The email telling me that Emirates Airlines is knocking $1,000 off business class fares between Dubai and San Francisco (SFO), Los Angeles (LAX), Dallas (DFW), Seattle (SEA) and Washington, D.C. (IAD) this summer (a great deal, but still way out of my budget) reminds me that I still have some photos to share from my Emirates-hosted trip to Dubai in April.
I was, of course, most interested in exploring Dubai International Airport. But that had to wait until the very early morning of my flight back home.
First there were a few whirlwind days in a surprising city where a lot of attractions were charming and, in many cases, charmingly over the top.
Charming: markets selling everything from spices and shawls to geegaws and, of course, gold.
Charmingly over the top:
The world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa, which you may recognize from the most recent Mission Impossible film.
Here’s a view from the top:
The building is a dizzying 2,716.5 feet high and more than 160 stories tall and has a vending machine up on the observation deck that dispenses souvenirs made of gold.
Back on the ground, Ski Dubai – a ski resort inside the Mall of the Emirates, complete with skiing, snowboarding and a resident waddle of penguins was definitely charming and definitely over the top.
Also over-the-top: the Burj Al Arab hotel.
Referred to as “the world’s only seven-star hotel,” (it’s actually a deluxe 5-star property, but let’s not quibble) it looks like a billowing sail from the outside and inside has two-story suites with knock-out views and amenities that include butlers on call. Here’s a peek inside one of the swankier bathrooms.
Dizzy? Tomorrow…Stuck at Dubai International Airport.
With free movies, free Wi-Fi, free lounge chairs, a giant slide and five gardens among its many amenities, Singapore’s Changi Airport is already an airport travelers don’t mind spending a few hours in.
For those who don’t want to spend a long layover inside the airport, there are also free city tours available, with both day and night itineraries.
The day itinerary, known as the Heritage Tour, is available four times a day and includes a visit to the Colonial District, Merlion Park and Chinatown or Little India.
There’s now also an evening itinerary – the City Lights Tour, with stops at a variety of iconic locations, including the infamous Raffles Hotel.
The Free Singapore Tour is available for free to passengers with layovers at Changi Airport of at least five hours. Find more information about Changi’s free Singapore tours here.
Topiary Bear welcomes travelers at San Jose International Airport
Even though the San Jose International Airport has a high-tech, still-new terminal, a favorite sight at the entrance to the airport is this low-tech topiary character.
Topiary is the art of training or pruning plant material into new and often fantastic designs and the folks at the Smithsonian Institution’s Collection Blog have put together a nice round-up of gardens featuring topiary designs.
Included is Green Animals Topiary Garden in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Billed as “the oldest and most northern topiary garden in the United States,” the garden has more than 80 pieces of topiary, including animals and birds, geometric figures and ornamental designs sculpted from California privet, yew, and English boxwood.
E-readers such as Kindle or Nook may be hot holiday gifts this season, but that doesn’t mean libraries are a thing of the past. In fact, with architecturally significant buildings, exhibitions and a wide range of amenities, the public libraries in many cities rank alongside museums and other cultural attractions as must-see destinations for many travelers.
Here are five libraries worth a visit:
Stuttgart Central Library, Stuttgart, Germany
Officially dedicated at the end of November, the new central library in Stuttgart, Germany, has joined the Mercedes-Benz Museum as a major local attraction. Designed by Korean architect Eun Young Yi, the Stadtbibliothek is a nine-story, cubed, glass block structure that looks staid and grey during the day but glows iridescent blue at night. Inside, an open, all-white floor plan pushes the books to the perimeter, surrounding the children’s library and the multi-zoned reading, research and gathering spaces.
Don’t miss: To emphasize that this new facility is open to all, the word “Library” is written in English on the outer wall of one side of the building and written in German, Korean and Arabic on the other three.
Central Library, Seattle, Washington
When it opened in 2004, the New York Times’ Herbert Muschamp described the downtown Central Library in Seattle, Wash., as “a blazing chandelier to swing your dreams upon.”
Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas, the unusually-shaped steel and glass building with 30 miles of books arranged in an ingenious ‘Books Spiral’ has become one of the city’s most visited attractions. “More than 2 million people visit the Central Library year,” said Seattle Public Library spokesperson Andra Allison. “You can’t go anywhere in the building without seeing tourists with cameras.”
Don’t miss: Take a guided or self-guided tour, but don’t miss the view from the 10th floor.
British Library, London
With more than 150 million items, London’s British Library is one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive. In addition to public tours and events, the library displays world treasures from a collection that includes the 1215 Magna Carta, Leonardo da Vinci’s notes on architecture and arithmetic, illuminated manuscripts and Shakespeare’s First Folio.
Don’t miss: Current exhibitions explore the role of supernatural phenomena in the work of Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘lost’ novel.
Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark
Founded in 1648, Denmark’s Royal Library holds printed Danish works dating back to 1482. The original 1906 library building on Copenhagen’s harbor was expanded in 1999 with an angular, shiny black granite addition now referred to as the Black Diamond. Today, the library is one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions and is home to the National Museum of Photography, a 600-seat concert hall with its own 10-member ensemble, a garden, a roof-top terrace and several exhibition spaces.
Don’t miss: Public tours of the old and new library buildings are offered each Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m.
Trinity College Library, Dublin, Ireland Dublin’s Trinity College Library is Ireland’s largest. It’s also one of the country’s biggest tourist attractions, mostly because the library is home to the Book of Kells, a lavishly decorated, four-volume illuminated manuscript created by Celtic monks in the 9th century. Two volumes are displayed to the public at a time: one is open to a significant, decorated page; another shows two pages of script.
Don’t miss: In addition to the Book of Kells and other related manuscripts, visitors may tour the library’s Long Room, which contains oak bookcases filled with 200,000 of the library’s oldest books, a collection of marble busts depicting writers, philosophers and men connected with the college and Ireland’s oldest harp, which dates to the 15th century.
Which special libraries have you visited in your travels? Add your suggestion below.
Here’s part 2 of the recent slide show I put together for Bing Travel highlighting some of the best amenities at the country’s busiest airports. (Part 1, which includes the airports in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and Dallas/Fort Worth can be found here.)
No. 5: Denver International Airport
Some travelers are still smarting from Christmas 2006, when a blizzard closed Denver International Airport for 22 hours, stranding more than 3,000 passengers. The airport’s snow-removal skills have vastly improved, but weather-related delays can still happen. Wait those out with free Wi-Fi or a self-guided tour of the art collection (brochures are available at any information booth).
Defeat the delay: If any planes are moving, watch them on the active taxiway that runs beneath the glass and steel pedestrian bridge linking the A gates to the main terminal. (That bridge also leads to security checkpoint lines reliably shorter than those in the main terminal.)
When winter weather hits, all of the always-busy New York-area airports — LaGuardia Airport, Newark Liberty International and John F. Kennedy International — quickly become zoos. At JFK, seven separate terminals mean delayed travelers must make do with services at hand. That’s not a problem in JetBlue’s amenity-rich T5, which offers free Wi-Fi throughout the terminal and more than 40 shops and restaurants, including Deep Blue Sushi — all after you go through security. Elsewhere, it’s a post-security challenge. Your best bet is Terminal 4, which has the most pre-security options, including public art by Alexander Calder and a retail hall with shops and restaurants, such as the Palm Bar and Grill.
Defeat the delay: When planes are grounded, the AirTrain from JFK to the New York City subways usually keeps running. The trip to the city might take an hour, but will cost less than $10 and can be its own adventure.
No. 7: George Bush Intercontinental Airport
At Houston’s Bush Intercontinental, delayed passengers can view space-related exhibits on loan from NASA and shop for their own space-themed souvenirs at a branch of NASA’s Space Trader store. There’s also a revolving steakhouse restaurant, CK’s, at the Houston Airport Marriott located in the center of the terminal complex, and an interterminal train below the terminals designed in 1981 by the Walt Disney Co.
Defeat the delay: It may be an airport, but you can still get a taste of Texas. Three Stelzig Ranch shops offer boots, hats and other Texas-style accessories, while Texas Trail Boss Jerky sells beef, pork, turkey and bison jerky.
No. 8: Las Vegas McCarran International Airport
In addition to free Wi-Fi and complimentary recharge work stations, McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas offers delayed travelers entertainment in the form of the Howard Cannon Aviation Museum, art exhibits, an aviation-themed kid’s play area, an interactive Dance Heads video booth and bars serving oxygen cocktails.
Defeat the delay: McCarran also has approximately 1,200 slot machines. And, as the saying goes, you can’t win if you don’t play.
