Posted by Nick on August 8, 2010
Every year in August hundreds of small family-owned wineries bring out their best bottles for one of the single largest (and best) California wine tasting events. For the past 19 years, lovers of small-production wines have flocked to the Festival Pavilion of San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center to discover and taste some of California’s hidden gems.
The Family Winemakers of California Tasting was originally a trade-only event, but in 1996, Family Winemakers of California opened the annual tasting to the wine-consuming public. With more than 400 wineries on site—representing every wine region in California—this is one of the most diverse, not to be missed tastings in the nation.
2010 San Francisco Tasting:
Sunday, August 22, open to the trade (1:00 - 6:00) and the public (3:00 - 6:00)
Monday, August 23, open to the trade only (1:00 - 6:00)
at Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco
For information about the festival, go to www.familywinemakers.org.
Posted by rlashea on July 15, 2010
If you are planning a New York City vacation and have all of the city’s most famous sites on your to do list, a bus tour is a good way to spend a day or two of your trip. New York City bus tours provide transportation and information on the city’s most famous sites, or just a few of the ones you would like to see most.
City Sights NY
City Sights NY bus tours take visitors on double-decker buses with open tops, providing riders with unobstructed views of the most famous attractions. Tour options include full city, downtown, Brooklyn, night tours and a Harlem gospel tour. Private tours are available and packaged tours that include museum admissions and harbor cruises can be arranged. City Sights ticketing location is in the lobby of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum on NYC’s famed 42nd Street.
234 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10018
(212) 812-2700
Gray Line
Another double-decker bus option with open air top seating, Gray Line offers a variety of tours similar to City Sights. The most popular tour is the All Loops tour, which takes you past all of the city’s most famous attractions and includes either an Empire State Building or Top of the Rock ticket, admission to the South Street Seaport Museum and a water attraction ticket. The tour is a hop on and off tour, which allows riders to get on and off the buses at over 50 different city attractions as much as they want for 48 hours. Multilingual tours are available.
1560 Broadway
New York, NY 11221
(800) 669-0051
On Location Tours
If you are a movie or TV junkie, On Location Tours offers the New York City bus tours for you. Buses take visitors to some of the most famous filming locations in the city, as well as known celebrity residences. The main tour option with On Location Tours is the New York TV and Movies Sites Tour, on which riders see locations from movies and TV shows like Spider-Man, Ghostbusters, Friends and Gossip Girl. Additional tours, such as the Classics Tour, which takes you past locations seen in films such as The Godfather and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, are available as private tours.
10 West 37th Street
New York, NY 10018-7435
(212) 209-3370
Posted by rlashea on July 14, 2010
Situated in Orlando’s Loch Haven Park, the Orlando Museum of Art plays host to a wide variety of art works, from those created by local painters and photographers to those created by internationally-renowned artists. The museum’s Festival of Trees is an event held during the early part of the holiday season each year.
Orlando Museum of Art
Opened in 1924 with the mission of collecting and preserving works of art, and showcasing them to residents and visitors of central Florida, the Orlando Museum of Art maintains that same vision today. Ten to 12 exhibits are showcased at the museum each year, and 13 off-site exhibits throughout the city are sponsored by the museum annually. Aside from the art collections and exhibits, the Museum of Art also provides educational programming for the local community.
Permanent Collections
Aside from the rotating temporary exhibits that come through the museum doors each season, the Orlando Museum of Art hosts three permanent collections: American Art, Art of the Ancient Americas and African Art. American Art at the museum includes 18th century to modern artwork by American artists and photographers, such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams, while the Ancient Americas are represented by ceramics, jade carvings and other hand-made items, dating from as far back as 2000 B.C. The African Art Collection includes wooden masks, ivory carvings and beadwork from all across Africa.
Festival of Trees
Taking place over nine days in mid-to-late November, the Festival of Trees is only one of a number of special events held at the Orlando Museum of Art throughout the year. During the festival, holiday villages, including the Gingerbread Village and Toyland Town, are erected inside the museum, and a variety of live entertainment is offered, such as performances by local school choirs and ballet recitals. The museum is also adorned in holiday décor, such as wreaths and, of course, trees. The designer trees and wreaths displayed are available for sale to museum visitors.
Attend the Festival
Admission to the Festival of Trees at the Orlando Museum of Art can be purchased at the museum upon arrival. General admission for the Festival of Trees, as of the 2009 festival, was $10 per adult and $6 per child. An opening night party, featuring a selection of fine foods and entertainment is also held each year. A ticket for the 2009 party was $100. Party guests also get the first opportunity to pick and purchase the trees and wreaths on display.
Other Things to See
Home to the Walt Disney World Resort and Universal Studios Florida, Orlando is a tourism Mecca. Other area theme parks include Sea World, Busch Gardens, and Discovery Cove, which attempts to mimic the experience of an island vacation by offering tropical a variety of settings and experiences, including beaches, snorkeling in coral reefs and swimming with dolphins. Orlando’s International Drive, home to Discovery Cove, Sea World and Universal Studios, also offers a host of additional activities for tourists, such as indoor skydiving, mini golf and a Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum.
Posted by rlashea on July 13, 2010
In the center of Manhattan, just blocks from the shopping of Fifth Avenue, Radio City Music Hall and Rockefeller Plaza, Times Square serves as the tourist hub of New York City. Aside from being the site where the ball drops each New Year and home to Broadway’s theaters, Times Square offers a host of restaurants, specialty stores and souvenir shops. Despite Times Square being the busiest place in New York City with an estimated 15,000 people passing through each hour, according to the Times Square Alliance, parking can be found right in the middle of it all if you know where to look for it.
Find out if your hotel offers parking. Many of the hotels in Times Square provide either an on-site parking garage or parking at a nearby garage. Whether Times Square hotels offer on-site or off-site parking, they usually also offer valet parking, though you may not have in-and-out privileges when you park through a valet, so you should make sure that you won’t want your car again until you leave.
Compare prices at the parking garages in Times Square if your hotel doesn’t provide parking. The Best Parking website offers a map of the Times Square area that lists all of the area’s garages and contact information (see Resources.) The site also provides a tool for calculating the rate for each garage.
Look for street parking. While street parking can be difficult to find in the heart of Times Square, many side streets around Times Square do offer street parking. Street parking can either be metered or free, depending on the street, but always goes quickly and the spaces left are usually a tight fit.
Drive down the street before you park your car, or walk down the street once you have parked, and look for signs regarding the parking laws on the street. Many streets allow parking only some days of the week, or only during posted hours. If you leave your car on the street outside of the permitted parking times, your car may be towed.
Be prepared for the cost of parking your car in Times Square. Times Square parking can range greatly in cost, but are often higher-priced than parking garages in other cities and throughout the rest of Manhattan. The cost to park your car can exceed $100 for a 24-hour period at many garages.
*Note - Most parking garages in New York City do not allow you to park your own car. Generally, New York City parking garages have less space than parking garages in other large cities, and many use special lift mechanisms to park cars above each other. When you take your car into a Times Square parking garage, be prepared to leave your car and keys with attendant.
Posted by rlashea on July 12, 2010
The Austin, Texas city motto may be “Let’s Keep Austin Weird,” but the majority of hotels in the city are the same cookie cutter chain hotels offered in other cities throughout the U.S.
The most notable exception is The Driskill, a landmark hotel from 1886, located in Austin’s downtown.
Before picking an Austin hotel, you may want to compare a few to find out which hotel offers the best accommodations for your traveling party.
Use a travel booking website, like Kayak.com, to compare Austin hotels based on price and star rating. Simply type Austin, TX into the city box. Enter the dates of your visit to Austin, the number of rooms and guests and click “Search.” If you check the boxes next to the other travel sites listed on the page, like Expedia
and Travelocity
, Kayak provides you with results from the other travel sites as well.
Compare the hotels in a certain section of town or hotels that are near a specific attraction. Kayak.com and Expedia both offer the option of searching for hotels by attraction. When you type Austin into the box on Kayak, a list of attractions in Austin come up automatically, including the University of Texas and Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. On Expedia, when you click on the “Hotels” option, you can select “Attraction” from the “Find Hotels Near” box.
Read the fine print to uncover hidden fees at the hotels that you are considering for your Austin stay. Even hotels that have the exact same price may differ in price when additional fees are factored in. Downtown Austin hotels are likely to have a parking fee, for instance, while hotels outside of the downtown area may provide free parking. Some hotels may charge for Wi-Fi access, while others offer it for free.
Evaluate the amenities that each Austin hotel offers. If you are traveling by air to Austin, you may want a hotel with an airport shuttle. If you plan to spend your nights in Austin’s 6th Street Entertainment District, you may want a hotel in the area or one that provides a 24-hour shuttle to the district.
Check out traveler reviews of the hotels on the Sherman’s Travel website or on TripAdvisor.com. Sherman’s Travel also offers an expert review of each hotel, alongside the user reviews. These reviews can be especially helpful in determining factors such as the hotel’s cleanliness and the noise level in the guest rooms.
