Tours Gone Wild

Here at T+L we’re increasingly concerned about the sanity and judgment of certain tour operators. Ever in search of novelty, they’ve lately stumbled upon some questionable gimmicks. We’ve seen a spike in sight-jogging tours (“Okay, folks, we have exactly four minutes and twenty-seven seconds to see the entire Left Bank—now GO!”) along with the highly suspect, deeply embarrassing trend of guided Segway rides (c’mon, people, is this actually any easier than walking?). Meanwhile, some jokers are even offering motorcycle-sidecar tours of Beijing. Terrific! As if the traffic and smog weren’t bad enough in a car, let’s go out in a tiny, exposed vehicle where we can get a front-row view of the city’s exhaust pipes while chain-smoking drivers ash on us out their windows. Sorry, but we’ll take the sidewalk.

Peter Jon Lindberg is Travel + Leisure's editor at large. You can follow him on Twitter @PeterJLlindberg.

Photo by iStockphoto

Score! Visit Cooperstown with Ken Burns

Are you ready for some baseball? Tauck Tours has drafted documentary filmmaker Ken Burns to host 4-day trip to Cooperstown, New York, in late June.

Participants will be invited to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame after-hours for some private worship at the high church of America’s favorite pastime. Ken Burns will give a keynote address and then hang around to talk ball during a cocktail reception (I hope the ghost of center fielder and bar-keep Mickey Mantle will not permit any craft cocktails made with Gatorade).

Former players will join the pilgrimage, too, for color commentary—Hall-of Fame pitcher Phil Niekro; former major league outfielder and ESPN analyst Doug Glanville; even a player from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League will attend. Other speakers and participants include Daniel Okrent (writer and inventor of fantasy baseball), a former librarian at the Hall of Fame, and other as-yet-unnamed experts.

Guests will stay at the Otesaga Resort Hotel, a lovely historic property with a wide front porch and rocking chairs. All meals and scheduled activities are included during the trip, including tickets to a 19th century ‘town ball’ game and a stroll around Doubleday Field. For a baseball fan, it sounds like a ridiculously fun long weekend. Oh, will you look at that? It falls a couple of weeks after Father’s Day.

For more information or to book the Tauck Baseball Event, please visit Tauck Tours, or call (800) 468-2825.
The date: June 27-30
The dollars: from $3,690 per person, double occupancy
What You Get:
- 3 nights’ accommodations at Otesaga Resort
- All meals and scheduled activities
- Airport transfers and in-town transportation

Ann Shields is a senior digital editor at Travel + Leisure.

Top photo (Babe Rute): courtesy of Tauck; bottom photo (Ken Burns): courtesy of University of Texas, Arlington.

 

Trip Doctor: Istanbul's Best Walking Tours

Culinary Backstreets–Istanbul Eats: Go off the beaten path to under-the-radar restaurants, bakeries, and candy shops. From $125.

Sea Song: Itineraries from Sea Song, which has custom tours in 17 Turkish destinations, are crafted around themes—food; archaeology; sacred places; artisan traditions—and include unique experiences such as lunch at a historic Ottoman house. From $150.

Send your dilemmas to news editor Amy Farley at tripdoctor@aexp.com. Follow @afarles on Twitter.

Photo by Richard T. Nowitz/CORBIS

Trip Doctor: Madrid's Best Walking Tours

Wellington Society of Madrid: Join one of the dozen walks offered by Stephen Drake-Jones, a history professor and longtime resident. You’ll get his lively perspective on topics including Hemingway’s Madrid (past clients include the writer’s niece, Hilary), the Hapsburgs, the Prado and Modern Arts museums, and the curiosities and anecdotes of old Madrid, with stops at historic taverns. From $76.

Send your dilemmas to news editor Amy Farley at tripdoctor@aexp.com. Follow @afarles on Twitter.

Photo by David Nicholas

Trip Doctor: Rome's Best Walking Tours

Context Travel: The company has walking tours in 21 European cities, plus a robust collection of 50 itineraries in Rome. Outings are led by master’s- and Ph.D.-level scholars in such disciplines as archaeology and urban planning. From $75.

Elizabeth Minchilli in Rome: Food writer Minchilli leads market tours in Campo de’ Fiori and Testaccio; sample local delicacies along the way. From $195.

Send your dilemmas to news editor Amy Farley at tripdoctor@aexp.com. Follow @afarles on Twitter.

 

Photo by David Leventi

Trip Doctor: Paris's Best Walking Tours

Black Paris Tours: Explore places made famous by notable African Americans such as Josephine Baker. From $91.

Paris Muse: Art historians and educators lead excursions to museums including the Louvre and the Centre Pompidou. From $91.

Paris Walks: Centuries-old local lore brings the city to life on itineraries such as “Paris During the Occupation.” From $16.

Send your dilemmas to news editor Amy Farley at tripdoctor@aexp.com. Follow @afarles on Twitter.

 

Photo by James Merrell

Trip Doctor: London's Best Walking Tours

Fox Squirrel: Itineraries focus on arts and culture and highlight topics such as fashion and food. From $48.

Guild of Registered Tourist Guides: Tours are led by guides who specialize in everything from the monarchy to the music scene. From $213.

London Walks: With more than a dozen drop-in walks daily, it’s perfect for last-minute planners. From $14.

Send your dilemmas to news editor Amy Farley at tripdoctor@aexp.com. Follow @afarles on Twitter.

Photo by Christian Kerber

New York Post Bus Tour Brings Back Yesterday's News

For New Yorkers, The New York Post is like a member of the family. Sure, it can be sensationalistic and vulgar. (Sometimes both at the same time.) Once and a while some critics may even find it a bit racist. But the Post is our paper, and we love it no matter what. Besides, what else are you gonna get for a dollar these days?

Now visitors can see New York City through The Post's legendary headlines. Metro Sightseeing (sister company of Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises) and the newspaper have teamed up to offer The New York Post Headlines Tour, a double-decker ride through the tabloid city.

The tour, which departs from 57th Street and 7th Avenue at 10AM and 2PM every Thursday (tickets are $49), takes you from the Helmsley Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South, former haunt of "Queen of Mean" hotelier Leona Helmsley to the Marble Collegiate Church, where Donald Trump met his second wife, Marla Maples in 1987. That marriage ended in 1997, but not before giving the Post one of its most famous headlines ever: "The Best Sex I Ever Had!"

As the bus winds its way downtown, guide Dennis Lynch offers a Page Six-worthy rundown of boldface names: Liza Minelli and David Gest (who were hitched at the Regent Hotel)  Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley (who honeymooned at Trump Plaza) to Alec "The Bloviator" Baldwin (as the Post calls him) and Matt Lauer (both of whom are identified with Rockefeller Center), and Tupac Shakur (who was attacked in Times Square) all get name-checked. So do some of New York's darkest tabloid figures, like Bernhard Goetz and Joel Steinberg.

As you can tell by some of the points of reference, New York's tabloid heyday peaked with the 1980s. Looking out at Manhattan from the top of the New York Post Headlines Tour in 2013, the city looks very different than it did back in the day: It's cleaner, better-run, and packed with far more tourists than it was when the Post cost 25 cents. Besides, as anyone who's guiltily clicked on a link to TMZ or skimmed a copy of US Weekly at the supermarket checkout line knows, New York is no longer the center of the scandal universe. Similarly, newspapers can no longer claim to dominate in sensationalist coverage of the celebrities and power brokers. But if you enjoy nostalgia, and have a soft spot for the foibles of the rich and (in-)famous, this tour is for you—even if you're a Daily News or New York Times reader.

Photo by Matt Haber

That Sinking Feeling: Passengers Rescued from Liverpool Duck Bus

When Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip rode the amphibious tour bus, the Yellow Duckmarine, for a tour of Liverpool last year, they may have elevated this rather conspicuous mode of tourism to a slightly more dignified position.

This week, the image of these tours has sunk again—rather literally. Over Easter weekend, a lunchtime run by the Beatlemania-tinged tour—which passes by several local landmarks, including the Cavern Club where the Fab Four got their start—ended abruptly when the boat began to sink in the River Mersey. Luckily, as The Daily Mail's Becky Evans reports, all of the passengers were evacuated safely to a pontoon.  (Beatles nerds might note that "Ferry Cross the Mersey" was not a Beatles song, but a hit for Gerry The Pacemakers.) From the shore, many passengers watched (and documented) the Duckmarine sinking, not unlike Pete Best’s star potential back in the day.

Happily, no one was hurt, but the amphibious DUKW vehicles—originally used by the U.S. military during World War II—have seen their share of bad accidents as tour vehicles in the past, including a deadly crash in Philadelphia in 2010.

Duckmarine officials told The Daily Mail that they're suspending the water portion of tours with their other Duckmarines while they conduct an investigation of the accident. "Our crew are incredibly experienced and they acted very quickly," sales manager Paul Furlong told reporter Becky Evans. "It's still a fine tour but we're not charging the full amount."

See: Experiencing European Culture in Liverpool

Photo by PE Forsberg / Alamy

Joint Venture: Jamaican Farms Entice Visitors with Special “Ganja Tours"

Wine lovers have Napa Valley. Beer snobs have Oregon. And now, potheads may have their own vacation paradise: wandering the lush grounds that perhaps inspired Bob Marley to sing, “let’s get together and feel alright.”

According to a new AP report, tour operators in Jamaica are increasingly taking visitors to see the marijuana farms that produce the local “ganja”—such as spots near Nine Mile, Marley’s hometown, and outside Negril.

Even with the potential buzz-kill undertones (pot has been illegal in Jamaica since 1913), such excursions actually sound like a nice nature tour, laced with fun facts: you can survey the leafy plants, red soil, and learn about interesting varieties of the plant, such as sinsemilla (reportedly Marley’s favorite), “purple kush,” and “pineapple skunk.”

Perhaps taking some cues from pot-legalizing U.S. states such as Colorado and Washington, there is talk of someday legalizing marijuana in Jamaica. Until then, some tour operators are operating pretty cautiously. According to the article, one tour requires more than just a per-person fee, in order to weed out narcs: “After you smoke a spliff with us and we get to know you,” according to a site called Jamaicamax, “then we will take you on the best ganja tours in Jamaica and you’ll smoke (and eat if you want) so much ganja you’ll be talking to Bob Marley himself.”

Photo credit: David McFadden/ /AP/Corbis