Travel

Feeling bad that you can’t afford a vacation? Travel books with titles like “Don’t Go There!” and “I Should Have Stayed Home” may make you feel better. For $15 or so, you’ll get a laugh out of vacation horrors that you’ll be happy to miss.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Bette Davis was married at the Mission Inn, as was Richard Nixon. Ronald and Nancy Reagan spent their wedding night here, and the list of famous people who’ve stayed here over the years includes Humphrey Bogart and Harry Houdini. But celebrity connections are just one reason to visit this National Historic Landmark. This time of year, there are 3.5 million reasons more.

As if spending the holidays with the family weren’t stressful enough, add the angst of air travel, as painful to swallow as fruitcake. With airport security still on high alert and airlines penny-pinching passengers over checked bags, getting home for Santa’s chimney drop can darken any festive mood.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Warmhearted smiles welcome me as I stride into the John Moore bar, the oldest rum shop in Barbados. I’ve been in the Caribbean for only a few days, but I feel as though I belong when I order a “Black and Coke,” which is the native slang for Extra Old rum served with Coca Cola. Embarrassingly, my cover is blown when I use a large bill to pay for my drink, which costs less than half as much as the cocktails at the beach resort where I am staying.

‘I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords,” Mark Twain wrote of Lake Tahoe in 1872. More than 136 years later, Twain’s words still ring true, especially for skiers at the resorts that ring the lake like a crown. But gorgeous views of the lake, lots of snow and great vertical drops are the only things that the North Lake Tahoe and South Lake Tahoe resorts share. No two resorts better epitomize the differences than Heavenly Resort in the south and Squaw Valley in the north.

SAN FRANCISCO – “There’s a little bit of everywhere in San Francisco.” So says a wise cabdriver at the end of a perfect weekend in this international city.

SAN FRANCISCO – Some 7.5 million people ride San Francisco’s cable cars each year. Many of them board at Powell and Market streets, the famous turnaround site at the end of the line. Here tourists can snap pictures of workers manually swiveling the cars around to begin the route again. But visitors may not realize there are actually three cable lines, each with its own flavor. The scenic Powell-Mason and Powell-Hyde lines both begin at Powell and Market. The third line, which is the least crowded and least known to tourists, runs along hilly California Street and also offers lovely views.

Presidential tourism is as old as George Washington and as enduring as Grant’s Tomb. In honor of the just-concluded election, here are three of my all-time favorite presidential history spots, chosen because of their charm and the stories behind them.

Places that presidents call home often become major tourist attractions, from estates at Mount Vernon and Monticello; to Hodgenville, Ky., where Abe Lincoln’s log cabin once stood; to Bill Clinton’s boyhood home in Hope, Ark. So what’s the equivalent of Barack Obama’s log cabin? Probably a 10th-floor apartment in Honolulu, where he lived with his mother and grandparents.

MOAB, Utah – The bluffs and hills of this mountain biking hub were as red as a sunburn and barren, save for a few juniper trees and clumps of rabbit brush. As I hiked to a flat stretch of sandstone, I saw them, bigger and more clearly defined than I had expected: dinosaur tracks.