Mobissimo

Expedia has a last minute special, save 29% of the 29th of February*  Check out more details here.

Now's the time to travel to New Zealand, no doubt, as it's summerish there, approaching fall, weather is still good and flights are fairly cheap.  Here's a list of spa deals in the land of the Hobbitt, enjoy and find your tickets here on Mobissimo.  Try this one for under $200.

Under $200
A "summer special" at Silver Fern Accommodation and Spa in Rotorua costs $165 for two for a night in a luxury one-bedroom suite, with its own private spa pool. Each extra night booked costs $135 and in-room continental breakfasts are included on the first morning.

Tired of the winter-blues? The islands are calling! Plan your next vacation to Hawaii today and enjoy parasailing in the Pacific Ocean, hiking through a rainforest, or surfing into the sunset. Whatever you choose, Starwood Hotels & Resorts is here to help plan your dream vacation. Book your vacation today at a Sheraton, Westin or Luxury Collection property in Hawaii and enjoy an up to $200 resort credit. Escape the winter-blues and enjoy relaxing in the sun on the beautiful islands of Hawaii. Check out the deals, the Sheraton from $270.

No joke, this one is for real.  Apparently two young women were treated rudely and then banished for life from flying Southwest Airlines for nothing more than being super hot.  Don't know if that really is the reason, strange things happen in Florida.  We'll let you be the judge, the picture is below and video is here, are these two young women too hot to fly?  Read more here via Tampa Bays10.com.

Tampa, Florida – Prejudice against pretty?

That's the claim from a pair of 18-year-old best friends from Oldsmar who were escorted off a Southwest Airlines plane.

USF student Nisreen Swedberg and friend Sarah Williams claim the flight crew was rude to them from the moment they stepped onto the plane at Tampa International Airport on February 14.

Swedberg said she asked a flight attendant for a bottle of water and was told she could wait until the rest of the flight was served.

“And I patiently waited and then when they came around with water, they skipped me,” Swedberg said.

Hard to just on what constitutes art these days. One could argue Mapplethorpe, Hirst, even Basquiat, but still, beauty exists in the eye of the beholder. Enter graffiti, the scourge of public surfaces. Here's a map to the well known artists of NYC, I've seen a couple of these, kinda neato. More here via Gridskipper.

New York City's streets are home to a wide range of street artists, graff writers, or vandals, depending on what vernacular you prefer. For most New Yorkers it's easy to appreciate the more conventionally beautiful of the artists' work, while the murky and destructive world of the tagger is a seeming blight on the city.

Bit of a predicament here, American Airlines apparently denied treatment to a woman enroute flying AA.  While the reports are still unconfirmed, several things went wrong here, read the LA Times here for more information.

NEW YORK -- An American Airlines passenger died after a flight attendant told her he couldn't give her any oxygen and then tried to help her with faulty equipment, including an empty oxygen tank, a relative said.

The airline confirmed the flight death and said medical professionals had tried to save the passenger, Carine Desir, who was returning home to Brooklyn from Haiti.

Desir, who had heart disease, died of natural causes, medical examiner's office spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said Sunday.

New York is full of lonely people, perhaps more so than Los Angeles.  Instead of the little metal box of a car in LA, you get the slighter larger studio to confine your days and nights.  One cab driver seeks to correct this and has become a fairly successful matchmaker in the process, read more here.

A cab driver has been playing matchmaker for lonely New Yorkers who flag him down.

Ahmed Ibrahim, 53, claims to have set up more than 70 dates for customers during the past few years.

The cupid cab driver, as he refers to himself, insists 19 couples he helped get together had relationships that lasted more than a year.

Mr Ibrahim planned to decorate his yellow cab with red and white hearts and roses for Valentine's

Culinary awards abound around the world, yet nothing quite compares to Anthony Bourdain et al's take on food awards.  Instead of lavish praise - there is that too, Bourdain and crew point out the flops as well, kinda like a Razzie in a way.  Read more about the nominees here via Eater.

Michael Ruhlman and Tony Bourdain have concocted The Golden Clog Awards (Ruhlman has previously announced as much on his blog), a quirky little awards event born out of "too many beers and late night yakitori," as Bourdain explained to Eater yesterday. The awards ceremony, or "awards ceremony," will take place this Friday at 2:00 PM in Miami Beach, as part of the 2008 South Beach Wine & Food Festival, which does lend a certain, frightening air of credibility to the proceedings.

In no way do we condone underage drinking, nor do we think that drinking is the definition of cool, this story from the New Yorker online suggests differently.  More here.

Today a Dartmouth student blog took a peek at the numbers of alcohol-related infractions per thousand students in each of the Ivy League schools. Unsurprisingly, Dartmouth itself came out on top. There's not a lot going on off-campus in terms of nightlife, and since the popular fraternities are in and around school grounds, it makes sense that the university would be busting people with high regularity.

The super sized A380 Airbus super jumbo will make it's maiden arrival at London Heathrow.  Since Heathrow is one of the worst airports in the world for immigration, 500+ disembarking flyers at one point will only make the lines that much longer.  Yay*  Here's more about this impending debacle.

SINGAPORE -- Singapore Airlines Ltd. plans to fly the world's largest passenger aircraft, the Airbus A380, on the Singapore-London route starting in March.

The airline will take delivery of the third of the double-decker planes into its fleet by mid-March, and will fly it daily between the city-state and London from March 18, the carrier said in a statement

While now only flying New York to London, EOS is offering service now to Dubai.  Even in light of the recent demise of MaxJet, the all business class model seems to be working.  More here from the Times Online.

All business airline Eos, which operates regular flights from Stansted to New York JFK, is to launch daily services to Dubai from July.

Jack Williams, Eos’ president and CEO, said: “Our community includes many guests and investors from the Gulf region who feel that Dubai and Eos are a perfect fit. UAE consumers appreciate products and services of the highest quality and we’ve created a travel experience that authentically reflects their lifestyle, an extension of the way they want to live while flying.”

Well, seems footage of a French stewardess stripping for the pilots in the cockpit has emerged.  More here via Gridskipper.

Last week, footage of a large-breasted flight attendant giving pilots a striptease in the cockpit of a French jet surfaced online. After viewing, European airline officials and that always-classy British tabloid The Sun announced an investigation to determine the identity of the sexy stewardess in question. They found her. They also found a second video. Awesome.

Tuesday, 2/5/08: Antwerp: Kohinklijk Ballet van Vlaanderen Antwerp's pulsing dance heartbeat, the Royal Ballet of Flanders, is being transplanted to Seville, Lisbon, and Barcelona for the month of February and Luxembourg in March (with their highly-lauded and Forsythe-choreographed "Impressing the Czar," no less). However, if you can't jete alongside the company, you CAN ditch the chocolate, waffles, and Tin Tin for a night when they come back to Antwerp in April. While we've been pretty dedicated to the classical ballet companies of Europe on this site (a dearth of Nutcrackers and Sleeping Beauties, it would seem). However, the RBF is ballet in a less traditional (though no less understandable or less beautiful) sense of the word. Modern choreographers, such as William Forsythe or George Balanchine, are the bread and butter--or waffles and syrup--here and the dancers take to their masterworks like NATO employees to Brussels.

The young vibe of the company makes it perfect for young audiences, and if you're 26 or under you can get tickets for 50% of their face value. Those over 65 can also get in for 15% off. And leave it to those Belgians to give one-better: students studying in Belgium or Antwerp specifically can purchase ten Cultuurcheques for 15 Euro. These "checks" act as individual discount coupons (which can also go up to 50% off) that are accepted widely at Antwerp, including the ballet. If you'll be in town for a while, or want to do a whirlwind tour of this city's bustling art and culture scene, they're good to have on hand.

But, if you absolutely can't live without your Tchaikovsky fix, there IS a Sleeping Beauty.



Thanks, ligiah! Kohinklijk Ballet van Vlaanderen The Royal Ballet of Flanders Kattendijkdok-Westkaai 16, 2000 +32(0)3 234 34 38 http://www.kbvv.be

Monday, 2/4/08: Barcelona: Gran Teatro del Liceu Barcelona is getting a lot of love these days, thanks in part to Woody Allen's latest film Vicky Cristina Barcelona and also to the city's general fabulousness. The culture is tempered by the vibrant nightlife (or should it be vice versa...) so why not kill some time before that 10:00 pm dinner by hopping over to the Gran Teatro del Liceu? While it doesn't have the great stained-glass ceiling of its sister concert hall the Palau de la Musica, it has some pretty luminescent performances and opera divas (and divos) on stage. Not the least of which included Senor Allen himself, who played with his New Orleans Jazz Band as a special New Year's treat last month (all things Southern are good for the hangovers).

And that concert will give you a hint as to the wide variety of music at the Gran Teatro. From Allen to Anna Netrebko, they've all done the Big B, and with a history of eccentric and exotic productions (much like Barcelona's architecture and design ethos on the whole) the performers aren't the only things to look at. Current operas on the agenda include Elektra, Lucrezia Borgia, Tannhauser, and--one of the most Spanish-at-heart operas--Don Giovanni.  There will also be two dance companies to catch in May and July, and a series of concerts and recitals ranging from Handel to Brahms to Stravinsky.

Undoubtedly, however, opera is the Liceu's main squeeze. If you're a senior citizen (65 and above), you're guaranteed 30% ticket discounts to all foyer shows as well as the same discount on the day-of any performance--two hours before curtain. There's also the standard student love (and Barcelona has its fair share of students either studying, studying abroad, or passing through): same senior discounts as well as the Liceu at the University. Live simulcasts of five selected operas (Aida, La Cenerentola--both of which have already passed--Elektra, Tannhauser, Tamerlano, and Death in Venice) will be broadcast at over 40 universities within Spain, including the University of Barcelona. For more information on that (in every language besides English, it seems), check out Opera Oberta's website. Thanks, 45street! Gran Teatro del Liceu La Rambla 51-59, 08002 +34 93 485 99 13 http://www.liceubarcelona.com

Used to be that the greenback, the US Dollar was the de facto currency around the world. Anywhere, you flash the Benji, you get in, you pay, you do it. Unfortunately, the US Dollar has been not so strong as of late versus other world currencies, basically right now the USD to Euros is on par with the mightly ruble. Sigh* Anyway, NYC stores are taking Euros now, probably not so much because of the strength of the Euro, but just because every shop in Soho, Madison Ave has a Sven, Hans, Jean-Baptiste buying something in cash, more here via Yahoo!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In the latest example that the U.S. dollar just ain't what it used to be, some shops in New York City have begun accepting euros and other foreign currency as payment for merchandise.

"We had decided that money is money and we'll take it and just do the exchange whenever we can with our bank," Robert Chu, owner of East Village Wines, told Reuters television.

The increasingly weak U.S. dollar, once considered the king among currencies, has brought waves of European tourists to New York with money to burn and looking to take advantage of hugely favorable exchange rates.