Travelogue… with Bob Nicolaides

 

Foreign Office: Be careful, Mombasa is not safe for tourists

 

The Foreign Office is warning of unrest and increased tension in the Mombasa area of Kenya following the death of a prominent cleric. It warned British visitors of the possibility of further disturbances in the seaside city, where several people have been killed in recent months. It said Britons in Mombasa should follow local news, look out for further updates to the FCO travel advice and "remain vigilant at all times".

The warning came after explosions in a suburb of the capital Nairobi on Monday, which caused a number of deaths and many injuries. A number of worshippers were killed during an attack on a church in Likoni, Mombasa on Sunday March 23. "There is a possibility of further disturbances in the Mombasa area," said the Foreign Office. " Likoni is the area where the ferry runs from Mombasa to Southern beach and tourist resorts".

On March 17, a large Improvised Explosive Device, together with some weapons, were found in a car impounded by police in Mombasa. Local media are reporting that Kenyan police believe there may be additional similar bombs in the wider region and are pursuing these threats. On February 2, police raided the Musa mosque in Majengo district of Mombasa, resulting in several deaths. A small explosion took place at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on January 16. There were no reported casualties. Airport services were not affected. On 12 December 2013 a failed grenade attack on a vehicle took place in the Likoni area of Mombasa. On January 1 a number of people were injured in a grenade attack on a nightclub in Diani, near Mombasa.

 

 

Travel company asks Danes for more sex and more babies

 

Danish travel company wants Danes to have more sex, make more babies. A hilarious commercial created by a travel company encouraging locals to help turn around the falling birth rate in Denmark in a unusual competition. Courtesy: Spies Travel. Perhaps you conjure images of new age foodies wandering the forests in search of organic fennel and wild boar they’ll wrestle to the death with their bare hands. Or maybe you think of one of those chilling Nordic murder series.

Well, it seems the Danes aren’t thinking about sex enough either. Birth rates in the northern European country are plummeting, despite all that delicious, creamy Lurpak butter. But one company wants to change all that. Denmark’s biggest travel company Spies has made an ad which encourages Danes to get down and dirty and devilishly Danish.

Here’s the deal. The travel company obviously wants Danes to travel. So they’ve come up with an ad which argues you’re far more likely to feel sexy on a quick getaway than in the dreary routine of Danish daily life. The TV ad includes a couple of bogus stats which would surely be impossible to verify. For example, it says Danes have 46 per cent more sex when they’re away from home. It also says 10 per cent of Danish babies are conceived on holiday.

Accurate or not, the sell is still a good one. Danes who watch the ad are bound to go ‘yes, a quick jaunt to Paris would definitely put me in the mood more than a dreary rainy weekend in Aarhus’, which for the record is Denmark’s second biggest city.

There’s a bonus too. If you can prove you conceived on your trip away with Spies, you get a three-year supply of nappies. But no Lurpak. That you have to pay for.

 

 

 

Events in Ukraine rings SOS alarms for European tourism

 

Growth of tourism within Europe is expected to slow this year due to recent political upheaval in Ukraine and Crimea. Tourism within Europe grew faster than the world average in 2013, but that rate of growth is not expected to continue in 2014. "For 2014 we expect the region to consolidate growth," said John Kester, acting director of the United Nations World Tourism Organization Tourism Market Trends Program.

"Most source markets show good prospects, but due to the recent events growth might soften from the Russian Federation, one of the fastest growing markets for many ETC member destinations recently". He was speaking at the recent annual meeting of the Marketing Intelligence Group (MIG), which is part of the European Travel Commission.

During the meeting, Visit Flanders research manager Vincent Nijs was elected as the new chairman of MIG. Emöke Halassy and Tünde Mester from Hungarian Tourism and Peter Nash from Tourism Ireland were elected as vice-chairpersons. "Improving knowledge transfer, by which I mean the process that goes from eliciting information needs into research projects and actionable findings, is the key objective of my term," said Nijs.

Strangest restaurants: Where to eat dinner in the sky   Going to a restaurant tends to be roughly the same experience whatever you do, right? A table for two, a nice bottle of wine, an overpriced main course and some polite conversation in a modern setting full of discreet lighting and tasteful décor. Well apparently not. When it comes to eating out, some restaurants veer wildly from the blueprint – taking in everything from ‘alien’furnishings, meals served up in haunted caves and dining events where the experience is literally out of this world. Or, at least, above it. That’s H.R. Giger Museum Bar, Gruyères, Switzerland. Swiss surrealist painter Hans Rudolf Giger is a relatively off-the-wall chap. Some of his art is a little on the odd side, and his vision has carried through into the movies – he was part of the special effects team that created the dark world seen in the 1979 classic Alien. So it should be no surprise that the top floor bar-eatery in the museum that salutes his work in the Swiss town of Gruyères looks like it has escaped from a science fiction set. Effectively, it has. But that isn’t the case on the coast of Tyne and Wear, where the Marsden Grotto does a roaring trade just outside South Shields. Legend has it that it was first used in the 18th century –by smugglers, sailors and assorted seafaring folk who wanted to avoid the eye of the law for their import-export schemes. Three centuries on, the cave has been fully excavated and put to proper culinary use, and even has an upstairs chamber with sea views for more distinguished dining. Local myth also has it that the cave is haunted. Think about that as you make your way below in the cliff-side lift that carries diners down from the car park above. Some restaurants are great institutions that stay in situ for many decades. Others turn up one month, stay opem for a few weeks, and vanish shortly after. This is certainly the case with the Electrolux Cube. An on-going project staged by the Swedish appliances company, this moveable structure of transparent glass tends to pop up for four-month stints at the heart of major European cities. So far, it has dropped into position in Milan (on a rooftop overlooking the Piazza del Duomo), in Stockholm (atop the Swedish capital’s Royal Opera House) and in London (where it took up residence on the Royal Festival Hall). It has also landed in Brussels. Focus is always on haut cuisine, with Michelin-starred chefs from the city in question making guest appearances in the Cube. The next port of call is still to be confirmed. It is a common complaint that service in some modern restaurants can be too impersonal, with waiters barely pausing to scribble your order as they dash to assist another table. This is never likely to be the case at the Italian eatery that takes its focus on its guests to extreme lengths. How and why? Because it only has one table.  Skyhigh Dinner The clue is in the name at Solo Per Due (Just for Two) –which can be found some 50 miles north of Rome in the small town of Vacone. The smallest restaurant in the world nestles in a 19th century house – which is supposedly in the grounds of a Roman villa that once belonged to the first century BC classical poet Horace. The menu changes daily depending on the season, and reservations are only taken by e-mail – interested parties should write to info@soloperdue.it. With the restaurant supplying such a personal service, the price is – not unexpectedly – not cheap. Dinner costs €250 (£209) per person, not including champagne. Dinner In The Sky, various cities. Restaurants set up on the top floors of skyscrapers tend to proffer fine views. But the people behind Dinner In The Sky take this idea one step further, doing away with those old-fashioned concepts of walls, windows, doors and lifts – then simply hoisting their guests into the air by attaching a special portable table to a crane. Generally, their tables can seat up to 22 people, and are raised 100ft into the atmosphere for gastronomic grub that, if not quite among the stars, certainly has its feet off the ground. Diners are strapped into their seats, and can watch as a chef and assistance produce their meal at a preparation space in the centre of the table. And if you are staging a special event, a second table – for violinists or DJs – can be elevated alongside. This high-wire act has been performed in 40 cities, including London, Rio and Sydney.

Is Porto tour to be the worst in the world   Forget the ornate cathedrals, the glitzy bars or gourmet restaurants. On what is billed as “The Worst Tours” of Portugal's second city Porto, the highlights are decrepit homes and crumbling shops. Three out-of-work architects have concocted the tours to show visitors the impact of Portugal's debilitating economic crisis on the city that was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1996. “Porto is not just a postcard or some streets where tourists do their shopping. My city is also all this,” said tour guide Margarida Castro Felga, 31, gesturing at the dilapidated facades in the city's Fontainhas district. Also on the itinerary are empty stores whose owners have long gone bankrupt and dozens of houses with boarded windows and doors, even at the upper end of the Porto's main shopping thoroughfare Santa Catarina street. In short, what they are offering is a walking tour of “the alleys, the abandoned buildings, the square, the mean streets, the old markets ... the stories behind them all, and great discussions on very partial points of view”. Disbelieving local youngsters watch the group led by Castro Felga pass by and stop outside the crumbling buildings. “It's sad to let such a beautiful city get run down,” said Dean Watson, who had signed up for the tour with his wife Louise. For the American-English couple in their 50s, the tour brings to life the economic malaise plaguing the eurozone nation, which only managed to shake off two-and-a-half years of recession in the second quarter of 2013. “This kind of visit helps us understand what's happening in Europe today,” said Louise who has lived in Germany with her husband for the last 30 years. “People in Germany prefer not to think too much about it,” she said. Faced with looming bankruptcy after decades of ballooning wages and state spending led to a massive build up of debt, Portugal was forced to seek an international bailout worth 78 billion euros ($119.68 billion) in May 2011. In exchange however, it was forced to undertake sweeping job, pay and pension cuts which deepened a recession and spawned poverty and unemployment that stood at 15.3 per cent during the last three months of 2013. “The city has been losing people for more than 10 years but austerity policies have made things worse,” said Castro Felga, who added that she has stopped counting the number of friends who have left to work overseas. Other morose titbits of life in Portugal dispensed during the visit: not all workers are entitled to unemployment benefits and minimum wage is only 500 euros per month — as compared to a heftier 750 euros in Spain, which has also just emerged from a drawn-out recession, and some 1300 euros in France, both fellow eurozone nations. Official data show that some 18.7 per cent of apartments in the city were empty in 2011, while in capital Lisbon, non-occupancy rate is at 15.5 per cent. But the guides of The Worst Tours reject any suggestion they are flaunting Porto's misery — a criticism directed by some at tour guides who specialise in slums, such as Brazil's favelas. Pedestrians walk past the closed Finance Ministry office in central Porto. Pedestrians walk past the closed Finance Ministry office in central Porto. Source: AFP For Helena Goncalves from the Porto tourism board, such tours only serve to hurt the city's reputation at a time when it badly needs tourist dollars, and when the city is actually gaining popularity. “The city is finally figuring on the international tourism map” thanks to the arrival of low-cost airlines, she said. Overnight stays by foreigners in Porto, which gave its name to one of Portugal's internationally famous exports, port wine, surged 15.2 per cent in 2013. Tunisia: To win tourists with image makeover, Star Wars   Tunisia style Star Wars TUNIS - Tunisia is working against the clock to salvage its 2014 tourist season after three turbulent years, by revamping the country's image—with the help of online media and a few Star Wars characters. "To change a country from one that is relatively inexpensive to a top-end tourist destination will take 10 or 15 years," said Amel Karboul, Tunisia's new tourism minister. "But to change the image of a country from one that's cheap to one that is 'fun' can be done much more quickly, and that's a priority for us," she said, referring to perceptions of Tunisia as a budget holiday destination. The North African country hopes to welcome seven million tourists this year, a slight increase on the 6.9 million who visited in 2010 before the revolution that ousted a decades-old dictatorship and unleashed outbreaks of Islamist violence that damaged Tunisia's reputation. The number of tourists fell to just 4.7 million in 2011, and has only recovered slowly, affecting the estimated 400,000 people working in the key sector that accounts for around seven percent of Gross Domestic Product. To reverse this trend, the ministry decided to exploit the desert settings used for many scenes in the Star Wars films, in a Tunisian version of the music video hit "Happy" by US star Pharrell Williams, replicated on YouTube by people around the world dancing to the tune. "Happy (We are from Tatooine)," commissioned by the ministry, features a range of characters from Star Wars boogying in and around the city of Tataouine, including the iconic droids R2-D2 and C-3PO, a stormtrooper and Darth Vader himself. The southern desert city gave its name to the fictional home planet of Anakin and Luke Skywalker— key figures in the cult The “Star Wars Tunisia" edition of the Pharrell Williams video has already received nearly 1.5 million hits. "There are fans [of the sci-fi films] in the United States, in Scandinavia, in Asia, in South America, where Tunisia is barely known," the minister told a group of journalists last week. "It will raise awareness of Tunisia," she said of her strategy to harness social media as a way of publicizing the country. Already it has had to deal with the fallout from an incident involving a group of Israeli tourists on a cruise ship who were barred from disembarking at Tunis, with the US-based cruise operator saying it would no longer call at Tunisian ports in protest. Karboul insisted the case had nothing to do with discrimination, saying merely that there was a problem with the Israelis' visas. Before the revolution, Tunisia managed to project an image of itself as an attractive holiday destination in the southern Mediterranean, concealing the ruthlessness of the regime in power that was finally overthrown in the first Arab Spring uprising in 2011. Many had hoped to see tourism rebound last year, but those hopes were dashed with the separate assassinations of two secular politicians in attacks that sparked political upheaval and fears of further jihadist violence. Even so, tourism receipts rose by a modest 1.7 percent to 3.23 billion dinars (€1.5 billion/$2.1 billion) from 2012, although they were 8.3 percent off the figure of 2013.