Travel briefs
Published 2:17 pm Friday, December 14, 2007
A glittering ball in Times Square is not the only thing that drops at midnight on New Year’s Eve.
In Key West, Fla., a 6-foot-tall manmade conch shell descends to the roof of Sloppy Joe’s Bar to mark the new year. But the island is also home to two other midnight descents on Dec. 31: a super-sized red high-heel shoe carrying drag queen Sushi at the Bourbon Street Pub-New Orleans House complex; and a pirate wench who descends from the top of the mast of the tall ship Liberty Clipper at the Historic Seaport.
In Atlanta, the 19th annual Peach Drop features an 800-pound peach made of fiberglass. The event, held in Underground Atlanta, a six-block retail and entertainment district, will be followed by fireworks and an explosion of confetti. Festivities start at noon that day for families and continue until 4 a.m. as restaurants, bars and nightclubs in Kenny’s Alley stay open to accommodate all-night revelers. Details at www.peachdrop.com.
In New Orleans, the celebration starts at 8:30 p.m. with partying and music in Jackson Square. At midnight a lighted gumbo pot drops from atop the Jax Brewery. Then a fireworks display lights up the night skies over the Mississippi River. The revelry continues overnight in the nearby French Quarter, followed by college football on Jan. 1 with the Sugar Bowl game between Hawaii and Georgia.
Have an offbeat holiday at hidden landmarks
If you’re looking for something a little different to do over the holidays this year, here are a few offbeat attractions from the Hampton Hotels Hidden Landmarks Web site.
Visit W. 11th Street in Cleveland (across from Rowley’s Inn) where the 1983 movie “A Christmas Story” was shot.
Check out Bronner’s, which calls itself the “World’s Largest Christmas Store,” in Frankenmuth, Mich. The store stocks 50,000 Christmas-related products and says it gets 2 million visitors a year, including 2,000 tour groups.
Go to a reindeer park. Operation Santa Claus at The Reindeer Ranch near Redmond, Ore., bills itself as the home of the country’s largest herd of domesticated reindeer.
Be dazzled by Denver’s Christmas display of more than 40,000 colorful lights on the City and County Building on Bannock Street.
For more information, go to www.hamptonlandmarks.com and type “holiday” in the search box.
Disney cruise itinerary again includes St. Croix
St. Croix is readying its brightly painted colonial buildings and centuries-old sugar mills to welcome cruise ship passengers again.
Disney Cruise Line announced new eastern Caribbean itineraries for 2009, with one seven-night cruise featuring a day stop in St. Croix, the largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Tourism provides much-needed income on the island, and locals greet passengers with a fair of crafts and music.
Most major cruise lines suspended visits to St. Croix five years ago, citing crime and a lack of consumer demand.
The director of the St. Croix Chamber of Commerce, Michael Dembeck, said robberies have become far less frequent on the island — the poorest in the three-island chain — while adding that safety concerns were “overblown” by the cruise ship industry back in 2002.
Tourism Commissioner Beverly Nicholson Doty said the Disney stopovers will be a significant boon for St. Croix, which has long stretches of scenic coastline, Danish facades and historic sites including plantation ruins that were once home to U.S. founding father Alexander Hamilton.
Smart travelers find off-season bargains
Looking for a hotel bargain?
Then heed the findings of CheapTickets.com’s “Cheapometer,” which offers month-by-month projections for when hotel rates will be cheapest in 2008 in popular destinations around the world.
For example, hotels in Athens will be 68 percent cheaper in January than at its peak tourism period, the Web site said.
Other January bargains include Jackson Hole, Wyo., 64 percent cheaper than peak, and Paris, 48 percent cheaper, the site said.
Hotels in California’s wine country in Napa and Sonoma is 47 percent cheaper in February than peak, CheapTickets said, and London is 35 percent cheaper in February.
Venice hotels are 55 percent cheaper in March than what you might pay other times of year, and Montreal is 40 percent cheaper that month.
Hotels in Hawaii are 22 percent cheaper in May than in peak season, according to CheapTickets.
Shenandoah National Park repairing road
One of Virginia’s most scenic roads is getting a face-lift.
Shenandoah National Park has begun a yearlong construction project to rebuild portions of the 105-mile Skyline Drive. The work will be done on a 34-mile stretch between the Thornton Gap entrance station at the road’s intersection with U.S. 211 and at the Swift Run entrance station at the road’s intersection with U.S. 33.
Park spokeswoman Karen Beck-Herzog said the reconstruction is expected to cost about $1.9 million.
Beck-Herzog said visitors can expect delays throughout the year. About 400,000 vehicles and 300 buses entered the park from January through October.
Skyline Drive was built in the 1930s. It was last reconstructed in the 1980s.
Associated Press
