Midnight at the Oasis, send your camel to bed. Shadows painting our faces, traces of romance in our heads. Heaven's holding a half moon, shining just for us. Let's slip off to a sand dune, real soon, kick up a little dust. Or so I was singing (thank you writer David Nichtern), long about midnight,…
The $1.4 billion megaship–the largest passenger ship ever made, with room for 6,296 guests–is nearly half again as big as the last biggest cruise ship, RCL's Freedom of the Seas. She's as big as a supertanker or a container ship. Flatten the deck and you could launch F-18s off it. If you were sitting on…
With a name like Opposite House, you wouldn't expect the ordinary. The 98-room hotel, which opened in Beijing last year in the Sanlitun neighborhood, fits the image of a hip urban inn fancied by young adults and by monied travelers who are looking for contemporary design and style. Service is casual, yet quick and thorough.…
Charleston, S.C., is one of America's favorite cities for travelers. It's a city you can walk with wonder at the historic architecture of its houses and storefronts, listen to the clip-clop of horses pulling carriages full of happy tourists, sit for a spell in shady waterfront parks, stroll the neighborhoods for an understanding of the southern…
My table was in High Cotton. That's a southern phrase that means the best of times, which these are not. But on a vacation night in Charleston, South Carolina, High Cotton, the restaurant, was standing tall. Charleston has become a foody city, a vacation destination for folks who like to eat. At High cotton, my meal was…
When i was growing up, Beijing was known in the United States as Peking, which is a more English version of the name. In junior high school, I suffered a teacher who called the city Beiping and spelled it Peiping. All of these names have some legitimacy, but the city is now Beijing, capital of…
Some 400 men and women who blog their thoughts on the Internet are heading to sea this weekend, on a cruise on the Carnival Fantasy. Imagine that: Choosing to join 400 other people with opinions and a desire to express them. Such an experience would be a nightmare for some folks. Not me. I am…