Dave Seminara
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Dave Seminara is a journalist and former diplomat based in Chicago who contributes to The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, and a wide variety of other publications and sites. Twitter- @DaveSem website: www.daveseminara.com
Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
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Dave Seminara is a journalist and former diplomat based in Chicago who contributes to The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, and a wide variety of other publications and sites. Twitter- @DaveSem website: www.daveseminara.com
After driving for miles on a dirt road through the pitch darkness and seeing no signs of life anywhere, I was certain we were lost. It was a perfect early August evening in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and we were looking for the Thursday night square dance in Glencoe Mills, a blink-and-you'll-miss it hamlet in Cape Breton's untrammeled interior. The road was so dark and so eerily quiet that when I finally saw another car coming towards us from the opposite direction, I flagged the driver to stop.
I arrived on the Greek island of Syros on the night ferry from Samos at 2:30 a.m., bleary-eyed and in need of coffee or a bed, maybe both. My sons, then 2 and 4, were still half-asleep, wondering why the hell we'd hustled them out of their tidy bunks in the middle of the night. We stepped over backpackers, most of them heading to Mykonos, Naxos or Santorini, who were still asleep in the corridors of the boat, and alighted in Ermoupolis, the cultural and administrative capital of the Cyclades island group.
If you're accustomed to bidding for hotels, flights and rental cars on Priceline, you may have noticed that in recent months the bidding process has become more cumbersome and time consuming. When your bid is rejected, you need to change some element of your offer before bidding again – the dates, the geographic area, the vehicle class for car rentals or the star level for hotels – in order to bid again. Or you wait 24 hours to submit the same bid.
I'm almost never game to wait in a long line to eat. But I joined a line stretching outside the door at Xoco in Chicago last Saturday because I couldn't stand to hear another rave about the place without experiencing what all the fuss is about for myself. Xoco is a fast food Mexican place owned by former "Top Chef" master chef Rick Bayless, whom my colleague Laurel Miller once memorably described as an "all-around culinary badass."
Condé Nast Traveler (CNT) released its annual "Hot List" of the world's "best new hotels" this week, featuring 154 newish properties in 57 countries around the world. CNT boasts that 62 of these hotels have room rates that start at $300 per night or less but is that really a realistic threshold for separating expensive hotels from affordable ones? I've been traveling the world for more than 20 years and I very rarely spend more than half that on accommodation.
I'm addicted to "House Hunters International," the HGTV reality show that profiles people who are moving to another country or buying a vacation home outside the U.S. Aside from the fact that the program whets my appetite to visit the places that are profiled, I love the way it plants seditious seeds in my head about places that were never previously on my radar.
Everyone who can afford it should visit Greece this summer. That was the conclusion I reached after reading a heartbreaking story about malnourished children in Greece on the front page of Thursday's New York Times. According to Liz Alderman's piece, malnutrition is a serious and growing problem in Greece, where the unemployment rate has reached 27 percent and even those who are employed have seen their wages slashed due to austerity measures. Alderman interviewed Greek school officials and others who have seen school kids stealing food, fainting or appearing listless due to hunger and foraging through trash bins for leftovers.
If you've never been to Chicago, or you've only visited during the winter, which tends to last roughly from early fall through late spring, you have to see the place in the summer. As soon as the weather gets warm, the city's residents flock to the lakefront and the place buzzes with live music, street festivals and places to dine al fresco.
When you're lying in the shade of a towering palm tree on Playa Espadilla Sur, a glorious, often empty beach backed by thick forest in Costa Rica's Manuel Antonio National Park, the temptation to remain inert can be irresistible. But it would be a shame to travel all the way to this fascinating corner of Central America and do nothing but lie on the beach. Costa Rica has a whopping 26 national parks, so travelers can find adventure in every corner of the country. But Manuel Antonio, the country's smallest yet most popular park, is probably the most accessible adventure hub for active travelers who are looking for more than just great beaches.
I'm a cheapskate and a risk taker, so Priceline's "Name Your Own Price" bidding tool was made for me. Over the years, I've bid on and gotten three- and four-star hotels in cities all over North America and Europe for an average of about $75 per night and as little as $35 using the free-re bid system outlined here. I love the deals but for me, part of the fun is the serendipity of seeing William Shatner, the Priceline spokesperson, pointing at me on my computer screen, watching the page spin and then seeing it spit out a result. It's a hell of a lot more fun than playing the slots but sometimes the Priceline gods give you a baffling selection.
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