Cleared for takeoff!

Greg Gross

This blog exists because of two women — my mother, who kindled my love of travel as a kid, and a young black woman in Natchez, MS, who proudly informed me that she had never set foot outside the city limits…and never intended to!

Say WHAT?!

My most prized possession is an expired passport with 15 visa stamps in it, which has prompted some people of color to wonder if I’m actually white.

To them, I owe the title of this blog.

Travel opens your eyes, broadens your mind.  It inspires and it humbles.  You return knowing your world, and yourself, a little better.  So we’ll be talking about travel — tips, ideas, destinations.  Maybe you’ll find something here that inspires you to join those of us already “out there.”

I hope so, because as my friend Shay Olivarria says, “the world is bigger than your block.”

It’s time you had a look at it.

We’re going LIVE!

Join me this week for a live online chat Thursday on Here’s Why., the fun new blog started up by Anne Maclachlan — friend, colleague, Renaissance woman and just plain wicked-good writer.

We’ll be talking about all things travel, including my reasons for starting my blog in the first place. Wonder where the blog is going in 2010? Wonder where YOU should be going in 2010? Wonder why travel matters now more than ever? Bring your questions, comments, whatever. If it has to do with travel, it’s fair game!

After it’s over, come back and check out Anne’s site. You’ll enjoy her keen insight and five-bladed sense of humor long after we’re done chatting.

Here’s the code to automatically bring you into the chat.

See you there!

DATE: Thursday, 11 Feb 2010.

TIME: 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific

SITE: Here’s Why.

DIRECT CHAT LINK: CoverItLive

Batter up, blankets down!

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but spring training’s so delightful. And since we’re fed up with snow…

In the spring, the fancy of a lot of folks turns to baseball…and well it should.

Football is finally over, and winter is laying siege to much of the country. For denizens of the mid-Atlantic states especially, a little March getaway to Florida or Arizona could justly be viewed as an act of self-preservation.

Think about it. No temperatures in their 20s, their teens or even “younger.” The salt goes on your French fries, or around the rim of your margarita glass, instead of on the roads. And snow is not viewed as one of the four major food groups.

Like I said, think about it.

If you’re willing to do more than just think about it, there are plenty of vacation packages designed around the schedules of the two spring training leagues, the Grapefruit League in Florida and the Cactus League in Arizona. Decide whether you’re more a tropics or a desert person, pick your package, then start packing.

Check first with Major League Baseball, or with your favorite major-league team. Many offer packages for their fans.

Contact your favorite airline, especially if you’re enrolled in their frequent-flier program, to see if they have such packages. Check too with the usual online suspects — Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Kayak.

IF YOU GO
Some packages are already selling out, so if you’re hoping to thaw out down south or out west, best get a move on. He who hesitates gets frozen out. Literally.

Spring Training Tours…Offers tour packages for both the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues, which an emphasis on weekend trips.

Expedia…Hotel deals in the spring training venues, both leagues, starting at $70 a night.

Budget Travel…Arthur Frommer’s indispensible info source on all things travel, steps up to the spring training plate again this year. Tips on tickets and how to get up close and personal with the diamond’s stars of today and tomorrow.

In recognition that this is not prime vacation time for most folks, a lot of these packages are designed as weekend getaways.

While the packages can be a pretty good deal, don’t be afraid to price out a spring training trip — or any trip — if you think you can beat the package price. Spend a little time, shop carefully and you might be able to put together the best package entirely on your own.

Here’s an idea: Check with your favorite cruise lines. They’ve been known to do specialty cruises around spring training time, featuring Hall of Famers and other past baseball greats. Baseball without the baseball, and a cruise to boot!

Which brings up the one edge that Florida’s Grapefruit League has over their cactus counterparts. Unlike the Arizona desert, Florida sands come with oceans attached. When you or your significant other weary of baseball, you can always hit the beach.

Not the worst fringe benefit in the world.

Spring training this year begins Mar. 2 in Florida and Mar. 3 in Arizona. It lasts about a month. PLAY BALL!

And I don’t mean snowballs!

Mardi Gras comes nine days early

Lift your head up, New Orleans…you’re a winner!

Officially, Mardi Gras Day this year falls on Feb. 16.

The New Orleans Saints just changed the calendar. This year, Mardi Gras starts NOW!

Congratulations to the Saints, Super Bowl champions on their very first appearance. As an original Saints fans who recalls this team’s bedraggled beginnings four decades ago, tonight is sweet vindication. And props to team owner Tom Benson for keeping the team in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, even if he did do it reluctantly. It all worked out in the end.

The fleur-de-lis never looked so good.

Congratulations even more to the city of New Orleans. My birthplace. Birthplace of jazz. Birthplace of Mardi Gras. You who have endured so much, suffered so much, been neglected, disparaged and disrespected so much by so many for so long.

But NOT tonight, jack! Uptown, Downtown, Back ‘o Town. Third Ward, Ninth Ward. Canal Street, Bourbon Street, South Claiborne. New Orleans East. Lakeshore, Gentilly, Kenner, Metairie. St. Bernard, Algiers. The night, the nation, are yours tonight!

And all those folks who came pouring into the city from everywhere, just to watch the game on TV, are getting their reward now — what is sure to be the longest, loudest and (hopefully) most joyous citywide street celebration the city, maybe the country, has ever seen.

This may be the first time in New Orleans history that Mardi Gras Day becomes an afterthought.

And don’t you wish you were there right now?! God knows I do!

Psst! just try to hold it down around the cemeteries, y’all. The spirits need their rest, you know, and…aww, to Hell with it! Wake them up, too!

Memories in black and gold

The upcoming Super Bowl brings back 43-year-old memories of New Orleans and the debut of the Saints, a mixed picture in both cases.

In 1967, the first Super Bowl game was played. Few folks even knew about it. Many of those who did weren’t sure what to make of it.

The same could be said of the New Orleans Saints, who debuted that same year.

Every Sunday, we walked — Dad, my brothers, George Jr. and Thaddeus, and I — down Freret Street to Tulane University to watch them play.

Tulane had admitted its first black students four years earlier. Still, just being on that campus felt eerie. It didn’t seem real. It didn’t seem possible. In 1967, New Orleans had a lot of places like that. But they couldn’t stop you from dreaming. Martin Luther King Jr. had taught us that.

As we walked across the campus, I would fantasize about being a student there, books in hand, going from class to class.

But first things first. It was Sunday. Time for football.

The Saints’ colors, black and gold, were the perfect blend of class and menace. I wore my gold beret with its black fleur-de-lis to the games. You couldn’t tell me I wasn’t the baddest thing in the place. (I wasn’t, of course, but you couldn’t TELL me that!)

End zone seats were $3. The four of us could do a game — beer, sodas, hot dogs and all — for about thirty bucks.

Walking to the games meant Dad never paid for parking. Good thing, because there wasn’t any. Fans parked on the streets, in people’s driveways, even on their lawns.

Tulane Stadium was one of those old brick oval football yards, built just before the Great Depression. They grew hedges behind the endzones. Players would run full-speed across the endzones — and vanish in shrubbery.

It could take them awhile to get out.

There were no nets behind the goalposts. A ball that went into the stands was yours — provided you could fight your way out of the stadium with it. Sometimes, there was more hitting in the stands than on the field.

The Saints themselves were a mix of aging castoffs and untried rookies. They had names like Ernie Wheelwright, Steve Stonebreaker, Dan Abramowicz — and the player whose name probably best symbolized the Saints’ fortunes in 1967:

Charlie Brown.

On their very first play, against the Los Angeles Rams, John Gilliam returned the opening kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown. We were stoked! The old stadium was rocking!

The Rams won, anyway.

The Saints spent that first season playing Sonny Liston to the NFL’s 15 other Muhammad Alis — three wins, 11 losses.

Today, the championship game that was so little known in 1967 is now one of the most watched spectacles on Earth — and this Sunday, the New Orleans Saints will be playing in it.

Things have also changed at Tulane. The old brick stadium has long since given way to student housing, a campus rec center — and a huge parking structure.

And no one thinks twice about seeing a black student on campus anymore. I know, because at different times thereafter, Thaddeus studied there and I did research there.

I think Dad would have rated that ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl. But I’m pretty sure he’ll be watching, just the same.

Super Bowl XLIV — Better than being there?

Can’t get tickets for the big game? Can’t get to Miami? Why not catch the game in New Orleans instead?

Super Bowl XLIV, set for this coming Sunday, is special. Why? Because for the first time in their 43 years of existence, the New Orleans Saints are in it.

Five years after the team came dangerously close to abandoning New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, they’ll be center-stage in one of the three biggest spectacles in the sports world (the other two being the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup).

As one who watched those very first Saints games 43 years ago, this brings back a lot of memories for me. Now, the Saints are only days away from whipping up a batch of special memories for a whole new generation of fans.

They’ll face the Indianapolis Colts, who already have a few Lombardi Trophies and are gunning for more. Between them, these two teams have enough offensive firepower to blow out the fuses on every scoreboard in Sun Life Stadium in Miami.

This could be a Super Bowl for the ages.

If only you could get tickets, right? Maybe you’re trying to scrounge up the cash to score a couple of seats, which start at $1,350 apiece and go as high as…well, you don’t really want to know, do you?

For the price of one of the cheaper tickets, you not only could see the big game, but get your Super Bowl groove on in the town that has made celebrating life a way of life.

Why not catch the game in New Orleans?

The buzz coming out of the Crescent City this week is that a fair number of folks are pouring into the city to do exactly that.

If the Saints win, you could find yourself in the middle of the biggest celebration since…well, Mardi Gras! As it happens, this Super Bowl is taking place right in the middle of the city’s Carnival season. Go for the Super Bowl, come a day or two early for the parades and the beads and the music and the food.

And should the Saints come up short in the game, you can join New Orleanians in drowning their sorrows — and believe me, no city knows more about drowning its sorrows than New Orleans.

Even at the height of the two-week Carnival season, it’s possible to find some last-minute hotel rooms in the city. Shop around online or contact the New Orleans XXXXXXX. Last-minutes flights can be had, as well.

Once you’re there, the only question left is — where to watch the big game?

Sure, you’re got a nice working color TV in your room, and the big-screen down in the lobby bar is always available. but who wants rto watch the biggest sporting event in New Orleans history with a bunch of tourists? Talk to your desk clerk or hotel concierge. Ask them to recommend some cool spots where the locals will be watching the game.

Regardless of the game’s outcome, odds are you’ll go home with memories that could make you the envy of folks who actually went to the game.

IF YOU GO
Check with your favorite airlines for last-minute flights to New Orleans — remember that the airlines knock a few dollars off the fares when you book online rather than dealing with a live reservations clerk.

Check too with the major online reservations players — Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Orbitz, Hotwire, Booking Buddy and CheapoAir — for both flights and hotel availability and prices.

Some Internet travel sites specialize in last-minute travel — flights, lodging, the works:
Last-Minute Travel…Just what their name implies
LastMinute.com…An interesting site that gives your choice of last-minute travel deals in the United States or the United Kingdom.
SmarterTravel…They make a specialty of tracking down last-minute air bargains

The closer you can get to up-to-date local info, the better:
New Orleans Online…Good resource for Crescent City visitors.
About.com…This page has info on Super Bowl parties, pep rallies, second-line parades and other game day merriment.
New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau

As I find more resources, I’ll be adding to this list, right up to game day.

Travel — Do it for your kids!

Kids who see more of the world do better in school — and maybe better in life.

Got kids? Want them to get a richer education than they can get in the classroom alone? Or would you be happy if they just got better grades?

If your answer is “yes,” put down the remote, turn off the Wii — yes, even log off this computer — and take your kids traveling.

According to studies from the U.S. Travel Association, kids who travel with their families tend to do better in school.

You can tell me the USTA is just a travel industry lobby group, which it is. You can tell me they have an agenda, which they do.

What you can’t tell me is that they’re wrong.

You can’t tell me that standing where Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial to proclaim his now-famous dream doesn’t resonate in the mind of a young child.

You can’t tell me that walking that long black wall of 58,000 names on the Vietnam Memorial won’t teach a kid more about the cost of war than all the dry recitations of military history. Or that hearing the recorded voices of slave ancestors at the Library of Congress, or being able to peer inside an astronaut’s space capsule, won’t fire a young imagination.

And that’s just in Washington D.C. Wait until they get that first look at the Mississippi River, the giant Sequoias in California, the Grand Canyon, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Let them ride to the top of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, walk across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, look out from the top of the Empire State Building.

Let them walk in the footsteps of Harriet Tubman along the Underground Railroad.

Or pause in front of the house in Queens where Louis Armstrong sat on his front steps and taught little kids to play trumpet.

Or pass through the old courthouse in St.Louis, under the shadow of that gleaming arch, where a panel of federal judges from the South informed Dred Scott that he was legally only three-fifths of a man because he was a slave.

Educational? Yeah, I’d say so.

But all that is prelude. Just wait until an immigration officer stamps their passport and welcomes them into a foreign land for the first time. That’s when they start to realize that there’s a lot more to this world than our little corner of it, and that they need not live in fear of the people in it.

A 2006 survey done for the International Student Travel Organization showed that “a clear majority of students who traveled on an international exchange program felt they had become more trusting, open-minded, flexible, confident, and tolerant as a result of their travel experiences.”

There’s another educational benefit from travel. You and your kids may come home with a better idea of what your schools are not teaching.

I was in a junior high school in Oakland when we got an exchange student from northern Italy named Pietro. Tall, blond, athletic. The girls went nuts when he spoke to them in Italian. But Pietro was on a mission to work on his English.

I don’t know why. His English was flawless — as were his German and his French. I’ll go out on a limb right here and say his Italian was probably pretty good, too.

Wait minute, hold up! A kid our own age, fluent in four languages? Pretty soon, Pietro had some of us looking at each other like, “What’s wrong with us? Why are we lagging so bad?”

He also had us looking at our teachers, who suddenly didn’t seem so omniscient anymore.

You know what’s up with public schools today. Shrinking budgets, campus closings, educational enrichment programs disappearing like mirages in the desert. Kids are missing out on a lot of things that my generation took for granted.

But you don’t have to accept that. With some well thought out family travel, you can fill those gaps in your kids’ education. Rare is the travel provider these days that doesn’t offer some sort of discounted family travel package to almost any destination in the world. Pick one that looks good, check it out thoroughly, then start packing.

You don’t even have to let the kids know that their vacation is actually a learning experience on steroids.

We’ll just keep that between us.

Obama to the rails?

After decades of dithering, is America finally ready to move its passenger trains out of the 19th century and into the 21st?

One of China's new high-speed passenger trains. Is this what America's rail future looks like?

The buzz has it that President Barack Obama will follow up on his State of the Union address tomorrow with a town hall meeting in Florida, and he’ll be bearing about $8 billion worth of gifts — seed money for 13 regional corridors around the country for high-speed passenger trains.

It’s all part of the now-famous/infamous White House stimulus spending package.

We’ll need to wait until tomorrow to see if it actually is 13 corridors, and if the stimulus money totals out to be $8 billion. But if any of this happens at all, it’ll move America’s pitifully outdated passenger rail network closer to the state of the art — and closer to the standard increasingly taken for granted in Europe and Asia — than it has ever been.

If the Wall Street Journal is right — and there’s no reason to believe they’re not — the biggest chunk of that, $2.25 billion, is earmarked for California to get our long-discussed high-speed rail system off the ground.

I’ve already pointed out, and more than once, the differences between modern high-speed rail systems in Europe and elsewhere and…Amtrak, whose shortcomings are not only well-documented, but almost too numerous to count. For years, Americans who’ve experienced for themselves the speed, efficiency and comfort of high-speed rail elsewhere in the world have been clamoring for Washington to get off its rump and do something similar here.

State governments across the country have been laying out plans for regional high-speed rail for at least a decade. Voters in California even passed a bond measure supporting it. But it’s been known from the start that without federal dollars to back it up, it was all just wishful thinking.

The first meaningful steps in turning long-held wishes into high-speed reality could come tomorrow. We’ll see.

NEW SERIES: Wine travel

First of an occasional series

Vineyard, Guadalupe Valley, Baja California, Mexico

Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Othello, II. iii. (315)
The chance to experience a truly fantastic wine is a great reason to go out to dinner. It’s an equally good reason to travel the world.

The old Latin saying tells us that “in vino veritas” — in wine (there is) truth. You may also find that in wine, there is culture, geography, politics, intrigue and a whole lot more. A lot the Old World’s history can be found inside its giant wooden wine casks.

It’s also one way to get the flavor of a place, literally.

A cabernet sauvignon from Napa may use the same variety of grape as one from Naples, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to taste exactly the same. The air, the soil, the climate, all the things that make those two regions unique, also make for a unique wine.

And if you’re drinking for taste instead of “the buzz,” you will pick up the difference from one region to another.

So how many regions are we talking about? Lots!

When I was a kid and someone mentioned wine — real, serious wine — you thought of France and Italy, and that was about it. As I grew a little older, I added Spain and Germany to the mix, but to my mind, good wine was still all about Europe.

If you thought of California at all, it was because of what one Internet wag calls “bumwines,” which serve no purpose other than to prematurely kill as many of your brain cells as possible. I’m talking about things like Ripple, Thunderbird, Boone’s Farm and similar offerings from what I used to call “the trashcans of Ernest and Julio Gallo.”

For my next trick, an understatement: Things have changed!

The French and Italians are still very much in the game, and the wine-producing regions that gave their names to their wines — Burgundy, Champagne, Chianti, to name a very few — are happily still with us. In the 21st century, though, their list of competitors has grown considerably. Argentina. Chile. Australia. New Zealand. South Africa, and that’s just scratching the surface.

These days, it’s hard to find a region of the world that doesn’t produce some wonderful wines. You could rack up a lot of frequent-flier miles on your favorite airline in pursuit of the grape.

You could start right in my home state of California, which has spent the last half-century shedding its image as the trash wine capital of the world. A drive or a bike tour through the Northern California wine counties — Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, among others — will leave you with an educated palate and a trunk or pannier full of bottles.

The same can be said of New York and Washington states, among others. They don’t have to be huge, sprawling operations, either. Just as American microbreweries are producing some really tasty craft beers, there are small wineries around the country putting out some excellent wines.

Some of those wineries may be no more than a half-day’s drive from your house.

Want to use your passport in the name of wine? Head north to Canada. There, you’ll find ice wine. No, it’s not wine made from ice!

Remember those Shakespearean tales and Robin Hood stories from Olde England that made reference to a drink called mead? You can still find lots of Canadian wineries making it.

As you might expect from Canada, they also have a fair number of wineries producing organic wines.

If you’d prefer both your wine and yourself not frozen, you can always head south instead of north. Mexico has some significant wine-producing regions, and the most important of them are within easy reach of the U.S. traveler.

Look at that. We’ve got you happily sloshed already, and we haven’t even left the continent yet.

But we will. Count on it!

First, however, we’re going to take a look at the two California wine countries. That’s right, two, one on each side of the U.S.-Mexico border. Those will be our first stops on our global wine road. So pack up your tastebuds, decide who’s going to be the designated driver…and get ready to get your drink on!

Italy in pictures

Just posted an audio slideshow on YouTube from last last’s Italy trip. Rome, Pisa, Florence and Venice. Made me want to get back on the plane. Immediately.

Enjoy!

PS: Eventually, I’ll be able to embed slideshows and videos directly into the blog. For now, I have to do it this way.

SISTERS are TRAVELING for themselves

Whether as players in the global travel industry or as international travelers themselves, black women are stepping in…and stepping out.

La Terraza B&B, San Roque de Grecia, Costa Rica -- owned and operated by an African-American woman

After you’ve been perusing black-related websites for awhile, you notice something: A lot of them are created, written and run by women. Many are travelogues, recounting journeys taken all over the world, but a growing number also are travel businesses catering directly — and in many instances, exclusively — to women.

Black American women.

Jeanetta Owens, La Terraza owner

They’re putting together group trips to destinations all over the world, especially Europe. Ladies only, please. These range from general tour visits to themed trips, covering everything from cross-cultural tours to adventures for all those Stellas looking to get their groove back.

A third group of black women aren’t taking their sisters overseas. They’re already there.

These are American expatriates living abroad. Putting their intimate knowledge of their new homelands to work, they’re creating careers for themselves as tour organizers and guides for U.S. tourists, taking on all comers.

Among the better-known tours of black Paris are Walking the Spirit Tours by Julia Browne, Black Paris by Rikki Stevenson and Discover Paris!, co-founded by Monique Y. Wells.

If they’re not running tours, they’re writing guides about Paris with black U.S. visitors in mind, like Melinda Herron’s Insider Paris Guide for Black Culture.

Whether as travelers or as business operators, black women are finding travel not only a lot of fun.

They’re also finding it empowering and liberating.

One of the websites helping black women get their travel on is BlackGirlTravel.com. Its owner, Fleacé Weaver, gave me some insight into what she does, and the growing presence of black American women on the international travel scene.

Q. What first got you interested in travel?

A. In high school, my favorite class was geography. During
class, I would daydream of visiting foreign lands.

Q. What was your first truly memorable trip and what made it so?

A. As a runway model, my first international trip was to Milan, Italy. I consider the trip as my coming of age experience. The amount of male attention I received as an African-American woman was initially overwhelming. I was in awe of rich culture and how buildings dated back to 72 BC were still standing. The people of Milan were very cosmopolitan yet had a very hometown nature. The Italians work to live instead of living to work. They seem not to require much to be happy, just good food, good wine and time with family and friends.

Q. What made you want to start organizing trips for black women?

A. As the founder of Blackweekly.com here in Los Angeles, I service 23,000 members, with 63% being female. I was seeking something unique that would connect and empower our female members. We started with Blackweekly.com Girlfriends events, then Sister in Business. In 2006, we offered our first international tour. It was a hit and in 2008, BlackGirlTravel.com was born.

Q. Who travels more in your opinion, black women or black men, and why?

A. Black men travel more, but we are closing that gap. What we learning is many Black women want to travel but are afraid to travel alone. I am proud that our tours have created quite a few avid travelers.

Q. Are there specific benefits for black women in travel? If so, what are they?

A. Wow, there are many benefits but the number one is the empowerment in discovering how men in other countries find Black women beautiful. Many women return to the states with a new attitude about dating.

Q. What would be your own dream trip?

A. Every trip is a dream trip for me! I love traveling with my members, it never gets old. I get excited just thinking about being with them the first time seeing the Eiffel Tower or the Colosseum. I still cry every time someone is affected by the beauty of the Sistine Chapel. I am blessed to have a job that helps make dreams come true.

Lest you think all the attention is focused on Europe, Jeanetta Owens will invite you to her bed-and-breakfast in Costa Rica.

She and her late husband, Charles, sold their home in Washington state seven-plus years ago intending to travel around Latin America. Costa Rica was supposed to be just one stop on a journey to see the world.

“We had no plans for staying in Costa Rica and absolutely no plans for purchasing a B&B,” she says. “We started out with a gardener and maid, both of which spoke no English and we did not speak any Spanish. I think my husband knew 11 words.”

Seven-plus years later, Owens is the proprietor of La Terraza in San Roque de Grecia.

“We wanted to provide vacation travelers with services unlike any of the accommodations we had stayed in,” she says.

All this offers a lot of potential advantages for black American female travelers, especially those who are relatively new to the travel game. The all-female groups offer both friendship and the feeling of safety-in-numbers, not to mention a kind of emotional security blanket. You venture into a faraway land with a group of people who look, talk and feel as you do.

The black American female tour guides in foreign countries have a similar impact for independent travelers looking for tours in their destinations — a familiar-looking, English-speaking face who not only can put your travel experience in a social and cultural context you can relate to, but show you when it’s appropriate — and fun — to step out of it.

And all without needing to rely on a male traveling companion, something more than a few women find a lot less stressful.

It also gives the ladies more options. If she wants to travel and he doesn’t, she can just take off without him.

Take note, my brothers, take note!