Starwood Hotels debuted a jewelry line to celebrate the opening of the St. Regis Bahia Beach Resort in Puerto Rico.
Whether you’re shopping for Paris hotels for that next business trip or planning a much-deserved Hawaii vacation, it’s gotten easier to do travel in style, thanks to new services and products introduced this year at several luxury hotel brands.
In June, JW Marriott launched a series of partnerships with luxury brands in nutrition, culinary, art, culture, accessories and wellness. Par
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Several weeks ago, my daughter Pauline mentioned that she would be using the occasion of a two-week trip to Poland, which she had planned for some time, to visit the small town of Lomza, where my long-dead mother and my mother’s sisters and brothers had grown up. Neither myself nor any of my cousins had ever visited Lomza, though our childhood was filled with stories of the family’s life there prior to the moment, in 1919, when they all fled the war-torn continent of Europe to a refuge in the home of an uncle in Syracuse, New York.
My mother’s father, a rabbi in the Yeshiva of Lomza, had died in 1911 of typhus, which he contracted by staying to treat his students with that illness in their residence hall. Read more…
Famous singers and songwriters play at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville.
(Southern Living) — Explore Nashville, Tennessee, at five of Southern Living’s favorite spots for live music, local produce and more.
The Bluebird Café
Located on Hillsboro Pike, in an unassuming strip mall between a Shell gas station and a McDonald’s, the Bluebird Café is one of the top venues in America for hearing up-and-coming (and already famous) singers and songwriters. The small, 100-seat room isn’t fancy, but an evening there sure is fun. Country, rock and contemporary Christian songwriters gather nightly for the 6 p.m. s
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We hear a lot of about the Napa Valley and Sonoma and even the central coast of California in terms of food and wine. But not so much about the Livermore Valley, just a little southeast of San Francisco.
Its too bad because its a great destination thats still relatively low-key. I grew up out there and my first newspaper job was at the Tri-Valley Herald in Pleasanton. I mostly knew it as the home to the still-going Alameda County Fair, which touches down for a couple weeks in late June and early July and is like the Canadian National Exhibition but with live horse-racing thats pretty good.
The ferris wheels and rides are great, theres good entertainment, the beer is cold and the people-watching is superb.
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I hired a car at Girona airport which was full of fuel at the start. I had to return it empty. There was still more than a quarter of a tank left. I got no rebate. Is it normal in Spain to have to return the car with an empty tank? – Stewart Kershaw
The three models used by car-rental companies are “out full/back full”, “out empty/back empty”, and “out full/back empty”.
From the driver’s point of view, the first of these is best – so long as you allow time to refuel before your flight home. It leaves little room for dispute (though some firms will demand a receipt from a filling station close to the drop-off point), and you end up paying only for the fuel you use.
The out empty/back empty rule works to your advantage only if you are confident about driving when almost out of fuel; most of us, though, will always top up to avoid running out on the autopista.
“Out full/back empty” is a tactic employed by some of the cheapest car-rental companies. Effectively, you are buying a tank of petrol, at whatever rate the firm chooses to set. On a fortnight’s hire with plenty of mileage, it isn’t much of a problem, but on a short-term rental you could find yourself paying 100 and end up using only 50 in fuel. The solution: always ask what the fuel policy is, and steer your business to “out full, back full” rental companies.
Email your travel queries to
simon.calder@standard.co.uk