Vacations Blog

Europe, being very touchy over leadership issues in the EU, has rotating presidencies for just about everything. Turns out they also have rotating ‘Capitals of Culture.’ And Istanbul is one of the 2010 European Capital of Culture (ECOC) cities. So what does that mean and why should you care?

Bosphorus Bridge linking Asia and Europe

A city that gets itself designated as the ECOC gets to showcase its cultural life and cultural development for the entire year with events, shows and programs, which transform the city into an exciting destination for visitors.

Istanbul already has a lot of culture, to say the least. It has been the capital of three empires, starting with the Romans in 330 AD. 

For added significance, Istanbul literally connects Asia and Europe, with bridges over the Bosphorus Strait linking the two continents.

With the pileup of thousands of years of heritage, a dash of European modernity mixed in with Asian muslim customs and Ottoman cuisine, what you have in Istanbul is what Europe will look like 50 to 100 years from now.

These two faces of Istanbul are plainly visible in the contrast between attractions like the traditional structure of the Blue Mosque and the Art Nouveau buildings in nearby Nisantasi.

As for the immediate future, the 2010 ECOC program has plenty of highlights and events lined up all through 2010 to make your visit memorable. More details here – www.en.istanbul2010.org/

Photo courtesy Istanbul 2010 ECOC.

Winter Wonderfest at Navy Pier

The weather outside might be frightful but Navy Pier supplies indoor winter fun with the Winter Wonderfest at Navy Pier.  A Chicago holiday tradition for 10 years, the festival runs daily through January 3rd and supplies a snow-covered, action-filled day for the whole family.  A diverse range of activities include a rope obstacle course, inflatable games and create-a-cookie.  Amusement rides guarantee excitement with favorites like the 50-foot indoor Ferris wheel, the Winter Wind Glider and the Reindeer Express Train.

If you’re watching Christmas carols being performed by a full-fledged classical orchestra and a choir, accompanied by the pyrotecnics and light wizardry one generally associates with rock concerts, then you’re watching a rock orchestra - the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, to be specific.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

And in case one isn’t sufficient, there’s two of them. Producer Paul O’Neill has TSO touring with two teams – TSO East and TSO West – at the same time.

So, with their latest album Night Castle having been released in Oct 09, they’re on tour with shows scheduled for virtually every single day, and even twice a day in different locations.

Each show is a 2-hour extravaganza of visual effects, with lasers and pyrotechnics. And it’s not just about the imagery.  TSO’s albums and holiday tour shows have a message and a story to tell.

In fact, the name itself is based on the Trans-Siberian Railway, which  links pockets of communities which would otherwise never be able to connect. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra similarly connects vastly different styles of music and brings together fans who would otherwise never come in contact.

Even though Night Castle is not a holiday album like Christmas Eve and Other Stories, the story behind it is still one of hope and redemption. Oh yes, Night Castle has a full-fledged story behind it… Read More »

If you’re looking to put down your concert travel money on a band with some pedigree, you couldn’t do better than hard rock band Nickelback, whose last album All the Right Reasons has sold 11 million copies.

Chad Kroeger, Nickelback

The album also spent a stunning 156 weeks on the Billboard charts – a 11 year record broken only this month by Taylor Swift, whose first album has been squatting on the charts since Nov 2006.

Nickelback is now the 2nd most popular foreign band in the US, in terms of the sheer number of Nickelback tickets sold, with only the Beatles ahead of them.

The long road to hard rock nirvana stretches all the way back to 1995 and Alberta, where Chad Kroeger used to hand nickels back to his customers at Starbucks. In between then and now, Nickelback has earned 26 awards and 68 nominations, including 5 grammies.

Their latest album Dark Horse, released last November, debuted at No. 2 on the charts. Shows they have what it takes to keep churning out the good stuff, and stay at the top.

The Nickelbacks – Chad Kroeger, his brother & bassist Mike Kroeger, guitarist Ryan Peake and drummer Daniel Adair, have been on the road all year long, and notched up an impressive 60 concerts across North America, with more shows in Europe and Australia.  

Nickelback is now saddling up again for the first leg of the 2010 Dark Horse tour which brings them cantering back into North America, with Shinedown and Breaking Benjamin as the support acts. Read More »

The world as we know it is about to end. Immediately after we enter 2010, physicists at Switzerland’s CERN facility will use the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator with awesome power, to smash protons at record energies in a bid to re-create conditions that existed right after the Big Bang. 

If it works, tiny black holes will be created, and we’ll know a lot more about the origins of the Universe. If it works too well, then the black holes will do what they’re born to do – start gobbling stuff.

Wooden Globe at CERN

They’ll start with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research where the 16.8 mile collider tunnel is buried 100m under the Franco-Swiss border.

Once the black holes are done with CERN, they’ll go after Geneva, then Switzerland, France, and the whole of Europe. After washing down the heavy meal with the Atlantic, the black holes will start licking at the Eastern Seaboard and the Statue of Liberty for dessert.

You might want to say your goodbyes, do all the things you never did, etc. Or… you could take the fight to the monster, and take a vacation in Geneva, visit CERN and tell the cretins there what you really think about their Big Bang machine.  

For the record, CERN does offer tours for visitors, and they host over 25,000 visitors every year. Explore the mysteries of the universe and find out about the gigantic equipment used by physicists at CERN – particle accelerators and detectors. Don’t miss the large wooden globe.

For science geeks, end-of-the-world theorists and sundry fruitcakes visiting Geneva, this is a must visit attraction.

Photo by horstjens; More info here – www.cern.ch/outreach/ 

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Hips don’t lie, and neither do album sales. Shakira’s latest album She Wolf is well on its way to adding a few more awards and millions of record sales to the sizzling star’s already sizeable pile of 103 awards and the over 50 million albums sold.

Shakira MySpace Karaoke Contest

Shakira is planning a She Wolf tour in 2010, and there’s three ways you get to be there – win a karoake contest, get selected as an opening act, or… pay for Shakira tickets, like everyone else.

If you’re in the US or Canada, you have until Dec 12 to record your take of Shaikra’s most famous songs on Myspace Karaoke. If you win, not only do you get two free tickets to a Shakira concert, you also get free travel and free accomodations.

If you think your musical talent is too good to be a-wasting it on trying to snag free tix, then you can take your talent and stuff it… centerstage.

Because Shakira is hunting for new talents for the 2010 She Wolf tour, and that’s plural – as in many up-and-coming artistes. Each show on the tour will have a different opening act.

When the contest starts, you will be able to upload your performance videos to her website, and Shakira fans will rate your video and they get to decide the finalists, after which Shakira and her team will choose from amongst the finalists.

There’s no link for the contest page as yet, but check back soon, because when it gets announced, we’ll be the first to let you know. The dates and venues for the 2010 tour have also not been announced yet, so we’ll be keeping track of that too, and update as and when shows or a schedule is made public.

One of the key assets in Kathy Griffin’s closet – other than her acerbic wit – is the way she turns everything in her life into a part of her act.

Kathy Griffin

This versatality extends to her Hollywood career, which she turned into an emmy worthy reality show – My Life on the D-List, now about to kick off season 6 on Bravo.

She writes a book named Official Book Club Selection which is selling copies because it’s dishy and fun, but also because she’s got a petition going to collect 50,000 signatures to convince Oprah to pick the book.

The whole thing is a satire which rips into authors who kiss up to Queen Oprah and bend over in order to get an entrée into Oprah’s book club and couch.

Griffin puts out a holiday CD named Suckin’ it for the Holidays which has plenty of ‘Griffin Spirit’ and shock value inside, where she takes on everyone on her radar – from her mother to Justin Timberlake and The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

It’s all a part of her life, and it gets hard to separate the real and showbiz versions of Kathy Griffin. Griffin’s hunger for tackling new situations and piping everything back into her act apparently extends to her vacations too.

Take a look below at the list of KG Vacations aka Kathy Griffin’s D-List (destination list) and you’ll see how she manages to create mashups of her vacations with her acts and shows. Read More »

Sunset over Hilton Head Island

You might know Hilton Head, South Carolina for its rolling golf greens and pristine beaches  but there’s more to this balmy paradise.  Hilton Head is also home to the centuries-old Gullah culture and the land was owned by Gullah people until 40 years ago.  The Gullah trace their roots to Sierra Leone, West Africa and have managed to preserve  their language, food and culture due to the Barrier Island’s isolation. To learn the fascinating history of  Hilton Head, grab a trip on the Gullah Heritage Trail Tours. Led by  Gullah historian and Hilton Head native Emory Campbell, the two-hour tour involves a 100-mile bus tour through  scenic  salt marsh waterways. Read More »