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A full-day tour of the wine country around Santiago by Vinobus includes the Maipo Valley; tour/tasting at Pérez Cruz Vineyard; Vineyard Santa Rita; the Andino museum, and Vina Santa Rita wine cellars. Lunch at Dona Paula restaurant is not included in the price.
Tours run daily from 9 a.m. $50 per person (minimum, three persons). Enotour Chile (A. Luis Thayer Ojeda 0130, Of. 1204, Providencia, Santiago, Chile; phone [56 2] 481 4081, www
enotourchile.com).
The hotel Sherlock Holmes, located (where else?) on Baker Street in London, offers discounted room rates when booked with a “Murder Mystery Event” party held in its restaurant.
Held twice a month, the interactive murder mystery dinner theater is performed over a three-course meal and lasts three hours. On a first-come, first-booked basis and along with a drink, clue packages and prizes, it costs £39.95-£79 ($63-$125) per person (with VAT).
The discounted room rate for the hotel is £135 (Fri/Sat/Sun) or £170 (weekdays) and includes breakfast.
An MP3 audio tour of music-related sites in Liverpool, England, can be downloaded for free at www.liverpool08.com/downloads.
“Pete Wylie’s Music Tour” is narrated by the founder of the band The Mighty Wah!, and the hour-long guide (seven tracks) takes day-trippers to sites of 50 years of pop, pyschedelia, punk and dance music. Accompanying the download is a 36-page publication, “Sound City,” which includes a “music map.”
The museum The Beatles Story (Britannia Vaults, Albert Dock, Liverpool, England; phone +44 0 151 709 1963, www.beatlesstory.com) celebrates Liverpool’s most famous musicians.
Displays are now at two locations, the Albert Dock district and Mersey Ferry Terminal, and include an audio tour narrated by John Lennon’s sister, a short movie on the “Fab 4,” rooms that celebrate their solo careers, an interactive children’s area and a Starbucks.
Open 9 a.m.-7 p.m. daily. £12.25 (near $19.50) adult.
In Liverpool, you can visit the childhood homes of John Lennon (Mendips, at 251 Menlove Ave.) and Sir Paul McCarthy (20 Forthlin Road) aboard the 14-passenger Beatles minibus. Memorabilia, photos and displays chronicle the composers’ early lives.
The Technik Museum Sinsheim (Museumsplatz, D-74889, Sinsheim, Germany; phone +49 [0] 7261 9299 0, fax 1391 6, www.museum-sinsheim.de) in Sinsheim exhibits over 300 classic cars, 200 motorcycles, 60 aircraft, 20 locomotives and 40 racing cars, not to mention the first Air France Concorde and a large Formula 1 exhibition.
€18 (near $27) adult. An IMAX theater screens transportation-related films (€10). Open 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Friday, 9-8 Saturday-Sunday. A two-hour tour in English costs €80 ($111); book at least 14 days ahead.
The Transport Museum Dresden (Augustusburg 1, 01067 Dresden, Germany; phone +0351 86440, fax 8644-110, www.verkehrsmuseum-dresden.de [in German]) exhibits locomotives from 1924 to 1993 (such as the Saxon Muldenthal, built in 1861), cars, trams, motorbikes (the first gasoline-powered motorcycle, built in 1885), bicycles, hot-air balloons and airplanes.
It is located at the Johanneum, a Renaissance building (1586) where the Electors of Saxony kept their horses and carriages. Open 10-5 Tuesday-Sunday. €4.50 adult. Guided tour, €40 ($56).
The Flexjet 25 Jet Card (888/240-2108 or visit www.flexjet25.com/2010) provides travel by the hour (in increments of 25, 30 and 35 hours) on a fleet of Bombardier Learjets and Challenge business aircraft. Jet card owners can arrange use of the jets of their choice to locations in the USA, Canada, Central America and the Caribbean.
Purchasers of the Flexjet 25 Jet Card – Gold Edition, starting at $122,900 (limited availability), will also receive a hospitality package to the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, Feb. 26-March 1, 2010.
For travelers using mobile smartphones (which can access the Internet), Globetrotter SOS, Ltd. (1 High St., Thatcham, Berkshire, RG19 3JG, UK; phone +44 845 003 9943, www.globetrottersos.com) has launched an emergency-response service which uses satellite-tracking technology and is available 24/7 anywhere in the world.
With your cell phone and the service Textamundo, you can get an answer by text to almost any question, 24/7. The service works on 500 cell phone networks in 198 countries, with 20 active agents based in the USA, Ireland, UK, Austria, Australia and Honduras standing by to access the Internet.
Most questions are transport related (a flight’s status or “Need a taxi at Bankgok Hotel”), but you can ask for anything (sports score, weather, etc.). Send the name of a hotel, for example, and be sent its address, phone number and even GPS coordinates.