Canoeing down Papua New Guinea's Sepik River, visiting the ruins of Hellenic Greece, experiencing evolution's miracles up close or wandering through the ruins of Crusaders' castles: What on earth can these varied experiences possibly have in common? Answer: They all took or take place on islands.
Islands are unique things, each with its own dramatic story of creation. One might be a mountain risi...
Tour Host Review
In a slight deviation from my customary practice, I've chosen this month Ito highlight a travel agency (instead of a tour operator) as Pick of the Month. Since my goal has always been to find the company that best represents each newsletter's theme, Wild Side Destination's vast experience in finding the right island holiday for each individual traveler lands it the honor.
Niche marketing is the k...
Host of the Month
Since we’re featuring Tasmania’s spectacular Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park in this month’s newsletter, we thought we’d offer an additional reason to visit Australia’s green island state.In late March, when the arctic beeches, the imported deciduous trees and the heath begin to take on their fall colors, Tasmania will be an irresistible place. The Tasman...
Festival Pick
Islands exert powerful pulls on the tides of human imagination. The quick collapse of Minoan civilization after the massive eruption of Thera in the eastern Mediterranean around 1,400 B.C. led to the legend of Atlantis. The Spanish novelist Montalvo, in his romance Las Serges de Esplandian, wrote of a paradisiacal island called California, somewhere in the New World, a vision that inspired the con...
World Heritage Site
It's Little Rhode Island That Hosts The Biggest U.S. Culinary Museum
Eating and talking about good food, and traveling far to find it and learn about it inevitably raises the question, are there any museums devoted to the history of food and the culinary arts?
In the U.S., the answer is a surprising one: Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI, houses a culinary archives and museum ...
Museum Pick
Australia's jagged green southern edge wows with peaks and water
North Americans and Europeans who tour Australia don’t come seeking a landscape that will remind them of home. True, the Australian Alps have some steep peaks and snow in winter, and the red deserts of the Outback might remind some U.S. Southwesterners of Utah or Arizona, but the country in general has its own distinct and d...
National Park Pick
Four chilling sentences for tour operators
Written By Patrick Totty Posted on Adventure
"If tour operators don't think Expedia and Travelocity have teams of people working right now on replicating what they are doing, they are wrong," a technology supplier warned.
”The tour business remains the least technologically advanced sector in the travel industry. The most ubiquitous piece of automation is an invention of the 19th century – the telephone – and the second most prevalent tool is the fax.
”The lack of technical advancement has been costly for both operators and their suppliers.
”Yet many operators are still hesitant to make the technology investments they require to stay competitive.”
Those sentences are excerpted from “Net Retailers Gearing Up to Take On Operators,” an article that ran in the October 21 issue of Travel Weekly.
"The beauty that is Cyprus, its colors, its history, the passion of the people, it is all still here,” says Andreas Charalambidis, a well known Cypriot painter, as he gazes at the ancient harbor of Paphos, a 2,000‑year old city on the Mediterranean Sea.
"Yes, we have many tourists in this part of Cyprus, but if you look beyond the visitors, past the...
What is it about Zanzibar? What makes it so exotic to people who have never been there and hardly know where it is? Perhaps because it is one of those magical African names, like Timbuktu and Casablanca. In history books and novels, this Indian Ocean island is full of mystery, a land of slaves and spices, a tropical idyll of bleached white beaches with palm trees leaning...
Madagascar is not quite African and not quite Asian, but rather a land unto itself. As the world’s fourth largest island, the country is generally known for its delightful lemurs and bewildering baobab trees. And while I wanted to meet those lemurs and walk under those baobabs, Madagascar attracted me for another reason – the Tsingy de Bemaraha.
Shortly after sunrise, with the sky the color of pewter, and a chill sea breeze creating whitecaps in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Jean-Guy Bougeois pilots his small fishing boat, the Marie-Nicole, into the sheltered harbor of L'Etang-du-Nord, a tiny village in the French Canadian archipelago of Iles-de-la-Madeleine.
For the fishermen of Iles-de-la-Madeleine, a long and narrow group...
Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola observed when he first caught sight of San Francisco Bay in 1776 that it was large enough to comfortably accommodate all the naval fleets of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-six years later, even after warships have been super-sized, his observation is still accurate. Despite having lost 40% of its original 700-square-mile...
Visit our Web SiteFirst the emperors, then the monks, then the artists and writers, and now the camera-toting tourists – all have been streaming to this island, drawn inexorably by the beauty of its dramatic cliffs, its sunlight, and its luxuriant vegetation.
So taken by its charm was the Emperor Augustus that he traded the island of...
Several places in the world function as a meeting point between sometimes rival cultures. Alsace Lorraine is one such place, a buffer between France and Germany. Trieste on the Adriatic sits athwart the Italian and Slavic worlds, while Singapore successfully juggles Chinese, Hindu and Malaysian cultures.The subtropical island of Okinawa, Japan’s furthest-flung prefecture, is another such place. Here, northeast of Taiwan and situated as far east of China as...
A waiter at a restaurant in the Maltese capital city of Valetta served our after dinner coffee, then placed two small white plates of halvah at either end of the long table. Over a period of five days I had become addicted to the rich Turkish confection made of ground sesame seeds, and nuts and honey. The grainy, fudge-like candy made the perfect accompaniment...
Italians are known for their passion about many things – art, music, soccer; but especially about their culinary traditions. One of the products of which they are most proud is olive oil. Whichever region of Italy you visit - Liguria to the north, Tuscany in the center, or Apulia in the south – proud residents proclaim their oil to be the finest produced anywhere.
You haven’t truly grabbed the bull by the horns until the snorting beast has tossed you skywards into a somersaulting flip over its massive head; after quickly planting your hands on its heavily muscled back, you spring off into the arms of a friend, steadying you after the acrobatic thrill of a lifetime.
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Canoeing down Papua New Guinea's Sepik River, visiting the ruins of Hellenic Greece, experiencing evolution's miracles up close or wandering through the ruins of Crusaders' castles: What on earth can these varied experiences possibly have in common? Answer: They all took or take place on islands.
Islands are unique things, each with its own dramatic story of creation. One might be a mountain risi...
Four chilling sentences for tour operators
"If tour operators don't think Expedia and Travelocity have teams of people working right now on replicating what they are doing, they are wrong," a technology supplier warned.
"The beauty that is Cyprus, its colors, its history, the passion of the people, it is all still here,” says Andreas Charalambidis, a well known Cypriot painter, as he gazes at the ancient harbor of Paphos, a 2,000‑year old city on the Mediterranean Sea. 
What is it about Zanzibar? What makes it so exotic to people who have never been there and hardly know where it is? Perhaps because it is one of those magical African names, like Timbuktu and Casablanca. In history books and novels, this Indian Ocean island is full of mystery, a land of slaves and spices, a tropical idyll of bleached white beaches with palm trees leaning...
Madagascar is not quite African and not quite Asian, but rather a land unto itself. As the world’s fourth largest island, the country is generally known for its delightful lemurs and bewildering baobab trees. And while I wanted to meet those lemurs and walk under those baobabs, Madagascar attracted me for another reason – the Tsingy de Bemaraha.
Italians are known for their passion about many things – art, music, soccer; but especially about their culinary traditions. One of the products of which they are most proud is olive oil. Whichever region of Italy you visit - Liguria to the north, Tuscany in the center, or Apulia in the south – proud residents proclaim their oil to be the finest produced anywhere.