Paris Archives : Plane Sailing

Where the action is: hotels with Hollywood connections

I once stayed at the Hyatt (now Andaz) hotel on Sunset in West Hollywood where, apart from seeing Axl Rose in the foyer, I visited the rooftop pool that featured in the cult film This is Spinal Tap. The so-called “riot hotel” was also the scene of many real band-behaving-badly moments back in the day.

I didn’t seek out this rock’n’roll experience (it came as part of a deal secured by a friend), but there are plenty of people who do want to stay in hotels with connections to the rich and famous.

Bangkok and Dubai: a tale of two top tourist cities

Bangkok has topped the MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index for the highest number of visitors — but it’s Dubai where the cashed-up tourists are going.

According to MasterCard, visitors stayed in Bangkok an average of 4.7 nights and spend US$173 per day during calendar 2017. The capital of Thailand attracts an average of 20 million overnight visitors in the year.

Is your favourite museum on this list?

The Rosetta Stone is one of the British Museum’s many drawards.

TripAdvisor has issued a new list. Now, I take both TripAdvisor and lists with a grain of salt, but I’m prepared to have a look and have my say.

This one offers up the world’s Top 25 museums. It’s a big call, but it’s interesting to me both because it mentions a few I know nothing about, and excludes (or gives low rankings to) some of my favourites.

Nostalgia is better than it used to be

Mae Rhampung in Thailand reminds me of Australia’s Gold Coast when I was a child.

Dejav vu, as any fan of Monty Python knows, is that strange feeling we sometimes get that we’ve lived through something before.

I often get it when I travel.

Where’s the romance?

Followers of this site will know that I have a love-hate relationship with lists. As a journalist, I know such offering as “the 10 best …” or “20 most exciting…” or “12 cheapest..,” are popular with readers.

But, as an educated and rational person, I know that nobody is in the position to offer the best of anything, unless they’ve tried everything — and nobody has.

Continue reading Where’s the romance?

The world’s favourite cities

Which city is the favourite with tourists? Well, it depends which source you believe.

Hong Kong is — again — the most popular city with tourists, according to the latest survey, which notes that London has been overtaken for second place by Bangkok.

Continue reading The world’s favourite cities

Forget the stereotypes

The French are arrogant, the English are miserable, Scots are tight with their money, Australians are boorish drunks, Italians are dangerously passionate, Americans are loud know-it-alls …

Munich Hofbrauhaus — Not all Germans wear lederhosen and play in oompah bands. But some do.

If you agree with any of these statements, then you’re guilty of buying into stereotypes. While it’s true that stereotypes develop from a grain of truth or experience, they too often get exaggerated and disguise a very important fact about humanity.

Continue reading Forget the stereotypes