Images of Istanbul

Whirling dervishes, Turkish coffee, historic mosques, hand-woven carpets, a cruise on the Bosphorus--that's life in Istanbul.

A Turkish Rorschach Test

What do you see in the following images? Please comment below.
All were taken in the Cappadocia region of Turkey.

I see a camel.

I see a little family.

I see me.

Hmmm and Me.

Hmmm Again.

Two Gents A'Walkin'.

A Grand Lady with a Tiny Head.

Alternative Uses for Everyday Products

Ever find yourself on the road and desperately in need of shoe polish or eye makeup remover or a tourniquet? Don’t worry--you don’t have to run out and buy anything. Just look in your packed luggage.

Let’s start in the oral area. Toothpaste isn’t just for brushing, anymore. Ever use a hotel iron only to find it has left awful stains on your wrinkled white pants? Next time, clean the gunk off the iron with toothpaste. Apply paste to a cool iron, wipe thoroughly, and voila, no more mess. Shoes scuffed? Same deal.

Next, let's examine our dental floss. Yes, we can use it to pick crumbs from between our teeth. But it can also serve as a line for hanging wet clothing; as a temporary shoelace: or it can be used to secure luggage zippers in place. Or say you check into a hotel with a drippy faucet, and no fix is in sight.Tie a long piece of floss around the spout and let it hang down into the basin. The dripping water will slide along the floss, eliminating the loud plunk, plunk that may keep you awake at night.

Hair conditioner has multiple uses aside from keeping your tresses smooth and untangled. And since most hotels stock it as an amenity, you don’t even have to pack it to get its benefits. You can use conditioner to:

1. Remove eye makeup

2. Soften makeup brushes

3. Loosen sticky zippers (apply lotion to tracks of the zipper)

Don’t worry, guys, I am getting to you, too…

4. Shave and

5. Remove a stuck ring from your finger. However, gentlemen, note I do not condone this if you are merely removing a stuck wedding ring in the effort to appear single while traveling.
 

Tampons not only function for their original usage, but can have life-saving applications as well. Obviously, guys will have to go out pre-trip to buy tampons. No bloody way? Listen up. Outdoorsy types swear by the feminine hygiene product as a multi-use lifesaver. Among the first-aid benefits:

1. Unroll the tampon and inside you’ll find an ultra-absorbent material perfect for an improvised dressing for a manly wound.

2. If you are in the middle of the woods and suffering from dehydration, the tampon can serve as an emergency water filter. It may not clear out all the bugs and whistles, but in a pinch, a tampon filter could allow you to drink enough pure-enough water to save your life.

3. And yes, in case you get your nose broken in a manly fight, tampons are perfect for stopping up the blood flow.

CineTourism--The Academy Awards and Travel

Which tourism destination is going to be the big winner thanks to this year’s Academy Awards? I’m betting on Norway. Norway? Yes, the Scandinavian country is banking on the success of Frozen, Oscar winner for Best Animated Film, to draw visitors to the land up over this summer. Despite the fact that the film set in Norway per se, Arendelle, the fictional  setting of the movie, is reportedly a mash-up of the country’s scenery, architecture, and way of life.  Innovation Norway reports that since the film’s debut last fall, U.S. visits to the country’s tourism website have tripled, and search engines are reporting increased interest in flights into Oslo

www.visitnorway.com/en/

Frozen wouldn’t be the first animated Academy Award winner to bring home the tourism bacon to a northern country. Last year’s winner, Brave, depicts the adventures of a fictional Scottish princess in an actual animated Scotland. The film inspired a multi-million dollar marketing campaign by Visit Scotland, which  forecasts movie-generated visits to bring in more than 200 million dollars in the next five years. Two of the places that inspired animators, the ruins of Dunnottar Castle and the Callanish Stones, are seeing increased visitation, and several companies have developed Brave tours.

www.dunnattorcastle.co.uk

While it may seem odd that animated films are serving as travel inspiration, the marriage between live action Academy Award-nominated films and tourism runs deep. Usually, the acclaimed films are masterworks of cinematography. While its roots may go back farther in time (i.e. Lawrence of Arabia 1962), the decade of the 1980s was when the introduction of exotic destinations started directly correlating to increased tourism numbers. The African continent was one of the biggest beneficiaries of that golden age.  Best Picture winner Out of Africa (1985) painted a glamorous yet raw view of life in colonial Kenya. Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, and stunning cinematography created a sense of romance that put Kenya on the mass tourism map for the very first time. In 1988, Gorillas in the Mist (nine nominations, no wins) drew attention to the natural wonders of Rwanda. Tourism temporarily shot up there after the movie’s release, although the civil war in the 1990s negated the impact. But only temporarily--25 years after the movie’s release, Gorilla in the Mist-inspired tours are bestsellers.

www.footprints-adventures.co.uk

Australia was another long-distance destination that used movies to reel in visitors in the 1980s. Long before the Lord of the Rings trilogy made New Zealand a top travel destination, Crocodile Dundee (1986) sparked a fanatical interest in the Land Down Under. No, it didn't win any Academy Awards, although it was nominated for Best Screenplay. But the mix of the rugged and humorous Aussie prototype Paul Hogan and the rugged and scenic appeal of the Northern Territory created a recipe for tourism success. The Northern Territory saw an explosion of tourism by early 1988. To accommodate some of the film-crazed fanatics, an international hotel in the shape of a crocodile opened its jaws in the fall of 1988 in Kakadu National Park. 

www.northernterritory.visitorsbureau.com.au

Meanwhile, Hogan became a tourism pitchman. His “Throw Another Shrimp on the Barbie” advertising campaign for Tourism Australia was a marketing phenomenon. Interestingly , Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (2008), one of those stereotypical cinematic homages to dramatic landscapes, did not have the bite that Crocodile Dundee did in terms of winning Oz tourism share. Maybe by 2008, people were too busy heading to New Zealand, inspired by the mystical views of Middle Earth depicted in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Learning Russian Fast-Food Style

Now that we have covered the basic Cyrillic alphabet, let's proceed to a reading lesson. I chose to spend my one free day in Moscow last May wandering the Arbat and silently phonetically mouthing out the names of familiar fast food franchises. I highly recommend this strategy for those trying to learn the seemingly impenetrable Iron Curtain that is Cyrillic.

First, we visit McDonalds. This one is easy, right? MAK=MAC. The fourth character looks like the Greek delta Δ--which is D. O becomes an A sound in Russian when the syllable is unstressed, so we've got DO. In our previous lesson, we learned that H =N, so HA is NA. The third to last character is the Cyrillic version of L. Then we are back to delta, and C=S. What does it spell? McDonalds.

Very good. Now, let's get a cup of KOФE. Note the third letter, which looks the same as the Greek version of F (phi). Sound it out. You have coffee. Excellent. But where to get our coffee? Perhaps CTAPБAKC.

Now we need a doughnut to accompany our coffee. We do not get coffee at the pink and orange establishment above, because we cannot read the sign that says "Coffee & More". After all, we are reading in Russian. But ДAHKИH ДOHATC sounds Дelicious. To translate, we need to close the one hole in our doughnut sign literacy.  И =ee. Hence, Dahnkeen Donahtc. Close enough.

Let's moo-ve/MYB (merely a transliteration) on. 

MY MY, or Moo Moo, is a popular fast food chain in Moscow. If you can't read the Cyrillic, just look for the black and white корова.

Finally, let's wash this all done with a bottle of BOДA. B=V. The O sounds like A, due to the stress. Voila, Vahdah. Let's take a sip and call it a day/ДEHb. 

Learning Russian: An Olympian Feat

I have been taking Russian for the past three weeks. Actually, full disclosure, as I am not trying to be a K-G-Beast, I took an introductory class three years ago, but I didn't get high marx. In fact, I never got beyond learning the ABC's...or in the case of the Cyrillic alphabet, the AБB's.

www.thegrissom-gram.blogspot.com

 My knowledge of that alphabet was enhanced by

 last year's trip to Russia, where I putin free time

 attempting to read restaurant (pectopah) signs. 

I will detail that exercise and my steppe-by-steppe progress 
in Russian classes in upcoming posts. Meantime,
for those confused by the order of the Parade of Nations 
at the Sochi Opening Ceremony, let me attempt to 
explain, given my rudimentary knowledge of Cyrillic.
I hope it will be godunov for you.

As you can see from the chart above, Cyrillic has a variety of 
characters. Some look familiar to those who know English; 
some look familiar to those who know Greek (pi); 
and others look downright unfamiliar.

Further mucking up the works is that many of the letters that look 
familiar are not pronounced the way we think they should be. 
B=V; P=R and H=N. Our B is the Russian Б (sort of); 
our P is the character that looks like pi П; and our H does exist. 

And don't even get me started on Ч, Ш, Щ or the bI.

Transliteration: Blini

So, let's refer back to the chart above. Because B which actually 
sounds like V is the third letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, 
Venezuela (Венесуэла) and the Virgin Islands (in the Winter Olympics?) 
were near the beginning of the parade and the Czech Republic (Чехия) and Chile (Чили), featuring that damned Ч (sound similar to the ch in chai), were near the end. Jamaica (Ямайка) and Japan (Япония) were the last to enter alphabetically. As is tradition, the host country  Россия, came last.

By the way, for fans of the Olympics Cold War style, remember the CCCP worn by Olga Korbut and her ilk? It stands for Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик. Gogol it.

Valentine's Day Travel: Sweetheart Deals

As Valentine's Day approaches, hotels and inns are deluging me with press releases featuring all sorts of sweetheart deals. Here is a selection of some that had me doing double-takes.

The Library Hotel, New York City

Trying to get your significant other to be more romantic while whispering sweet nothings in your ear? If so, check out the Poet in Residence program at New York's Library Hotel.   During February, Love Poems for Two: A Couples Massage for the Mind and Soul, is being offered by one Karen Clark, poet. The private 90-minute workshop is designed to help couples express their deep thoughts to each other literally literary-ly. The tab for the workshop is $125 per couple, who must be checked in at the Library Hotel or its sister properties.  

Now then, how about a Valentine's Day deal for four? Yep, Love is in the Air at Pennsylvania's Omni Bedford Springs Resort for a couple of couples traveling in concert. The package for four includes champagne, chocolate, a hot air balloon ride, couples massages, and a suite. Hmmmmm. The package starts at $2,500 per night for the foursome. Note that the suites in question sport two bedrooms, so the deal is tamer than it appears upon first glance.

Omni Bedford Springs Resort

The same property is also promoting a Lonely Hearts package for singles. Come with a platonic buddy and enjoy accommodation, chocolate and champagne, and spa treatments. The package rate starts at $229 per person per night.

The Inn at 202 Dover in Easton, Maryland is celebrating Valentine's Day, Presidents Weekend, and Black History Month all in one fell swoop. The luxury inn is offering special Valentine's Day dinners at its Peacock Restaurant and African-American history tours of the historic Hill neighborhood in Easton.

For more ideas, bargain hunters should head to Groupon for a list of curated deals for romantics. You'll find specials on weekend and week-long vacations in the U.S. and in the Caribbean, Central America, and even London and Paris. Just be aware that some of the deals have blackout dates on Valentine's Day weekend. 

For more sweetheart tips, watch my appearance on WJLA-TV news in Washington, DC on February 6.