Oh what I wouldn’t give to be tasting some delicious steak right now. Clearly, someone needs to go purchase lunch. Folks in Dallas won’t be hungry this weekend with the Great Steak of Texas Festival in town. Festivities consist of a chuck wagon dinner, cook-offs and music performances by some people I’ve never heard of (not that that means anything). And, it’s only $3 at the gate. What a bah-gin!

[Source: Dallas Morning News]
[TravelPost.com Dallas hotel reviews]

I had heard about the flight attendants labor unions getting their collective noses out of joint over the new Jodie Foster film Flightplan, but I hadn’t really thought about the absurdity of it all until reading Diane Clarkson’s blog today. Clarkson, who is a travel analyst for Jupiter Research, points out that there are plenty of movies who misrepresent professions or portray them in negative lights. Her list of example films is pretty funny:

· Jurassic Park – depicts scientists as irresponsible cloners
· Training Day, Internal Affairs, Police Academy (all) and ET – unfairly represent cops as criminal, unethical, incompetent, and/or unsympathetic to aliens
· The Devil’s Advocate – no matter what you think about lawyers, portraying Satan as an attorney isn’t nice
· Ghost –depicts bankers as embezzlers. Not too flattering to psychics either.

Personally, I don’t think the flight attendants have much to worry about. The movie has been getting horrible reviews. And the plot just sounds horrible.

TravelPoster Denise just wrote a cool journal entry about her recent adventures in Bali, Indonesia, including her trip to the Casa Luna Ubud Bali cooking school. I am fascinated by cooking schools, especially those that take place in destinations other than Italy or France (though I’m sure those are tres manifique). At the Casa Luna, you can take market trips or cooking classes for 200,000-250,000 Indonesia Rupiahs (about $20 USD). Here are some of the dishes you can learn there:

* Spiced fish in banana leaves
* Fragrant tuna curry
* Asian spinach in tomato sambal
* Carrot & Cucumber salad
* Black rice pudding
* Balinese chicken satay
* Beans in coconut milk
* Lawar
* Corn fritters
* Gado-gado
* Fragrant yellow rice

And many more. Casa Luna is also a guesthouse, restaurant and housewares shop.

Thanks, Denise!

I once swam with nurse sharks (of the little itty bitty harmless shark variety), but a Great White is clearly something one must have much larger balskies to undertake. Should you be in possession of such acoutrements, you might want to try cage diving with Jaws. Cage Diver offers trips to do just that in California, the Bahamas and South Africa. You take a ride on a nice boat out to the shark viewing area, then they lower you down in a metal cage so you don’t get eaten by the very thing you’ve paid good money to go and stare at. I think the web site says it best:

Diving with sharks is incredible. Diving with sharks without the protection of a shark cage is just not smart.

A shark cage protects you in the same way a bird cage keeps the family parakeet safe from the family cat.

[Photo: Cage Diver shark cage]

Sheryl Crow and Lance Armstrong are supposedly getting married at Bacara Resort and Spa in Santa Barbara this spring. I wonder if they’ll incorporate the color yellow into their wedding somehow.

Just doing my job to keep yall up to date on the celebs and where they stay.

[Source: Luxist, Page Six]
[TravelPost.com Santa Barbara hotel reviews]

I posted a bit on weird hotel signs from around the world not too long ago, and these photos are in the same vein. A friend sent them to me, and a friend sent them to her, so neither of us knows where they came from. But they’re good for a laugh. Good Friday material.

I love it. A rundown of hotels with scandalous pasts. Everyone knows about Sid and Nancy (Room 100, which, incidentally, no longer exists) at the Hotel Chelsea, but the Sheraton Sand Key Resort in Clearwater Beach, Fla., which is the hotel televangelist Jim Bakker chose for his notorious tryst with church secretary Jessica Hahn (Room 538), was totally not on my radar. Personally, staying in the Jim Bakker room sounds way creepier than the Sid and Nancy room. Probably the coolest one on the list? The Hilton Amsterdam room (702) where John Lennon and Yoko Ono had their famous 1969 bed-in. The hotel was renovted in 1990 (with Ono’s help) to look like it did during the bed-in. Minus the people in the bed and the press, of course.

[Source: USA Today]
[Photo: John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Bed-in” suite]

While the Christian Science Monitor does not run travel features frequently, its travel stories are usually quite good when they do run. Case in point: this story on Pondicherry, India from today’s edition. The jist is that the colonial French influence on the area still remains, and, in fact, is being preserved by locals, while other parts of India have tried hard to remove traces of colonial British rule. Check it out.

I’m not sure if the words Tao and Las Vegas belong in the same sentence, but the Venetian didn’t ask me for advice when naming its new Tao Nightclub and Lounge, opening to the public today. Modeled after the Tao Restaurant and Bar in New York, the 10,000-square-foot club is located within the casino’s Tao Las Vegas complex, which the press release below describes as an “Asian city.” (I wonder if they’ll have free bird flu. Joke.) The accompanying Tao restaurant opens to the public tomorrow (Friday), though celebrities from Paris Hilton to Chelsea Clinton (now there’s diversity!) have already tromped through it at pre-opening parties. Here’s a description from the Venetian web site:

Upon entry, guests are greeted with live performance art, including two live Buddhist monks sitting on a giant Buddha hand and scenes from early Shanghai opium dens.

Too funny.

Sorry, no pix yet.

[Source: Press release]
[TravelPost.com hotel reviews of the Venetian]

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve miscalculated the time it will take me to reach an airport in a new city, and I arrive at the airport early, notice that the airline I’m flying has an earlier flight home and then grumble about how I’d have to deal with standby if I wanted to get on that flight. Usually, when I try, there aren’t any seats available on the earlier flight. But if there were, it would be nice to be able to just change flights at the check-in kiosk, no? That’s what American Airlines is now offering to its coach class passengers (b/c biz and firsty-first class already have this privilege) with its Same-Day Confirmed Flight Change plan. For $25, you can hop on any flight with available seats that takes off within three hours of your original flight. Your seat is confirmed. No standby rigamarole. Yes, it’s a little thing, but good to know about if you’re flying AA, and you’re insane friend-cousin-parents-coworkers start to really get on your nerves and make you just want to hop the earliest plane you can back to your safe, sweet home.