No one travels quite like Dita Von Teese travels. So, when the burlesque star was jaunting across America recently, promoting her new 'My Cointreau Travel Essentials' bar, we cornered her to ask some burning travel questions--tips that may just get us through this month of holiday travel insanity.
Jaunted: What are your beauty travel essentials?
Dita:I always have my lipstick, lip pencil, powder and moisturizer.
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212 and 808. Respectively, they are the area codes for dialing New York City and Hawaii. Today, however, they are also the prices for a one-way economy or first class seat on Hawaiian Airlines' just announced direct flights from New York-JFK to Honolulu starting in June 2012.
That's right. $212. To Hawaii. Non-Stop. With complimentary in-flight meals, pillows and blankets. That's all great and good, but the problem is these sale fares are going fast. Already we're seeing them raise to the $300s as planes fill for—believe it or not—autumn 2012. It just goes to show how needed this route is, since United née Continental is the only other airline making the 10-hour, 5,000-mile trek (and they dumped their free in-flight meal and other niceties almost one year ago).
The details: flights will be on an Airbus A330-200, with 18 first class seats and 276 economy (32" seat pitch in econ). Book 'em, Danno.
For a better perspective on how the new Hawaiian flights will go down, we met with the airline's CEO Mark Dunkerley this morning, mere hours after even airline crew found out they'd soon be flying to NYC. ]]>
When you think about the people who make a cruise ship run, who comes to mind? The captain...maybe the head chef and cruise director, right? Well, with about 1,000 crew onboard Cunard's Queen Victoria, there's so many others in the shadows, all responsible for making your vacation an awesome one and we'd like to introduce you to them.
Over the last two weeks, we've given exclusive peeks into the (somewhat) secret lives of a ship's officer, a "gentleman dance host," the ship's acupuncturist, the actual doctor and the foodie Saucier. For this final installment, we're all about getting our drink on. Cheers.
Cruises are the ultimate all-inclusive vacation...or are they? What you will have to pay for is all that boozing—wine with dinner, gin and tonics on deck and champagne poolside—so there's a man onboard whose job it is to make the cocktail menu as tempting as possible. For the Queen Victoria, this man is James, the ship's Public Rooms Services Manager.
He may be on a boat right now, but James is head over heels for hotels, using his experience in opening both Manchester's Velvet Hotel and Malmaison to evolve the Queen Victoria's bars and lounges into singular experiences for her thousands of guests. He's been at sea now straight since 2004, also stepping onto the old Caronia, the Queen Mary 2 and even some of the smaller Seabourn ships. Thus, you can bet he knows what to drink if you're feeling the motion of the ocean a bit much: the Ginger Cosmo.]]>
When you think about the people who make a cruise ship run, who comes to mind? The captain...maybe the head chef and cruise director, right? Well, with about 1,000 crew onboard Cunard's Queen Victoria, there's so many others in the shadows, all responsible for making your vacation an awesome one. And over these two weeks, we'd like to introduce you to them.
Last week we gave you exclusive peeks into the (somewhat) secret lives of a ship's officer, a "gentleman dance host," the ship's acupuncturist and its actual doctor. Now we're headed into the kitchens with Roberto, the Queen Victoria's Chef de Partie in charge of sauces.
He's just back from a month-long vacation to Bali, where he slept in an overwater bungalow and dined on fresh meals prepared in the rice fields. He's Roberto, and believe it or not, he's the chef in charge of making all the sauces for meals onboard the Queen Victoria, in the Brittania restaurant.
Oh, but it gets better. Roberto is not only a dashing English man of Italian and South African heritage who cuts a fine figure in his tall chef's hat; he's also a Gordon Ramsay-trained chef, with a CV that includes Ramsay's restaurant at Claridge's in London. And like many Londoners, Roberto feels a connection with New York, specifically with Thomas Keller's Michelin four-starred restaurant Per Se, where he comes to dine (and tour the kitchen) almost every time the QV docks in NYC. ]]>
When you think about the people who make a cruise ship run, who comes to mind? The captain...maybe the head chef and cruise director, right? Well, with about 1,000 crew onboard Cunard's Queen Victoria, there's so many others in the shadows, all responsible for making your vacation an awesome one. And over the next two weeks, we'd like to introduce you to them.
Last week we gave you exclusive peeks into the (somewhat) secret lives of a ship's officer, a "gentleman dance host," and the ships' acupuncturist. Now it's time to get technical with Dr. Shaun, a Medical Officer onboard the Queen Victoria.
Not feeling so well on your cruise? No problem—since down below the theatre, below the bars and below even the cheapest cabins sits the Queen Victoria's full Medical Center, with its team of doctors and nurses in officer's whites ready to treat everything from your minor case of mal de mer up to serious, surgical matters.
One of the smart team is Dr. Shaun, a South African who has taken his medical training and interest in sports medicine to the high seas. He treats both passengers and crew, a easy feat considering how well-equipped the Medical Center is with two clinics, private recovery rooms (with portholes!) and heavy gear like portable X-ray machines and yes—Defibrillators.]]>
When you think about the people who make a cruise ship run, who comes to mind? The captain...maybe the head chef and cruise director, right? Well, with about 1,000 crew onboard Cunard's Queen Victoria, there's so many others in the shadows, all responsible for making your vacation an awesome one. And over the next two weeks, we'd like to introduce you to them.
Now that you're fully acquainted with a ship's officer and a pro dancer, it's time to indulge a bit with Justin Lane, Doctor of Chinese Medicine and the Queen Victoria's resident Acupuncturist.
Originally from San Francisco, Justin’s been fully qualified to stick needles in people for just two years, but he’s been into acupuncture for far longer than that. Growing up, he suffered from asthma and allergies; where Western medicine failed to help, acupuncture did the job. “Chinese medicine made a profound difference to my life,” he says. So when his childhood dream of becoming an airline pilot fell through, he decided to help others the way he’d been helped. After his undergrad degree (Psychology in San Fran, no less) he headed down to the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine at San Diego for four years of training.
As Cunard is a British ship, the majority of passengers are English, which doesn’t always bode well for Justin, since he reckons that not only are Americans more open to trying new therapies and into spa-ing in general, but also that, because of the (glorious) NHS, the Brits aren’t used to paying for healthcare. ]]>
The other day we got the chance to get some advice from an older, wiser, big sister travel expert, Samantha Brown. You know her as the host of her own show on the Travel Channel and as The Woman Whose Job We All Covet.
This summer, she's got another gig--she's the spokesperson for Nature Valley's National Parks Project, an awareness campaign to get folks to take advantage of the nearly 400 national parks in America and in doing that, help preserve our national parks for the next generation.
Now in a perfect world with unlimited funds we'd be at the Acadia National Park in Maine walking along with Sam in matching L.L. Bean jackets and duck boots but instead we did a Skype interview indoors--she in a hotel room in Boston and we in the cleanest corner of our home office. ]]>