Travel Briefs

The three monumental doors of the Florence Baptistery were reunited in December 2019 after being apart for almost 30 years for restoration. The three gilded-bronze doors were crafted by different artisans between 1330 and 1452. Each is more than 16 feet tall and almost 10 feet wide and weighs over eight tons. The oldest, the South Door, damaged by flooding in 1966, was the last to be restored.

They can be viewed at the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, or Opera Museum (Via della...

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Beginning in early 2020, visitors to the ancient temple complex of Angkor Wat, Cambodia, will no longer be able to ride elephants on the grounds of the site. Two of the park’s 14 elephants have been released in a nearby forest, with the rest to follow shortly. Elephant riding in Angkor Wat was introduced in 2001. In 2016, one of the park’s elephants died due to a combination of heatstroke and exhaustion, leading to a petition to ban the practice entirely.

A new budget Icelandic airline, PLAY (flyplay.com), is being launched in 2020 by executives of the former airline WOW Air, which ceased operation in March 2019. At press time, the company had leased two passenger planes that would serve an initial six European destinations (which had yet to be announced). The company expected to expand to four US airports by spring 2020. Meanwhile, a US company unconnected to the original airline restarted WOW Air in November, basing it in Washington, DC....

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Transport for London (TfL), the board in charge of regulating taxis and ride-sharing services in the English capital, decided on Nov. 25 to not renew ride-share company Uber’s license to operate, citing “repeated safety failures.” These failures included the company’s allowing drivers to continue to drive for the company even after their licenses had been suspended or revoked. Uber is appealing the decision and will continue to operate during the appeal, but, should it lose, Uber drivers...

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Scheduled to open in Vienna, Austria, on March 12, 2020, the Albertina Modern will be home to more than 60,000 pieces of post-1945 modern art by more than 5,000 artists. Housed in the newly restored Künstlerhaus, on Karlsplatz, the museum is just off the Ringstraße, a few blocks from the main Albertina Museum. For info, contact the Albertina Museum (phone +43 1 534 83 0, www.albertina.at).

A museum and restaurant, La Cité de la Gastronomie (4 Grand Cloître du Grand Hôtel-Dieu; citegastronomielyon.fr/en), opened in a 15th-century hospital building in Lyon, France, in October 2019. Two floors of the museum have exhibits focusing on the culinary history of Lyon as well as on international food traditions. On the third floor, the Gastro’Lab is a working space where chefs and researchers experiment with ingredients and cooking techniques. The fourth floor has an open kitchen where...

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The Frank A. Perret Museum in Saint-Pierre, Martinique, commemorates the volcanic eruption of May 8, 1902, that buried much of the city and killed more than 30,000 people, leaving only three residents alive. Closed for five months for expansion, the museum reopened in May 2019 as the Mémorial de la Catastrophe de 1902 (169 rue Victor-Hugo; phone +222 05 96 78 15 19, www.memorial1902.org [in French only]). It displays more than 400 artifacts recovered from the buried city plus exhibits on...

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In Cornwall, United Kingdom, a footbridge over a rocky chasm now connects the ruins of Tintagel Castle, on a land-tied island, with the mainland. Opened on Aug. 7, the bridge restores a medieval crossing that fell into the ocean centuries ago. Before the opening of the 223-foot bridge, visitors had to walk down a steep flight of steps on one side of the chasm, cross a shorter footbridge and then climb up stairs on the other side. Tintagel Castle, which dates to the 13th century, has long...

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