While I was watching young gymnasts cartwheel down the street and a young juggler ride a unicycle as part of the 4th of July parade I was feeling pretty good about driving 400 miles to this town in Southern Oregon for this very American holiday. Ashland knows how to hold a festival. It is best known for being the home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival which produces shows for 10 months out of the year and lays claim to being the largest reparatory theatre offering in the United States. The Shakespeare festival started as a part of the 4th of July festival when a teacher, Angus Bowmer, asked permission to add a Shakespeare play to the festivities. Ashland was no stranger to culture as it used to be a stop on the Chautauqua circuit which brought speakers and artists to various small towns in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Ashland can be enjoyed any time of year but we came on this long weekend because of the particular charm of this place on the 4th. The 4th of July parade was 2 hours long. It featured some very small town aspects like the mayor and other local politicians and dignitaries from the sister city in Mexico. Floats from local businesses were sometimes lackluster but some of the local businesses rise to the occasion. One mexican restaurant, El Tapatio, had 40 dancers and a portable restaurant float. Some had very political themes in this very liberal town. I heard a local from a near by town express his outrage at a group who were protesting the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo as they marched in Orange jumpsuits and hoods. “You sure would not see something like that in Talent” only 5 miles away the local lamented. Undoubtably there are many things in Ashland that cannot be found in nearby towns.

Among the singular pleasures of Ashland are some wonderful restaurants like Munchies (bakery restaurant, try the Marionberry pie), Thai Pepper (great red curry), and Tabu (Nuevo Latino Cuisine). On the 4th these eateries are supplemented by food booths in the park. The festivities also include craft booths, live music and a reading of the Declaration of Independence.
In the evening while the town went to watch the fireworks we attended Othello at the outdoor Elizabethan theatre. What they also don’t have in Talent is ironically enough the talent to produce some of the finest live theatre in the country. Ashland does just that, year after year.

Popularity: 37% [?]

Expedia surveyed 4,000 hotel proprietors internationally asking them who they would prefer to stay in their hotels.

Japanese, who were voted by hoteliers as the world’s best tourists in a global travel survey released this month.

It also rated the travellers on categories that included manners, willingness to learn the local language and sample the cuisine, tidiness, generosity and stylishness.

Here is the list of top 10 overall travellers according to the survey:
1. Japanese
2. British/Germans
3. Canadians
4. Swiss
5. Dutch
6. Australians/Swedes
7. Belgians
8. Norwegians
9. Austrians/Danes/Finnish
10. New Zealanders

Americans rated 11th on the list but most generous.

for more of this article go to eTurboNews. Thanks to Alan Lew of Travelography for pointing this article out.

Popularity: 45% [?]

Near Venice’s St Mark’s square I once overheard an american tourist complain that everywhere they went in Europe there were crowds. This same tourist was wearing a Globus tour company name tag and had arrived with a group of at least 50 people. I had to laugh. He was the crowd.

Some people choose to tour Europe in the comfort of an air conditioned tour bus and others would never be caught dead in that situation. So which kind of person are you? What kind of European vacation is right for you?

Let’s look first at why someone would take a packaged tour:

• Tours are easy - I may not have the time or want to take the time to plan a vacation. Independent travel requires more planning than following a tour guide. If you make hundreds of decisions every day then you may relish the opportunity to let someone else decide where you are going and what you are seeing on your vacation.
• Tours can be inexpensive - Depending on what kind of tour you do and what sort of hotels you stay at you might find that a tour is a less expensive way to have that vacation (staying at that class of lodging). Tour companies often make their money on the economics of putting a number of people in a bus.
• Tours can be efficient - If you want to do a 10 country tour of Europe without killing yourself, it might be easier to do that on a tour where someone else is worrying about getting you from Antwerp to Zurich. You can sleep on the bus if need be.
• Tours provide companions - If you go on a tour you are not alone. Many people crave companionship and you get that on a tour. You might meet your new best friend in the person across the aisle. My mother met a lifelong friend on a Greyhound bus.
• Tours seem safe - A big, often unspoken reason, why many people see Europe on a tour is out of fear: fear of being robbed, fear of becoming lost, fear of the unknown, or fear of not being able to communicate.

All of those are good reasons to take a bus tour although I am saddened when people chose a tour out of fear. But why would you choose to travel independently?

• Independent travel is an adventure - Traveling by yourself or in a small group you may discover places you would not discover from a tour bus. When we were in France a number of years ago we followed a road sign to a ruined castle. Four of us had the entire place to ourselves. This is not even the sort of place that makes the guidebooks.
• Independent travelers can connect to locals - When you are traveling with 50 people in a bus (often from the same country) you have a little bubble of your own culture around you that is more difficult to pierce. On our recent trip to Crete we met a woman on the ferry who ran a bed and breakfast in Chania. She invited us to join her family on an drive into the mountains and dinner at a restaurant the tourists don’t know about.
• Independent travelers have flexibility - On our first trip to Europe we had no hotels booked at all and no itinerary. Sometimes we stayed in places that were a disaster (like over a German beer hall during Pentecost) but other times we stumbled across beautiful little towns like Fritzlar with its half timbered houses lining a picturesque square.
• Independent travelers can get away from the crowds - I have stood at St Mark’s square in Venice and been the only person there as the sun rose. Even crowded tourist filled towns like Rothenberg ob der Tauber in Germany are peaceful at night after the tour buses pull out of the parking lots.
• Independent travelers can spend less time in gift shops - Tour guides can make much of their income by stopping at particular places to shop. If you are traveling independently, you can spend as much or as little time as you like in the Vatican gift shop. You can skip shopping all together if you like (my choice) or spend the entire day shopping (my wife and daughter’s choice).

So what kind of traveler are you?

Popularity: 51% [?]

In honor of the death of comedian George Carlin yesterday, here is a bit of his comedy routine on the absurdity of airline travel and airplane announcements. Not safe for work… it is George Carlin after all.

found on Budget Travel

Popularity: 36% [?]

These are desperate days for the airline industry so we can probably understand that when readers of two Philadelphia newspapers read last week that a new airline would charge by the pound many people believed the story. After all how much stranger is that idea that than charging for customer service, meals, pillows, and all checked baggage. But, although this might be the next move for the airline industry the airline being advertised was fake as were the ads. According to Yahoo:

PHILADELPHIA - Derrie-Air has been exposed. Readers of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News opened their papers Friday to see ads for a new airline called Derrie-Air, which purportedly charges passengers by the pound.

But the new carrier will never get off the ground. It’s a one-day advertising campaign about a fake airline by Philadelphia Media Holdings, the papers’ owner, and Gyro ad agency.

In light blue banners throughout the papers — as well as on their Web site, Philly.com — Derrie-Air cheerily trumpets its policy: The more you weigh, the more you pay. The ads direct readers to the Web site http://www.flyderrie-air.com.

Visitors to the airline site learn that Derrie-Air is the world’s only carbon-neutral luxury airline, and it justifies its fare policy by saying that it takes more fuel to move heavier objects. The carrier pledges to plant trees to offset every pound of carbon its planes release into the atmosphere.

Popularity: 45% [?]