ABCDE Travel sunday, june 13, 2010
FARM DAYS Volunteer
service In Laos, here we go ’round the (organic) mulberry bush. F4
Navigator Beware the Internet spear phishers. F2 Going Our Way Taking stock of Stockholm et al. F3
Bed Check It’s a real holiday at this B&B in Bethlehem, Pa. F6 CHAT We answer reader questions 2 p.m. Monday at
washingtonpost.com/travel.
IMPULSIVE TRAVELER
Well
coddled A town where the scene never changes. F7
Welcome! F
(I think.)
House a perfect stranger, and it might feel perfectly strange
by Nancy Trejos I thought I knew all I needed to know about
my first potential houseguest from Facebook: her age, her religion, her relationship status. She also listed quite a few of her favorite things: favorite casino, favorite feeling, even fa- vorite credit card. But of course, I didn’t really know her at all. And that was the problem. She lived in New York and wanted to visit
Washington to see the cherry blossoms, and she wanted to stay with me. We had both re- cently joined
CasaCasa.org, a nearly year-old online community that links travelers looking for places to stay with people who have rooms to spare. It’s one of the newest twists in an ongoing
travel trend: vacationers choosing the hospital- ity of strangers over the hospitality industry. But I wondered: Would we hit it off? As much as I studied New York Girl’s Facebook page, could I really know what it would be like to have a stranger live with me for three days? And would I, in turn, feel comfortable being a stranger in someone else’s home? To make trips more affordable — or even pos-
strangers continued on F6 If it’s too good
to be true . . . You won’t believe the deal you got on that place. Or will you?
by Brigid Schulte It was nearly closing time when I got to the
Western Union counter at Harris Teeter. I’d al- ready tried one Western Union closer to my house that was locked up for the night and one at a nearby Giant with a broken machine. I carefully filled out the form to wire nearly $1,000 to a complete stranger. I felt uneasy. But Deron Milton was offering a
two-bedroom penthouse vacation apartment rental in a prewar building in New York’s Gra- mercy Park overlooking a Zen garden with a swimming pool and fitness center for $150 a night. Part of me just knew it sounded too good to be true. But another part just really, really wanted it to be true. We’d decided at the last minute to take the kids to New York for spring break, and I’d spent many a bleary-eyed late-night hour searching Priceline and
Hotels.com and other sites for af-
scams continued on F5
NATE WILLIAMS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Amid a tide of anxiety, hopes for solidarity in the Gulf Oil spill taints trips
for some, but not all by Andrea Sachs
Shawn Kennington and his family were splashing around in the warm Gulf of Mexico waters off Florida’s Pensacola Beach when they had to come ashore. Tar balls — not seaweed strands, their origi- nal diagnosis — had attached themselves to the back and legs of one of Kenning- ton’s daughters. Kennington washed the
slime off. The next morning, oil spill be damned, the family returned to the beach, to col- lect shells, build sand castles and relish their holiday. “We are still able to enjoy the beach and water,” Kennington, the mayor of Pittsburg, Tex., said by phone from the beach last week. “It’s not perfect like it was in the past, but it’s not a disaster. I think we made the right move coming down.”
If the communities along the gulf, which is growing slicker by the day after the April 20 drilling rig explosion, could handpick their visitors, they would order
thousands of Kenningtons — and Morris- es. Bruce Morris, who lives outside Fort Worth, did not vacillate over an up- coming trip to Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort, 60 miles from Pensacola in Des- tin, Fla. The mortgage loan specialist was visiting, no question. “I don’t care if there are tar balls, torna- does, hurricanes or hellfire. I’m going to be there,” Morris said of his 24th stay at the luxury property. “It would almost be sacrilege if I didn’t go.” This impassioned commitment to trav- eling to the beleaguered area may be un-
ROGELIO V. SOLIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS gulf continued on F4 At lodgings in Biloxi, Miss., rates are down and cancellations are up.
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