Just my hunch: After the British Airways strike: Lower fares to London?

      Friday, March 26

       Will British Airways start a fare war for late spring and summer travel to London once its strikes are over? It's just a hunch, but my guess is that the airline will take some aggressive steps to win back its customers' confidence. That would be good news for those who are looking at fares of more than $1,000 for June travel.
       Cabin crews are set to strike this weekend through March 30, the second walk-out in two weeks, and it's a fair bet that customers are thinking about doing business with other carriers, and not just in the near term. The union has said it may call a further strike after April 14.
       Another hunch: Now is not an ideal time to buy a ticket to London on any airline if you can hold off. With BA's disruptions and cancellations, competing airlines have no reason to be offering any deals or discounts.

Canada: Ouch!

     Travel to Canada is getting more expensive again, with exchange rates on the U.S. and Canadian dollars almost near parity for the first time in two years.

      If you're heading to Vancouver, Victoria, Whistler or any place else in Canada soon, it means you'll pay about $98 U.S. for a hotel room price at $100 Canadian, compared to $79 this time last year. 

     Paying for Canadian purchases in U.S. dollars might be the smartest financial move if retailers are willing to take dollars at par value. 

     Using a credit card, withdrawing cash in Canadian dollars from ATMs, or buying Canadian dollars in the U.S. all result in foreign currency transaction fees which further add to the pain. The exceptions are credit cards issued by Capital One and Charles Schwab which carry no foreign transaction fees.

Mexico: How safe?

Sunday, March 14th, 2010


     It all depends on where you're going. As a new travel warning issued by the U.S. State Department points out, the areas of concern continue to be the Northern border towns of Tijuana, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey and Matamoros..
      To often in the past, these types of government warnings have taken a broad-brush approach, simply advising against travel to a country as a whole. What's different about this warning, issued Sunday following the shooting in Ciudad Juarez of three people with ties to the American consulate, is its level of detail and the way it rightly targets only towns where drug-related violence has been rampant. 
      This could have something to do with the fact that Mexico's tourism economy is very fragile and the U.S. government doesn't want to do anything that might damage it, but let's hope it also has something to do with a new, more responsible approach to travel warnings in general. Here's what I wrote on the subject in a previous column for The Seattle Times.
      As the State Department points out, millions of U.S. citizens safely visit Mexico each year (including tens of thousands who cross the land border daily for study, tourism or business and nearly one million U.S. citizens who live in Mexico), and this isn't likely to change.
       I just returned from 7 days in Mazatlan (The restored Plaza Machado is pictured above) and Sayulita, and experienced nothing out of the ordinary. Both were packed with Americans and Canadians enjoying their vacations on the beaches and in town at the local cafes and restaurants. 
     The Mexican people, of course, are concerned about what's happening in their country and are worried that the violence could spread, and how worries about it could hurt their tourist economy. It was interesting to observe a military "show of force,'' one evening in Sayulita when a truck with armed soldiers did a once-around the town square. 

       The bottom line: If you're planning a vacation soon to Mexico, by all means go, but heed the State Department's advice and use common-sense precautions such as visiting only legitimate business and tourist areas during daylight hours, and avoiding areas where drug dealing might occur. Monitor developments on the State Deparment's Web site. 

Tropea: Cinque Terre Not

Here's a spot in Southern Italy Rick Steves hasn't discovered (Or if he has, he's not telling anyone).

 Everyone knows about the the Cinque Terre, the five cliff-hugging villages along the Northern Italian coast. European jet-setters camp out in villas on the island of Capri. Tour groups favor Sorrento and the beaches of Positano along the Amalfi coast. But few Americans know about the Calabrian seaside town of Tropea, six hours by train south of Rome.

Sun-seeking Italian, British and German tourists come by the droves in summer. But offseason, being here can feel like wandering into a party waiting to happen.

Here's my recommendation: Stop here on your way down the coast between Rome and Sicily. Book a room (about $50 per person) in the Casa del Sole, a four-room B&B run by the energetic Eugenia Castellaneta, 40, who moved to Tropea from her hometown of Bari in Puglia a few years ago. Then go find a sample of the town treat -  almost anything made from the "Cipolla di Tropea," a sweet, red onion shaped like a miniature football that grows in the surrounding countryside. Shops sell onion jam and pasta, and as we found out when we stopped into Gelati Tonino, even onion ice cream.

The inventor is Antonio La Tore (Tonino) who makes 60 flavors of gelato in the shop he's owned  for 40 years. The most popular is onion, which he makes once a week and serves on Sundays, but he's also come up with flavors that mimic other Calabrian specialties such as pesto, figs and pine nuts. He convinced me to try his hot salami gelato with a hint of smoke and spice. I'm not sure salami was meant to be eaten cold, creamy and sweet, but when he posed for a photo holding up a big orange glop on a wooden scoop, he smiled like proud father, and I loved him for giving the idea a try.

   Click here to read more on Tropea.

Small-Town Southern Italy

Books on food make some of the best travel companions. One of my favorites is Carla Capalbo's "The Food and Wine Guide to Naples and Campania," filled with vivid descriptions and photos of Southern Italian towns and villages waiting to be discovered.

Many Italian Americans trace their roots to this area, but guidebooks generally focus only on Naples, Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast, leaving travelers with the impression that a massive earthquake in 1980 left nothing much else to see.

My husband and I have spent several years exploring many of the small towns in Southern Italy. The hilltop town of Calitri near the Basilicata border is one of our favorites.

Like many Southern Italian towns, Calitri has always been a town that people left. Thousands immigrated to other parts of Italy, South America and the United States in the 1900s in search of jobs, and again after 1980.

Now tourism is starting to spawn a small migration of foreigners interested in exploring their roots or buying a vacation home. Browsing the Internet one day, I found Web sites listing houses for rent in the "Borgo Antico," the medieval-town center that was all but abandoned after the earthquake.

Fourth-generation Calitri resident Emma Basile remembers "the old town as a place for cats, not people," when she was growing up. But a few years ago, a private development company began buying up a few of the houses, restoring them and selling them to foreign investors as vacation homes. After finishing school in Milan and Naples, Basile returned to Calitri and opened a real-estate and rental-property-management office that doubles as the unofficial tourist bureau.

I couldn't believe our luck when she met us in the town square on a rainy, windy evening and walked with us to the 15th-century house we had rented for four days from a British couple. Our bedroom overlooked miles of rolling green pasture land and a trail of steps leading to a little hilltop church. Above is the kitchen. All this for about $85 a night. Interested? Contact Emma at Porta Oriente. She manages properties for various owners. Prices average 15-35 euros per night. The one above is called "Blue Sky.''  Calitri is easily reached by car from Naples, or from the Amalfi Coast. For more on Calitri and some other finds in Campania, click here. And for another perspective, check out a blog written by Paolo, an American who owns a home in Calitri. 


"We have no relatives from there, just liked the down-to-earth unspoiled nature of the place,'' he says. "We love our decision - the town, the people and the area remain delightful." Paolo writes about his adventures there and posts his stories monthly. Click here to see Paolo's blog. 

One of the things I love about Southern Italy is scenes like the one below. You never know what you're going to run into, literally!