Apr 7th, 2013 at 3:00PM:
Have a conversation about cruise ships and the topic of dining options usually comes up. It's just a popular topic that cruise lines invest a lot of time and resources in, striving to provide exactly what their passengers desire. Now, more than ever, cruise lines are doing just that, often tapping well-known culinary experts to bring their shore-side influence aboard the ships. Crystal ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
Sicily posts
Ultimate Dinner Parties At Sea, Just $1000 To Attend
Apr 7th, 2013 at 3:00PM:
Have a conversation about cruise ships and the topic of dining options usually comes up. It's just a popular topic that cruise lines invest a lot of time and resources in, striving to provide exactly what their passengers desire. Now, more than ever, cruise lines are doing just that, often tapping well-known culinary experts to bring their shore-side influence aboard the ships. Crystal ...From Ankle To Arch: Italy's Culinary Diversity
Jan 21st, 2013 at 12:00PM:
Go to your local supermarket to buy pasta and you'll find about a dozen different shapes from which to choose. Travel from the ankle to the arch of the heel in Italy, though, and you'll find 150 different types. And those are just the pasta types that begin with the letter "C."
Each of Italy's 20 regions has a distinct cuisine. Pizza crust thickens and thins. Ingredients go in and out of ...12 Offbeat Travel Ideas For 2013
Jan 2nd, 2013 at 12:00PM: My annual New Year's Eve tradition is to reflect on all the places I visited during the year and plot out where I want to go in the New Year. 2012 was a banner travel year for my family because we put all of our things in storage for five months and traveled extensively in Europe and North America. We gorged ourselves on donuts and thought we got scammed in Western New York's Amish Country, ...Egypt Protests Scatter Cruise Ships, Concern Tour Operators
Sep 14th, 2012 at 3:00PM: Egypt's tourism business has been suffering since the 2011 uprising that forced President Hosni Mubarak to step down. This week, in response to protests in Egypt, the vital industry received another blow as cruise lines and tour operators began making alternative plans.
"In an abundance of caution, Royal Caribbean International has decided to cancel Mariner of the Seas' next port call to ...Gangi: The Italian hill town the guidebooks forgot to mention
Feb 2nd, 2012 at 10:00AM: Have you ever fallen in love with a place that doesn't merit a mention in most guidebooks and felt conflicted about the its obscurity? On the one hand, you don't want it to be "discovered," but on the other, the snub feels like a bit of an insult, even for you, the newcomer who just fell for the place. This is how I feel about Gangi, an obscure, remote 12th century hill town tucked away near ...Lampedusa: Italy's loneliest off-season island
Jan 22nd, 2012 at 10:00AM:
Lampedusa is Italy's southernmost island. Geologically part of Africa, it sits about 70 miles from the Tunisian mainland and a good 125 miles from Sicily. If the island sounds familiar to you, that's probably because it's been in the news quite a bit recently.
In the wake of the Arab Spring, tens of thousands of migrants from Africa (first from Tunisia and Libya; later in the year from ...Photo of the Day - Sicilian man
Jan 1st, 2012 at 6:00PM:
This elegant gentleman was captured in Sicily by Flickr user TravelSeminar. The weathered creases that line his face, the pulled back curtains and shy grin all suggest a moment of welcome and openness. It's the perfect visual accompaniment to a brand new year - take it as an invitation to get your own travel plans off to a great start. Here's wishing you all the best in 2012!
Have any great ...The world's most disputed antiquities: a top 5 list
Aug 3rd, 2011 at 1:00PM:
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art announced Tuesday that it would return 19 Egyptian antiquities that have lived at the museum for most of the last century. These artifacts, excavated from the 14th century B.C. tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun (King Tut), include a sphinx bracelet, a small bronze dog, and a broad collar with beads, among other bits and pieces. Zahi Hawass, the former Secretary ...VIDEO: Astronaut's view of the world
May 31st, 2011 at 5:00PM:
Need a few moments of Zen? This video from NASA's Johnson Space Center has seven of them, traveling over the Earth from the coast of Namibia to the Amazon Basin to capture an astronaut's view of the world. The incredible images are narrated by Dr. Justin Wilkinson, a soothing astronaut who points out the many rivers, mountains, deserts, and other features shown on NASA's camera from far above. ...
Photo of the Day (12.19.10)
Dec 19th, 2010 at 9:00PM:
You might say that today's photo pick, taken by Flickr user WitChi Wotcha in Sicily, has a bit of an "edge." The first visual element your eyes fall on is that giant freakin' knife in the sharpener's hands. What do you cut with that thing?? Soon your eyes move away from the knife and you notice the wonderful mix of other small details in the scene, like the curious expression of the man on the ...Sicilian steals a New Year's Eve away from his family
Jan 2nd, 2010 at 2:00PM: Some people will do anything to dodge family at the holidays. We'll kick and scream or otherwise misbehave, but my new hero is a Sicilian man who risked getting a record to score a New Year's Eve away from the wife and relatives. The 35-year-old went to the police station and asked to be incarcerated for the evening. The cops refused, claiming that he needed to commit a crime before he could score ...Heading to Palermo, Italy? Bring an air freshener!
May 31st, 2009 at 7:00PM: This is not exactly a "photo of the day", but it is still an impressive destination photo, albeit a smelly one... The garbage men in the Sicilian capital of Palermo are on strike - and the photo above shows the results of just one week of no garbage pickup. The situation is starting to look a lot like the mess in Naples last year. Unfortunately for the residents of Palermo, the weather is nice ...Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern: Sicily. Yep, the food is bizarre
Sep 23rd, 2008 at 5:30PM: Andrew Zimmern seemed positively giddy in last Tuesday's episode of Bizarre Foods as he ate his way around Sicily's bonanza of animal innards eats. First stop was Palermo, the capital where butcher shops display all sorts of animal parts, just like they've done for centuries. At Mercato Ballero, a bustling outdoor marketplace, Zimmern got busy eating with gusto.
"The cow stomachs are so fresh, ...Buy a Sicilian villa... for only 1 euro!
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Sep 17th, 2008 at 4:00PM: Vacation homes abroad don't scream cheap, so when I saw that the mayor of the hilltop town Salemi in Sicily was selling old stone villas for a mere euro (that's about $1.42 at today's exchange rate) I knew there had to be a catch. There is. The picturesque villas were damaged in the 1968 earthquake and since then have remained unoccupied and left to deteriorate. Then again an old fixer-upper in a ...Mafia-free shopping in Palermo
Mar 13th, 2008 at 1:00PM: "Why did you go to the police? Why didn't you come to me first?" the memorable line was said by one of Hollywood's most famous Mafia men: Don Corleone of The Godfather. But in some places, people really do skip over the police and head directly to the boss. Take Palermo, Italy where shopkeepers have for years paid the "Pizzo;" 200 to 500 euros paid monthly to Sicily's Costa Nostra in order to ...Concierge's IT List: Places for upscale tastes, but maybe cheaper
Jan 6th, 2008 at 3:30PM: There's The New York Times list of 53 places to go in 2008 (see post), the 40 travel tips and suggestions from London's Times (see post )and now Concierge.com has an IT List of 10 more suggestions, all with sound reasoning behind each one.
The way a destination ends up on this list is that it's had enough people show up to increase the odds that it has some sense of what travelers like, ...
