DHTML Menu, (c)2004 Apycom
 

Volume 4, Issue #11 - December 2011

How to be Fish Bait

By Heather Rath
ITWPA Member

Many, many small fish attack my feet and feverishly nibble at my ankles, toes, and soles. I gaze into the tank of water into which my legs are dangling and watch with great interest, because the Dr. Fish attendant assures me the fish are only cleaning my feet. “There is nothing to worry about,” she says in English. “This is safe and hygienic and does not hurt.”

I am in Crete. Life appears to be more laid back here than in my home country of Canada, where a resort on the west coast was ordered to close down its fish cleaning spa on the basis of its being unsanitary.

Imagine my surprise when we landed in Crete and I came across many Dr. Fish spa treatments for both hands and feet. The Garra Rufa (a member of the carp family) fish cleaning craze has spread from the town of Kangal in Turkey, where the tiny fish live in hot springs. With a light sucking -- they have no teeth -- the tiny creatures remove the dead cells from your feet (or hands). At the same time they secrete diathanol, an enzyme that helps rejuvenate your skin.


 

 

Before entering the sterile water I must wash and dry my feet so as not to contaminate the tank and tiny fishes.  I will do the same when my thirty minutes (about US$22) are up. Fascinated, I watch schools of these little fish attack my poor, weary, travel-tired feet. The tank faces the street and suddenly I am the center of attention as throngs of onlookers watch the frenzied feeding on my feet.

While the fish do their work I am transported back to a cool lake of my childhood where I could see minnows in the clear water. Sometimes, if I was quiet and still, the minnows would come to investigate my feet and I would feel light little nibbles. It is the same sensation from these throngs of little fish in Crete, half a world away.

The brochure claims that after only one session I will feel my legs relieved and relaxed. The fish supposedly trigger various acupuncture points on my legs “which balance the nervous system and help the circulation of blood.” Personally, I did not experience these benefits -- but perhaps I need more treatments.

The brochure also claims that fish therapy is a favorite of celebrities like Rihanna, Naomi Campbell, Gwyneth Paltrow, Shakira, Johnny Depp, and more...

Well, if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.

If you’d like to purchase this article for your publication, click here to contact the author directly.

( Read More )

Juneau: Alaska's Frontier City

By Roy Stevenson
ITWPA Member
Photographs by Linda Popovich

Locked between mountains and the Gastineau Channel, Juneau is a great portal for visitors to be introduced to the rugged and beautiful “last frontier” state of Alaska. With a population of 31,000, Juneau is a cross between a city, a frontier town, a cruise ship destination, and small town America, all of which you will experience within minutes of each other.

Juneau’s cornucopia of natural splendor is really its stock-in-trade. You’re never far from an awe-inspiring glacier, rivers teeming with thousands of spawning salmon, or mammoth humpback whales breaching violently from the ocean. You can paddle across peaceful lakes, or ride a tramway up a steep mountain for a spectacular view of lush rain forest and shimmering fjords.

Juneau’s man-made attractions also pack some serious weight for their punch: sampling delectable amber ales at a renowned brewery, panning for gold on a river which hard-bitten prospectors worked over a century earlier, exploring a historic gold mine, and wandering through some interesting museums are all part of the Juneau experience. And watching the locals who emerge after the tidal wave of cruise passengers has receded back into its luxury liners is always instructive.

You can’t miss Juneau residents -- they’re likely to be wearing the official footwear of Alaska, brown Neoprene XTRATUF Gumboots, with a half-inch-wide, cream-colored rim around the top and cream-colored soles. I once saw a flock of hot young women, dressed to kill in their miniskirts, participating in a Karaoke bar wearing these gumboots without the slightest hint of self-consciousness.

The Mendenhall Glacier is an ideal place to set the naturalistic stage for your visit to Juneau. Caught in a deep valley between tall granite outcrops, the glacier presents a breathtaking sight, with its bluish-gray cliffs and tall ridges of ice snaking down from a huge ice field. Sunk into the top of a small butte and surrounded by Northwest evergreens, the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center is an ideal place to view the glacier. Only a 15-minute drive from town, it’s the oldest visitor center in the U.S. Forest Service, and one mile from the huge glacier that dominates the vista.


Inside the center’s auditorium, an 11-minute film tells how these phenomenal ice monsters are formed and recede in tandem with the pulse of nature, while other displays describe Alaska’s abundant wildlife. Outside, a short walk along a sealed trail gets you to Photo Point, where tourists snap away, recording this picture-perfect vista of lake, glacier, and mountains.

Descending a concrete walkway near the center, you arrive at a raised boardwalk set ten feet above the ground on metal stilts, where you can look down on the spawning salmon in the small glacial creek. It’s August and they’re writhing and wriggling as they fight their way up the rushing water, stopping for breathers in small side eddies. Recent evidence of bears is everywhere: chewed-up salmon carcasses, large crushed piles of grass, and black piles of scat. The bears are hungry, stocking up for their impending hibernation.

Nearby I read a sign that tells parents to keep their dogs on a leash and their children close -- sound advice indeed. The bears are taking the afternoon off when we visit, but I’m told that when one lumbers onto the boardwalk, a ranger walks in front, warning visitors to move back and stand still while the bear passes. Wow, a personal ranger escort -- welcome to Alaska!

The next day we launch a kayak from Above & Beyond Alaska Company’s Kayak Center into the eerily quiet Mendenhall Lake. The calm waters are shrouded in lacy curtains of mist as we slowly paddle our way toward the glacier, about two miles distant. We silently glide among oddly-sculpted icebergs, some the size of small cars or large houses, as they loom up around us. Their colors change from blue to green to white depending on their depth and size. It’s like being in a giant ice-filled margarita glass, with a rim of forest and mountains.

Sticking close to the water’s edge we paddle past cascading waterfalls, gravel beaches, and protruding wedges of land covered with dense green Northwest foliage and brush. Finally, we get to within three quarters of a mile of the glacier, and it’s noticeably colder here from the packed icebergs. All too quickly we turn away from this marvelous sight and paddle back to our beach.

On our way into town we drop by the Macaulay Salmon Hatchery to watch the amazing sight of thousands of huge, spawning salmon struggling and clawing their way up the rushing water to reach their biological destiny, which in this case is to be milked, gutted, cleaned, and sold to fishermen. Inside the Visitor Center, an aquarium shows Alaskan undersea life, and tourists are lured into buying salmon products of every description -- smoked, canned, you name it.

This non-profit hatchery exists to sustain salmon for the state of Alaska for commercial and sporting use, and I’d say they do an outstanding job of it. We walk past long metal vats with tens of thousands of tiny salmon fry writhing around, waiting to graduate into the larger vats with the bigger boys and girls. Eventually they’ll be released into the ocean and two to five years later will thrash their way back here to be milked of their eggs and milt. Where else but Alaska will you find a horde of tourists intensely watching this whole process?

It would be gross touristic negligence to visit Juneau without going on a whale-watching excursion. To see these behemoth 45-foot-long denizens of the deep erupt 15 feet or more from the water in a feeding frenzy is more than spectacular. It is, simply put, a sight that must be seen to be believed. Captain Greg of Weather Permitting Alaska takes us out in his aluminum boat to show us these enormous creatures, telling me that he guarantees a whale sighting.

 

 

 

He lives up to his word. Twenty minutes later we are watching a sight that would excite even the most jaded tourist or wildlife photographer -- humpback whales bubblefeeding. One of the whales makes a primal grunting sound somewhat akin to a distorted foghorn and dives below a school of unsuspecting herring. The whale then blows bubbles that rise, scaring the herring into a tight ball. Meanwhile, nine other whales have dived deep under the water, forming into a circle. They rise rapidly up to the surface, their enormous jaws wide open, scooping hundreds of pounds of herring and plankton into their gaping maws.

Exactly eleven seconds after the foghorn warning the whales, like prehistoric monsters, breach simultaneously from the water in a gigantic waterspout and then slam down onto the water on their backs and sides, to disappear with a blast of steam from their blowholes and a last flick of their mighty trident-shaped tails. It’s quite a performance and I can hardly speak for a while afterwards, apart from a lame, “Did you see that?” We follow the whales for an hour or so, see this performance repeated a couple of times, and return to shore very happy campers.

Back in Juneau, we take the Mount Roberts Tramway to the top of the steep, 2,000-foot-high mountain of the same name, and catch a breathtaking view of Gastineau Channel and Douglas Island far below us. This panorama of absolute seclusion is a powerful reminder of how Juneau can only be reached by boat or plane -- there are no roads leading into Juneau from the mainland. We visit a half-blind eagle in a shelter, walk along the hiking trail for a while, and watch an informative movie, Seeing Daylight, about Tlingit Indian legends, culture, and language.



 

 

Back down the mountain we walk along Juneau’s tidy streets exploring its touristy shops, galleries, museums, and restaurants. The historic district of town, with its turn-of-the-century western facades, is an eclectic milieu of jewelry and souvenir shops that feeds the insatiable thirst of the cruise ship passengers, interspersed with bars of all stripes, and hardware and convenience stores for the residents. Pretty planter boxes of colorful flowers, twin-globe street lamps, and festive banners brighten up the sidewalk as a trolley car clangs its way along the street.

Watching the enormous cruise ships berthing and sightseeing seaplanes buzzing to and fro across the harbor reinforces just how much tourism is the lifeblood of this city.

Don’t miss the iconic Red Dog Saloon, but time your visit after the cruise passengers have retreated, or you’ll have to wait a while. This touristy recreation of a noisy honky-tonk bar seems to have captured the spirit of the 1890’s during the town’s gold rush heyday, complete with sawdust floor. Look for Wyatt Earp’s gun, some Winchester rifles, a mounted Kodiak bear, and other frontier paraphernalia displayed behind the bar.

For beer aficionados, the Alaskan Brewing Company makes for a lively stop. In 1986, when the Alaskan Brewing Company set up its brewery in Juneau, it became the 67th operating brewery in the United States. Since then, its products have been awarded more than 100 major national and international medals and awards, half of which are gold. Its most renowned brews, Alaskan Amber, Alaskan IPA, Alaskan Stout, Alaskan Summer Ale, and Alaskan Winter Ale, are uniformly thirst-quenching. Drop by and sample up to six of their delicious beers, free of charge. You’ll meet a fun mix of locals and tourists, all with a passion for beer.

Much of Juneau’s history revolves around its gold mining days that started in 1880, so you’ll find plenty of gold mining museums and tours here. Tucked away in a rugged mountain valley behind Juneau, the Last Chance Mining Museum is absolutely crammed, floor to ceiling, with thousands of old pieces of gold mining equipment ranging from small to enormous. The gadgets make the museum look like the setting for a Steampunk Convention.

In one corner of the museum stands a replica of the AJ Mine Adit, the mine entrance. The original mine entrances are sealed off to the public, so this replica was created to give the visitor an idea of what a mine was like back in the day. Walking through, you’ll see historic photographs, a wide display of hand tools that were used in the shops for maintaining the mining equipment, pneumatic drilling equipment, and ancient picks and rock samples.

The remnants of another gold mine are seen on the AJ Mine and Gastineau Mill Tour -- and they’ll show you how to pan for gold. The tour bus ascends a steep trail up Mount Roberts to what remains of the Alaska Gastineau Mill. A guide shows large black and white photos outlining the different types of gold mining, demonstrates how to operate a sluice box, and then describes hydraulic mining, dredging, open pit mining, and underground hard rock mining.

 

Next you drive two minutes down the dirt trail and stop at the enormous rusting steel girders and concrete skeleton of the former mill, built into the steep mountainside. It was here that the ore carts opened to pour their contents into a rotating pebble mill, where the rocks were crushed into a sand-like product which was then sifted and washed to collect the gold.

Finally you’re whisked further down the hill for a tour inside the historic Gastineau Mine conveyor tunnel shaft, one of the highlights of the day. It’s the only hard rock gold mining tour in S.E. Alaska. Your guide escorts you into the cool, 360-foot-long mineshaft. Inside the mineshaft, 20 feet wide and 10 feet high, our voices and the gravel crunching underfoot echo down its length. The guide stops to demonstrate how work was done in the mines, sawing a joist, operating a bone-rattling pneumatic drill, and dumping ore into a hopper ore cart.

The Juneau-Douglas City Museum gives a concise and thorough history of the town. As one might expect, its major focus is on its mining history, with plenty of old photographs, interactive exhibits, dioramas, and displays about Hands-On Mining, to show the pioneer life as it was back in the mining days.

You can read stories about the mines from sliding panels, and a large, colorful display shows the types of rock at the Treadwell Mine. Glass cases contain typical clothing worn by miners, and some of their equipment.

The Alaska State Museum, a white concrete building with art nouveau decorations sculpted into its walls, is only a ten-minute walk from the Juneau-Douglas City Museum, and is equally impressive. Although not as focused on mining as the Juneau-Douglas City Museum, it gives a polished, in-depth recounting of the state’s history and natural history, including Native Cultures, History Galleries, a For Kids Only section, and much more.

 

 

 

 

 

The Juneau Steamboat Company Harbor Tour, ably led by Captain John L. George, is a low-key summary of the Juneau gold rush heritage. You sit inside a turn-of-the-century, wood-fired passenger steamboat as it chugs sedately along the Gastineau Channel at 3.5 knots. Wearing a black vest complete with silver watch chain and captain’s hat, Captain George regales you with tales of how these steamboats were a common form of transport back in the day, ferrying miners and their families across the channel.

 

 

 

Where to stay:

For the complete experience, stay at the historic Silverbow Inn, a beautiful 1914 boutique hotel with 11 rooms decorated with antiques and period wallpaper. Situated in the heart of downtown Juneau, its old furnishings and creaking floors help you relive the good old days of mining in Juneau. The bakery next door is not to be missed.

If you’d like to purchase this article for your publication, click here to contact the author directly.

( Read More )

Dorado Beach: An Exclusive Puerto Rican Getaway

By Adrienne Jordan

Three miles of golden-sand beaches, four championship golf courses, and an 11-mile nature trail are just the beginning of the exciting features of the famed Dorado Beach in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Designated as the “Hamptons of the Caribbean,” this luxury 140-acre eco-resort was built by Laurence Rockefeller in 1958 with his vision of preserving nature. This image was carried out by creating a lush, romantic atmosphere with 70 percent of the resort being “green space.” Take a walk, jog, or bike down the 11-mile Rockefeller Nature Trail and cross paths with lazy iguanas and tropical birds amidst the cool shade of palm trees.

Dorado Beach is a perfect destination for those seeking private and exclusive accommodations. The Plantation Resort Residences are three- and four-bedroom condominium units available to be rented on a nightly or weekly basis and equipped with 24-hour security. Each unit is between 1,900 and 3,600 square feet: luxury-sized suites ideal for couples, groups, or families. Each room comes with a complimentary golf cart for trekking the resort, as well as open access to the golf courses, fitness center, beaches, and waterpark.

The resort has undergone many changes that attract families with children. For example, the recent addition of the Watermill, a $12 million private aquatic playground themed after a traditional Puerto Rican sugar mill features 30-foot water slides, a 1,400-foot-long lazy river, and a sand play area. Also, the new “Ambassadors of the Environment” program is a perfect way for families and kids to participate in educational experiences such as underwater photography classes and protecting fragile ecosystems through hands-on activities. During the holidays, the resort schedules activities for youth such as Easter egg hunts and brunch with Santa.  

There are many fun activities available in proximity to the resort. Puerto Rico boasts the largest shopping center in the Caribbean, Plaza Las Americas, which is located just 30 minutes from the resort and features hundreds of stores and local cuisine. Old San Juan is a popular tourist destination with its hundreds of historic Spanish colonial buildings from the 16th and 17th centuries. Some adventurous pursuits include hiking the pristine El Yunque jungle, saltwater fishing on the coastal mangroves, and windsurfing.

Laurence Rockefeller quoted, “Man has a basic need for nature, recreation, contemplation, and stimulation of his senses,” a fitting summation of the Dorado Beach experience. With lush surroundings of centuries-old trees, native wildlife, expansive beaches, and world-class golf courses, there is something for everyone to indulge in at Dorado Beach.

If you’d like to purchase this article for your publication, click here to contact the author directly.

( Read More )

At the Lizzie Borden B&B, You Decide: Guilty or Innocent?

By Tom McGovern
ITWPA Member

“I am innocent. I will leave it to my counsel to speak for me,” Lizzie Borden proclaimed at her trial in 1893. That counsel did indeed get Ms. Borden acquitted of murder. Twelve men on June 29, 1893 found this young woman not guilty of murdering her father and her stepmother, Abby Durfree Grey.

We all remember the children’s rhyme:

Lizzie Borden took an ax
Gave her father forty whacks
When she saw what she had done
She gave her mother forty-one

While Ms. Borden may not have actually given each of her parents forty whacks -- an investigation shows it was closer to twenty -- there is little room for doubt that she committed the murders. So why did twelve men find this young woman innocent of the crimes?

You may find the answers at the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast/Museum, 92 Second Street, Fall River, MA, opened in 1992. You can spend the night in the same room where Ms. Grey was whacked. If you do not have the stomach for a sleepover, you can opt for a tour of the house. Tours are conducted every day between the hours of 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Call (508) 675-7333 for reservations.

The major reason given for the acquittal was that they could not fathom that this young Christian woman who taught Sunday school could commit such a crime -- even though she was seen trying to purchase prussic acid, an illegal substance, from a local pharmacy and was also spotted burning one of her dresses about a week after the crime. No murder weapon was ever found and no blood was seen immediately after the murders had taken place. How could someone wash all that blood off herself in a short period of time? This question also led the men of the jury to acquit her.

So next time you are traveling in Massachusetts, stop by 92 Second Street in Fall River, known as one of the creepiest places in North America, and have breakfast with the spirits of the Bordens.

GPS ALERT: 92 Second Street is the historical address of the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast/Museum. The legal address is 230 Second Street, Fall River, MA. Set your GPS to this address for accuracy.

If you’d like to purchase this article for your publication, click here to contact the author directly.

( Read More )

Adventures Just Outside San Francisco

By Diane Leone



On a recent trip to San Francisco to attend a conference, I found myself trying to decide what to do with my free time. Instead of the typical tourist things in the city, I decided on a wine-tasting trip to the Tri-Valley area and a trip to Sausalito.

After a 45-minute ride on the public transportation system (Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART), the Tri-Valley area is still a cab ride away, so when you get off BART at the last stop -- Dublin/Pleasanton -- you will need to hail a cab. I found a cab at the curb and was off to Bent Creek Winery in Livermore, the home of several wineries. The afternoon wine tastings, held Friday through Sunday at Bent Creek, are free, and their website promised great wine (of course) and beautiful vistas.

The owners, Pat and Tom Heineman, were delightful and welcoming and ushered me in to the tasting room where I knew immediately I was in good hands with Forrest. He was an expert on all things wine. We started with a light sauvignon blanc, moved through whites into reds (including cabs, merlots, syrahs, and petite syrahs) and ended with ports. I realized that with the distance between wineries, no car and no designated driver, this would be my only winery visit for the day -- but it was all I needed. It was a great experience.

The grapes on the vine were gorgeous. They would begin harvesting them the following Monday. Tom invited me to go outside and pick some, so I walked outside to the first row of vines and picked some grapes and brought them back inside. Forrest told me to eat one and tell him how it tasted. It was sweet and juicy, as one would expect. Next, he took another grape and put it in a gadget called a refractometer that squeezed it. According to www.wiki.com, a refractometer “measures the index of refraction. Specifically, it measures the phase velocity of a wave traveling through a substance, in relation to the phase velocity of the substance itself.” That sounds very techy to me. I prefer Forrest’s description: it tells you what the sugar content is, and when it’s just right, it’s time to harvest the grapes. Now that, I can understand.

I swirled glasses of wine, watching for the “legs” (how thickly the wine clings to and runs down the glass after it is swirled). I smelled their bouquet. I could drink as much of the wine as I wanted. Sometimes I finished the glass, and other times, I tasted it and poured the rest out. (Apparently, you don’t really have to spit the wine out.) There were crackers to cleanse the palate in between wines. There were candied pecans that brought out the best in some wines, and chocolate chips that really tamed the ports. It was a wonderful experience.

The sweeping vistas of other wineries on rolling hills of green took my breath away. The weather was perfect. With wine tasting and photos completed, I made my way back to the wine-tasting café and the cab ride back to the BART station. Forty-five minutes later I was back in downtown San Francisco. I had a great adventure, made some new friends and sampled a lot of incredible wine!

The next morning I walked to the Farmer’s Market at the docks in front of the Tower at Union Station. The morning was cool and bright and the Farmer’s Market was one of the best I have seen. The vegetables were brilliant in color and the flowers jumped out at you. The people were interesting as well. It was full of couples, people on bikes, people with their pets and children, all milling around, sampling the strawberries and grapes and drinking coffee. There were vendors selling everything from trinkets to original artwork along with the food. Inside Union Station, all of the vendors were open and there wasn’t anything to want for -- from organic, locally grown and pressed olive oil to homemade hot chocolate so thick and rich you just had to have more.




I was on my way to catch the ferry over to the town of Sausalito. The ferry ride was brisk and windy but it offered great views of the Golden Gate Bridge (with some of the peaks already in the fog) and a nice view of the infamous Alcatraz prison -- a trip for another day. The view looking at Sausalito and up at the mountains, with the homes built into the sides, is as breathtaking as the view of the bay looking back at San Francisco.  

The downtown area of Sausalito is quaint and charming, with many great restaurants to choose from and plenty of shops to buy souvenirs and trinkets. Quite a few visitors exiting the ferry headed to a great seafood restaurant, Spinnaker on the Bay. I headed to Angelino’s for Italian. I found a seat at the bar and enjoyed not only the food and the beautiful view of the bay, but also the almost musical way the wait staff ushered people in and out while the bartender made espressos by the dozen.

I ordered a Pizza Margherita and a glass of pinot noir and enjoyed the ambience. The pizza was too much for me and made me think of Julia Roberts in a scene from the movie Eat, Pray, Love. It made me smile as I finished one last piece before I gave in and pushed the plate aside.

I arrived early to catch the ferry back, so I sat and watched the sailboats and kayaks in the bay. The best part of the return ferry was the entertaining employee with the megaphone who, in an excellent effort to entertain all of us waiting for the arriving passengers to exit, gave detailed and colorful instructions on how, when, where, and why to board the ferry. He really seemed to enjoy his job and his timing was perfect. 

If you have seen the typical tourist places in San Francisco and find yourself in the city wanting to see new things, you don’t have to rent a car to find new adventures just outside the city.

 

 

Tri-Valley Area

Bent Creek Winery

Top Things to do and see in Sausalito

If you’d like to purchase this article for your publication, click here to contact the author directly.

( Read More )