Roadtripping

Rockettes will be godmothers of new Norwegian Cruise Line ship

When the Norwegian Breakaway is christened in May, it will have the Rockettes as its godmothers.

Norwegian Cruise Line announced Tuesday that it will be the “official cruise line” of the Rockettes and Radio City Music Hall, with an 11-foot replica of its newest ship on display in the theater’s Grand Lounge.

And for those of you who want to master the dancers’ trademark high kick, two Rockettes will sail aboard select cruises and offer fitness classes, as well as photo opps and meet-and-greets.

That’s an unusual feature for godmothers, who typically break the champagne bottle on the hull, then have little else to do with their ship.

“This truly takes the role of godmother to a new level,” Kevin Sheehan, the cruise line’s CEO, said in a press release.

Norwegian Breakaway will be based in New York year-round and is designed to have strong ties to the city, with Peter Max paintings of the Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty on its hull.  “The Rockettes, one of the most beloved and recognizable New York icons, are the perfect choice to serve as the ship’s godmothers,” Sheehan said.

The Norwegian Breakaway will have its christening ceremony on May 8 in New York, then begin cruises May 12 to Bermuda, and later to the Caribbean, the Bahamas and Florida.

Advice for keeping your laptop safe

As someone who travels with laptop, camera and other electronics, I’m paranoid about leaving any piece of equipment in my car, on (or under) a restaurant table, in an overhead bin that’s out of my line of sight. So I carry everything in a laptop-sized bag pack that I can keep a constant eye on when it’s not on my back. Why? Consider this statistic: Every week, an average of 12,000 laptops are lost or go missing at U.S. airports.  To minimize the possibility that yours will be one of them, check out these tips from Consumer Traveler on how to keep your laptop — and the data on it — safe.

A TV host's favorite road trip restaurants

Where do you eat on road trips? Not the fast food places where you stop when you’re in a hurry, but the nice places where you linger over dinner? G. Garvin, host of Cooking Channel’s Road Trip with G. Garvin, (and I can assure you this is not The Miami Herald’s TV critic and columnist Glenn Garvin), gave TheDailyMeal.com a list of his nine favorite restaurants – three in California, two each in Chicago and Atlanta, and one each in Asheville and Philadelphia. Click here to see his faves.

Autumn road trips: color in the mountains

We’re almost at my favorite time of year for road trips: autumn, when nature’s scenery is spectacular. I’m planning a trip to North Carolina, including a drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway to see the fall color. How about you?

To help you choose your route, The Miami Herald has a few articles for you. Click here for a story about New Hampshire, here for a story about Maine, and here for an article about the lodges in Georgia’s state parks.

If none of those fits the bill, here’s some help: a list of websites and phone numbers where you can find information about fall foliage. Some of these sites or phone lines might not be up and running yet, so bookmark this site for later.

STATES

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Maine

Massachusetts

New Hampshire

New York 800-225-5697

North Carolina

Tennessee

Vermont 800-VERMONT (800-837-6668)

Virginia 800-424-5683

Wisconsin

OTHER

Asheville, N.C

Blue Ridge Parkway

Georgia State Parks

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

New England: Yankee Magazine

Shenandoah National Park

USA

Photo: Maine Office of Tourism

Dueling re-enactments of Civil War's Battle of Antietam

If you’re intrigued by battle re-enactments, you’ll want to know about the dueling re-enactments of the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day of the Civil War. Monday is the 150^th anniversary of the battle — also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg — in which more than 23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or missing. The re-enactment is the biggest Civil War event of 2012, attracting 8,000 participants. But here’s the interesting part: the participants are divided between two re-enactments, one last weekend, one this coming weekend, with distinctly different styles. Last weekend’s event featured the sticklers for historical accuracy. The upcoming event features re-enactors more interested in putting on a show for spectators. Click here for a report on the two events. If you’re interested in going to this weekend’s re-enactment, click here.

Photo: A Union officer, center, leads his troops during a Civil War re-enactment of the Battle of Antietam last weekend. Credit: AP Photo/The Herald-Mail, Kevin G. Gilbert

10 new Alabama road trips

The Alabama Tourism Department has unveiled 10 new road trips within that state, ranging from the beach to the mountains, from Gee’s Bend famous patchwork quilts to bird-watching and battle re-enactments. The new trips are Numbers 21-30 of 100 that the state plans to post over three years. Check out the 30 already posted here.

Statue of Liberty to reopen Oct. 28

The Statue of Liberty, at least part of which has been closed to the public for most of the years since Sept. 11, 2001, will re-open to the public on Oct. 28, the statue’s 126th birthday. This time, the interior has been closed for a year while the National Park Service installed a second stairway and made other safety improvements.

In July 2010, when a smoke alarm was tripped in the Statue of Liberty and hundreds of tourists had to be evacuated via the only stairway that runs to her crown, officials decided she needed another set of stairs. The monument – including the museum in the pedestal – was closed a year ago, the day after her 125th birthday. Visitors could still tour Liberty Island. The statue was closed for three years after 9-11 and got a $20 million renovation, most of it security related. The crown remained closed to the public until 2009.

“We have reached a critical milestone in our Fire and Life Safety Project where we can begin to allow visitors back in to the monument on a limited basis while the project moves to completion by the end of the year,” David Luchsinger, superintendent of Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island, said this week in announcing the reopening. Check here for updates.

Photo credit: McClatchy Tribune

Autumn road trip: Niagara-on-the-Lake

Two things I learned from doing a little wine-tasting in Niagara-on-the Lake: One, a good icewine is truly fabulous, and two, just because you can get grapes from a Cabernet Sauvignon vine doesn’t mean you can make good wine from them. I visited the town six years ago during a road trip that started in Toronto, wound around the western end of Lake Ontario to the spectacular Niagara Falls and the charming Niagara-on-the-Lake. I experienced all the greatest hits: the falls, the Shaw theater festival, and local wine-tasting. Autumn is a great time to see the place -- it’s harvest season, the leaves are changing color, and the Shaw Festival runs well into October.  If that whets your appetite, read this story by Beth Harpaz, Associated Press travel editor. But stick to the wine grapes that like the cool climate, including pinot noir and riesling.

Road trip with kids: East Coast to Oregon and back

I’ve been following the year-long road trip that Chris Elliott, who writes the Travel Troubleshooter column that runs in The Miami Herald’s Sunday travel section, is taking with his wife and their three kids, ages 5, 6, and 9. Chris and his wife, Kari Haugeto, are blogging about the trip. Up next is a cross-country trek that they are calling the Oregon Trail. It’s not the wagon trail that pioneers followed in the first half of the 1800s, but their own route. They’re off to Deadwood, S.D., one of my all-time favorite road trip discoveries, where you can still find traces of the Wild West, including the nightly re-enactment of the shooting of Wild Bill Hickok.  For good info about road trips with youngsters, check out their blog here. Below is their route for this leg.

Isaac's winds uncover a 1923 shipwreck in Alabama

Here’s a sight I’d go out of my way to see if I were on a road trip: the remains of a schooner that ran aground off Mobile Bay, Alabama, nearly 90 years ago and was recently exposed by Hurricane Isaac.

It’s an interesting story. The schooner, Rachel, was blown onto the sand by a tropical storm. It was too far ashore to get it back into the water, so it was left there, on a long, thin spit of land that runs west from Gulf Shores near the mouth of Mobile Bay, on Fort Morgan Beach. Through the years, storm winds have uncovered it, then recovered it. Now, the old shipwreck is drawing a lot of attention, the Associated Press says. Read the full story here.

Photo: Melissa Nelson Gabriel/Associated Press