, joint fares, codesharing, shared airport terminals and lounges, and so on. The goal of any alliance is to be able to fly a customer anywhere in the world on a combination of networked carriers faster and more conveniently than would be possible outside the network. It’s been estimated that joining one of the three alliances—oneworld (American, British Airways, etc.), SkyTeam (Delta, Continental, Northwest, etc.), or the Star Alliance (United, US Airways, Lufthansa, etc.)—can generate hundreds of millions of additional dollars in annual
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Are you a globetrotting wine drinker? American cities sizzle with hot spots where you can sip Portuguese vinho one night, and pop open a Spanish Cava sparkler on another. So go ahead, play the international field. Flirt with exotic hotties from faraway lands. Just take a moment to appreciate our own wine heritage and where it all began: California’s Napa Valley. Before 1960, few Americans drank wine. Of those who did, “Old World” regions of France and Italy were the order of the day. Robert Mondavi and his Napa Valley brethren popularized the concept of drinking wine from the Napa Valley and put the region on the cultural map. Today, Napa is a destination unto itself. Just a few scenic hours from San Francisco, Napa offers some of the best restaurants in the world, incredible resorts, and the rare opportunity to taste wine standing in the vineyard where it was grown and made. “This is what I love about the Napa Valley,” says Sean Kagy, chef owner of One Restaurant & Lounge in Mason,
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If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll have noticed that I regularly circle back to two topics: the airlines’ ongoing devaluation of mileage programs, and the rumors that one or more major airlines will spin off their mileage programs as freestanding businesses. The topics are inextricably linked, although there’s room for argument as to how the one would affect the other. My best guess is that while selling off their loyalty programs would be good for the airlines’ balance sheets, and for the airlines’ stockholders, it would make a bad situation even worse for consumers participating in the programs. After all, if the airlines can’t meet their customers’ expectations when the programs are under their direct control, the chances of any improvement under a profit-driven regime seem remote at best. According to an article in TheStreet.com, there are two groups pushing especially hard for loyalty program spinoffs. The first, as I’ve always suggested, is investor groups who
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A reader recently asked if the well-known “French lease” buyback program is still available for travelers to Europe, and I can assure him that it is. It’s best for long-term rentals, senior drivers facing a maximum age cap on regular rentals, or young drivers ages 18 to 24, but it can also be a good deal for drivers of any age.How it worksOn paper, you buy a factory-new car, drive it for up to six months, and sell it back to the leasing company at a guaranteed resale price. Conventional wisdom says that a new car loses maybe 25 percent of its value the day you drive it off the showroom floor, but this counterintuitive program works because the car manufacturer treats the sale as an export, thus avoiding VAT, and the barely-used return cars can be a much better deal for French residents than a new car. In practice, you don’t have to put up the purchase price at all. All you pay is a regular lease prepayment, which you can put on your charge card just like a rental. The leasing company
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