THE ROOM REPORT
UNION STATION – A WYNDHAM HISTORIC HOTEL
1001 Broadway, Nashville, TN, 615-726-1001, wyndham.com.
RATES: Start at $179 per night. Overnight parking $17 or $10 at the public lot with no in-and-out.
STAY HERE IF YOU’RE: Heck-bent on experiencing a piece of historic Nashville in exchange for a truly high-quality good night’s sleep.
IT’S CLOSE TO: Downtown, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, the entertainment district.
THE ROOMS ARE: Smallish, but an appealing mix of contemporary and comfortable.
THEY PUT ALL OF THE MONEY INTO: The renovation, which isn’t quite finished, but not the restaurant, with its terrible breakfast buffet, and not the heating system, which pumped out frigid air all night despite repeated requests for help on a record-breaking freezing weekend. And not the shuttle, which I was told offered free rides around town when I booked my stay, but, oops, the driver quit two weeks before my arrival, and they hadn’t gotten around to replacing him.
THE BOTTOM LINE: The details are being neglected here. The staff is very nice but has to spend a lot of time saying, “I’m so sorry.”
GEARING UP
The Disposable Clean Diner is a portable germ barrier for restaurant highchairs, aimed at parents who see danger everywhere. This is also a product for the parent with a bad case of germ paranoia and plenty of spare time to make sure that baby’s environment is obsessively sterile. The Disposable Clean Diner works as advertised. It fit nicely on the highchair and did an admirable job of catching 75 percent of my baby’s dinner that invariably bypassed his mouth, which was appreciated at cleanup time. And did it protect him from those meanie germs? I guess so (although the sheet doesn’t cover the actual food tray, presumably a regular bacterial Garden of Eden). But since his habit on being released from a highchair is to stick the nearest shoe in his mouth or to lick the dog’s paw, a germ barrier like this one seems, paradoxically, like inadequate overkill. | $7.99 for a pack of three, cleanshopper.com, Whole Foods
– The Washington Post
BOOK YOUR VACATION
Just after the holidays, when an iPod, a personal DVD player and a new mountain bike are standard gifts, and the family is already deep into planning a spring break trip to a foreign country, it’s hard to remember that when some of us were kids, the dream of backpacking across Europe when we hit college age was just that: a dream. Nowadays, it’s a rite of passage, and a lot of kids don’t even bother with the backpack; they book nice hotels and eat in really good restaurants. But “Europe from a Backpack” ($15.95, Pearson Venture Group) and its companions “Spain from a Backpack” and one on Italy, prove that there are still young folks going the budget route. These are collections of short stories of varying quality – funny, poignant, exasperating – with no addresses or other basic guide info, just enough to make you want to fill a pack and go.
HotelChatter.com
It’s all hotels, all the time on this site, with postings from other travelers on their bests and worsts, searchable listings from around the globe and the ability to submit your own tips, snapshots and reviews. Click on the map to pull up stories on places to stay for your next trip; some even include restaurants and things to do, along with decent photos and celebrity sightings. Especially helpful: updates on hotels undergoing renovations or new ones being built.
TRAVEL BY NUMBERS| Top 10 cheap sleeps in the United Kingdom
In a recent issue of the monthly travel newsletter TravelSmart, the U.K. correspondent rated B&Bs and inns. Listing includes the nearest tube or bus stop and nightly rate, which usually includes breakfast and afternoon tea and sherry.
1. London: Garden Court Hotel (Bayswater; $75-$140)
2. London: London School of Economics (eight locations; $55-$90)
3. London: Vancouver Studios (Bayswater; $135)
4. Edinburgh: Ardenlee Guesthouse (Eyre Place; $100)
5. Edinburgh: Edinburgh First (Holyrood Park Road; $65-$140).
6. Glasgow: Heritage Hotel (Alfred Terrace; $60-$90)
7. Dublin: St. Dunstan’s B&B (Oakley Road; $80)
8. Dublin: Kellys Hotel (Great Georges Street; $60-$110)
9. Dublin: Hotel St. George (Parnell Square; $90-$150).
10. Cork: The Action Lodge (Western Road; $40-$140).
Visit TravelSmartNewsletter.com.
GEO QUIZ | Where are these places?
Note: It is a new year, and again we start over with questions from the National Geographic Society’s National Geography Bee from the previous year. As always, we begin with the preliminary questions, then move on to the State and the National Finals. This is why the questions are a little bit easier at the beginning and get progressively harder. While some of you like them to be mind- boggingly difficult, we find that some appreciate this little bit of a breather. Please stick with it, because as the weeks progress, they again will become impossible.
1. The Yenisey River is in which country, Russia or Australia?
2. Which mountains extend across more degrees of latitude, the Andes or the Atlas Mountains?
3. Sanaa is the capital of which country in the Middle East, Iraq or Yemen?
4. Which of the following is a Baltic country, Azerbaijan or Latvia?
5. Which islands are part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the Bahamas or the Azores?
6. The Celtic Sea is an arm of which ocean, the Indian Ocean or the Atlantic Ocean?
7. Mont Blanc is the highest peak in what mountain system, the Alps or the Caucasus Mountains?
8. Which country is farther north, Paraguay or Venezuela?
9. Which country spans more degrees of longitude, Iceland or Indonesia?
10. The Yucatán Channel separates Mexico from which country, Guatemala or Cuba?
ANSWERS: 1. Russia 2. Andes 3. Yemen 4. Latvia 5. Azores 6. Atlantic Ocean 7. Alps 8. Venezuela 9. Indonesia 10. Cuba
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC BEE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY
