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Holiday Candlelight Program at Malabar Farm
Join fellow hostellers and celebrate the beauty of the holidays during the Annual Candlelight Christmas Tours at Malabar Farm. This special four-day holiday event will be held Thursday, (12/10), Friday (12/11), Saturday (12/12), 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. and Sunday, December 13th 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Holiday decorations feature greenery, candles, bubble lights, and many other items common to the 1940's. Six trees will be decorated with special themes by volunteer organizations. The Malabar Farm - Lehman's Country Store is open for holiday shopping and features unique Ohio made products, Lehman's old-time housewares, Malabar Farm all natural beef/pork for your holiday table, and homemade fresh fudge.
This four-day special Candlelight Christmas celebration features live caroling, freshly baked cookies, hot wassail and a holiday toy workshop with a visit from Santa Claus himself. Live entertainment and music provided.
Admission is $5.00 for adults, $4.50 seniors and $3.00 for children age 6-17 for the self-guided candlelight tour of the Big House.
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The Amazing Race Comes Home to HI-USA!
Here is a profile from our new program presenter, Kelly Crabb.
I’m just a regular gal from Houston, with an incurable passion for travel. Lucky for me, I was selected to travel around the world and compete for a million dollars in the Emmy Winning Global Leadership Challenge and Travel Show on CBS, The Amazing Race. Although this took place a year and a half ago, It remains the most fun thing I have ever done. I feel very blessed to have experienced an opportunity like this one and it only fueled my personal fire to want to see even more of the world and share my experiences with others. Most importantly, it gave me ammo and credentials to encourage people I meet to chase their dreams and see the world.
I participated in Season 13 of The Amazing Race, which kicked off in Los Angeles. We flew immediately to Brazil, where we visited Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Fortaleza and Sao Paulo. We engaged in lots of water activities and I quickly learned the basics of speaking Portuguese. After a week or so of racing and resting, we flew to La Paz, Bolivia and battled altitudes of nearly 14,000 feet! We were spared elimination early on by someone else’s lack of attention to detail, actually by the smartest guys in the Race. Next, we raced to New Zealand, the most beautiful place on Earth. Laced with vineyards, jungles, beaches, we. One of our tasks was crushing enough kiwis to make 12 gallons of juice, then drinking it, and gladly we did. Then, it was on to Cambodia. Here, we saw poverty and chaos. So much so, that we felt moved to start a charity upon returning to the States. Unfortunately, we didn’t have luck on our side once we got to India, and the Race ended there for us.
My best friend from college and teammate, Christy Cook, and I were eliminated late enough in the game to travel on to the remaining stops on the Race which were Kazakhstan and Russia. We hung out with the production crew, enjoyed our daily Per Diem and dealt with the fact that we weren’t the first all female team to win the Race. It was tough to accept our loss but we still feel proud of ourselves for our fearless determination, sense of urgency and our 6th place finish. The finish line was beautiful Portland, Oregon.
After the Race, I was afforded countless opportunities to continue to travel. I took surf trips, cruises and solo camping trips and began travel writing. Last year, I compiled my countless journal entries and started writing my book, Diary of a Xenophile. I have high hopes that the right literary agent will find interest in it. I’m the type of person that would gladly spend my last dime on a trip to somewhere lovely where I can gaze out at mountains, beaches or farmland and thank God for what he created. I am delighted to have the opportunity to represent Hostelling International and encourage affordable world travel and lodging with people of all ages.
10 Best Things to do in 2010
Ring in the new year with these top travel ideas from Lonely Planet, excerpted from the new Best in Travel 2010, available now.
THE TOTAL ECLIPSE FROM EASTER ISLAND
Sunday, June 11, will see a total eclipse of the sun, visible from a corridor that traverses the southern Pacific Ocean. About halfway through, the path will cross over one of the world’s most extraordinary and isolated places: Rapa Nui, aka Easter Island, renowned for its ancient monolithic moai (statues). This will be the best possible place to observe the eclipse, with the darkened sun lingering above the northwestern horizon. It’s hard to beat the heady cocktail of a shadowed sun, a Polynesian island, and 887 monumental rock statues.
THE PEKING TO PARIS MOTOR RACE
The 2010 Peking to Paris Motor Challenge is a Wacky Races–style epic adventure, featuring classic cars rattling across the Old Silk Route. It starts in Peking on September 11, passes the Great Wall of China, then crosses Mongolia and the Gobi Desert, all the ’stans, Iran, Turkey, Greece and Italy, before finishing up in Paris. Most participants drive vintage cars, many of which are pre-1922. The first such race took place in 1907, the second in 1997: this will be the fourth classic-car overland extravaganza. Suspension and sockets permitting, they should cover the distance (14,119 km) in around five weeks.
THE FIFA WORLD CUP, SOUTH AFRICA
No other event has such power to capture the international imagination, and in 2010 the FIFA World Cup is coming to Africa. We’ll doubtless be, if not making it to the games ourselves, glued to the box: the 2006 World Cup had a total cumulative television audience of 26.29 billion. South Africa’s premier soccer venue is the FNB Stadium (Soccer City), in Johannesburg, which has been enlarged to a seating capacity of 94,700 for 2010. Rumors have it that FIFA had a ‘plan B’ for the World Cup, in case South Africa seemed ill-prepared, amid concerns about facilities and security. Nevertheless, it seems to be going full steam ahead, so let’s hear it for plan A!
BURNING MAN, NEVADA, USA
The Burning Man Festival, in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, is a city that rises and falls in a week. The site is vast and flat, edged by bony hills, the perfect place for did-I-really-see-that mirages. There are no spectators here: everyone is there to participate. It’s not about commerce either – the only things for sale are coffee and ice. For seven magical days in the dog days of summer, strange, fantastical shapes dot the desert. It’s all evidence of what happens if you let your imagination run wild in the hot sun. On Saturday night, the man (a big wicker one) is burned to the ground. If you fancy turning your car into a giant spider or painting yourself blue, Burning Man is calling you.
CAMINO DE SANTIAGO PILGRIMAGE, SPAIN
It’s a Holy Year in 2010, which means it’s prime time for a Christian pilgrimage. The pick is the journey to Santiago in Spain, where the apostle St James is buried. You can take any route – even start from your front door – but there are a few traditional approaches. Most popular is the Camino Francés (French Way), from Roncesvalles, around 800km away. You should get a Pilgrim’s Passport from a local church or tourist office, so that you can have it stamped en route. When you arrive, first touch the Tree of Jesse pillar, worn away by centuries of pilgrims’ hands, then hug St James’ statue in thanks for a good journey.
THE COMMONWEALTH GAMES, DELHI, INDIA
Delhi has been undergoing a makeover to host its biggest ever sporting event, the Commonwealth Games, which include sports ranging from synchronized swimming to shooting. The games will shine the global spotlight on this vibrant, clattering, chaotic capital, and the last few years have seen Delhi streamlined (as far as the unruly city can be) with a flurry of new infrastructure, including a brand-new metro system and a US$230.7 million, 158.4-acre games village. The airport has been expanded, and there are new roads, overhauled stadia, and lots of new homestays and hotels. There’s rarely been a better time to visit Delhi, particularly for Rugby Sevens, netball or Taekwondo fans.
A SPACE FLIGHT, CALIFORNIA, USA
Virgin Galactic is pitched to have the first commercial space flights starting in 2010. Tickets have been on sale since 2005 and cost around US$200,000 a pop. Flights will be launched from the Mojave Spaceport in the Mojave Desert, California. The spaceship is attached to a specially designed carrier aircraft, “the mothership,” for up to 15,000m. It then will ignite its hybrid rocket and climb to over 110,000 meters in about 90 seconds, reaching a speed of just over three times the speed of sound, before descending again. Put your name on the list and you should get there eventually – there’s expected to be around one flight per week.
2010 WINTER OLYMPIC GAMES, VANCOUVER, CANADA
From the February 12 to 28, the Winter Olympic Games will be doing their chilly thing in Vancouver, while the slopes of Whistler, 120km north, will host the skiing and sledging events. This icy extravaganza encompasses an incredible 86 sports, including the obvious, like skiing, ice hockey and figure skating, and the obscure, such as curling (a team sport: two sweepers use brushes to propel a polished granite disc along an ice track) and skeleton (racing a skeletal metal sled downhill). Be there, if only to see exactly how they will try to top the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics opening celebrations.
THE PUSHKAR CAMEL FAIR, INDIA
As the morning light sharpens, the scene near Pushkar, a tiny pilgrimage town situated in the Thar Desert of Rajasthan, comes into focus. Hundreds of camels and their owners’ camps fill the desert scrub. This is one of India’s most spectacular festivals (November 18 to 21), which began as only a sideshow to the main business of the moon-inspired Katrik Purnima, but became an attraction in its own right. The noise is remarkable, an unearthly chorus of camel snorts, fairground rides, people and distorted sound systems. It’s a swirl of color and chaos: camels, horses, tribal people, tourists and film crews all play their parts in creating the scene. Plus, if you’re in the market for a camel, this is where to strike a deal.
WORLD EXPO 2010, SHANGHAI, CHINA
Shanghai is hosting the 2010 World Expo (May 1 to October 31), a chance for the city to trump Beijing’s 2008 Olympic Games. Expos have been part of the international convention scene since the UK’s Grand Exhibition in 1851, and 70 million visitors are expected to visit this particular festival of nations. The huge site straddles both banks of the Yamuna river – more than 18,000 households have been rehoused to clear the site. Each of the 200 participating countries is pulling out all the stops: Copenhagen is even flying out one of their major tourist attractions – the iconic Little Mermaid statue – for the duration.
Get trip planning tips and more for your 2010 travels at www.lonelyplanet.com.