Web sites aim to spur Caribbean tourism

Web sites aim to spurCaribbean tourism
CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands (AP) -- Caribbean travelers can book small hotels online with a new Web engine launched by the Caribbean Tourism Organization.
DoitCaribbean.com is designed to offer consumers better access to some 1,000 small hotels in more than 30 countries in the region. The site's emphasis on small operators differs from the recently launched GoCaribbean.com, which offers online flight reservations and bookings at 400 major hotel chains. GoCaribbean also allows dive companies, rental car agencies, golf courses and spas to offer their products and services.
Check the Web sites at www.DoitCaribbean.com or www.GoCaribbean.com.
Exhibit celebratesPan Am Clipper era
NEW YORK (AP) -- The Museum of American Financial History is hosting an exhibit called "Pan Am and the Golden Age of Air Travel."
The exhibit focuses on Pan Am's Clipper period, from 1935 through 1946, when it became the first American airline to fly to foreign destinations and the first to employ flight attendants, serve meals on board and show full-length movies. On display are vintage route maps, ads, signs, postcards, financial documents and other memorabilia.
The museum, located at 28 Broadway, is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The exhibit is on view through Dec. 30; admission is $2.
Driving tour explores scenic Wyoming areas
ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo. (AP) -- A 23.5-mile route offering motorists a view of southwest Wyoming's indigenous wild horses and scenic areas is open.
The Pilot Butte Wild Horse Scenic Loop Tour connects the cities of Rock Springs and Green River along several county roads.
Besides a chance to see wild horses, the route offers views of the Wind River, Wyoming and Uinta mountain ranges, Pilot Butte, Wilkins Peak and the old Overland Trail route.
It also provides information at various interpretive sites on the area's natural resources, geology, history, culture and economic development.
Head to Antarcticaon turn-of-year trip
DARIEN, Conn. (AP) -- How does Christmas in Antarctica sound? Quark Expeditions is offering 11- and 12-day voyages around the Antarctic Peninsula and South Shetland Islands between Dec. 15 and Jan. 4.
The Connecticut-based company is making the trip aboard small vessels that carry 49 to 110 passengers, designed to navigate scenic waterways closed to larger ships. The trip affords abundant opportunities to view wildlife and the frozen landscape.
Ships leave from Ushuaia in Argentina on the Beagle Channel.
Rates start at $3,995 per person. For more information, visit www.quarkexpeditions.com or call (203) 656-0499.
Maritime park honorsblacks' contributions
BALTIMORE (AP) -- Construction has begun on the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park, a national cultural center dedicated to black contributions to maritime history.
Douglass and Myers were among 15 black Baltimoreans who founded the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Co. in 1866, the first black-owned company of its kind.
The park, near the city's touristy Inner Harbor, will feature a promenade along the harbor, a museum in a restored 19th-century warehouse and outside exhibits where visitors and students will watch shipwrights restore 19th-century sailing vessels such as the USS Constellation and the Lady Maryland.
Some portions of the park are scheduled to be open to the public within a year.