A Trip News

Once a haven for divers, the island of Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos chain is now one of the Caribbean ’s fanciest. Luxury resorts with security gates, high-end condos and designer golf courses now dot the sun-soaked island, leaving fewer choices for the budget traveler. But if you’re willing to forgo infinity pools and mud wraps at the flashy megaresorts, you can still have a rich experience on this little island, affectionately nicknamed Provo.
Where to Stay
Budget options on this (more…)

This unsung Austrian city deserves the spotlight, says Mark Rowe
Linz may be among the least visited of Austria’s major cities – at least by Britons drawn to Vienna, Innsbruck and Salzburg – but its designation encapsulates the spirit of the European Capitals of Culture programme.
Austria’s third largest city, and the capital of Upper Austria, nudging towards the Czech border, is home to just 190,000 people. It has a reputation for industry that is inescapable if viewed from the (more…)

IT was just after 8 on a cloudy January morning as the flat-bottomed pontoon boat made its way over the glassy surface of Kings Bay, 600 acres of fresh water in Crystal River, Fla. The bay, actually a spring-fed pool, is rimmed by attractive homes and lush greenery along its many coves and lagoons, but aboard the boat, no one cared.
Huddled on aluminum benches were 10 wet-suited comrades. We represented a variety of countries and ages, but on this particular morning, we all wanted the same thing: (more…)

THE moon wasn’t quite full, but still it shone like a spotlight as we shouldered our skis toward the summit of Mount Mansfield in northern Vermont .
“Wow, look at that, guys,” my friend Elizabeth said, pausing in the rhythmic crunch-crunch of her ski boots to gaze at the surrounding Stowe Valley. “We’re above the clouds — what a beautiful night.”
It was somewhere around 7 p.m. on a Wednesday last month, long past bedtime for Stowe’s lifts, and (more…)

Heavy rains in recent days in Peru have affected the famed Nazca Lines, the 2,000 year-old giant outlines that are one of the country’s top tourist attractions, an AFP report has said. Officials said that the changes were “reversible”.

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I take the bus from Dunedin to Invercargill, the last town of any consequence in New Zealand’s South Island. I am going to get my van out of storage, where it has been for the past 15 months. It starts first time. Unbelievable. Massive celebrations. One hour later, I go to the post office to secure a new registration, thinking it’ll just need backdating.
"Sorry, Mr Donald. ON7598 is no longer valid. It needs to be re-registered and new plates." Trying to keep the panic out of my voice, (more…)

THE BASICS
Since it opened in Manhattan in 2004, the Gansevoort Hotel, with its rooftop pool overlooking the meatpacking district, has been generating buzz. The owners hoped to take that buzz to South Beach, where they bought a vast 1960s building called the Roney Plaza and carved out a 334-room hotel along one edge. (The rest of the building is reserved for condominiums.) Their masterstroke was persuading David Barton, of the eponymous gym chain, to open a large and gorgeously designed branch (more…)

AIRLINE passengers along the east coast had their flights delayed by up to 90 minutes yesterday after a computer glitch knocked out the flight management system covering half the country.
The system containing all of the flight plan data for Australia’s east coast crashed in Brisbane about 1pm.
Air traffic controllers had to type the information for flights back into the system manually.
As a result, planes banked up on runways in Brisbane, Cairns and Sydney while they waited for permission (more…)

Officials from Hong Kong and Japan launched here Friday the Hong Kong-Japan Tourism Exchange Year 2009 to foster tourism and cultural interflows between the two places.
    Commissioner for Tourism of Hong Kong Margaret Fong and Commissioner of Japan Tourism Agency Yoshiaki Hompo signed a memorandum of cooperation to signify the two sides’ commitment to drive success for the tourism exchange year.
    Speaking at the memorandum signing ceremony, Fong (more…)

Until recently, there hasn’t been much variety for visitors wanting to stay the night in Brooklyn. In spite of the fact that hip New Yorkers and savvy tourists have been flocking to the borough for several years now, drawn in part by its reputation as a place where the budget-conscious can get their money’s worth, the accommodation on offer has been limited to twee B&Bs, cheap hostels or homogenised chains.
In the last couple of years, however, things have started to change. Nu Hotel is part of (more…)