Tuesday, December 21, 2010

A perfect day in Cairo

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When in Cairo, it’s imperative to see a pyramid or two, browse the wonders of the Egyptian Museum and shop the stalls of the Khan al-Khalili market. But leave a day or so in your city schedule to uncover the more authentic, hidden pleasures of this powerhouse of the Arab world to experience the sights, sounds and tastes of a whole host of lesser-known delights.

Start your perfect Cairene morning shopping in the shadow of Bab Zuweila, one of three huge remaining gates of 11th century Fatimid-era Cairo, with a wander down Sharia Khayamiya – or the Street of the Tentmakers – situated opposite. Here you’ll find for sale decorative cotton tents in which, during the annual festival of Ramadan, families break their daily fast with their evening iftar meal. Look out for the colourful child-sized versions which make a stunning spin on a playhouse for tots back home.

Bibliophiles should spend the early hours of the day ensconced in old tomes at L’Orientaliste (15 Shar’a Qasr al-Nil) with its incredible selection of out-of-print titles, old maps, and suitably musty aromas, whilst those in search of antiques or chic little boutiques will be content browsing the back lanes of the cool leafy Zamalek district, tucked away on an island linked by bridges, mid-Nile.

As lunchtime rolls on, locals flock for sustenance to the stalls that line the lanes of Cairo’s Islamic quarter; look for shop-fronts vending kushari from huge metal saucepans. The ultimate Cairene snack food, it consists of pasta, lentils, chickpeas, spicy tomato sauce and fried onions, and makes a filling on-the-hoof repast. Alternatively, seek out tiny, family-run Zizo, just opposite Bab al Futuh, the northern gate of Fatimid Cairo, for an Alexandrian-style spicy sausage sandwich. Old-timer Cairenes with more time on their hands take lunch at downtown Alfi Bey Restaurant (3 Shar’a el Alfi), opened in 1938 and still serving slow-cooked braised stews from its wood-panelled dining room. Meanwhile, if lighter Mediterranean fare appeals, Maison Thomas (1 Shar’a 26th July), back in Zamalek, is the cool local choice for sun-dried tomato-studded pizzas, Italian cheese paninis, and a perfectly frothed cappuccino.

It’s possible to spend an entire Cairo afternoon exploring the labyrinthine, historic mosques and madrassas (religious schools) that make up Islamic Cairo, but it’s worthwhile considering, instead, delving into the centuries-older streets of Coptic Cairo, also known as Mari Girgis (St. George), which contains far more than just Coptic Christian traces. The Coptic Museum (Shar’a Mari Girgis), less frequented than the big-ticket Egyptian Museum downtown, houses the world’s most extensive collection of Coptic Christian artwork, whilst the inhabitants of the serene Convent of St. George will, if you so desire it, wrap you in chains as part of a cleansing ritual believed to represent the suffering of St. George at the hands of the Romans.

Look out for the quiet, shady cemetery at the back of the Church of St. Barbara, from which you’ll see locals training their flocks of homing pigeons; if you ask nicely the groundskeeper might unlock one of the family chapels for an atmospheric peep. From here, look in on the Ben Ezra Synagogue which still serves the 50-or-so local Jewish families, and the beautiful pavilion-like Tomb of Sulayman al-Faransawi, a Frenchman in Napoleon’s army who converted to Islam and died here in 1860. Later, for the most stunning sunset in town, take a taxi ride up to al-Azhar Park, Cairo’s largest green expanse, from which you’ll see stellar views out over the city and thrill to the combined call to prayer from hundreds of city mosques.


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When night descends on the city, there’s plenty outside the confines of Cairo’s plush hotels to keep you busy. Hang out with Cairo’s bohemian set at Al-Horreya Cafe (Midan Falaki), a simple, well-used, well-loved bar where writers, artists and intellectuals have smoked, glugged cold beers and argued philosophically over their chess pieces for decades. For something swisher, seek out hard-to-find underground electronic-inflected nightclub Le Tabasco, (8 Amman Sq, Mohandiseen) or make your way upstairs to the equally well disguised La Bodega (156 26th July St) in Zamalek, with its Moulin Rouge-style restaurant and sleek, minimalist bar. Finally, before heading to bed, grab a skewer or two at Abou Shakra (69 Sharia Qasr al-Ainy, Garden City) where locals have been coming since 1947 to line their stomachs with kebabs, koftas and shwarma sandwiches the night before the weary morning-after.


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A perfect day in Cairo
Amelia Thomas
Lonely Planet Author

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

10 Things I Hate in Hotels

I spend a lot of nights in hotels – apart from camping, staying with friends, travel on boats, trains and planes and other excuses for being away from home. Last year that came to 116 nights in 61 different hotels. And of course there are inevitably some things I don’t like about some of those hotels. My top 10 hotel hates:

1. @ = $ – hotels charging over the odds for internet connections

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2. ▲ Hidden powerpoints – I’ve paid a lot of money for this room, why do I have to crawl around under the furniture to plug in my laptop or phone charger?


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3. ▲ Unstealable coathangers – I’ve never had an urge to steal hotel coathangers, but with these I can’t hang a shirt to drip dry from the shower rail.

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4. ▲ Mystery lightswitches – where on earth is the switch to turn on that light? Or even more annoying to turned the damned thing off?


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5. Lousy lighting – having ► found how to turn the lights on I still need a head torch to read in bed.





6. Lost stairs – I’m only one or two floors up and don’t want to wait for the elevator, but where on earth are the stairs?


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7. ▲ Preset alarms – the last guest to use this room had to get up at 330 am to get to the airport for a pre-dawn flight. So guess what happens to me at 330 am?



8. The environment, what’s that? – I come back to the room and find every light turned on, the air-con set to sub-zero and the TV on with the volume cranked up to 11.



9. The breakfast mystery – why is it that the price tag for breakfast is so often not revealed and/or whether breakfast is or is not included in the room price is a closely guarded secret?


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10. ▲ The packed minibar – every corner of the fridge is packed with overpriced drinks and snacks, leaving no room to squeeze my own water bottle in. In this digital era at least I don’t have to squeeze film in as well.

Tony wheeler.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Dive in! 10 best underwater experiences.

Would you like to be under the sea? Even if diving with sharks isn’t your thing, there are underwater cocktails bars. Go ahead, dive in!

1. Diving with great whites, Gansbaai, South Africa
Everyone knows how the Jaws theme music goes. Diving with great white sharks is up there with base-jumping in the adrenaline top 10, and Gansbaai in the Southern Cape is the ideal place to swim with the big fish. Fortunately, there’s an aluminium cage – or for the brave, a clear plastic tube – between you and the ocean’s greatest killing machines. Numerous companies offer dives in Gansbaai’s ‘Shark Alley’, but look for operators who invest their profits back into shark conservation. The Shark Lady, aka Kim Maclean, pioneered shark diving at Gansbaai; peak shark season runs from May to October.

2. Getting married underwater in Trang, Thailand
If you fancy making a splash on your wedding day, consider an underwater wedding at Trang in southern Thailand. Every Valentine’s Day, dozens of couples don scuba tanks and descend to an altar 12m beneath the Andaman Sea for a full Thai wedding ceremony. Wedding dresses are de rigueur and even the marriage certificate is signed underwater; the ceremony ends with the happy couple releasing one million baby shrimps and a giant clam onto the reef to gain Buddhist merit. Of course, it’s tricky saying ‘I do’ with a regulator in your mouth…

The Trang Underwater Wedding Ceremony runs from 12 to 14 February every year, and brides and grooms must be certified open-water divers.

3. Sleeping with the fishes in Fiji
Travellers with plenty of cowrie shells to spare can swap a night under the stars for a night with the starfish at the sparkling new Poseidon Undersea Resort in the Fiji islands. Suites are housed in futuristic pods on the sea bed, covered by acrylic domes and linked to the surface by a high-speed elevator. There’s even a private submarine that guests can pilot around the lagoon. It’s all very James Bond, and the prices would make a supervillain wince.

There’s a long waiting list for rooms at Poseidon Undersea Resort. If you have to ask the cost, you probably can’t afford it.

4. The ultimate fish supper in the Maldives
Taking the heights of luxury to the depths of the ocean, the Conrad Rangali Maldives resort offers every imaginable indulgence, including an eatery at the bottom of the briny. Covered by a curving glass canopy, the Ithaa restaurant floats beneath a curtain of swirling tropical fish, 5m below the surface of the Indian Ocean. Stingrays, groupers and sharks are regular visitors – think of it as an aquarium where the fish get to watch you eat. If you can see past the obvious contradiction, the menu runs to spiced scallops, tuna sashimi and lobster fricassee.

Visit the Conrad Rangali Maldives from December to March for peak underwater visibility.

5. Swimming to your room in the Florida Keys
The only hotel in the world where you have to scuba dive to reception, Jules’Undersea Lodge is housed inside a converted marine laboratory off the coast of Key Largo. Just six people fit inside this futuristic space, which opens directly onto the sea bed through a pressure-balanced wet room. The compact quarters might deter the claustrophobic, but the sea-lab setting is very James Cameron’s The Abyss. Rates include meals – delivered from the surface in waterproof containers – as well as unlimited tanks for dives in the lagoon.

Advance bookings are essential for the two bedrooms at Jules’ Undersea Lodge, and guests must be certified divers or take a special introductory dive course.

6. Snorkelling with whale sharks, Ningaloo Reef, Australia
Swimming with sharks feels a lot less scary when the sharks in question don’t eat meat. Whale sharks grow to more than 12m in length – as long as a doubledecker bus – but these gentle giants live off a diet of microscopic plankton. Whale sharks spook easily and the ideal way to get close is with a mask, snorkel and fins, so the best place to swim with the world’s biggest fish is Ningaloo Marine Park on the west coast of Australia. Numerous operators run shark-snorkelling tours from the town of Exmouth in Western Australia.

Whale sharks visit Ningaloo Reef between April and July – at other times, you’ll have to make do with manta rays, turtles, dolphins and humpback whales.

7. Submarine cocktails in Eilat, Israel
According to Jules Verne, Captain Nemo frowned on alcohol and anything else associated with the surface of the earth, but the Red Sea Star would still be his kind of bar. Nestling on the seabed off the coast of Eilat, this wacky watering hole offers the rare opportunity to sip a sea breeze cocktail at the bottom of the sea. Okay, so the decor – wobbly windows, starfish lanterns, jellfish chairs – is as tacky as an octopus’s tentacles, but you can’t fault the views over a coral garden teeming with fish.

Before you jump into your swimming costume, the Red Sea Star is attached to dry land by a 70m pontoon.

8. Wreck diving in Truk Lagoon, Micronesia
The world of wreck diving owes a lot to WWII – whole fleets of warships were sent down to Davy Jones at Coron in the Philippines and in Scapa Flow in Scotland. But nothing compares to wreck diving in the tiny state of Chuuk in Micronesia. The sandy seabed of this coral atoll forms an eerie graveyard for more than 300 Japanese battleships, freighters, submarines and aircraft, sunk in a single devastating American assault in February 1944. However, dive carefully – the wrecks still carry their original cargoes of tanks, ammunition, torpedoes, depth charges and mines.

Continental Micronesia flies from Guam to the tiny airstrip on Weno island four times a week.

9. Freshwater frolics in Lake Malawi
Landlocked Malawi might seem an unlikely destination for a dive trip, but Lake Malawi has hidden depths (ahem). One of the world’s top spots for freshwater diving, this African Great Lake is home to at least 1500 species of tropical fish, but significantly, no crocodiles (for some reason, they stick to the rivers feeding the lake). On the southern lakeshore, Monkey Bay is a prime spot to learn to dive: for one thing, the ‘pool’ training takes place in the warm, current-free waters of the lake.

In the chilled-out traveller centre of Cape Maclear, Gecko Lounge scores highly for its lakeside terrace and boisterous party vibe.

10. Disappear into a blue hole in Mexico
The polar opposite of open-water diving, sinkhole diving offers the eerie experience of dropping into the dark unknown. Hidden away in the jungles of Yucatán, Tamaulipas and Quintana Roo, Mexico’s cenotes – from the Mayan word for ‘sacred well’ – plunge to dizzying depths. Divers have descended to 282m in the still, silent waters of Zacatón in Tamaulipas without ever reaching the bottom. Leave your fear of confined spaces at the surface – the average blue hole is a tangle of stalactites, stalagmites and winding limestone passages.

Tulum in Quintana Roo is the undisputed capital of cenote diving, but you’ll need special certification for cave diving.


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Thursday, December 2, 2010

The 6 best cities to get lost in

Put your map away and spin round three times – it’s time to get lost. Going off the radar in a strange city can be the perfect way to uncover its secrets, get a feel for the layout and meet the locals.

Of course, there’s good lost and bad lost. It’s best done on purpose, with plenty of time to spare and a sound way to get found again.

Some cities just seem to lend themselves to this kind of off-the-chart adventure. Here are six of our favourites – and six ways to make it home again.

Venice

This has got to be the ultimate head-spinner of a city. First it comes at you with an endless recession of identical canals and bridges, then it veers off at odd angles and into blind corners, and all the time it’s boggling your senses with its impossible film-set beauty. No fair, Venice! Getting lost here pays – the tramp of a thousand tourists yields to tranquil sunlit courtyards and the sound of pigeons’ wings.

Get found: Look out for the signs and arrows scrawled on the walls: you can follow them to hubs like the Rialto and L’Accademia.



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Varanasi

You could throw yourself into Varanasi’s dark maze of streets a hundred times over and still come out at a different point. Discover temples, sweet shops and silk bargains in its back alleys.

Get found: Countless bicycle rickshaw drivers will be only too happy to take you home – for a price that’s in range of just about every budget.


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London

Most visitors to London have a fractured, point-to-point experience of the city, popping up from tube stations to visit the sights then diving underground again. It’s efficient, but where’s the romance? Try a wander and you’ll be rewarded by grand squares, secluded churchyards and one-off boutiques.

Get found: Just look for the distinctive London Underground sign. Bingo, you’re back on the map!


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Tokyo

The bewildering pace and flickering neon of this go-go city guarantee a bit of giddiness. Abandon yourself to the disorientation and you might just get off-road enough to find the wabi-sabi side of Tokyo.

Get found: Like London, Tokyo has an excellent public transport system. If it all gets too much, jump a train back to home base.


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Istanbul

There are (at least) two great things about getting out of the tourist centre in Istanbul. One – the hotels and hard-sell rug merchants fall away, replaced by local tea shops, parks and houses. Two – the city’s rollercoaster hills reward you with Bosphorus views and toned-up legs. Get lost every day and see your fitness soar!

Get found: If you want to get back to the tourist area, stop for a glass of tea and ask the way to Sultanahmet. Soothe your tired muscles in one of the city’s spectacular bath houses.

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Canberra

With its systems of circular roads, Australia’s capital city regularly traps its visitors in a hamster-wheel spiral of confusion. But there’s better ways to get lost here. Head out of the city centre – yes, into the bush. Keep going. There! See those suburbs? That’s where the life of the city is going on – including some of its best eating.

Get found: Hooray for GPS! Or go with the traditional Aussie method and ask for directions at a servo (service station).



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