The DoMe Travel Thread

--01-17-19: www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/italian-town-of-sambuca-in-sicily-sells-homes-for-a-dollar/ar-BBSjCM1?li=BBnb7Kz

  WE WILL LOOK INTO THESE HOMES TOO…
Looking for a dose of instant sunshine to help you through the winter? This latest deal out of Italy could be just the warm jolt of vitamin D you need.

As of right now, you can buy a house on southern Italy's beautiful island of Sicily for less than the cost of an espresso.

Sambuca, a hilltop town with views over the Mediterranean island and nearby beaches, has placed dozens of dwellings on the market for €1, or just over a dollar.

The deal is aimed at reviving a community that, like many other rural spots in Italy, has suffered from depopulation in recent years as residents move to bigger cities.

It's not the first Italian town to lure in outsiders with tempting offers but, say local officials, Sambuca is scrapping red tape to make sure anyone interested can more or less make their purchase right away.

"As opposed to other towns that have merely done this for propaganda, this city hall owns all €1 houses on sale," says Giuseppe Cacioppo, Sambuca's deputy mayor and tourist councilor.

"We're not intermediaries who liaise between old and new owners. You want that house, you'll get it no time."

City of Splendor
But there's a catch. The new owners must commit to refurbish their choice of the crumbling 40- to 150-square meter dwellings within three years, at a cost starting from €15,000 (about $17,200).

They'll also need to cough up a €5,000 security deposit that will be returned once the restyle is complete. READ MORE…

--01-15-19 IMPORTANT READ FOR TRAVELERS TO MEXICO: www.msn.com/en-us/travel/article/14-mistakes-most-tourists-make-in-mexico/ar-BBSd1ti?li=BBnbklE 

--01-17-19: www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/worlds-first-entirely-vegan-hotel-suite-is-taking-reservations/ar-BBSlfiB?ocid=U147DHP  
Ethically conscious travelers everywhere take note: you can now opt to stay in an entirely vegan hotel room when in London.

The unique offering was just announced by Hilton London Bankside, which has created a luxe Vegan Suite in collaboration with Bompas & Parr, a firm specializing in multi-sensory design.

The suite’s creation was announced to coincide with Veganuary, a month when the charity by the same name encourages people to try going vegan for 30 days.

The entire suite at Hilton London Bankside, which received the thumbs up from The Vegan Society, has undergone a complete refurbishment. (The Vegan Society even served as consultants on material choices and design elements throughout the process.

Everything from carpets to pillow options and mini-bar offerings has been redesigned to create a boutique, luxurious and welcoming experience for the ethically-conscious traveler.

The vegan experience actually begins the moment guests step foot into the London hotel, where they're greeted with a specially designed plant-based check-in desk with upholstered seating made from Pinatex, a natural leather alternative created from cellulose fibers extracted from pineapple leaves.

Even the hotel room key card is made from Pinatex.

The interior of the uber-stylish vegan suite also draws inspiration from the pineapple, which was brought to South London by botanist John Tradescant in the 17th century.

The suite was built with influences of the delicately pure Pinatex core material throughout. The room also contains a range of additional, specially designed features that embrace a plant-based lifestyle. READ MORE…

--01-17-19: slate.com/human-interest/2019/01/new-zealand-tourists-john-johnson-tina-cash-arrest.html
As the world plunges into chaos, you could be forgiven for thinking New Zealand, a bolthole for the super-wealthy operating under the stewardship of the nicest lady in politics, is simply trucking along serenely.

Sure, Brazil’s fascist president has just relaxed gun laws despite the country leading the world in homicides, and the U.K. is drifting disastrously toward Brexit while Theresa May’s leadership hangs in the balance. I don’t care to mention Trump.

But we do have problems of our own in this little corner of the South Pacific.

Namely, we are being terrorized by a large, rowdy family of holidaymakers.

For weeks, a terrible family of unruly tourists has wrought a trail of destruction from Auckland all the way to Hamilton.

A large man in red shorts and a white tank top, a woman in a unicorn onesie, and a small, angry boy are the unwilling public faces of this terrible family who number about 12, according to multiple witnesses.

It all kicked off on Monday when Kiwi social media was flooded with video footage from an Auckland beach. The video showed a Kiwi woman confronting a tourist about rubbish they’d left strewn along the beach, including beer bottles and baby wipes. (Littering is a fineable offence in New Zealand as well as heavily culturally frowned upon.)

The woman shooting the video, Aucklander Krista Curnow, said she was intimidated by several adults in the group before being threatened by a shirtless boy of about 9 wearing an oversized straw hat.

In the video, the boy, having detected his family’s honor is being called into question and marching purposefully into the fracas, shouts, “I’ll knock your brains out!”

Soon other New Zealanders came forward with their own stories of unpleasant encounters with the unrepentant tourists.

It turns out this bad family has been wreaking havoc on our quiet country for a month! The family’s alleged crimes are many and varied. Not only did they refuse to pick up their own rubbish, they had the cheek to tell locals to pick it up for them.

They have been accused of purposely contaminating meals with both ants and strands of hair to get out of paying the sometimes hundreds of dollars’ worth of food they’d ordered, leaving a shit-filled baby onesie on a plane, and walking through a Burger King drive-thru.

To understand why the story of the bad family has absolutely taken over New Zealand, you must know that our economy absolutely depends on the massive amounts of money tourism brings in, yet we actively despise every single tourist who dares to come and enjoy all the stuff we promised was so great.

Furthermore, Kiwis cannot abide arrogance. As a nation, we are crippled by a pervasive tall poppy syndrome, which means all our comedy must be deadpan and every one of our heroes is obligated to be taciturn, lest they accidentally let on they’re proud of themselves.

So the bad family is a perfect storm. Yes, littering is bad, and so is weaseling out of paying your bills. But it’s the total lack of remorse this menacing foreign family appears to feel about their actions which has united the public against them.

Just who do they think they are? Well, that’s not entirely clear; no one’s even certain at this point where they’re actually from.

Initially, and somewhat bigotedly, witnesses to their trail of destruction referred to the group as Irish travelers, but one family member later claimed in an exclusive interview with local reporter Belinda Feek that they were from Liverpool.

While the group’s heritage may be up for debate, what is clear is that in the absence of any actual news thanks to the summer holiday slump, New Zealand has become obsessed with this horrible family’s misdeeds.

Since Monday, every major news website in the country has been covering every minor exploit of this crafty family on its homepage, and Kiwi Twitter has been reveling in each absurd detail.

On Day Two, Tuesday, the country’s paper of record, the New Zealand Herald, created a timeline detailing the bad family’s every infraction—a news device usually reserved for covering quickly unfolding national emergencies like earthquakes or tropical storms.

At one point, news alerts were pinging phones hourly: The bad family has been sighted in a Bunnings hardware store and hassled by a member of the public!

The bad family tried to turn staff against each other in an Auckland café before running away without paying! The bad family “rudely demanded” to use a random man’s scooter! The bad family was spotted throwing their toast on the floor!

And the stories kept on coming. It is now believed the unruly tourists struck as early as Dec. 7, stealing a Christmas tree from an Auckland petrol station.

Is nothing sacred? New Zealand was baying for the blood of the bad family. They had to be punished.

Then, on Tuesday afternoon, an alert: Immigration had served a deportation notice. Apparently, the government can kick someone out of the country on the grounds of bad character, and clearly our officials agreed with the public at large:

We were dealing with a bunch of real bad eggs. The bad family didn’t care; they were already cutting their vacation short, John Johnson told the Herald.

“We’re here to see the Hobbits,” he said. “I’ve been looking at the Hobbits my whole life, since I’m born, that was originally what our plans was, but it’s all been f–ked up now.”

“I’m no one famous,” he added plaintively. “I’m just a fat kid from England on holiday.” READ MORE…

DO ME’S THOUGHTS: I WISH & PRAY THAT MEXICO’S IMMIGRATION DEPT. STARTS DEPORTING AMERICANS LIVING HERE/VISITING HERE THAT ARE RACISTS. IT IS STARTING TO GET REALLY BAD…

--01-17-19 IMPORTANT—I LIKE THIS LIST: us.cnn.com/travel/article/affordable-luxury-hotels/index.html