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Sailing Vacations, Luxury South Africa, and Wellness Retreats in Our December Newsletter

To all our loyal members, we drink a toast to you this New Year! What a privilege to be trusted and allowed into your lives to help make memories for you and your loved ones. We do not take this lightly and we are so very thankful that you have signed up as ActiveTravels members. This month we are so excited as our valued clients travel to all these diverse locales: South Africa, Hawaii, Dominican Republic, Italy, Florida, California, Switzerland, Belize and France. More clients’ travels for the coming year include Cuba, Iceland, Tanzania, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Israel, Spain and much, much more. Our December newsletter awaits. We are reporting this month about the beauty and ease of sailing vacations, locales to witness the Northern Lights (2017 is reportedly the best year in a decade), the Royal Portfolio’s exclusive South African circuit, and where to go if you need to recharge your body and mind during the coming year. 

Lisa and I wish you a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year! See you in 2017! 

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Art Lovers Will Savor The Alfond Inn, Winter Park

It’s not everyday that I turn around to peer at a piece of art hanging from the walls of a hotel. Usually it’s some commercial print of ocean and seabirds. But last week, while spending the night at the Alfond Inn in Winter Park, Florida, I found myself walking aimlessly through the hallways just to check out the art. When I found an ethereal print by Neeta Madahar, repped by one of my favorite galleries in Boston, Howard Yezerski (now Miller Yezerski), I had to dig a little deeper to see what’s up. I found out that the Alfond Inn, a 112-room boutique hotel debuted last August, thanks to a $12.5 million grant from the Harold Alfond Foundation. Profits from the inn will go directly to Winter Park’s Rollins College for a scholarship fund. Harold Alfond founded Dexter Shoe Company, and his son Ted and wife Barbara are both Rollins alumni. Barbara serves on the board of trustees at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the couple is recognized by ArtNews as two of the 200 most important art collectors in America. With the assistance of independent Boston-based curator Abigail Ross Goodman (who once ran the Judy Rotenberg gallery in Boston), the couple amassed a 100-piece contemporary art collection solely for The Alfond Inn. Not too shabby. 

 
I wish I could have spent more time in Winter Park, a great walking town of boutique shops and restaurants, just outside of Orlando. The Alfond Inn also houses a rooftop pool and a great Southern restaurant, Hamilton’s Kitchen, where I dined al fresco on chicken and grits that evening. I’d happily stay there again, just to walk the hallways. 
 
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Warsaw Rebuilds And Reclaims Its Former Glory

“Before World War II, Warsaw was more beautiful than Prague, than Budapest,” said Joanna Maria Olejek, a translator living in the heart of the city. But then, of course, the Nazis came in and destroyed 85 percent of the city, pinpointing the most important cultural attractions. Stalin swiftly followed Hitler to clean up the mess and give the city a nice communist sheen. Look at the expanse of multistoried apartments, sprinkled with high-rise hotels, and you yearn for a more compelling skyline.

 
Seeing the city with my brother, Jim, last April after he had screened his latest movie at a film festival, I quickly learned the vitality of this city is best found at street level. Classy restaurants and bars beckon the growing number of international visitors who come to the city to make a buck. Property development looms everywhere, as evidenced by the number of cranes perching above high-rise condos and office buildings, some designed by world-class architects like Norman Foster and Daniel Libeskind. Best of all, Poland still uses the local currency, the zloty, and won’t change over to the euro anytime soon. So Warsaw remains far more affordable for Americans than Paris and other cities in the Eurozone.
 
To read my latest story for Global Traveler, please click here. 
 
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One Year After Irene, Vermont Is Fully Open for Fall Foliage Traffic

All eyes were on the Atlantic shoreline one year ago today as Hurricane Irene, downgraded to Tropical Storm Irene, slowly made her treacherous way north. We would soon find out that this perilous storm had far more of an affinity for New England’s mountains than sea, wreaking havoc in her wake as she followed the spine of peaks from the Berkshires into Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Southern Vermont took the brunt of the hit, not necessarily from the wind as much as the deluge of rain causing rivers to overflow, washing away bridges and resulting in more than 200 sections of collapsed road. Fall foliage season, the height of travel to the region, was reduced to a trickle. This season, there hopefully will be no surprises. After Labor Day, I’m going to spend the week talking about my favorite places to be in Vermont during fall foliage, including biking Addison County, mountain biking the Kingdom Trails, sea kayaking the Lake Champlain islands, and hiking Mount Hunger. Stick around. 

 
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Just Ask Jeeves: The Rise of Butler Service in the Travel Industry

Walk into the Lanesborough Hotel at London’s Hyde Park Corner and you’re immediately escorted to your room, where you are introduced to your butler, who is there to be your personal assistant for the rest of your stay. He’ll unpack for you, set up your WiFi, make restaurant reservations, draw your bath, make hotel transfers, wake you up with coffee and tea, be a personal shopper, and a whole lot more if need be. 
 
“We’ll do anything as long as it’s legal,” says the Lanesborough’s head butler, Daniel Jordaan. In the past, that has included cutting a businessman’s hair who was late for a meeting; finding reindeer from a farm, little people to dress up as elves, Santa, and a snow machine for an impromptu Christmas party; redecorating a private hospital room in the style of the Lanesborough after a woman had come to London to give birth; and sending a courier on the Eurostar train to Paris to have a confidential document signed urgently.
 
Blame it on Carson, the hard-working butler who runs a tight ship on the popular television series, Downton Abbey, but more and more high-end clientele are yearning for yesteryear when personal service extended from the hotel or cruise line’s concierge to inside the suite. With the addition of butlers, hoteliers now have the opportunity to service their guests behind closed doors. 
 
 
I’m off with my son, Jake, to the first of many college visits this fall. I’ll be back on Tuesday, September 3rd. Enjoy the weekend, and, as always, keep active! 
 
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Philadelphia Freedom

Washington, DC, garners its fair share of travel press this time of year because of soon-to-bud cherry blossoms. But don’t forget about that other East Coast history hot spot, Philadelphia. Home to one of two U.S. Mint facilities open to the public (Denver is the other; www.usmint.gov/mint_tours), families can take an hour-long self-guided tour of this money manufacturing plant. Unfortunately, they don’t give out freebies. Diagonally across the street is the home of the Liberty Bell, set in a $12.9 million glass pavilion. This tour is also self-guided and free, but guides are on hand to answer all of the children’s questions about that crack. Stay at the Sheraton Philadelphia Society Hill Hotel and you can walk to other Old City attractions like Franklin Fountain, an early 20th-century soda shop that makes the best root beer float I ever had, and Shane Candies, the oldest continuously operating candy story in America. Save room for dinner at City Tavern.  A reconstruction of an 18th-century tavern where Ben Franklin and other Founding Fathers dined, waiters dress up in Colonial garb and serve recipes from that period. 

 
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Good News Out of Tanzania

Earlier this year, I reported on the Tanzanian government’s plan to build a 260-mile highway that would slice right through the southern part of Serengeti. The moronic move would not only disrupt one of the world’s great migrations of 2 million wildebeests traveling north into Kenya’s Masai Mara, but could have been an easy way in and out for poachers. Thankfully, after listening to numerous conservation groups and international travel operators, the government scrapped that idea. Tourism is the number one industry in Tanzania, so it seems like the government finally got wise to the fact that they shouldn’t cut off the hand that feeds them.
 

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